Dry, spring winds
As every year, by end of February, I cover Meritaten’s bottom part with plastic tarp. It is about time of winter when spring starts to take over, with dry wind seeping out moisture from everything. Wooden boats don’t like such abrupt changes - it puts mechanical fastenings on stress and makes the boat leak much more upon launching.
Just recently we had tons of snow and freezing winter. All of sudden, within one week all snow is gone and temperature oscillates around 10 degrees!
The job went quickly so I could go inside the cabin and clean up the garbage left after demolishing fo’c’sle in the autumn. Kerosane, pressure lamp - my battered Optimus 200 - made the cabin habitable with its hissing and warmth.
The fo’c’sle is mostly empty now, only port-side bunk remains (partially). There is no cabin sole yet and sea-cocks left after marine toilet are not connected to anything. I will remove them and seal the hull - we use chemical toilet nowadays so no need to have these through-hulls.
Plenty of work left here and I will most probably not finish that before launching but there is no stress - we can sail the boat without furniture in this part.
There will be toilet, batteries and storage space here anyway, it’s a matter of organising it properly and seaworthy.
I dragged on deck our storm hook - fisherman anchor. I’m not convinced I will keep her onboard, so far the performance was worse than our smaller Bruce anchor. I will give it a chance this season but most probably it will be replaced by bigger Bruce anyhow.