Head Games

     " 'til I can't take it anymore, no more...."
                                             -Foreigner


   *This post contains harsh realities of  boat life.  Reader discretion is advised.*



    Have I mentioned how much winter sucks?

    If so, too bad.  I'm gonna reiterate:

    Winter sucks.

   This winter was like a bad party guest- it came late, stuck around, and wasn't much fun.

   How hard was this winter?

  Lemme tell you a story:

  Back in November of 1975, the Edmund Fitzgerald sank during a storm on Lake Superior.  The  last ship to have visual and radio contact with the freighter was another freighter, the Arthur M. Anderson, which survived the same storm unscathed.  

  That's one tough boat.

   February 2015, the Arthur M. Anderson, the Chuck Norris of lakeboats, is stuck, trapped by Lake Erie ice just off Conneaut, Ohio.

                                                                                                     -image courtesy of techtimes.com

  The ice of February did what the gales of November couldn't:  Forced the Arthur M. Anderson to accept Coast Guard assistance.

                                                                                                            - image courtesy of fox8.com

  Yeah, THAT hard.

   The only, very limited, upside to this winter was the extended period of solidly sub-freezing temperature.

   Emphasis on the word "solid'.

   Perfect for one particular boat job.

   One Sunday afternoon, Elly the Crazy Boatdawg™  and I dealt with our cabin fever by making a run to the boatyard, and while one of us ran around the boatyard...

The other one of us able to climb a ladder did so, and then dug a path through the cockpit and uncovered the companionway...

  To clamber below and begin to deal with one part of the boat that SWMBO and I both agreed needed improvement with a quickness...

...The head.

  

     The head was NextBoat's one minor, mild disappointment. The height was uncomfortable and  it was poorly located in the space leaving a user feeling, er...

....cramped.  

     That was fixable, but the bigger practical issues weren't- the integrated holding tank didn't hold much, and, not to put too fine a point on it, when aforementioned holding tank was close to full, (often, because of it's limited size), the holding tank tended to be less-than-diligent about the "holding" part when the boat heeled past 15 degrees.

     Yeah, the head leaked when the boat heeled.  

     Ick.

    So, with everydamnthing between here and the state of Georgia frozen solid, the time was right to remove the offending fixture, and plot and plan its replacement.  Yeah, in theory,  the head should be empty, but Murphy's Law of Marine Plumbing Disruption states that no head is completely empty.  the only safe head is a frozen solid head, I figure.  

 Before.....

   

10 minutes of quick hose hacking and yanking, and a heave over the side....

   During, removed from, and stowed beneath, NextBoat.... 

      I acquired a larger holding tank from Jack's Used Boat Part Emporium and cleaned up the head reclaimed from DonorBoat, and a few days ago  SWMBO and I loaded in the new/old head, and eyeballed the layout:

    

  Yeah, we think this will work.

  The old vinyl flooring and carpet has to come out, a new floor has to go in, a seacock needs to be installed, the holding tank needs to be fitted...

   But the worst is done.

- Thanks for stopping by, and please remember to "Talk the Dock!"

Low-Buck Arts & Crafts at Stately Jones Manor

      "In the meadow, we can build a snowman..."
                                              -Felix Bernard



    ......  or not.


      As I write this, the temperature outside has nosedived to around -23 celsius.

      I am not nearly masochistic enough to calculate the windchill.

      If one is a skier, skater, ice fisherman, snowmobiler, snowboarder or snowshoer, one might enjoy freely frolicking in this frozen frontier.
 
      I, however, am none of the above.

      I am a sailor.

     And I am NOT going outside into this fucking frozen freakshow unless I absolutely have to.

      Luckily, I have a punchlist of off-season boat work to keep me occupied  until the lake ceases to be a solid mass entirely, and utterly, incapable of floating a boat.

     Doing something with our wobbly and plain saloon table was near the top of the "Boat projects that can be accomplished from the comfort of SJM" list.

     I've got some ideas for this project, boldly going where I had never gone before, but first: a warm-up project, an  aft cabin amuse-bouche if you will:

     Fixing the TV wall.


      The previous owners installed a small flat screen TV- its removal prior to sale has left an ugly blight in an otherwise very pleasant  aft cabin.

     SWMBO and I ruminated over this disfigurement throughout the season, and finally came up with an idea:

     A piece of scrap luan, some wood glue, and a cheap spreader to quickly, evenly and economically spread the adhesive....

      Then, trim a chart to size...

      Apply the chart to the very sticky board....

   Slather more glue on top, recalling skills vaguely remembered from elementary school art class decoupage projects.  While waiting for all that glue to dry, construct a frame from scrap mahogany trim...

Assemble  and varnish......

 ...and install (right side up) when the weather warms up.

  Right, so, feeling cocky, I got back to that saloon table....

     My initial thought was that we needed a larger table that would tie into the stripper pole, er, compression post. Upon further measuring and headscratching I realized that bigger is not better in this case.  Enlarging the table would make our current expansive and inviting recroom feel like  a cramped and cluttered cell, with a table that would be difficult to move around  and would prevent the locker door under the stove from opening fully.

So, the table can get no bigger.
Okay.
It does, however need to be more stable, so I lengthened the collar underneath, that fits over the post.  Now, no wobble.

But, there is a crapload of winter left, and it is a rather plain table, so I might as well try to figure out marquetry.

     Marquetry, as defined by the OED: "Inlaid work made from small pieces of coloured wood or other materials, used for the decoration of furniture."

     So, a supply run to Lee Valley Tools  was in order.  I needed glue, veneer.... that was pretty much it.

     I still managed to spend damn near $200.

     It's that kind of store.

     I bought a "box of veneer" which was exactly as described- a pizza box full of very thin sheets of a variety of different woods:

Like, 80-100 square feet of the stuff.

The table in question is about 3 square feet.


I quickly cobbled together a low-buck veneer cutting jig- a piece of scrap ply for a bed, some aluminum angle and scraps of luan trimmed to create 90 degree, 45 degree and 22.5 degree guides to simplify the math...

   

 ... and discovered the tricks to cutting very thin, very brittle pieces of wood...  after destroying a bunch of very thin, very brittle pieces of wood.

Luckily, I had a lot of it.

After marking the center on the table, and the half way polints on all four sides, I laid out a simple geometric design, and proceeded to cut and tape and glue and clamp and swear my way to an end result;

   

       It still needs some sanding and a few more coats of varnish, but I'm not completely embarassed by the end result.

    And I still have a crapload of veneer left over.

   And a crapload of winter.

   I rummaged through the scrap pile and did some sketching and came up with a plan for a simple cockpit table.  A little ply, some reclaimed teak trim from DonorBoat, and the basics are done:

 

   

   the rough work is done, now it's just a matter of mortising and installing the hinges, final sanding, and finishing.  I'm saving that until next weekend.

   It looks like there's still lots of winter left.




Thanks for checking in, and don't forget to "Talk the Dock!"

Ruh Roh.

     "I've been looking too hard, I've been waiting too long..."
                                                                         -Foreigner



     The Dock closes for the season on October 31.

     November 1, the waiting starts.

 

    November 1, We start to count down the days until we can get back in the water, back on the Dock.

    When the winter is long, deep, dark and cold, that count is important- it reminds us that winter is not never-ending, no matter how permanent  the ice and snow feel.  

  

    November 1,  we start to focus on April 15- Opening Day.

   This was one seriously long-ass winter, but by the end of March there was some hope.

   The Marina parking lot was (mostly) free of snow...

... even if the Dock was still (mostly) iced in, what with the temperatures remaining stubbornly sub-freezing, sub-seasonal and just generally submarining my mood.

By the end of last week things were looking up.  The air temp had increased rapidly, causing mist to rise from the thawing Lake on a rare (at least, this season)  string of two warm sunny days,  making Lake Erie look decidedly, er, eerie:

   Turns out, the Marina did not escape winter unscathed. With a relatively shallow depth,  limited room for ice to move, and a harbour mouth open to the prevailing winds, the ice froze thick, froze hard, and fought everything it came up against.  Like the docks:

The repairs were under way, but...

According to a note taped to the cash register at Bridge Yachts ...

Okay, so for all intents and purposes, it looks like Opening Day will not be Opening Day, but that is okay because it is getting warmer and finally starting to feel like spring, and it's all good, I tell myself...

... and then I wake up this morning  to this:

SNOW.

ARE YOU FREAKIN' KIDDIN' ME?!!?

    Sooner or later, we're gonna get in the water.

    Right?





   While we all wait for spring to damn well finally get here all permanent-like, please continue to "Talk the Dock!"