Random Stuff.

We went on a daysail today. We were supposed to have one tomorrow, but since no one signed up, we're just going to have dockside tours and regular maintainence, like every other day of the week. I miss regular sailing. I don't mind maintainence and staying in port for awhile, but going on transits is rather addicting. Once you start knowing what you're doing while you sail on one of these ships, it's tons of fun. Up until that point, it's stressful and scary, but you get past that. =)

In maintainence, we've done a lot. Lynx got really beat up over the summer as they didn't have a lot of time to stop and work on her, so there's tons of work to do. I've helped scrape out and replace over 1300 bungs (plugs that go over copper screws in the deck), which took the better part of a week. It involves starting at the foredeck (front deck) and working your way aft (back), tapping every bung, until you find a hollow sounding one, and then digging out the bung, and scraping out the green corrosion until you get to the red screw. Once you've done this to the whole deck, you vacuum them all out, then you take new bungs, dip them in epoxy, and pound them into all the holes. After the epoxy dries, you take a chisel, and knock of the half inch that's sticking out over the deck, and then scrape it down until it is level. Then you sand them down.

It sounds rather boring, I guess, but I didn't mind it. It's actually rather fun, other then not being able to feel your finger from all the tapping. =P It was a lot better than the other job I had been assigned to...scraping and sanding the main pinrail. I'll post a picture of it later. It looks good, but it is sooooo mind numbing. I don't want to think by the end of the day. All I did was scrape off dead wood, resharpen scrapers, and sand for one straight week. On the postive side, I got to oil her, so now it looks kind of hot. I wish I had taken a before picture so you had something to compare it to.

They have me working one of the anchors now. I'm scraping again, but this is more satisfying. I feel like I'm getting somewhere with it. Hopefully I'll be able to finish it before I leave. I want to see how it looks repainted.

My fingers are starting to get cold, so I should go below and read or something. I have duty tonight, or I would be wandering town. Oh well. Now you all know what I've been doing for the past three weeks. =)