Wednesday March 28: Boat Dogs and Finished Railing!

So we now have had the experience of having dogs aboard our boat. We had an opportunity to watch the two Yorkies, Gigit and Cricket. Both are over 10 years old so they tend to sleep as much as we do :-)

Cricket weights 4 1/2 lbs and Gigit weights 15 lbs. Talk about a couple of lightweights! Randy and Cindy let us keep them while they went on a cruise out of Ft. Lauderdale - they are very easy to watch and are very well trained - which of course is why they are easy to watch!

Cricket's favorite place to hide is on the front dash among the various stuffed animals who live there. It's also a great place for both dogs to sit and look out over the dock and keep an eye on who is coming and going.

Gigit's favorite trick is to wait until I get up from my reading chair and she quickly takes it over and pretends to be asleep when I turn to reclaim my seat!

Who could kick out anyone so cute, right?

But Friday Randy and Cindy will return and I'm sure we'll be back to being just the neighbors :-)

Missing port railing

In the meantime, Steve has been working hard on the broken front railing.

There was a young guy here in Marathon that seemed interested in making a stainless railing that would transition to the teak. It was a month or so and numerous phone calls and stop bys until we finally realized it just wasn't going to happen.

Steve's drawing for a stainless bow rail

Plan B was for the guy Steve found in Punta Gorda on our road trip that we stopped and spoke to - definitely he could do it and was very interested - he just needed an accurate measurement so he could give us a price. Meanwhile, four weeks and numerous unreturned phone calls later, we wrote him off as well. OK - fine. Plan C: Steve decided to just fix it himself (with some help from the very talented Randy)!




First, straighten the broken stainless steel support that runs under the teak along the curved part of the front. Thanks Dave for that 5
lb sledgehammer!

Next figure out how the broken pieces of teak fit together.

How fortunate that almost all of the pieces were still on the front of the boat and survived being blown away by Irma!

Steve and Randy then worked to permanently connect all of the pieces using a two part epoxy and lots of screws.

Next in the process was straighten one of the stainless steel stanchions that holds the teak up. Again the 5 lb sledgehammer came in handy.







Time now to finish the teak by adding slow-cure epoxy mixed with teak sawdust as well as gluing in teak plugs where the screws were holding the pieces of teak together.

All of this of course takes additional time just for everything to dry and cure




Now on to the next to last step - sanding the excess fill so the result is a smooth surface to the teak.






It of course does not look new but then it is, after all, a 40-year old boat!!

Overall a really great job to fix the railing on the port side!











Definitely passes the 10 foot rule :-)  Best part? I don't have to be concerned that I will flip Steve through the railing if I make a fast stop!

The upper railing repair went very well also. Again we were fortunate that the missing piece was found among the rubbish washed up by Irma.









It definitely needed some extra teak to replace the part that was broken off.



Didn't look that great when Randy initially repaired it but after going through the same process as the front rail - it was amazing!!





Still not quite finished but getting close!







It was a special impromptu gathering the other night at docktails.



Karen on Our Wisha was leaving the next day. She has sold the boat and will return to her home in Indiana. She and Skip had been here forever (which means I don't really know how long but I know it was longer than we were here!)

We hope to see her visiting next winter ......