Joshua gets a wild hair on Saturday to “let’s just unscrew the dropboard track and see how bad the decomposition is behind it.” Then, before consulting me, Joshua mixes up some clear penetrating epoxy (more than he needs because you never know) and begins happily painting away at the minor (minor!) little scricks in the edges where the tracks were. Then he’s got all this epoxy to give away and before I know what the hell is going on, has touched up all sorts of minor scrapes and dings and cracks and what-have-you all over the cockpit AND the interior right over the settee. And, when this particular brand of epoxy cures, it turns an icky yellow and just gets even yellowier with time and air. We leave the boat and return Sunday: about 100 different wee spots all over the cockpit are a dripping sickly neon yellow and, christ, it’s cold so the epoxy is taking a long time to get to the point where you can sand it. We did thankfully get other non-epoxied parts sanded because at this point it was obvious that the entire cockpit must now be painted or else I’d poke my eyes out having to look at all the blemishes.

So I’m at the boat Monday: still a wee tad tacky; oh bummer I’ll have to wait until tomorrow. No, BAD me, I’ll tape off so I’ll have fewer things to do tomorrow (sort of good me). Tuesday: SHIT. Have to sand this crap and paint it dammit. Sigh. Big growl. First I eat some salted cashews with Rooster sauce on them to get my strength up for the big task ahead of me (yum). Then I proceed to sand my fingernails to the quick with the other side of my folded-up nib of sandpaper (epoxy being far, far tougher than fingernails) because our cockpit has all sorts of uncomfortable angles with tight corners that a stupid electrical orbital sander just does not reach. (Ow.) In the end I managed to get a mild scrape on the epoxy in the corners and the gross spots on the broad open spaces sanded flat. The cockpit looks absolutely atrocious at this point and I’m sort of despairing. Plus the wind has cooked up a bit—for those of you unfamiliar with Coyote Point, the place gets regularly FUCKING WINDY AS SHIT and I’m not kidding. I try to decide if I should wait until tomorrow, you know, when the wind maybe dies down, but then I’ll just have to do it tomorrow, and I know the wind won’t die down until winter. I prep the paint and rig a shade structure so I don’t fry my skinny parts in the sun while otherwise preoccupied. I turn on the radio and set the volume to be heard from the cockpit and get ready for some Terry Gross. She was supposed to interview some New York Times dude about the Hurricane but unfortunately the Judge Roberts stuff is on. Oh well, maybe it’s almost over.

My shade structure is completely feeble in the face of the ferocious wind. I didn’t see this on the weather site this morning; it only said “foggy,” and it’s not anywhere near foggy so there you go. I still have to tape down the paint splatter guard over the companionways, and not having any special paint-blocking tools I scavenge one of Joe’s (the guy who we bought the boat from) old plastic bags holding some random stuff we never really looked at too closely and tape it to one companionway. Tape is not sticking (plastic bag is half decayed) and the stuff is going all over the place in the evil wind. After much grumbling and half-assed searching, I find a squashed box of garbage bags (with one left) and an old Safeway grocery bag to cut up for the remaining companionway and cockpit floor. I have just enough blue tape to tape down the fluttery bits of the floor: miracles never cease. Feinstein is now harassing Roberts about women’s issues. Seems he wrote down some neanderthal remarks about equality and the sexes during the Reagan era. Roberts dodges the question with a completely nonsensical bit about lawyer jokes.

I begin to paint the cockpit. It is SO fun I can’t even tell you. Actually, after painting all of the irritating bits that can’t be had by the foam mini-roller, and actually getting down the to nitty gritty of foam rolling, I see how amazingly fantastic the cockpit looks after only one coat of paint. I’m feeling better. It’s now 3pm and there is no hope of Terry Gross coming on. The Roberts love fest is getting nauseating at this point: “To your knowledge, is the line that you have attempted to walk in these proceedings about being as forthcoming as you can, but recognizing that you have a responsibility not to jeopardize your impartiality, either the perception or the reality or the impartiality and independence of the judiciary…?” sez Cornyn; “It IS, senator…” gag gag gag.

Wind is calming down. One coat is down and I have some Tasty Bite for lunch. The hearing is degenerating to this: “the American people want to know…” and oh god the sports analogies: “…yesterday we were talking about baseball, but today we’re talking about dodgeball…” Then there was a bunch of this: “Well, that is in an area where I think I should not respond because…” “I’m not going to comment.” “I can’t elaborate on—can’t elaborate on what’s—beyond what’s in the memo.”

One of these: “He’s filibustering, Senator.” Haw. Haw. Haw.

And then this crazy dude named Graham who I thought was something NPR threw in as comic relief.

GRAHAM: Let’s talk about rightin’ wrongs here. I think it STINKS that somebody can burn the flag and that’s called speech. What do you think about THAT?
[All this in a thick South Carolina accent. Did I forget to mention that?]
R: Well… We had the Flag Protection Act after the Supreme Court concluded that it was protected speech…
G: Show me where the term symbolic speech is in the Constitution.
R: Well, it’s not.
G: It’s NOT. They just MADE it up, didn’t they? And I think it STINKS that a kid that can’t go to school and say a prayer if he wants to voluntarily.
What. Do. You. Think. About. THAT?
R: That’s something that’s probably inappropriate for me to comment on.
…
G: I think it’s not right for elected officials to be unable to talk about or protect the unborn. What do you think about THAT?

Oh jeez and the guy went ON. Roberts at this point was exercising the ol’ Ginsburg maneuver—waiving it around like a flag to deflect all those messy opinion questions. The wind was finally dying down and it was warming up a bit.

Sigh. Second coat = on. 6pm: time to pick up Joshua and get stuff to make dinner. I leave about a zillion things lying around in my haste to be gone because crawling through the top of the companionways without touching any paint is uncomfortable and nearly impossible and I just prefer to let all my tools rust. Plus Joshua thinks we’ll be back over to empty the head so I can get them, that’s right, later.

Oh but the cockpit looks good. I guess it was worth it.

Joshua definitely thinks it was worth it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 14th, 2005 at 7:54 pm and is filed under boat projects, doings, TimeMachine, USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.