Not much progress on the boat these past couple weeks, but I figured I should still check in on the blogging.
As planned, Mark, Marley and I went for a road trip to Saguenay, Quebec, where Marley and I competed at the sled dog dryland world championship. We were away for five days, leaving the cats behind to hold the fort.
So? How went the race? I’d say that if I was there for pain, I’m a winner; if I was there for fun I’m a champion; if I was there for a podium….well I have a lot more work ahead of me. To resume: we had a great time with a good bunch of friends, the trails where challenging (fun) and the Europeans are high level competitors…I’m more of a go happy racer. It certainly was a very exiting way to start the dogging season.
Question: how many HP in one dog? Maybe I could consider a giant hamster wheel to power the boat….Marley isn’t agreeing 🙂
Back to the boat business…hunnn, I wish. We got back home and by the time my legs stopped hurting I was on my back snorting and coughing trying to convince myself I was going to get over this little cold in a coupe days of rest. Over a week and a pallet of Kleenex later I think I’m on the mend. Unfortunately I just missed the last warm days of the year, a perfect weather window to finish the blasting and painting inside the hull. Oh well…
I did manage to drag myself out there for a couple of days worth of work. I’m making the last of the ballast bins. I was done with our permanent ballast but still had twelve bins to make for some trim ballast.
Over the past week I did take advantage of my not-so-good-feelingness to catch up on some clean-up that had been neglected in the house, shop and in the boat…where I had a bad surprise. As we have been working at the bow and main compartment of the boat the aft section has been a bit forgotten and as it now appears, neglected. Each time we sandblasted, we thoroughly cleaned the boat inside out except for the aft section, which, even though some sand did get in there we didn’t have to worry about it for the painting that was being done. I finally got around to cleaning the left over mess. What I found was upsetting…corrosion, the steel in some specific areas has started pitting. It is upsetting but also really neat and interesting. On one of the areas, on which I have been keeping a close eye because it does sometimes hold a bit of water from condensation I had not noticed any trouble in over a year. Some other areas had been grinded and didn’t get reprimed, so the steel was exposed, but previously weren’t rusting much. It appears that the sand reacted with the steel and caused some galvanic corrosion. None of it was rusty red, it was black. Where the sand, moisture and steel have danced there waltz the surface was covered by a very black crust under which the steel was pitting. It happened surprisingly fast, I assume that the current flowing threw the hull when I weld had also it’s role to play in this reaction. Wow, who would of guessed the steel would of reacted with the sand. It is not silica sand, I’m now curious, I have to find out what it is that we are blasting with.
This is after a quick blast. The black stuff had formed over the pitted areas. I should point out that the mil scale had been removed prior to build the boat.
After I said all this the damage is very shallow and limited to small areas on some overly thick ¼ inch plating. I’m not going to stress about it. We sand blasted the affected areas, did a good cleanup and applied a temporary coating to stop the reaction until next summer. Hopefully this will be the end of that.