Little Cunning Plan Status: Pain

“While the aft cabin is torn apart, I’m going to explore the space under your bunk for installation of the water maker. Because I don’t have enough projects going on.”, Michael said over his margarita. I could not tell if he was being serious. Sometimes his sense of humor is drier than the Mexican desert in summer. I paused, taco in mid-air.

Having a storage shed has come in handy, even if we are truly tired of requiring one. All cushions, plus Patrick, off the boat.

“Sure. OK. I’ll put that on the list that will take us into 2024 with this refit.” I was only half kidding as the taco completed its journey. We’re not in Mexico, but some days we wish we  were. So we’ve discovered a really great little Mexican place right down the street from our house that makes the best margaritas and  tacos we’ve had since La Paz. All the staff are Hispanic and speak little English. It’s great. If we don’t look at the bill, we could pretend this refit was behind us and we’d already sailed back down south. Alas. The bill comes.

And have I told you lately how happy we are to own a house right now? Happy. Very. Because S/V Galapagos is unlivable. Very. You could not pay me good money to live on that boat during this refit, and during the winter. Nope. Not even a little bit. Wait. Hold on. This refit is going to be super expensive. How much are you willing to pay? I might be willing to negotiate, after all. Every woman has her price. Especially when she owns an old boat.

I need some of these lovely little cups. And the tequila that lives in them.

When I last wrote about this extensive refit, back in November, we’d just decided to replace all of the chainplates. What we didn’t know at that point (oh, sweet ignorance how I miss you) was that we would need to also replace mild steel backing plates that have complete disintegrated. The way our boat is built, the chainplates are backed by these thin steel plates that are then wrapped in fiberglass. Then the chainplates are bolted to that substrate. To be clear, these backing plates are so rotted and rusted away that this boat has probably been sailing without them actually adding value for decades. But now that we know they exist and that they are basically just flakes of rust, we have to replace them because to not do so is to do this job half-assed and we don’t want to roll that way.

Under a thick layer of fiberglass, we find this. This one is in the best shape.

Others look like this one that is in the forward head.

Here’s a section of fiberglass that was removed. It’s 3/4″ thick.

The problem, and the reason for the delay in making progress (other than the holidays), is that we had no plan. We had options on how to go about all of this, but no solid decision and no way to make the decision without professional consultation. Michael finally lined that up last week and a firm decision was made on how to move forward. There is something about having a plan, at least, that makes things feel better. And we got to work quickly after that.

In a nutshell, we are deconstructing our boat to its bones and it’s traumatic for us. This is just painful. Literally we have felt so over our heads with this project that Michael had to look our rigger in the eye and say, “Tell me that this is going to be OK. Tell me that we are doing the right thing and that we can get this done. I need this encouragement from you. I need to hear these words right now.”  And it’s true. We do need some encouragement. Like Peter Pan, we’d be happy to have people clapping their hands to give our work wings,  and also praying, spitting and spinning, or whatever other ritual comes to hand. We will take all the good wishes and all the positive energy people can send our way.  Because honestly, if we did not have complete faith in the people doing this work with us, we’d be close to throwing in the towel. Maybe we’d take a vacation and think about it and come back to it, but still, we’d be close to just saying, “Let’s sell this boat to a 30 year old with more energy and more money than sense and get the hell out of this. We will just fly to Fiji.” And that’s just being honest.

But we aren’t quitters. Not yet, anyhow. We may be getting older, we may be curmudgeonly, we be slightly anti-social and we may be tired and want naps. But by God we are not quitters yet. Give me back my towel, you yahoo. I’m not done with it yet.

As we discussed over our tacos, we’ve felt over our heads before and just carried on, one step at a time, and then at the end of the day we pulled it off and did a good job of it. Like that time we hit the rock in Mexico and put a hole in the bottom of the keel. Looking at the repair we did on that part of the boat, you can’t tell anything ever happened. So we’re going with that for now. We’ll get this done. I’m not sure what this means in terms of when we get to leave the dock, but first things first. We’ll get it done.

This repair involves cutting a lot of fiberglass that is 3/4″ thick to reveal the disintegrated backing plates, removing the plates,  and then having Hans, our fiberglass guy, come in and wrap new steel backing plates with glass. He will then fiberglass that package to the boat. Hans might be the only person we would trust with this work.

Why is this work so important to get right? Because these repairs will hold the chain plates. The chainplates are attached to the rigging. And the rigging holds the mast up. The mast is that tall pokey thing that holds the sails. So that’s a lot of stress on what is a very, extremely, undoubtedly, magnificently important structural part of the boat. No skimping. No cutting corners. It must be right. It must be solid.

Anyhow, all this means that all the wood trim has to be removed and the plywood underneath against the hull in the salon also has to be removed down to the glass. It’s a very big job and it feels like we are straight up ruining our precious Galapagos. Logic tells me this is required. But it’s a real leap of faith to think that she can be put together again good and strong as new.

Our poor girl. There was a bookcase here at one time. You can see the traces of an old leak on the right. The white stuff is rubbery sheet goods over a plywood backing. We have to remove about 6″ of plywood on each side of these cut out areas to expose the fiberglass. I will take care of cutting that while Mike puts his back into the fiberglass cutting.

In the aft cabin More beautiful wood trim I removed yesterday. All labeled and numbered and bundled. I hope it can go back up without issue.

In addition, nothing ever goes back together the way it was before. The areas where Hans will be adding more glass will be thicker than the original, meaning that we’ll have to get fancy in figuring out how to put all these wood pieces back together. I’m ahead of myself on that, but since I’m the one taking down all the wood slats, I’m the one seeing that putting them back together might be more interesting than taking them off.

And how much is all this going to cost? Who knows? I mean, does it really matter at this point? That’s like a surgeon opening up his heart patient only for someone to pop in and ask how much he charges to sew up the patient. What are the choices when you have come this far? That answer will be revealed in due time. Meanwhile, we keep our jobs.

S/V Galapagos, standing by.