Rain and Wind

It seems like we’ve had rain and wind nonstop for a month.  I know it’s really not that bad, but it seems like it.  The boat has been heeled over in the wind and gloomy and dark down below.  Pam continues to slowly get worse and I still try to get her off the boat for awhile each day, but it’s a big effort getting her on and off as she just about can’t walk anymore.  If you know anything about sailboats, think bosun’s chair.  So, this morning, even though I had our caregiver coming to give me a break, I was dark and down and gloomy and depressed, mostly from the weather.

As far as trailer work goes, things are pretty good.  Having to work slowly and deliberately as I’m in one of those stages where it’s easy to make stupid mistakes and I have little patience for myself on that stuff.  But, it’s almost magical the way the trailer is coming together after all this time.  So many things I’ve thought about and planned for during the last two years are actually in the trailer now and they mostly look and work like I wanted.  That’s way cool.

Outside, I’ve got the louvered panel for the fridge air intake installed.  Louvered panel came from Fergie's Custom Louvers and I used the Vintage Style Drip Caps from VTS.  Fergie’s louver polished up nice and easy, but Steve’s drip cap was a pain.  I knew it came white and need to be stripped, but it didn’t strip—even Aircraft Paint Remover didn’t touch the finish.  Only sanding got it down to bare aluminum and it was a lot of work.  It was also too long but that was expected and an easy fix.

I used nutplates and machine screws to fasten the louvered panel after making up some C channel to reinforce the huge hole I cut in the trailer.

Chris, Aluminium Idler, put up a post in his blog about using a torch to heat and bend his door back into shape.  I used the same technique after his inspiration to put a huge bend in a straight piece of trim for the bathroom entry sill.

Today I worked on the upper piece to that bathroom door and on the curved top for the former vanity cabinet just forward of the bathroom.

That little cabinet top has a really sharp curve on it and I could not get the usual 1/8” Baltic Birch to make the bend no matter what I tried.  I ended up using a couple pieces of 1/16” Aircraft Birch laminated together to get it done.

But back to the wind and rain. . . I worked about half the day on those two projects above and decided to spend the afternoon sitting and reading in front of the fire in the heater.  I’m parked in a storage lot which doesn’t sound very pretty, but Island Girl is in the back on the grass with lots of trees around and a couple of eagles often overhead.  The trailer doesn’t heel in the wind like the boat and the rain sounds really soothing on the aluminum.  And nine Caravanner windows are much better than tiny portholes.  My gloom was pretty well gone.

-steve