Suited up in a coverall, safety glasses, gloves, and a respirator while performing contortions inside a small boat in 90 degree weather with fiberglass dust flying everywhere probably doesn't sound like your ideal weekend, right? Not mine either, but the wifey is far too smart to subject herself to such masochism. I've only been able to do this on the weekends because it takes about a week for the horror of the previous experience to fade enough to do it again. I don't care how well you think you're protected from fiberglass dust, it WILL find your skin! And then let the suffering begin.

I've been grinding out poorly fiberglassed structures in the boat to properly fix and re-fiberglass them to my standards. I've ground out both quarter berths [quarter berth: a sleeping area which runs under each side of the cockpit], the mid bulkhead [bulkhead: vertical dividing partition to add rigidity to the hull]  and the rear starboard bulkhead. Why only the rear starboard bulkhead, you ask? Because there wasn't a port one. Seriously. You can see the before and after below. They still need to be fiberglassed in.

I've been looking for an outboard for el cielo and I've been surprised at how expensive they are. An outboard of 2 to 8 horsepower is recommended and even a used 2 horsepower is around $300. That seems crazy expensive to me. I've been looking without much luck until my brother's father-in-law gave me this teeny tiny little thing called a Mighty Mite. He found it abandoned in a rental house of his in what looked like new condition. It had then been sitting in his garage for who knows how many years. It's so little it's actually hard not to laugh at it. This little guy was made in the late fifties and is a little 17 pound, 1.7 horsepower, single cylinder, 2 stroke, water-cooled outboard. I believe it was only available by mail order. How cute! And free!

My weekends have been taken up with crewing for sailboat racing (2nd place, thank you) and various other events, so not much has happened progress-wise. I've been able to squeeze in little things though. To get a nice foil shape on the rudder I intended to build it up with Core-Cell structural foam and fiberglass the whole thing. Let me tell you, that foam is NOT cheap. A single 4' x 8' sheet of 6 mm thickness is over $80! The price seems to increase exponentially with thickness, so I ordered 6 mm offcuts (scraps left over from other jobs) at a 50% markdown. I built up the profile with three layers of foam and glued it all down.

The headrests (you can see the strip where they once were) were old and crappy and I'd originally thought I'd just sand them and re-varnish. Yeah right. Sage's thought process: "Hmmm, these don't seem glued down very well. I bet I could rip those out without too much trouble...oh, and I have some scrap meranti marine plywood that's just about the right length. Let's just pry on this a little bit." The temptation overcame me and out they came with a good deal more effort than I expected. Of course after the starboard side came out (pictured) I found a previous hull repair that I wasn't comfortable with, so I then ground it out and re-fiberglassed the area. You can see the shiny repaired area in the left. I still have a little bit more fiberglassing to do here, but I feel much better about it already.