5-30-09 Yesterday i brought all the flooring and joists back to the shop where i ran everything through the widebelt sander. I t was a lot of work but i cant see putting this much work into the floor grate and having it look so rough. The boards are fairly beat up and it's going to be even more work to make it look good, but i suppose i have the time and inclination to keep working on it. Today i stripped the shelves behind the benches and replaced the plywood with pine planks. If i can get everything sanded and finished during the evenings after work this week, i can get it all reinstalled this weekend. I'd like to have the benches done then too, although i'll need to find a source to match the teak (or mahogany, not sure which) since i know the ends that sit on the fiberglass deck are rotten. 

History of Aquarius

5-29-09
Early this spring i was browsing the tool section on craigslist when i saw an ad to trade a sailboat for a tablesaw. Since i have a unisaw that i use pretty much as a work table in my shop and it had been a long and depressing winter, i replied that i was interested. The owner, a nice enough sounding fellow named Hollis, told me she was moored at Gateway Marina in south Brooklyn and that i was welcome to go see her at slip G36. So i rented a zipcar, loaded up Andy and Jasmine and we drove the half hour down that way, past Coney Island, and took a right off the Belt Parkway toward the Rockaways. That area seems like a different world from here, especially when you walk out to the Marina, and Andy was happy as a clam to run down the docks, even if he did crouch down in a hilarious stance before he got his sea legs. 

As i got close to her i was impressed by her sleekness of line and the wood trimming under the tattered brown plastic tarp that that been thrown over the cockpit. She obviously needed some love and a good cleaning but she seemed sound and true and floating on a small sailboat again just opened up a new world that i haven't had during my time in New York. 

We went down a few times, basically every weekend, to clean her up, check the rigging, sails and hardware, and finally one sunny Sunday we hoisted the sails and shoved off from the dock. She was solid and true and although she feels about like a Lightning, she has a lot of ballast and she sails like a bigger boat. The local boaters told me to go around the docks and keep close heading north since the bay is shallow and as soon as we were just getting under way on a port tack we smacked hard into something under water. Jas and Andy lurched forward and i made haste to come about and get back into the channel. From there we followed the channel bouys and had no more mishaps, although we didn't stay out for long. Sailing back to the slip has always been a trick and it was no exception that time although we made it mostly without incident. 

Two weeks ago I was down to bail her out after a week or two of unseasonably heavy rains and i noticed bits of the cockpit floor floating around in the bilge. The floor had always been suspect and spongy so i got down and had a hard look and saw that although the teak planks was in fair condition, the joists below it were thoroughly rotten. The fact that during our last sailing adventure i had let both halyards go and watched them race up the mast, prompted me to decide to pull her out for a good going over. So i scheduled it for a Tuesday morning, signed up for a membership to US Boat so they would tow her to the service dock at the Marina, and out she came. 

I pulled out the whole floor in the cockpit and indeed the joists were shot. My friend had some nice 8/4 white oak in his shop and was kind enough to rip me some new joist stock immediately, and i spent last Saturday scraping and cleaning the inside of the cockpit and the bilge and painting everything white. The sun was beating straight down and reflecting off the cockpit and i was seriously sunburned. It still hurts now, five days later. 

Installing the new joists was fun and brought out a whole new thought system than i've used in years. Boats are not flat or straight, and it took a while to reorient my thoughts to how to work on them. With a (smokey) jigsaw, power plane and belt sander i was able to fit most of them in place and reinstall the teak decking, and it feels completely different. The legs of the benches are supported on those joists too, and the benches always felt rickety to me as well. I think she'll feel like a good solid girl again when i get everything finished and screwed down. 

On our last sail we tacked up the harbor around to Breezy point, which is the last piece of land before you can head due south out into the wide open ocean. I loved the feel of the swells again, and the wind was stronger out there too, but more steady. As the land recedes a different mentality takes over, like the sea is formidable but simple and overarching, and the light takes on a strange hue, like in Montana. I'll have to get to know and trust her more this season, but i'd love to see if I could sail around Long Island. There's a race that does it in two or three days, but they sail all night, so i'd look at doing it in more like a week. 

I still haven't hoisted the genoa yet and the working jib is already a handful, so she's actually a pretty big and powerful girl and i've yet to singlehand her. It wouldn't hurt my feelings to have a motor either, which is my next purchase.