Got a disturbing email from YachtSmiths this week. A boat under construction caught fire in the yard and is a total loss. Everyone at the yard is OK and my boat is apparently unharmed, but there is damage to the yard and only time will tell how this will turn out. I’ll be up there in a week to see what I need to do.

Did finish this wheel house hatch. 7 coats of varnish. It looks great. Also made a box to carry it up to Halifax. Hopefully, I’ll still be able to work on my boat up there.

Got four coats of varnish on the hatch and it looks great. Best hatch so far. Now, I want to go back and rebuild the other ones. Amy tells me I should wait 20 years…., at least. The new shed is working out great as well. Got a lot of space so we fetched my drill press from Ross/Melissa’s and the table saw from Hop/Liz’s. Putting together a right proper shop now.

We also stropped a few small blocks to use on the jib sheets on our little boat, which we took sailing Saturday night. It was real windy and Amy submerged them a few times, but they held up real well and we are quite pleased.

The new shed at Amy’s pad is real sweet. No more crap’n next to a tree. Can’t believe I did that for two years. Anyway, was able to get off work at noon on Friday. Went straight to the new shed to put the front molding on. Everything went extremely well until I spilled vegetable oil on my hatch. Yes, vegetable oil. I was using it to grease an axel for a block I was making on the side and some how tripped or stumbled or something into the table that the vegetable oil was sitting on and it slopped out of the bottle all the way to the hatch and got all over the hatch underside. How does that happen!! Why me??!! I was not happy and called for Amy and we cleaned it up best we could. Amy being a true hero, mentioned that I had toyed with the idea of teak oiling the underside of this hatch, so that is what we did and it came out great. Thanks Amy, but I still feel like I spend half my time recovering from mistakes. Really, vegetable oil, What the hell???…..

On Sunday, Amy and I sanded and routed till we were two shakes from varnishing. Some of the silkafex that I used as a sealant didn’t fill this little void I had in the molding (too much orbital sander in the corner) so I filled a straw with glue and blew it into the seam until it welled up out. Wish I had tried that trick on earlier seams that didn’t fill as well as intended.

Don’t have great light in the shed yet, but Ross/Melissa gave me a set of lights that will help nicely. Thanks guys.