Scraping cetol off the decks is fun fun fun

It's taken me roughly 4 full days, but I managed to scrape all the Cetol (from the previous owner) off our teak decks. I was guzzling water the whole time, and just kept sweating it out as fast as I took it in.

I'm borrowing my friend's multimaster today, to start the process of cutting the caulking out from the decks.

Marine Exchange is open till early afternoon, so I might be able to start the recaulking by this afternoon if I hurry.

I know this isn't the longest blog post in the world, but basically here's the current project scope:

a) Get Cetol off the decks. I'm going to sand a small section and see if I want to do that today instead of pulling caulking. I'm on the fence because the sun will naturally undo the crappy varnish stain that the Cetol left, but I don't want ugly decks for a few years while that happens.

b) Finish sanding the cap rails and use Cetol Natural Teak to finish them. I think. Maybe.

c) Get a new dodger, and start replacing the canvas overall. We're on deck for October for this work. Also, we're getting mounts made for the existing dodger stainless to allow for some solar panels up top. When they (Murphy's canvas) replace the dodger, they remove the frame and rebed everything. Sold work.

d) Pull the chain plates. Probably before I do the caulking on those areas. I've lifted a few of them up and haven't had any bad surprises, but I really need to yank them all.

c) Epoxy this spongy piece of plywood that the water got too. It's right above my head where I sleep, so I can quickly judge the success of this project the next time it rains at night.

I'll hook up more updates as progress continues.

Update on Monday, September 8, 2008 at 08:17 by Eric

I got the deck sanded last night, and managed to pull one of my teak boards up. I put down some Teak Deck Systems (one part) just to get used to the stuff. Instead of taking back all the caulking everywhere I'm going to go after the problem caulking sections first. The downside is that there will be joins between the new rubber and the old rubber, and those might not be completely water tight. But, that's still a hell of a lot better than the huge cracks I currently have. Better to have a couple pin holes here and there than the monster sized 5' cracks I've got on the starboard.

The multimaster was great. There's still a lot of manual stuff you need to do as well though; the multimaster takes care of maybe 60%-70% of the work. The sides still need to be sanded and hit with acetone to dry out the teak oil and make the compound stick.

And yes, it is the absolute dirtiest crap in the universe. *Everything* needs to be taped off.

Hey look at me! I'm 30 years old!

That's right, I'm 30. Long gone are my youthful 20's, where I could waste my days in reckless abandon. Distant now are the times where I could screw up and get away with it because of youth. Now I am a time honored veteran of life. A solid fixture in the human specie, and a little under halfway towards pushing daisies.

I've learned a few things through my 20's, and would like to offer them up to some of my younger readers. Of course I'm fairly tongue in cheek about how much I've learned. I have this freaky feeling that when I'm 40, I'll be looking back at my blog saying to myself "you thought you knew stuff at 30? You didn't know anything.... ". And then I'll do the same when I'm 50, and then 60, etc.

Anyway, here's what I think I've learned:

• 
  My XML Birthday CakeSaving money is important. It frees you from worry, and puts you in the driver's seat. Compound interest makes it work even for people who don't have a ton to put away. Saving money also takes care of some of your base needs (food / shelter / etc), so you can keep your head focused on more lofty stuff (imagination / empathy / etc).
• You can't turn a work ethic on and off. You either have a strong work ethic or you don't.
• You should always keep learning. Try to spend an hour per day learning something you didn't know the day before. And focus your learning on things that will make you successful (via whatever standard you judge success).
• Software development is an extremely difficult profession. Beyond the technical complexity, you have to strategically place yourself in the right environments so that you have production experience with the correct concepts that will push you where you want to go.
• Have fun and enjoy life. You only have one life to live on Earth, so make it count. No one looks back on their death bed and wishes they had worked more.
• Look for the common good in everyone. You'll generally find it, and people will want to hang out with you more.
• Reading a few self help books every now and then can be a good thing (circle back to my "keep learning" point).
• You lose confidence as you get older. Fight to keep it.
• The influence of women in a man's life might seem contradictory to a man's goals on the surface. But if you could imagine a world full of single men, devoid of families, children, and the many intangible items that women inject into a man's life, you probably wouldn't want to live in that world anymore than I would. In short, a good woman doesn't make you a better man in ways you might expect, but it will make you a better man.

Also, on the birthday cake, Charlotte did correct the XML to make it well formed.

July 4 2008: meet Lucky

Lucky. Very lucky.We're pretty sure her name isn't Lucky, but she's a very lucky dog regardless. Charlotte and I were watching the fireworks over San Diego Harbor from our cockpit, and she saw what looked like a seal swimming through the water. But then she noticed the seal had ears, and said "That looks like a dog."

I ran over a couple of boats down, and after a few failed attempts, managed to drag her out of the water. We hosed her down with fresh water (to get the salt off of her), put Bactine on her paws (she ripped them bloody on the barnacles), and she's now sleeping in the cockpit sole with some beach towels.

She's a great little dog, and I'm sure her owner(s) will come looking for her shortly. In the mean time, Calypso is very interested in who this new crew member is.

Our guess is that the fireworks made her jump off a boat over in the mooring field, and she swam at least the 150 yards to the marina, although it's probably more. She's lucky that she didn't drown, get hypothermia, or get struck by any one of the probably-drunk boaters in America's Cup Harbor here.

Pokez, morals, and so-cal kick back-ed-ness

One thing I've never liked about the west coast is the "don't rock the boat attitude". On the west coast, particularly in Southern California, an incredible emphasis is put on keeping things pleasant and happy. The kick back tone and relaxed atmosphere comes at a price: we have to gloss over things that would upset us, and ignore negativity.

The cost we pay for this is an unflinching compromise of our convictions. Our ethical compasses are floating wherever the masses take us, on a journey of moral relativism that would boggle even a first year philosophy major at Berkley.

Enter Pokez. I won't restate what others have said, but let me summarize by saying that it's a Mexican food restaurant in downtown San Diego, about 5 blocks from my office. It's also the cultural center of hipster San Diego, and has about as much street cred as any restaurant could ever hope to have.

Also, back in February of 2007, a family traveling with an autistic child had that child grabbed, shaken, and screamed at by one of their staff. The "staff" at Pokez usually consists of a tatoo'd twenty-something with various pieces of metal in their face. They are notorious for bad customer service and an aloof "put up with us or leave" attitude. Not all the staff of course, but it's certainly the majority.

It was driven home today when we there for lunch, and an elderly man wearing a Korean War Veteran hat was treated like an idiot and with zero respect. Here's a guy with a purple heart pin on his hat, getting rude treatment by some asshat who then treats his buddy who strolls in like royalty thirty seconds later.

Anyway, I'll be picking up my tacos elsewhere. Pokez won't miss me; the hip factor and street cred points will keep people coming for a long time, not to mention the fact that not a lot of people have heard all these stories. But, at least I won't be one of them. I might be rocking the boat by saying "nah... I don't eat there anymore after some of the stuff they've done that's really uncalled for", but at least I'll be able to look myself in the mirror a bit easier.

The case for HQL (and dynamic SQL)

HQL is Hibernate Query Language. Hibernate is an ORM, and for my money it's the best one (also, it's an open source project, so it's free). I read an article that bashed it pretty good, going so far as to say that you should never use it. As a general rule, whenever you meet someone who talks in absolutes, run the other way as fast as you can.

I've currently got a rather sizeable application in production right now that uses Hibernate, and a lot of HQL. My results have been outstanding, and HQL is now responsible for 99% of all object persistence and CRUD functionality. I bypass for some very specific reasons, at this point only because of certain data engine provider-specific functionality (like full text search syntax). Hibernate can do anything that Oracle *and* SQL Server can do, so there are a couple things that are vendor specific that you might need as well.

I was a production DBA for a long time, and the idea of dynamically created SQL was insanely stupid. I would have laughed you off as someone who didn't understand security, performance, and abstraction. Some artifacts:

• An article back in 2003 that slammed stored procedures and their lovers. At the time I was very much a DBA, and my blood ran cold as I read the horribly blasphemous words.
• A small test showing dynamic SQL (which is what HQL generates) is faster than a stored procedure.
• A larger test showing dynamic SQL is faster than stored procedures.

I have a few stored procedures running around, but out of 200 tables and maybe 500 classes, I have maybe 4-5 stored procs. I'm not slamming them outright, and I'll go back my statement that speaking in absolutes in crazy talk. But I can tell you that overall the use of HQL (and in turn, dynamic SQL) is a fine practice that has yielded great results for my projects.

mast news: the saga continues

To bring you all up to speed, three months ago we had the mast of our boat yanked off. I often refer to this process as being "de-mastulanated". Our boat is left in shambles, as the following things happen when you remove the mast from a sailboat:

• It doesn't sail anymore.
• The boom (in our case, both mainsail boom and staysail boom) are draped over the deck, looking like crap.
• The boat is used to having a certain compression on it, so with that gone, things tend to bend in ways they normally wouldn't, creating new leaks (and sadly, not removing the old ones either).
• There is rigging everywhere. I've been moving our gooseneck around almost daily, as it's next to the trashbags now. Rigging is everywhere inside the boat and outside.
• The boat rides higher on the water because it weighs so much less, reducing stability, and making for a bumpier existence.

In short, it's been very turbulent and upsetting for both Charlotte and I to be mastless for the last 90 days. I swung by the boat yard (which we will not speak our opinions about until our mast is back on the boat) and it looks like, God willing, we'll have the mast back on within a month or so. I can't wait, and am really looking forward to being a sailor again. I'll keep the blog updated as this progresses forward.

San Diego gets a new park at the harbor!

I found this cool video and article on KPBS, explaining how the huge parking lot around the San Diego County admin building is going to become a huge park! The building is directly across the street from the water, so it's absolutely prime real estate. Rather than turn it into the standard "urban living / light retail" blend of condos and Starbucks, San Diego gets an awesome new park!

San Diego is a heck of a town; if you're a native, or just an otherwise interested person, I'd recommend picking up a copy of Under the Perfect Sun: The San Diego that Tourists Never See.

Good job San Diego!

The mast saga: part deux

Boy oh boy do I have some updates for you guys. The three people I know (who know wooden boats) told me that my current mast is fine, and well capable of going around the world with the proper repairs. This list includes Ryan, John (of S/V Sea Raven), and Jay Greer (who the Pardey's mention in their books). Jay was nice enough to swing by the mast yesterday, and although we couldn't hook up directly, he checked it out and called me this morning to tell me his findings.

Also, Robert Perry chimed in on the issue, after I sent him an email explaining my problem, and how I was looking at putting the new CT41 mast on:

I think a wooden CT41 mast would be way too heavy for your boat. I would not
recommend this change.

So, if Robert Perry is telling me not to put the new CT41 mast on, it's a dead issue. Doug Jones of Traditional Boat Works was very cool throughout the entire process (he's the one with the CT41 mast), and honestly I can't knock him for not knowing that the mast would be too heavy for my HC36. I'm the skipper of the Rebel Heart, which sometimes means I get to sit around with my stupid yacht captain's hat on, smoking from my pipe. Other times, it means that I have to deal with every aspect of this vessel, including the power, lights, steerage, plumbing, electrical, safety, and in this case, sail plan and weight balance.

On John's (again, my neighbor and skipper of S/V Sea Raven, another Hans Christian) advice, I made a few calls around for some aluminum masts, but didn't find very much. There was one nice deal: a mast+boom+hardware for $2,000 over at Pacific Offshore Rigging, but I'd lose two feet on my mast height, and a Hans Christian is already a little underpowered as it is, so chopping two more feet would be brutal. I'll make a few more calls, but the aluminum route seems tricky as heck. It would probably be wiser for me to keep my ears open in general, after I get all this fixed. Buying spars is like buying anything else, in that the time to buy it is when you don't need it. With the mantra of "al taytseh friar!" running through my head, I should be buying things when I've got the upper hand, not when I'm mastless and desperately wanting to turn this power boat back into a sailboat.

So, the new plan is as follows:

1. Measure out the pieces of spruce we need for the repairs.
2. Open up the screwed in (non scarfed) repair.
3. Contact a fumigating company to bag and gas the spar, killing the termites. Also, Jay Greer mentioned that some gasses can kill dry rot spores as well, so he recommended me getting that done as well.I'll be pumping copper into the
4. Do the repairs... I have a feeling there might be several blog posts just about this.
5. Epoxy, paint, and re-attach the hardware.
6. Turn my power boat back into a sailboat.

Well, this whole experience has certainly put me in closer contact with my rig, and demystified a lot of it. Honestly, looking back, I think part of my desire to get the new mast was a spinoff of our disposable-consumer culture. If your TV breaks, you don't fix it, you get a new one. When was the last time you put a patch in your jeans? You toss them, and get new ones. I'm not positive how much of that motivated me towards the new mast (instead of repairing the old one), but there was something there to be sure.

Being the captain of a boat is a lot of responsibility. I consider myself fortunate that I was raised around boats, enjoy them, and have spent a decent amount of time on the water. Even with that, there are times when I have to make big decisions, and have very little information to go off of. It's frustrating, because the buck stops here, and unlike software (or some other topic I know fairly well), making an important decision with little information is a recipe for disaster.

But I'm happy with the way it played out thus far, even if it has been a bit traumatic. I exhausted a lot of different options, got advice from several different people, and bounced that advice off of others to try to come up with the correct approach. Those are skills that I continually hone in my corporate life, so it looks like my office job does actually have some direct benefit towards my nautical life (beyond financing it, of course).

We've escaped the boat yard, and are now mast-less.

No mast, so sad!Where do I even begin?

As I blogged about earlier, we had the boat hauled out for a paint job, and removed the mast (a process called "unstepping") so we could inspect it, and refinish it. Within a couple of days, we found a couple patches of rot, a couple of termite nests, and a previous repair that was botched. The cost of repairing it all is around $6K.

I put a post on the wooden boat forums, and got in contact with someone who directed me towards towards Doug Jones, of Traditional Boat Works. They mentioned that Doug might have two spare spars sitting around, and sure enough he does. I went over and checked it out; it's nearly a perfect match for my existing one. Saturday I'm going to head over and make sure my hardware fits, and that there aren't any other surprizes. Predicated that the plan works, I can have Doug pick up my old mast, and get started on getting the new one ready. Of course, this also means that it's a great time to replace the shrouds and stays ( = more $$).

It's a very traumatic experience getting your rig pulled. Living in a filthy boat yard for four days (no toilet, running water, or privacy) isn't that much fun either. I'm sitting at the public dock on my cellular card at the moment. The wind was pretty strong this afternoon, and I didn't want to risk playing bumper boats and smashing into anything. So, I'll wait out the wind, and have my friend help put the boat in. I'm going to feel really good when I'm safely back in the slip.

These last four days have been really crazy, and emotionally draining. It's really sad seeing our beautiful boat with no mast, and seeing the shrouds and stays all piled up on a concrete floor, looking like trash, is hard to deal with as well. I have a lot of love for this vessel, and she deserves better than that.

I'll update more as things progress, but like I said, right now I'm just looking forward to getting a good night's rest, being able to cook a meal again, and if I can spare a moment, have a bit of fun.

Update on Thursday, March 20, 2008 at 19:38 by Eric

Safely back in the slip. Whew. We're not out of the woods yet, but it's very nice to be out of the yard and back in the slip. Tonight I'm going to watch some TV, read my books, and chill out.

The hallout (read: "mast saga") has begun

I'm dead tired, and only taking a break because Ryan had to go to work, and I need to grab lunch. I've taken two weeks off work, and this is the first week. We hauled out Koehler Kraft, a notorious wood-oriented boat yard in San Diego. The bottom has been painted, and the mast was pulled. I have pictures of all of it, but of course forgot my cable to transfer the pictures to the laptop, so they'll be arriving in the next few days most likely. I'll start with the highlights:

• Pulling the mast. What a crazy experience. I got to be on the bowsprit, muscling the yankee furler over the rails, making sure the aluminum doesn't bend. I had to chop two electrical wires in half, because there was no way to undo them from the source. It's laid down on some horses now, and the fun has only begun.
• Peeling varnish. We're more than halfway done at this point, which is amazing. Rory and Ryan (Ryan was there from 8:00am - 10:00pm) slaved away with me yesterday on this. I've gotten really good at scraping varnish and 5200.
• Rot. We found a nice big piece, about 5 feet south of the mast head (the mast is 44 feet overall). Cost to repair, $2000 (or so).
• Termites. Some termites decided to make a nice little home in the rotted section. I think we've found them all (famous last words...), and it seems like they were localized to the rotted section. Either way, termites are frigin scary.
• A bad joint put in by a previous owner. I'll put the pictures of this up soon, but the patched in piece that they put through is cheap, not load bearing, and sadly not something that should stay up there. Cost to repair, $2000 (or so).
• Living in the yard for a couple of days. Our boat is our home, so when the boat goes onto a cradle in a boatyard and gets filthy, so does our home. Also, when you need to climb a 12' ladder to get onto the boat, you can imagine how much fun that is when needing to take a dog to go pee... three times a day.
• Charlotte is in Utah with her family. This is good for several reasons, but from my point of view I'm glad that she's insulated from boat hell right now.
• I'm dumping the roller furler.

All in all, I think this is going to cost upwards of $7000 by the time it's all said and done. That's not chump change, and although the idea of shelling out that much money is shockingly painful to me, so is the idea of navigating around the world's oceans with known rig problems. The idea of pulling the mast was to lay it down, inspect it, find all kinds of problems, and correct them. So in that regard, I'm 3/4 of the way through.

I like to provide dollar values for my blog readers, as to put some reality into the costs of owning a boat. I spoke with a friend of mine about it, who asked "if you knew that you were going to have to deal with this when you bought the boat, would you do it all over again?"

It's a good question, and the answer is absolutely yes. In reality, I probably would have ponied up an additional $20K onto the original purchase price to have the rig in spectacular shape. It's more the trauma of watching our home get torn apart, seeing termites eating it away, and things of that sort, that's the real tough part to deal with.

I'll get some pictures up soon; probably late tomorrow if I can't get it done by today. Blogging is therapeutic for me, so I try to find the time to do it. As helpful as it may be for my mind, however, it does not get the varnish stripped off the mast any faster, so I must get back to the grindstone (a.k.a. "my vacation").

Update on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at 22:38 by Rebel Heart

Okay, I got the pictures up. The one on the left is the mast getting swung off the boat (by the big 70 ton crane in the background).