June 26th: we are leaving Kingston marina and passing the LaSalle Causeway liftbridge!  Two days ago, la Buena Vida was finally ready to be launched: during my absence, Heiner worked very long hours in order to have the boat launch ready....by friday!

What a great feeling to be on the water once more! It was not sunny but that's ok...at least it was not cold ad windy! I kept looking at the water surface for flying fishes or dolphins! The Caribbean feels so far away but also so present...

We did it! The toe rail is finished: what a difficult and challenging task! To put on the wooden rail was ok but when it came to also install the genoa sail track, the alignment of all the holes (wooden rail, steel rail and genoa rail) required much more precision.  We sincerely hope NEVER to have to do that again!

After lunch, we decided that yes, we had enough stamina to start painting the cabin walls! The paint has faded and the bright and shiny look of these newly painted walls is very rewarding. There is only a little problem: we are running out of paint AND our marine shop did not place the order as we thought they had....sooo, hopefully, there will be just enough to apply a second coat tomorrow.

Heiner does not run the risk of getting sunburn because he spends all the time on his knees with his head downwards!

We enjoy sitting at this place for lunch, admiring the serene Cataraqui river ...

Le boeuf bourguignon fut ...deliciozo!  There is nothing like a good meal to end the day.......
Buon appetito!

The 2 pieces of mahagony rails are attached together and glued with epoxy...

S C A R F I N G ....by popular request, here is a better picture of how the two pieces of our toe rail are "attached" together...a method also called scarfing.  The "slits" in both pieces of wood in which biscuits are inserted are cut with a tool called scarfing router.

The drawing of Brian Dixon is to be found at this link on John's Nautical Website...:
http://www.boat-links.com/Scarfing.html

Today although rain was forecasted it just started at 17h00! We used the time well to do a bit of painting and then drove to our favorite lumber yard Card's Lumber on Highway 38 to buy more mahagony wood.  We like the guys there: very knowledgeable, generous (they'll do cuts and planing for free) and the prices are good! Heiner spent the whole afternoon cutting and sanding while Marleyne...played ! Yep, I visited a couple of garden centers, prepared trellis for clematis and for beans! But I also prepared a boeuf bourguignon!!! Somebody has to feed the crew!

Five days later...and we accomplished a lot!  We have finished the window jobs. Removed two small windows, grinded the rust away, applied 2 coats of epoxy, some West System, and one coat of paint before sticking the window frame back again using white rubber butyle (did we say that we would never use that stuff again...?). The big challenge was to replace the 4 large Lexan panels and choose a solution which, we hope, would hinder rust building up between the pane and the steel window frame (this space is now completely filled with Sikaflex).  This time around, we used Plexiglas instead of Lexan, and affixed the panes instead of using screws...they look absolutely great, very professionally made!

And what about the new toe rail that Heiner is making out of African mahagony???? I never thought that this thick wood rail would bend! But with the right application of force (!) it actually does! This was our trial run and the scarfing system proved to work out perfectly! (This illustration found on Brian Dixon's page

 gives some idea about scarfing)

TaDa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The exterior hull is ready: water line, antifouling and below the toerail...hull polishing will be our last step!

We don't count the hours of work anymore! Some people at the marina must think that we are the new managers as we are there 7 days a week from 9am to 5pm...

We now excel at multitasking! While the paint in the bilge dries, we attend the hull related jobs: Heiner is taping the hull to mark the water line...and of course, there were the 2 coats antifouling paint that needed to be applied: the first one being more critical as it had to be applied onto a still very fresh epoxy paint.  That makes for long long days.......thank God, our weather is now excellent (dry, sunny, and around 20-22C): it sometimes crosses our mind that, had we done the sandblasting in the Caribbean, we would have had to work with temperatures of 30C!

 We could not have much of a birthday celebration - calorie wise - because Heiner had to fit in the bilge (or basement as we like to refer to in landlubber's jargon)..Thanks to my shapely female figure, I cannot go in as deep as Heiner can! So, I was allowed to eat more birthday cake than he was ! After all, cheer leading takes energy!

In a way, it was easier to weld plates from outside than to continue the repair from inside the bilge.  Loose rust needed to be removed, sanding and hammering ..in those really small spaces, not at all easy! Heiner did a great job, though...

 ALMOST DISAPPEARED!