Bristol Channel Cutter Elizabeth

Guitar strapped on the back of a semi, driving thru space… ring any bells? No? Well, anyways… I’m back, and the balls have gone thru the wall. Not much time to do anything but work to make money and work to get Eliza launched. Certainly no time to be writing silly gibberish here that’s for sure. I should probably be busy making some  banner ads or something.

Dad is settled (to some degree) in his new home… I feel a sense of freedom, and guilt… sorta like I just dropped the kid off at the pool without his waterwings.

After a week of relentless rain, the weather finally cleared, and now I have a sunburn. I got right to work as soon as the drops stopped. There was alot of rot I had drilled or cut out before I CPES’d the bulwarks 3 weeks ago. Anywhere a SS bolt went through the wood, rot developed due to water impregnation and oxygen starvation. So first business was to fill the voids in. Teak dutchmans, and bungs were laid in with WEST thickened with 407. Of course, it rained on my epoxy. But I was able to get it sanded back and fair it in nicely the next day rain-free.

In my rush to launch last fall, and motor down to here before winter, I slapped some thickened WEST into the rectangle left in the stem by the removed bobstay chainplate. Now I wanted to fix that section properly with some layers of cloth and mat… over which I’ll have to paint. Luckily I am raising the waterline, so alot of the work I am doing will be covered by bottom paint, but some of it will be above the waterline. That will be interesting to see when I get around to trying to blend it in. I used a 4″ angle grinder and 36 grit paper to grind down the bow, followed by my RO sander with 80 grit. I laid 2 cloth layers as per the WEST literature, starting with bigger pieces and working outwards to smaller pieces. At first that schedule seemed counter intuitive, but now it makes sense.

After my epoxy got wet as mentioned above, I took the rainy moment to cut out the section of rotten chain in my main bower. It was 300′ of 5/16″ G4…. now its 210′ + 80′. I think 210′ will be sufficient for my primary anchor mated with 100′ or so of nylon. The other 80′ I will consider for my secondary bower, but that’s really too much weight to carry up forward IMO. Chain is nearly brand new…