Rain rain, go away
So there we were, all ready to re-paint the stateroom. We went to Lowe's and purchased the paint (two lovely shades of blue that escape me at the moment), got some snazzy new flooring to put in, and had things plotted out. Saturday rolled around and I got to work removing the crappy patio rug and other accessories that were in there. I extracted the rear step and discovered something strange and wet.
No, it wasn't Delia's nose hiding in the dark. It was, in fact, wet wood.
Not surprisingly, the starboard rear corner of the stateroom had the same leak issue that the port side had, which we took apart, cleaned up, and re-sealed a few weeks ago (see repair pictures in a previous post.) Anyway, this isn't a mission-critical problem, since the boat remains intact and the hull is holding up quite fine. Instead this is more of a nuisance that's going to require three or four days of nice weather, in order to take everything apart, air it out, kill off any mildew and mold (Borax is apparently the cure for all of life's ailments...) and then putty it up, glue some new wood in, and seal it back up.
This, then, has been the main problem. Our weather for the past week has been as follows: twenty minutes of sun, twenty minutes of downpour (sometimes with rumbling), twenty minutes of sun, thirty minutes of drizzle... repeat ad naseum, although occasionally replace "sun" with "clear nighttime skies" depending on the time of day. Due to some wacky weather in the north Pacific (something to do with upper level lows and troughs and such that I should recall from taking Meteorology 101 in college, but don't), this unsettled air will persist for another few days before finally giving way to some fair weather.
In the meanwhile, I've slapped some duct tape on all the seams in the corner, which has drastically ebbed the flow coming in, and also scraped out the really wet wood and set up a few small fans inside, to get some fresh air into what wood remains in fairly good shape. Things look promising, but for now it's a waiting game. Until those nice days come around, we're reduced to doing less exciting things, like moving all the kitchen stuff in and putting up lights. Kristin's got dozens of photos to share soon, along with thrilling stories of trying to get Speakeasy to install our DSL. Apparently their subcontractor's computer systems don't handle boat slip numbers very well.
Comments
Sorry to hear about the leak problem,if you can save any of the wood ,ther is a product, called Durham Rock hard water putty it adheres to wood, so if you have to build up a nailer or firing strip to some kind of shape, that you can fasten something to,this stuff works ,similar to plastic wood but it comes in a powder form,and you mix water to it. it comes in round containers at Lowes or Home Depot,4 oz and up. i have used it in the past ,and have had decent results. i have some here in the work shop,but thats not doing you guys any good here. Barry
Posted by: Dad | May 22, 2005 3:57 PM
The names of the paint escape you? How could you forget ADVENTURE and CRASHING WAVES ?! The very definition of our existence aboard the Octopus of Love. ;)
Posted by: Kristin | May 23, 2005 11:37 AM