San Diego: the last piece of the puzzle
San Diego: the last piece of the puzzle
A full moon shown through the forward hatch last night, and the sea lions have kept their distance. Maybe they make rounds, sleeping on different docks on different nights.
I got a coat of white non-skid paint, International’s Interdeck, on GANNET’s deck yesterday and went over spots that I missed today. My painting is probably no better or worse than it ever was, but old age has given me a good excuse: I really can’t see. Sometimes with my glasses on; sometimes with my glasses off. And particularly staring at white beneath a bright sun. I expect that touching up spots that I missed will be an ongoing exercise.
Earlier this year on THE HAWKE OF TUONELA glare on water and deck bothered me and I considered leaving GANNET’s deck gray. I didn’t because it was not a good non-skid surface and once I painted GANNET’s hull platinum, deck and hull blended together. Also with the now essentially complete blindness in my right eye and the dark polarized Bolle sunglasses for the other, glare is no longer a problem. I studied my eye in the mirror the other day and it is really a bit sad. The pupil is always fully dilated futilely trying to scoop up light that has no where to go.
Masking the deck took more than an hour and painting three hours, which is an hour longer than it did to paint the topsides. There are more little fiddly bits on the deck, and often the little boat put me in awkward positions, trying to reach through shrouds and around deck fittings.
I had two quart cans of Interdeck, which would have been more than enough, but one of them, though labelled ‘white’, must have come with the boat and was in fact gray, so this morning I bicycled to a WEST Marine for another can and a can of plain white for the vertical surfaces in the cockpit.
Before doing so I searched online for a liquor store that stocks Laphroaig 10 year and found one only a few blocks from the WEST. One might think that Laphroaig is not a San Diego drink, but the evenings have been cool enough for me to change into Levis and Polartec and have a sip of my favorite liquid, usually on deck while watching shadowy birds that are active at sunset.
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I recalled taking a similar photograph to the above, which is from GANNET’s slip, in Opua and was surprised to discover that it was five years ago.
Sunday, October 28, 2012