Thursday 12 August 2010

Picton Castle at sea; Thursday 12 August 2010 בס"ד

Got my 0715 wakeup for my first day as carpenter. At 0800, Paul told Jan and I our first assignment: to make new battons for the hatch. We measured the spaces and went to the wood pile in the hold to get some Espave woodthat we acquired in Panama. We took out three boards, one which Jan cut while still in the hold. On deck we power-sawed one into six inch planks, and luckily WT caught that I plugged into a DC outlet instead of an AC outlet (which has GFI and runs from the generator). Mate Mike told us to test it with six inches, so after we planed down the surface and rounded out the edges, we tried putting it in place at the hatch. It was too tall, so it didn't slip into place easily enough. We then took another inch off and made all the battons five inches after testing it and it worked fine. The wood was quite wet, even though we'd gotten it in Panama, so planing it was difficult at times and it would gum up the blade. It also gummed up the skilsaw blade when power-sawing, so we resumed with a handsaw. After lunch, Jan took me to the engine room and taught me how to sharpen the planer blades using the grinder and then finish with the whetstone. Maggie asked me during the day if I'd write a “Captain's Log” entry about the small boat expeditions for the website, since neither she nor the Captain had gone. I don't know why she chose me of all people (I'm certainly not the most well-written aboard), but I accepted the task. There were a few light squally bits throughout the day and when they happened we took in our tools and dried them off, then waited until it stopped raining to resume. When we finished the battons, we lashed them into the port breezeway so they could dry out a bit before we sand them down and treat them. After this, Jan and I dug out a duffel bag from the wood pile full of wedges, since some of the old batton wedges are in poor condition. I learned how to tell the difference between oak and pine by their grains, but we didn't end up working on them. Instead we cleaned up our massive shavings and sawdust mess with some of the 4-8s. Then we put the rudder and tiller into Monomoy and lashed it in place so the mates can look at it and figure out how to improve it. Then Paul told us a list of projects we'd be doing. Tomorrow we'll probably fix the broken Monomoy gaff, then over the passage we'll build a propane tank rack, similar to the bucket rack, an improved rudder indicator for the helm, fix something in the office, finish the battons, and maybe other projects too. After dinner, wrote my logs and played “Name All the Countries in the World” with Cheri. Just got up to lash the beacon light that was dangling from a freshly-painted lifering in the hold because it was smacking against the catwalk and that can't be good. Now gave Jo bandaids and talked about organizational skills. Night.