Sometimes progress isn’t pretty…

C.E. Grundler

Theoretically, we’re moving forward on the timeline to launch. I truly want to believe that, and somewhere in my mind I know work is actually progressing, though sometimes it’s hard to tell. Drying out wet deck cores isn’t a pretty process, and while the present heat wave we’re riding out is helping things along, the oppressive humidity makes fiberglass work both difficult and even more unpleasant than usual.

The plan for this week was to finish drying out and then seal up the forward and side decks. The teak planks came up weeks ago, revealing the fiberglass below, and we’d drilled out every single screw hole, which showed us where water had reached the teak lumber coring. Fortunately, unlike the bridge, there were actually large areas that had remained dry. In other spots, there was moderate dampness, but days of intense heating and forced ventilation have dried those sections out.

Those halogen shop lights throw a lot of heat. Get eight of them going and the decks are hotter than a car’s hood in July… hot enough to quite effectively heat my lunch by simply laying it on deck.  I’d add more lights, only I keep tripping the fuses in the shed as it is.  But in some spots, drying the core called for a more — shall we say — aggressive approach.

Once the moisture meter shows this area is more wood than water, that deck can go back down, we can fill the thousands of holes, then glass the whole thing up. And that pretty much sums it up for the moment. If all goes as planned, (yeah, knock on wood) next week I’m hoping to have some prettier, or at least less disturbing pictures to show everyone. And I can go back to heating my lunch in the toaster oven.

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