My buddy Brissy loves her sailboat. She’s nearly nine now and has almost never left it since she joined us when she was five weeks old. In this picture, she’s hangin’ out on the boom in Trinidad after crossing the Atlantic ocean. Up until this week, she had never walked on grass, but she’s now made three trips to the trailer to help me work on the days that I’ve had respite care for Pam. Bris thinks that grass stuff has real possibilities.
I had care for Pam today, but Brissy bailed on me and decided to stay on the boat and sleep all day. That made it a good day to work on that door through which both of them tend to walk, not knowing where they are going. I’ve had two real goals for the summer months: getting the belly pan installed and doing a general fix up of the door before wet weather hits us again.
The door is in really good original shape and fits very well. Mostly it just needed new gaskets, stripping and polish of the interior panels, and replacing pop rivets with bucked. I drilled out a couple of pop rivets on the hinges and they just fell right off. There was a little corrosion, so that was cleaned up and sprayed with aircraft primer. I also added a doubler inside the door and interior wall at each hinge attach.
Quite a bit more work to do on it, but it’s at least back on to keep Pam and Brissy secure.
Seems like nearly all the tasks right now show as a big improvement on the trailer. All that ripping apart and tearing up has to be done, but this stuff is more rewarding.
-steve
