Progress

Been raining here so much the ground is completely saturated. Every step you sink in and get a soaker. Now I know what the Pacific Northwest is like.

Yesterday I made good progress and tonight I'm going to try to get some more done. Too busy with paying work to go fool around in the garage right now. Robert emailed Eric and I this morning with a progress report and he's now sanding and filling Eliane's boat starting the process of getting ready to paint. He's asked Eric for a detailed painting process outline so he can re-explain it to Eliane in French and in "kid" terms. Eric speaks perfect French, but Robert has lots of on-the-job experience speaking "kid".

From what I remember, the idea is to varnish all the raw wood after the sanding & filling process is done. After the varnish to seal the wood comes the fairing with putty and a light re-sand, then comes paint. When Eric sends his procedure out, I'll fix any errors I've made here.

Postscript - July 28: Here's Eric's procedure:

1. Apply diluted (25%) varnish on all plywood edges, repeat as much as it will absorb
2. Remove staples with a long nose if you cannot, push them in with a punch and hammer
3. Fill all joints, holes with putty
4. Sand the putty, sand lightly the varnish
5. Apply the paint with the "roll and tip" technique. With a narrow (2-4'') short hair (or foam) roller, spread paint over a small area (4-8 sq.ft.) then quickly and delicately stroke this area with the tip of a dry brush (cheap foam ones are ideal) to remove bubbles. Do long regular and parallel strokes. Move to a next section and keep a wet edge to overlap the sections, if you cannot maintain a wet edge reduce the areas of the surfaces you work on at a time
6. Three coats of paint minimum

Thomas' boat will be different due to the epoxy that has been pre-coated on everything. I'll sand and then fair the hull. Areas which will need attention are the chines & outside panel joints. There shouldn't be any other major filling as I'm not using the screws anywhere on the outside of the hull. Once done there will be a light re-coat of epoxy, a finish sanding then paint.

Robert has been having fun sanding - the construction adhesive has a long full cure time (7 days) and it frequently gums up the sandpaper as it remains somewhat flexible even after curing. Cure time is also affected by ambient temperature, material porosity and humidity - all things that have not been optimal around here lately. Robert wanted it known that a harder setting sand-able adhesive would make things a lot easier. This goes hand in had with Eric's thoughts that a good waterproof wood glue would be better for a lot of tasks.

Eric sent out the basic sail dimensions today - we have to keep multiple project streams running concurrently to get this done.

I'm still working on Tyvek. The bamboo shipment has gone missing - it should have been here on Friday, but it was lost in Toronto and never made it to Ottawa. The Purolator Courier folks are on the case and they've commenced "an intensive warehouse search protocol" to find the shipment. Some Purolator shipping warehouse worker probably made our shipment into "Tiki Torches" for their Friday afternoon "staff meeting".