Saturday, February 04, 2012

It's not all bunnies and ducks...

More on politicians and drug testing, OMG a politician with a conscious (I'm buying my season lift tickets for Hades!), and my favorite in the Mr Compassion sweepstakes...

Building a dinghy on a boat can be something of a, let's just say an interesting experience...

For a start, there's the lack of space to work on an eight-foot dinghy aboard a CAL 34. Once the hull gets stitched together the ventilation down below goes all to hell because two of the hatches become non-opening for the duration and getting to the front of the boat means doing a lateral limbo.

Then there is the ever present swell, which makes doing fillets something of a comedy routine from an old silent movie as the dinghy becomes something of a moving target as the swell has it gyrating within a four foot eccentric arc. Made even worse by the sports fishermen doing their best to launch you off the boat when they power through the anchorage at speed pulling a six-foot wake...

Fun stuff!

Anyway, yesterday I did the interior fillets and the skies were clear so I left the dinghy right side up to cure and just after midnight we got a bit of a squall which in the course of ten minutes seemed to put one hellacious amount of water in the dinghy. Trust me, nothing says fun like bailing a dinghy on your hands an knees with a four foot swell running and 30+ knots of wind...

Listening to The Wailin' Jennys

So it goes...