New Years Eve

It is 10.30 PM on New Years Eve. Australia has had theirs. (In fact, Sydney is the first major city in the world to celebrate the New Year.)

I am writing this blog entry from the comfort of Pachuca thanks to John, two boats away at the end of this jetty. He said that he was going to set up a router to replace "Jerome" which had been servicing this jetty and true to his word the router arrived today and he set it up a few minutes later. Thanks to John's generosity I now have 3-bar service from Pachuca with the new router named "Impulse".

Yesterday I rode with Wally and Kerry to first drop off Rob at the airport. Wally then took me to West Marine while Kerry attended to some business across the street. He guided me on what fiberglass materials to buy and saved me $40 with by making the purchase through his account. One of the things that he introduced me to is a pump kit by which you can screw hand pumps to the West System 105 polyester resin and 206 hardeners to get the exact mix very easily. The pumps can stay in place until I finish the job after which I will restore the caps on the cans and clean out the pumps. Afterward Wally came aboard Pachuca and gave me very good advice on how to go about the job.

This morning I got up early with my primary goal of the day to prepare the anchor well for fiberglassing by sanding and grinding. I set up my laptop for an early internet session then visited Princess TaiPing to ask Nelson the captain/owner if he wanted to see a Grib file download. Indeed he did and soon we went through the exercise. Then he mentioned problems with his C-map. His laptop had first been hit by a virus then was contaminated by salt water after the junk took on a greenie in high seas. After that there were parts of the world that he could not see including a detailed view of Wake Island and parts of Japan and Taiwan. It took over an hour but I managed to transfer my C-map maps to a fresh folder in his laptop and then point his C-map software to the new folder. He could then see Wake Island and the other points of interest farther east.

By then it was 11 AM but I was determined to get that nasty sanding business behind me. Thanks to Wally I did the job with 100% protection Hawaii style. On his advice I had purchased a "zoot suit" which is simply a paper-like jump suit with a zipper, and some talcum powder. So I got down to my underpants and put baby powder all over me. The idea of this is to keep the fiber particles out of your skin. I then put on the zoot suit, my own disposable rubber gloves & ear plugs, and industrial grade breathing mask and protective goggles that Wally had loaned to me.

I went to work first with the Black and Decker "mouse" detail sander that I had purchased and Home Depot the day before. It is a palm-size sander with the business end the shape of a clothes iron. It gave me great results using 80-grit paper. I then used Wally's 4" angle grinder to do some serious trimming of fiberglass where the upper level runs on the stringers. I then spent some time using it to smooth some rough areas.

The process took 3 hot and dusty hours but the outcome was very, very good and I am now in a position to fiberglass. I was amazed at the amount of dust that I swept up in the cleanup. Toward the end I took a break and someone with Hugh asked me if what I was doing was the usual way of doing the job. So here I am in a jump suit, with dark skin and covered in white powder. I told him that I had sailed from Australia and I was an Aboriginal in my traditional tribal dress, then struck an Aboriginal pose telling him that my boomerang was in the boat. ... I like to think that he actually believed me for about 50 milliseconds.

For the fiberglassing I'll probably adhere to my usual modus operandi and spend tomorrow visualizing the job and do stage 1 of the fiberglassing the following day. I find that after visualizing a job in my head the actual job becomes almost automatic - and I am amazed at the number of traps or improvements that I find by running through a job over and over in my head.

Tonight I spent a few hours at a barbecue put on by Albert, a terrific man who is part of the scene around here. The roast turkey that he produced was out of this world. I spent some time with various people, including Hugh and two of his Chinese ship mates, one of whom produced a jug - looked like a full gallon - of Sake that had been donated to the boat that day. We then went to the parking lot and set off some fireworks about ... 10 meters from the propane tanks but mercifully much further from the diesel pumps. (After all, the name of this place is The Fuel Dock.)

I was told that the spectacular fireworks across the water at Magic Island happen on the 4th of July, and that this evening's fireworks would be launched by two nearby hotels. Well, I felt weary and didn't want to linger around until midnight so I returned to the boat early.

The first photo is of Tiffany, who is a member of the Hawaii Yacht Club but as you'll see if you have a close look likes to hang around The Fuel Dock right in front of Pachuca. (Double click your left mouse button to enlarge it.) The other two are of me hamming it up in my zoot suit, which is Extra Large because that is all they had, and in America Extra Large is really, really BIG.

Happy New Year to all of my friends in Australia, North America, and wherever they may be.