We visited Inspiration last Friday & Saturday in her heated storage at Saugatuck Marine Yacht Service.  We accomplished a lot and had a screaming good time doing it.  We applied 2 quarts of VC17m original.  We have one quart left to touch up some thin areas.  I bought a quart of VC172 thinner to help when we apply the third quart next visit.  I was to surprised to receive it 1 day after I bought it from Wholesale Marine ( http://www.wholesalemarine.com/ ).  I got a heck of a deal on the VC17m Original at $42/qt with no shipping.  The price has gone back up now to $47 but with no shipping it is still a good deal as compared to West Marine at $55/qt.

I got the batteries charged again and installed the filter screen using SS aircraft wire so it would not move in the housing of the inlet sea water.  I also started sanding  the rub rails with my new Fein Muktitool but it was getting too dusty so I stopped.  I could see 25 mad powerboaters that had an 1/8″ of dust on their boats.  We will do this task on the next trip as I made an adapter that will go from the Multitool dust attachment to my Sears power Vac.  I purchased a 1 micron filter and now I can draw a vacuum through the sanding pad that leads to the power vac.  It really works great.

I brought the forward hatch cover home and am refinishing it this week – so far it looks great.  I also hope to wrap up on the boarding ladder soon.  Man, does it have a lot of surface area!  Today I sanded out some of the runs created by overzealous applications of Cetol Gloss Clear.  I put a very thin coat of clear on today and it looks perfect.  Now I have to find the rest of those little mistakes and correct them with some 320 grit sandpaper.  Another coat and it should be done.

How bad we are!  We have been taking advantage of this unusually cold and snowy winter here in the Great Lakes of the USA.  A lot of cross country skiing has taken place.  As you may know skiing like this is quite exhausting.  We have not spent that much time on the boarding ladder.  As a matter of fact I think we are getting a little burnt out on the boarding ladder.  However, it does have three coats of Cetol Marine Light and is awaiting the final gloss coat.  For us the final gloss coat is the most tricky.  Add a little dust and it looks bad.  Add a little cool temperatures and it has bubbles.  The same applies if it dries too fast.  Anyway we will get there.

My sailing has consisted of armchair adventures and working on the website.  The bulleting board section is coming along nicely thanks to Jim Bach.  Jim contributed archives of the MSN site and they are all installed.  We now have about 10 core members that were the contributors on the old site.  So far the thing has not really taken off like I planned and this is a bit discouraging.  However, it is operational.