Thursday February 1: Good Start to a New Month

Paul, Steve and Randy (Colleen's legs behind the dinghy!)

I can tell already it's going to be a good month!

Time to take the dinghy to the next step - painting on
a layer of liquid rubber!

First step: Randy, Paul and Colleen helped Steve move the dinghy to underneath the steps. an ideal place to do the painting.

Paul, Colleen and Steve

The rubber coating takes between 24 and 48 hours to dry to the touch so the dinghy needs to be protected from the possible showers that are due in tomorrow.



First thing is to use the stir stick included with the paint a drill to stir the paint - for a total of 20 minutes! Gotta love using a drill to do this ....

Now let sit for an hour. Just enough time for a quick breakfast and a stop at the gymn.

Once the paint set up a bit, it was time to start.

Before

As you can see in the before picture, there were numerous places where the original rubber coating was rubbed off during Irma (dinghy was sitting in the holder on the swim platform).

After

It's not going to be perfect but hopefully it will hold up another 9 years :-)

It was definitely a no fun job. The paint is the consistency of cold honey. Steve used a stiff paint brush and a squegee to apply it. He held in there finishing up within 3 hours.

And as a nod to Safety Matt, respirator was in place during the entire job :-)


The rubber coating has to dry for a week and then it will be a coat of paint to finish off the dinghy project!!

I finally got around to making a cover for the small gas tank for the dinghy engine.

Should really help by keeping the rubber hose out of the sun. It's amazing how quickly that kind of thing can deteriorate in the sun. It should last another 9 years as well!



There was some fun to finish out January - my brother Pat and his wife Becky came to stay a couple of days!! Not the greatest weather - very windy and cool - but there were a few hours of sunshine and a trip to the pool. Besides, they kept saying it was still nicer than in Ohio!

We had a good time anyway and even managed to get in some games of Euchre and dominoes.

From here they were headed to Key West for a few days as they met up with friends. Better weather once they went there. I know Sloppy Joes was on the list of places to see .....  It was nice being able to spend more time with them than usually happens when we go to Ohio to visit.

We actually ended up in Key West also as we stopped by Rosie's office (hand therapist).

And since it was lunchtime, it was a great day to stop by Salute! on the beach.

Good lunch, wonderful view.