tried a heat gun and three different sanders before discovering the wonders of the 4" angle grinder. It WAS my favorite tool, until yesterday's accident...but I'll get to that later. I'm guessing the decks haven't been properly done in years, from the number of layers of paint that I painstakingly removed.In any case, upon returning to the boat on Sunday morning (if 10 AM counts as morning) after my shark and manta ray extravaganza, I quickly realized that my "fresh determination" was seriously lacking. Before I had been at the boat for 30 minutes, two of my main sources of advice (Leeroy and Gus) independently suggested that I wasn't nearly as close to being finished with sanding as I wanted to be, which only got them a grumpy Q for their troubles. Gus suggested that I ask shipwright John Oliver (who has helped me heaps with sanding and removing my deck hardware), for a second opinion, but when I went to find his boat and learned that he'd gone back down to Cairns, my foul mood got even worse. He did turn up later, and had both good news and bad...sanding's nearly done, he said, but next you've got to bog and sand again. To add insult to injury, when I asked Nick on the boat next door to come aboard and offer his opinion, he replied quite shortly "You've got enough opinions, now get on with it!" That was the straw that broke the camel's back. I started silently sobbing, mentally berating myself for getting involved in a project I had no idea how to complete, all by myself. What in the hell was I thinking? Why didn't I listen to all of those people who, upon seeing the boat for the first time, all said the same thing. "It's a lot of work..." Nick must have heard me sniffling, because 5 minutes later he gruffly said "you know, you should be proud of yourself! Look at what you've taken on." I poked my head out from under the tarp, conscious of the tear tracks in the paint dust on my cheeks and the quaver in my voice, and said "sometimes I'm proud, but sometimes I feel like a complete idiot!" I was about ready to throw the towel in then and there.
Somehow, though, with the help of chocolate and iced coffee, I made it through the rest of the afternoon and evening. As dark fell, I cleaned up and popped my head into the yacht club to say goodbye to Gus. He prevailed upon me to stay for a beer with him and Steve the Carpenter, which eventually led to what has recently become a typical Gus/Qamar maneuver. To make a long story short, Steve and Gus come to check Voodoo out, I ask Steve lots of questions about how he'd fix my V-berth, and we discuss multiple solutions. He rows us to Penny Lane, his motorcruiser (what a sweet boat!), to show us what he'd done in his V-berth, and there Gus browbeats him into doing my job for a very very reasonable price.
By this point, it is after 11, and I still haven't finished my submission for the state's coastal management plan, so I hightail it back home and work on the computer until 1:30.
The next day, Monday, I experienced a complete emotional turnaround. I sanded again for most of the day, and even my grinder accident couldn't dampen my good mood. (Mom, you should stop reading at this point!) There I was, sanding along the edge of the main hatch, when the grinder ricocheted off of the metal track. Before you could say "Makita", the sanding wheel got caught up in my shirt, and I was left clinging to a madly vibrating grinder, all tangled up in my shirt and sports bra, a shallow gash on my arm and scratches on my chest. Nick yelled out "are you ok?" and, as per usual, I said tentatively "yeah, I'm fine," though I had no idea if I was or not! I finally found the off button and spent 10 minutes extracting myself from the grinder, while I waited for my heart to stop racing. Lucky it wasn't a cutting wheel! Still, my favorite Miallo State School refit shirt (that I found on the boat) now has a huge tear in it, very conveniently located directly at breast level.
Later, when Steve and Gus came over for beers at sunset, I had accomplished so much that I could well and truly say that I was finished sanding the deck! (at least until after I put the bog on and have to re-fair it all.) As we looked at the V-berth situation again, I said to Gus, in all seriousness, "This is the coolest thing I have ever done in my entire life!"
Later that night, at Tara's birthday celebration at the Beach Shack, she summed it up with this philosophy: "I think life is at its best when you experience the full spectrum of emotion in a short period of time. The highest highs, and the lowest lows, but you know then that you are truly living."
