Spring Cleaning

It felt like we were waiting to paint most of the day. Mike got the final prep for the topsides done and then we putzed around on other little jobs while waiting until it cooled down enough to start painting. This included Mike diving into the lazarette to organize things and to rid ourselves of many, many useless items. I think I married a packrat. Mike has a tendency to keep anything that “might come in handy some day”. Given, some of it may, but the chance that we will need THAT particular item is close to nil. I guess it stems from the need/desire to be completely self-sufficient.
Unfortunately, painting seems to bring out a bit of stress in me (and therefore, us). Maybe because of all of the prepping we do I want it to look good, not like we just slapped it on. So after reading about painting polyurethane on the internet, I felt like I had some good tips. We briefly discussed our strategy, and then got to work. And of course, that’s when the wind decided to pick up. I mean really pick up. And all our planning quickly went out the window. At one point our tray full of paint was actually blown off the scaffolding. We then decided to switch to the leeward side of the boat, and after Mike moved all of the scaffolding we started again. We followed the recommended technique of one person rolling on the paint and the other following with a brush to even things out, but the results looked like shit, which only added to our developing stress fest. We then decided that only one of us would ‘roll’ which turned out to be me with Mike as my paint lackey. Luckily, we just got the first coat on when the skies grew dark. And then immediately went inside and drank a bottle of wine for dinner. Now it’s just getting up before sunrise to get a second coat on. As much as we hate setting the alarm for 0530, it’s gotta be done. Especially before the Demir boys show up and can see our work!