Gale Warning
Winds from the north at 25 to 30 kt gusting 35 kt. Seas 4 to 7 feet.
We were looking forward to joining some of our dock mates for a nice calm trip from Portland to Norwich today but that obviously wasn't going to happen. In fact, beginning yesterday afternoon, they were not opening the railroad bridge in Old Saybrook, probably because they were afraid of wind damage when it was up.
Tomorrow, Monday, is now showing a small craft advisory. Guess we are stuck in Portland for a while.
But, we used the time to good advantage.
On Friday afternoon, we started the engines and, with the help of a tablespoon of gas down each carb, they came to life immediately after the long winter layup.
On Saturday, Frances was busy cleaning and making the boat into the perfect summer home and I tackled putting up the bridge enclosure. Frances asked if I wanted some help and I replied that no help would be needed. The top has 11 sections and Frances had marked the position of each one last fall when we took it down. After I put up the first section backwards, I called for help and once Frances arrived on the bridge, the installation of all those sections went quite well.
Once the bridge was enclosed (it was cold and very windy) I got the radar and the chart plotter to communicate with each other and tested the steering and transmissions. Everything worked, just as it should. We hosed the winter grime off the boat and called it a day.
On Sunday (again cold and windy), we stowed more stuff, mounted the last cabinet door and then began applying the cleaning solution that precedes PolyGlo to the bridge and cabin sides.It was truly amazing to see what came off the boat with the aid of a Scotch-Brite pad. There was mold and dirt that must have been there for years. Then we applied a coat of PolyGlo and it simply disappeared into the old fiberglass on the cabin and bridge sides. Since we still had some time before cocktail hour, we applied a second coat of PolyGlo. The shine began to come back, although it will take at least two more coats of this stuff to make it really nice.
Here's a picture of the starboard cabin top. Notice the land yacht in the background.
If you look carefully, you can see where the PolyGlo stopped.
That's it for this weekend. Hopefully, we get the boat the Norwich this week.
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