(refers to events that happened August 2nd – 6th)

After spending eight days just outside of Papeete, we were ready to move on.  The anchorage we were in had warm showers, but this was about the only up side.  The water was dark, cloudy and stank with sewage from runoff from Papeete.  You could almost see the rate at which stuff grew on the underside of our boat.

Matt and I sailed the boat over to Moorea, a short 25 mile sail.  He then went off to meet his and Karen’s moms who were visiting for a week.  Matt and Karen would stay that night at the hotel and the subsequent three or four nights.  I had the boat to myself!! Let the party start!

Before the party could start though, Matt had given me a list of jobs to accomplish.  The list had one item on it.  Redo the wooden floors inside the boat.

O.K., that’s melodramatic.  Matt and I discussed and we both wanted a nice newly polyurethaned floor.  Matt felt any more wear in certain spots would cause permanent damage.  It would look great and be a huge bang for our buck in terms of enjoyment and resell value.

Step one: Scrape.  Using a scraper take off most of the old polyurethane over the entire floor.  Time required: 6 hours.  Sweat level: high.  Battery power requirements: none.

Step two:  Use Orbital Sander on 80 grit over half of the floor.  Time required: 12 hours.  Sweat level: moderate to high.  Battery power requirements: moderate.

Step three:  Use Belt Sander with vacuum attached over entire floor.  Time required: 5 hours.  Sweat level: low.  Battery power requirements: enormous.

Step three should have been step one and would have saved the time required to do step one and step two.  But Matt had initially suggested the scraper and orbital sander route.  After a couple of days of this, I met up with Matt, described the progress, and realized the belt sander was the way to go.  That it took three days of work before I made the switch is a testament to some stubbornness and my oft detailed lack of handiness experience.

Step four: Redo entire floor with Orbital Sander on 80 grit.  Time required: 6 hours.  Sweat level: moderate. Battery power requirements: moderate.

Step five: Use Fein tool with triangular sander tool to get into the corners and edges.  Time required: 3 hours.  Sweat level: moderate.  Battery power requirements: low.  Frustration level:  Enormous.

The Fein tool is a beautiful instrument, but this was not its calling.  The sandpaper we had for the Fein tool gummed up quickly, in about 5 minutes, and would then need to be changed.  Extraordinarily frustrating.

Step six:  Entire floor with Orbital Sander on 200 grit.  Time required: 4 hours.  Sweat level: moderate. Battery power requirements: moderate.

The floor was now bare wood, light and baby bottom smooth.  It was impressive to run my hand across after I had used the belt sander and think ‘oh that’s pretty smooth.’   Then after the 80 grit orbital sander was used, I’d think, ‘wow, THAT’s smooth.’ Finally, after the 200 grit sand paper, I was thinking, ‘This is better than the sexiest pair of smooth woman’s legs I’ve ever felt.’  That’s not true, but you get the point.

Step seven: clean.  Time required: 2 hours.  Sweat level: low. Battery power requirements: none.  Frustration level: high.

There was now sawdust everywhere.  I had failed to use the vacuum attachment in steps two and four.  This was a colossal mistake.  Sawdust was everywhere.  I had taped off Matt and Karen’s bedroom, but everywhere else had a thin to thick layer of sawdust.  Before laying down layers of polyurethane, which if the the sawdust got airborne and settled onto, would hold it fast like fly-stick paper, the boat needed to be cleaned.  I got to probably 90% of it.  Karen, bless her heart, spent an additional few hours cleaning up my mess a week later, getting to all the more smaller nooks and crannies of the boat.  A month later there is still sawdust visible in a myriad of places.

Step eight: wipe down floor with rubbing alcohol to clean.  Time required: 3 hours.

Step nine: repeat.  I went through six rags coating them in sawdust that had settled on the floor.

Step ten:  Finally the first layer of polyurethane was ready to be applied.   Time required: 2 hours. Brain cells killed:  some.  Satisfaction level: high.  I wore a respirator while applying because the polyurethane has a terrible headache inducing odor that forced me to sleep outside that night.  This step, by the way, was finished after a 16 hour work day ending at 4 am.

Step eleven:  Wake up in the morning and bask in the glory of a beautiful floor.  Take pictures of your exquisite work.  Drink multiple beers in the morning toasting your success.  Then prepare for another coat of polyurethane.  The directions say to apply two coats.  Matt, in his infinite wisdom, and constant striving for anal perfection, wants four.  (In his defense, in hind sight, each layer was necessary and improved the floor markedly)

Step twelve: Lightly sand with the orbital attached to vacuum.  Wipe down with rubbing alcohol to clean.  Time required: 2 hours.  Battery power requirements: colossal.  It will be necessary to run the engine in order to charge the batteries.  This is the first time EVER this has been necessary.

Step thirteen:  Next layer of polyurethane.  Time required: 2 hours.  This time making sure, once an area is covered in poly, to ever so gently run the brush across the area.  Like tickling someone with a feather…

Step fourteen through nineteen: Repeat steps eleven through thirteen twice more.

A week worth of work later, and now we have a beautiful floor.

I’m still working on the boat, don’t worry.

I’ve been trying to finish painting the deck, for months now actually, and I am discovering that November 25 in San Francisco is a terrible time to try to dry anything.

Here’s a picture I took today:

Notice that it appears our boat is leaving the slip. Don’t be fooled: I pushed the boat half out of the slip in a desperate attempt to shine a little bit more sunlight on the deck. Unfortunately, the boat’s little trip half out of the slip and back in was the farthest it has travelled in months.

Here’s another one for you:

In this one, notice the box fan in the upper right background. I ziptied this to the stanchion and have been running it for the past 36 hours.

I don’t have a picture of me holding up one of my photography reflectors trying to dry the side deck–I lasted about 15 seconds before I realized the futility of that one.

Here are some pictures of the progress:

 

 

The sail-making kit arrived from Sailrite two months ago.  I immediately opened the box and had, on a mini-scale, the same feeling upon seeing our boat for the first time.  “What the hell am I getting myself into?”  I slowly plodded through the instructions and all of the components.  Like poking around the boat for the first time, this induced more feelings of dread.

34 yards each of light blue and dark blue ripstop Nylon Sailcloth
79 feet of leech line
81 feet of 5-ply Waxed Bobbin Twine (I still don’t know what this is for)
1 square foot of 2-3 oz Pearl Gray Cowhide Leather
240 yards of Seamstick Basting Tape (both 1/2” and 1/4”)
a variety of other stuff

One last item caught my eye.  2400 yards of 1 oz V-46 White Polyester UV Thread.  Over 1.36 miles of thread.  It would take me 9 minutes to sprint a distance the length of the thread included in the Sailrite kit.  It would take our boat over 7 minutes, at top speed in heavy winds to cover the distance.  I tried not to think about how much sewing this implied.

I did know the first step, though, of this project:  securing a location to do the sewing.  My condo would not do.  The total square footage of my condo is 1126  feet, not including the balcony.  The largest room is a mere 220 square feet.  The square footage of our sail: 706.37 square feet.  My condo would not do.

I had been to another sail-making shop though, when we needed a patch put on our jib.  They had an enormous wood floor that immediately made me harken back to my high school basketball days.  The perfect location was so obvious.  I even work at a school… easy access!  A week later I sheepishly asked my principal at my school if I could use the gymnasium after school the next week.

“For what?” she inquired.

“I’m sewing a sail for our sailboat.”

“Wow.  Do you know how to make a sail?”

“No.”

“Do you know how to sew?”

“No.”

She laughed and wished me luck.

A week later I carted into the gym a box of supplies, including my sewing machine, some scissors, pens, black clips and scotch tape that I borrowed from school, and the Sailrite kit.

I then left and fetched a 48-inch wide dust mop.  Because I knew the floor was gross.  No way was I laying our brand new thousand dollar sail down on that floor.

I pulled out the scraps they include for patches and making sure the settings on your sewing machine are correct; they would be my practice test runs and only the fourth time I had ever operated the sewing machine.  I hemmed and hawed, but finally set up a work station in the middle of the gym floor and went at it.

And it was surprisingly easy!

Step 1: Take a roll of Seamstick basting tape and methodically roll it on to the edge of one of the sail panels.  
Note: Be careful to keep the sail taught but not stretched while applying.  There can be no bunching or buckling of the sail or of the basting tape.

Step 2: Line up two panels.  Remove backing to basting tape.
Note: a little at a time is best.

Step 3:  Apply one sail panel on top of another, lining it up on the marks drawn on the sail by Sailrite.

Note: This time both sails must be taught, but not stretched, as they are joined together.  
This results in awkward positioning wherein one knee is on the union of the sail panels where they have already been basted so as to provide the main anchor point for proper sail cloth tensioning for the next basting. The other leg, so as not to be on the sail cloth, thus providing another anchor point on the sail, resulting in improper tensioning, and consequently buckling or bunching of the sail cloth, must wrap on top of and behind the other leg.  Now while balanced here, one hand pulls taught one sail, the other hand pulls taught and applies the other sail to the basting tape.  Yoga helps.  The position I would get into, incidentally, looks a little like a kneeling eagle pose.

Step 4:  You should only do the joining of sail panels in small increments so as to ensure a proper sail union.  “Basting is a  critical step in sail-making.”  So says Sailrite.  Therefore, repeat step 3, 8 inches at a time, and just to join two sail panels you might be at this for 40 feet.

Step 5:  Roll up both panels from each end so that only the seam is showing.  
Note: Rolling the 4 foot wide panels at the head (top) of the sail by yourself is easy.  Rolling 40 foot wide panels at the foot (bottom) of the sail by yourself is not.

Step 6:  Finally some sewing!  Drag entire ensemblage over to sewing station and begin to sew.  
Note: A 45 degree zigzag stitch is proper, 3 mm wide.  No backing of the thread is required at the edges because luff tape will cover and anchor the strands of thread.  Be sure to sew as close to the edge of the seam as possible.
picture

Step 7:  Repeat Step 6.  Two rows of zigzag stitching are required at each seam.
Note: Three rows if using a straight stitch.
Note: On 40 foot sail panel seams, two rows of zigzag stitching will require you to change the bobbin on a standard consumer sewing machine a minimum of three times.  This will be annoying.
Note: On 40 foot sail panel seams, two rows of zigzag stitching will take beginning sewers 2 hours.
Note:  Your back will hurt from leaning over.
Note:  Your eyes will get fuzzy from staring at one spot for hours.
Note:  Your left leg will cramp from being awkwardly positioned to the side while controlling the speed with your foot on the footpad.
Note:  Your right knee will hurt from being on the ground for hours.  Even if wearing a knee pad.

There you have it.  Sewing the sail panels together in 7 easy steps.  All it takes is time.  Lots of time.  Next comes the reinforcement patches on the corners and the edges.  Both do not seem as straight forward as stitching in a straight line for 40 feet.

just to let you know what we’re up to . . . Jonny and I are taking the boat apart, starting too many huge projects all at once, and getting way in over our heads. Good times! We are simultaneously rebuilding the fridge, moving the propane locker to build a lazarette hatch, and rebuilding the entire radar arch/bimini/solar panel setup. A few pics:

I’ll give you two really good reasons why I shouldn’t sew a sail: 1) I know nothing about sewing.  2) I know nothing about sails.

All I know is that two months ago, while chatting about money and our sailboat, Matt said to me, “We definitely need a new sail.  Why don’t you sew it for us?  It will save us a lot of money and you could do it in Denver. It’s a boat project that doesn’t require a boat.”

It seemed so logical, so rational. Even Sailrite, the company that sells sail-making kits, said it was easy. Zip, zip, zip — and voila — done. Check out the video and see.

Still, intuition suggested that the task would be daunting. When I told my friends, “I’m thinking about sewing a sail,” I couldn’t even keep a straight face. Like so many other boat projects, sailmaking was unfamiliar and overwhelming.

Now, ankle deep as I am in this sailmaking endeavor, I wonder if Matt asked the question in jest.  A completed sail is wider and almost as long as my condo (ehem..currently for rent). How the heck am I supposed to do this?

I do know, however, the difference between a code zero, gennaker, asymetric spinaker, drifter, crusing spinaker, and genoa. I know how to thread a bobbin. I know what tension can be applied to different sail luff configurations and how that affects the ability of a sail to go to windward.   I also know what tension can be applied to a piece of thread and how that affects looping above and below the fabric.  I understand roach. I understand how to walk the dog.

I know this because I did hours of personal research, had several discussions with Matt, read a book, and talked for 30 minutes on the phone with Jeff, the head sailmaster at Sailrite, hitting him with questions I barely have enough knowledge to even be asking, let alone understand the answers.  He was extremely helpful, though I’m pretty sure he realized I was a complete greenhorn.  We need a sail though, so I pressed on, e-mailed him even more questions the next day, and then called again a few days later.

I know we want something that would work in light air.  You see, the breezes in the trade-winds (which blow from 20 degrees north to 20 degrees south of the equator minus about 5 degrees of doldrums right on the equator) are actually fairly wispy most of the time, only 5-15 knots.  All of our current sails are made of Dacron, the most common synthetic sail fabric, but which would be too heavy for those light trade winds.  Our new sail, called a drifter, will be made of super lightweight nylon, much like tent fabric.  We’ll mostly be flying it in what’s called a double-head sail set-up:  the jib and the drifter are attached at the forestay, one going to port and the other to starboard, each at about a 90 degree angle to the boat.  They create a big parachute the wind pushes against, moving the boat.  To use this set-up the wind needs to be coming from generally directly behind you, give or take 20 degrees.  Coincidentally, that’s what the wind will usually be like in the trades.

I also know this because I borrowed my sister’s sewing machine, and had my newfound mentor, Lauren, gave me a brief tutorial on using it.  Like a good mentor, she stepped back and let me have fun. To start, I ripped off a 4’x4′ section from my 20 foot square blue ground tarp, hoping that it would mimic nylon, because I wasn’t willing to cut up my tent.  I then impatiently cut  the 4’x4′ square into 6 different pieces to sew back together.  Once in a while, when something stopped working and I couldn’t fathom why, I’d ask for help.  Otherwise, I showed her my stitching, asked for feedback, and generally felt proud of what I had done.
The process reminded me of the internship programs that my students go through. Every week, they see new things, learn new skills, and push themselves beyond their normal boundaries — under the guidance of amazing mentors. Such opportunities — in school!— are awesome, and I smiled just thinking about it.

Three significant lessons emerged from the reassembly of the first tarp:

1) It would help if I cut up the tarp in straight lines.
2) It would help if I mimicked the way the sail panels would be pre-attached with double-sided tape.
3) It would help if I had more thread.

So we drove over to Fancy Tiger, a local boutique thread-shop.  They have a surprising lack of thread, needles, and fabric, but an ungodly amount of yarn, and they also have sewing classes! You get to bring in your own projects and get help!  It’s like getting 10 mentors at once, for free! As far as I can tell, there’s no other shop like it for 500 miles.

Back home, I cut out a second piece of tarp. This time with straight lines.  I tacked the pieces together with double-sided tape.  I used my new, bright yellow (Lauren raised her eyes at my choice, but I wanted bold) thread.  The second go was a significant improvement, and my confidence rose ten-fold.

So, now, thanks to so much help, this project seems more manageable. I’ve got Lauren, and my sister, and Jeff, and the entire staff of the local thread-shop as support.  With all that scaffolding, it should be easy.  Right?

At first, the returns lady at Home Depot didn’t wanna let me return the Dremel tool, since I didn’t have a receipt or the plastic box it came in. I pressed on.

“It’s broken,” I said. “Try it. It turns on, but you can’t change the bits.”

She examined the tool, turning it over mid-air. She held it gingerly, as if it were a sex toy, or a rotten vegetable.

“What’s wrong with it?” she asked, bringing up the refund screen.

“Broken collet,” I said, and she began typing. I spelled it out: C-O-L-L-E-T.

A wave of joy swept through me. Success! I thought. Replacement Dremel, here we come!

Alas, all was not right according to the returns lady. I had picked up a brand new Dremel tool, still in the box, for demonstration purposes, and now she looked at the image on the box — model 400XPR, with 70 bits and 3 attachments — and pointed to the attachments. She asked if I had those with me.

“I don’t,” I said. “I brought everything I have.” This was definitely a lie. I had left all the good dremel bits on the boat, because we are down to a precious few of them.

“You can’t return it without the box,” the returns lady said.

“But it’s broken,” I said. “The tool is broken, and it’s guaranteed.”

“I can’t return it like this,” she said. “There’s a code on the box that the manufacturer needs.” I begged. I pleaded.

“What if you let me return the old tool, without the box, and then i give you the new box, since I won’t need it?” This calculus was beyond her. It didn’t work like that.

The returns lady had me move over, to make way for another customer. Not a good sign. Not success. I felt like $100 was about to be pulled out of my pocket. My problem tool and I were handed off to Mike, apparently the fix-it guy at the service counter. I recognized him (I guess I’ve made too many trips to Home Depot) but tried to hide it. Mike grabbed a wrench,  depressed the collet button with his thumb, and tried to turn the collet with the wrench. It didn’t budge.

“That’s what I spent the last half hour trying to do,” I said, trying to establish rapport. He tried again, this time with two wrenches: one on the collet, and the other on the bit.

“I tried that too,” I said. I wanted to say: I’m not a dumbass, dude, but I restrained myself. Mike tried a few more times. By now the manager had walked over, to see if Mike had made any progress.

“What were you grinding?” Mike said.

“Balsa wood,” I said, which was true.

“It’s rusted shut,” Mike said. “It won’t open.”

“I told you,” I said. “It’s broken. I wasn’t even running it hot,” I added, which was also true.

“I’ve never seen a broken Dremel,” Mike said, with an air of fascination. He looked up at the manager.

“I’ve never seen a broken Dremel,” the manager said, with a sense of gravity. He seemed troubled, as if he’d just learned that the world was not round, but octagonal. I thought for a moment, and decided it was against my interest to point out that I had seen three broken Dremel tools before, in my own hands, by my own doing. I also restrained myself from blurting out: Are you guys serious? You work in a friggin’ hardware store! Instead, I lied again, and said I’d looked online and seen that a lot of people have this problem. It seemed innocent enough; how could people like me NOT have this problem

Grudgingly, the manager said he’d take care of it. As the manager walked back to the returns counter, Mike made some joke about running a retail establishment, where the point is to sell things. Then, to me, he said a lot of people come in with “I.D. 10-T problems, saying it like that: I.D. ten dash tee. I tried not to laugh. I knew he wasn’t  comparing me to the people who can’t find the ON button, or who think their CD-drives are coffee cup holders, but I didn’t want to be mentioned in the same breath as them. I did not want to be cataloged anywhere near the Incompetents.

The manager printed a refund slip and receipt, and I walked out into the world with a brand new Dremel, in a new case, in a new box, complete with 3 attachments and 70 bits. No money was sucked from my pocket. Success!

Of course, halfway home, I realized I was missing one key bit: the coring bit that was stuck in the broken tool. The single best bit we owned! Curses!

But I was too happy to turn around. Back at the boat, I swore I’d save the box, the case, and the receipt, because it’s only a matter of time before this one, too, bites the dust. Given how much work remains on the boat, it’s inevitable. I’d put money on it.

For the next two months I’m unemployed. This condition is not by choice. Nevertheless I intend to avoid feelings of guilt or worry by constantly working on the boat. Today was the second day of this mandated vacation.

Today I didn’t succeed in rewiring the nav lights (yesterday I didn’t succeed in fixing the diesel fuel leak). I spent all day doing it, and I finished maybe half of it. This is a job which I’ve already done twice and didn’t want to do even once. This third time it was because I accidentally cut through the wires while we were installing a portlight, in such a way that I couldn’t reuse the old wiring. Of course I only accepted this after taking apart half the ceiling which I enjoyed putting right back even less. Usually these things don’t faze me, they take their own time and I give it to them patiently. But today my coping system took a vacation and left me with the desire to hammer on everything in sight, to hammer the entire boat to nothingness. Nothingness wouldn’t need any maintenance.

So I spent much of the morning stuck up in the anchor locker again, and I wasn’t wearing a smile and feeling goofy like the last time I shoved myself in that uncomfortable hole.

This undertaking–i.e. planning to sail around the world–may be grand and romantic, but the reality of making it happen are thousands upon thousands of small victories and defeats. Each small task is necessary and requires total concentration; in such a state it becomes difficult to keep the big picture in mind. And sometimes I’d rather not think of that big picture, lest I become overwhelmed by the magnitude of the work that remains.

Tomorrow is another day, I know. Take the bad with the good, I know.