It feels like a different working life. Off from the lodging just before eight, usually a quick stop at the DIY shop, then on to Brodersby and the boat. A cup of coffee there, a run through the day’s plan once more. Then to work, and around eight in the evening I put the tools away, lock the boat up and make my way back to the lodging in Schleswig. Day after day it goes like this.
The jobs sound unremarkable enough:
- Renew the seawater through-hull and its valve
- Make good a spot on the keel rebate
- Fit the new windvane
- Antifouling
In the detail, though, it turns fiddly. Take the seawater through-hull:
- Cut away the old seacock and the laminated-in bronze through-hull from inside with the multi-tool. The whole thing is reachable only through the cockpit locker.
- From outside, saw out the remaining stub of bronze pipe with a hole-saw.
- Sand the hole in the hull, then dust it off and degrease it with acetone.
- Cut glass-fibre mat into small strips, mix epoxy and laminate the hole down until the diameter once again matches the new through-hull.
- After laminating, wait until the next day for the epoxy to cure; sand it to the right diameter.
- Trial-fit the seacock and the through-hull; cut the new pipe to length.
- In the locker, prime the new laminate twice, eight hours between coats, and then it can be painted.
- Once the paint has dried, the hole can be cleaned from outside with Sika activator and the new through-hull bedded in Sika: pushed in from outside, the nut started from inside the locker and done up only hand-tight, so as not to squeeze all the Sika out.
- After twenty-four hours the nut can be fully tightened. Then the new seacock can be screwed back onto the through-hull, again bedded in Sika.
It really does feel like a short apprenticeship in boatbuilding. You’re forever dealing either with dust, against which you want a mask, or with substances – acetone, epoxy, Sika, primer, paint – that call for gloves and sometimes a mask too. The jobs are so dovetailed into one another that you’re really working on all of them at once. While the epoxy dries here, you can take a step forward there. It feels as though nothing is ever finished. And it takes it out of you. There’s progress, but the list in front of me is still long. With Matthias, the harbourmaster here in Brodersby, I’ve fixed a launch date for next Tuesday. We'll see if I'll be ready in time.