The Blue View - A new bunkmate

 

I have a couple of photos of the main salon area. One was taken a few weeks ago and one yesterday - sort of a “Before and After” collage. Notice anything different? You undoubtedly observed that not only have the contents of the trash can changed, but the finish on the table has suffered a bit with the ongoing project.

With all this hammering, sawing and epoxying going on, I was worried about damaging the salon table, and a workbench would be so much more useful. So I removed the tabletop and replaced it with a hunk of plywood I keep around for the purpose.

The biggest dilemma was where to store the tabletop. Well, Marcie isn't using her half of the bunk, so...

My new bunk mate is a bit wider in the hips and more flat chested than I like, but, hey, “If you can't be with the one you love...”

Days and Ways to Celebrate

A daily list of mostly obscure holidays and fun ways to celebrate them.

Tweed Day

Hmmm...couldn't find out if you were supposed to wear your tweed jacket and cap this day or celebrate political corruption, e.g. this is Boss Tweed's birthday.

World Pillow Fight Day

Better yet, grab a pillow and have a fight.

The Blue View - Making Slow Progress on the Fridge Redo

I am making progress each day on the refrigerator/freezer project, but I never seem to get as much done as I hope to. Much of it has to do with my age. As much as I hate to admit it, I don't move as fast as I did twenty years ago. Age aside, there are a few other contributing factors to my “slower than molasses in January” pace, however. One issue is that most of the work has to be done in the saloon. This is not a boatyard or cruiser's marina where the majority of owners live aboard and are working on projects. I would like to be a good neighbor here by keeping the dust and noise to a minimum, and it would be rude of me and in poor form to do my sawing, hammering and sanding on deck or on the dock. So I have a very small work area cluttered with large pieces of plywood, laminate and foam, not to mention all my tools and supplies stacked everywhere. It is difficult just to walk through the saloon, let alone try to cut a piece of wood. Today is even more annoying as there is a 25 knot wind in the marina, and Nine of Cups is rolling a bit. I can't lean a piece of wood against something or leave a power tool sitting on a counter without fear of it crashing down with the next big gust.

The biggest issue, however, is the odd shape of the refrigerator/freezer area. Life would be much simpler if the box were cube shaped. My box has only one right angle. The outer wall conforms to the shape of the hull, which curves in from top to bottom and forward to aft. The inner wall is vertical, but slants away from the outer wall. This makes cutting the various pieces of foam and wood a lot more time consuming.

A case in point is the divider which separates the freezer section from the fridge. It is merely a 2.5” piece of rigid foam, cut to shape, and with a piece of laminate bonded to each side. If I were working in a shop with space to work and making a divider for a normal box, I would budget an hour to make the divider, plus half hour to allow time for the contact adhesive to cure. Okay – add in the age factor and make it an even two hours.

On Cups, I must first make a cardboard pattern for one side of the divider. Since the sides form all sorts of obtuse and acute angles, I have to make another pattern for the other side of the divider. It takes a few minutes figuring out how to align the patterns on each side of the foam before tracing the outlines onto the block.

I use a hacksaw blade to make the cuts, carefully following the lines on each side of the block with the saw.

Then I clean up the mess, clear the workspace and bond and trim the laminate.

All done in a mere six hours and twenty minutes, a little over triple the time it should have taken.

Of course, another explanation is that it is more than just the angles that are obtuse here.

Days and Ways to Celebrate

A daily list of mostly obscure holidays and fun ways to celebrate them.

Good Friday

Christian religious holiday and a day off for many folks in preparation for Easter weekend which is both religious and secular and signals the coming of Spring in the norther hemisphere. Spruce up your Easter bonnet. For downunders, it's time to think of autumnal things like cooler weather, less rain, no more cyclones.

The Blue View - When Blue does Pink

When we divided up the various boat chores, some were arbitrarily assigned as blue or pink while others just naturally fell into one of the categories. Just because a job is labeled pink doesn't mean I'm not allowed to do it, however, it's just that it is usually Marcie's bailiwick. A case in point is the laundry, which on Nine of Cups is definitely a pink job. Now that Marcie has been back in the States for a few weeks, I'd re-worn my underwear about as much as I could get away with, and the laundry bag was full. My choices were to go buy more or do the laundry. Now, it isn't as if I've never done my own laundry. I was a bachelor several decades ago, and if memory serves, I did wash my clothes back then. How hard could it be?

I asked around about where the laundromat was and whether anyone could give me a lift. Gillian, a friend of a friend stopped by, and said she'd be happy to give me a ride.

Gillian is a pretty big gal, about 6 feet, 200 pounds, and works as a shipwright at a boatyard a few miles away. I suspect she is probably big and tough enough not to take much guff from her co-workers. We seemed an odd pair as she went off to look for boat parts while I was washing the clothes. We climbed into her 3/4 ton 4WD pickup and headed over to the laundromat. She said she'd be back in an hour or so, which would be perfect.

I separated the light clothes from the dark, added the appropriate amount of soap, inserted my coins, started the wash, and read my Kindle for a half an hour. Other than a colossal waste of time, this didn't seem too difficult.

Once the wash was done, I loaded it into the dryer, set it to high (cotton) and resumed reading my Kindle. I checked on it about 10 minutes later. There was an odd smell in the air. The clothes were extremely hot. I couldn't even handle them. So hot, in fact, that two of Marcie's panties had literally melted to the sides of the dryer. I was pretty sure this wasn't normal. I turned the temperature down to medium and when I checked again in five minutes, the clothes were only slightly warm. So the blue in me kicked in and I then ran it on hot for two minutes, then on medium for two minutes and so on until they were dry.

Other than that, there was only one other slight problem. Apparently something with ink must have previously been in the dryer (or maybe it was the molten panties), because several of our t-shirts now had what appeared to be small blue ink spots on them. I checked all the pockets and didn't find anything that could have caused it, and I was careful to put the dark and red clothes in a separate washer from the light colors. It remains a mystery to me.

So now Marcie is low on panties and we're both low on tee's. I am convinced that these were mishaps that could have happened to anyone and one shouldn't lose one's job over something so minor. On the other hand, if I let Marcie think I'm inept at laundry, she'll probably never let me do it again. That's a blue thought, ain't it?

Days and Ways to Celebrate

A daily list of mostly obscure holidays and fun ways to celebrate them.

Puppy Day

Thinking about adopting a puppy? Today's the day.