Team Seacats

I’m taking the evening to take care of some well needed items around the house (like paying bills). Back soon.

I would like to extend a warm welcome to our friends at Amigos Drysuit Repair. They’re supporting our Team Seacats effort underway. I found these guys through word-of-mouth a couple of years ago and sent them a drysuit to have a neck seal replaced. As evidence on this website shows, I’m a pretty hardcore do-it-selfer and although I’ve considered replacing my own gaskets on my drysuits, my research (and experience watching others) showed that it can be a pretty tricky task.  Drysuits are not cheap and not something you want to mess up!  I sent my suit to Charlie and gang at Amigos last year and the installation of the gasket was nothing short of astonishing.  It was totally undectable and not much more expensive than doing it myself. Their work and customer service get a solid A+ in my book and we’re excited to have such talent on board with Team Seacats.

I brought the new trailer boxes home this afternoon. Brian, welder extraordinaire, did a great job tig welding the aluminum boxes. I spent a bit getting things sorted out so I can deliver the extra boxes to North Carolina soon (it’s a long story).  I remounted the original matching stainless box to the trailer and will stack the one aluminum box on these two for delivery.  That leaves us with one of the aluminum boxes that I just built.

I did get some work done on the boat…nothing groundbreaking – just more sanding.  I also ground out the daggerboard well cracks on the starboard hull.  They weren’t anywhere as deep or long as on the port hull.  I thought it might be warm enough to get some filler applied but it was a little too cold. More warm weather is on the way!

Originally uploaded by Team Seacats.

In color that is! I had a pretty good day today even though it was pretty cool outside. The starboard hull has all the shaping completed. After finish sanding with 120 grit paper and my long board, I put one thin layer of filler in some pin holes and some areas that didn’t quite get enough in the first round. I’m pretty proud of the results thus far – but I need to stay focused. Everyone keeps reminding me how much time I have left (I also put an automated count down thing under the “about us” text to the right). Bonnie helped me swap hulls on my saw horses and after examining them without the hull on them, I began to feel like I was asking a bit much of my saw horses. The continuous back and forth motion from the sanding was not making them happy. I took a few minutes and sawed up a 2×4 to make some bracing on the horses. They’re very happy now. I went after the port hull with the long board and it is sanded enough to clearly identify the low spots. This hull is in worse shape and I have a bit more sanding to do with 100 grit to get through most of the deep scratches. Tomorrow is supposed to be warm again (why not on the weekends!?) so the trip to the gym will be EARLY so I can get in to work early and get out a little early too.

The aluminum boxes are supposed to be welded up and ready for me to bring them home tomorrow (one for us – one for a friend). I took one of the two I20 boxes off it’s trailer so I can bring home the aluminum boxes one by one. Because we’re going to have just one box on the trailer, I made it as wide as possible and I can’t fit two side by side on this trailer.  I remembered that some of the trailer lights weren’t working and since I’ll be getting out considerably before sunrise tomorrow, I traced a problem with the trailer lights.  Ultimately I found a couple of wires that were connected incorrectly. Although the sidemarkers are suffering from poor grounding, both back lights work fine now. It should be good enough to get around town.

Originally uploaded by Team Seacats.

I should have known by how the forecast was changing daily for this weekend that there were no guarantees. Yesterday they said it was supposed to be 57 degrees and partly cloudy with rain and cooler temperatures settling in late evening. I got up this morning and started sanding on the hull and making great progress. I had some issues with my kerosene heater in the shop and by the time I located a replacement wick for it and got home the temperature had dropped 9 degrees and it was drizzling….great. On the upside it’s no longer supposed to rain tomorrow!