Some repairs Worked, some Didn't

After 22 days at the boat, once again, a lot of things got marked of the list - the shut off cable for the port engine worked like a charm, the ocean hatch locking lever was a quick fix, and the fabrication and installation of the acrylic window wasn't too difficult at all.  Simple things like getting hot water on board only took a quick flip of the breaker to "on" (who would've thought, huh?)  And replacing one of the access covers to the fresh water tank was just a 5 minute install with a new one.  I had also wanted to replace all the old light bulbs with more efficient LED ones, and it didn't even take an hour.  But some fixes took a bit more time....

....such as removing all the non-skid padding from the entry steps, assembling a closet, installing an automatic strainer, and running the mast wiring.  But for the most part, all of these tasks were pretty straight forward and we didn't run into too much trouble at all.

But there were also the "fails" - the fixes that didn't quite work out as planned. 

The first fail was my attempt at refinishing the navigation table.  The surface had 3 horrible water rings (damn-it, use a coaster! i.e. notice the cup in the picture below.)   And you just can't have a bad looking nav table, right?  So I figured that I'd just sand it down, and lay down some new stain - but that's what I get for thinking (and I've never been good at staining anything, I should've known better.)  The problem is that plywood doesn't sand down so good and I sanded past the first finished layer. Panic quickly set in.  Tami is going to freak.  Back to Home Depot to try and find a fix.  Counter-top paint was my solution - but that didn't come out worth a crap either.  So it's back to the drawing board with this project.

The "Before" picture - and those were the 
sandals Tami was wearing when she broke her heel :(

The "After" shot...not horrible, but not great either

Not everything can be a hit, so I'll have to figure out what I'm going to do here (it looks better from a distance than close up.)

The other thing we tried to do was to make new rungs for our entry ladder.  The old teak ones were in bad shape and needed replacing.  I thought it would be as easy as making a few cuts, drilling a few holes, and putting it back together.  Not so fast buddy.  First, have you ever priced teak???  My God, they wanted $36 per foot.  There has to be an alternate.  I almost went with oak, but who uses oak, right?  Then I called a local lumber store and they said they had something called Epa.  Its a hard, water-resistant wood and at only $4 per foot, pretty reasonable.  But sad to say, after about a day and a half of working on it and getting two rungs in place, it just didn't feel solid enough.  It also started splintering at the attaching point and we agreed that we just couldn't move forward and feel comfortable getting on the boat using these rungs - so it was scrapped.

 Nice wood (that's what she said) but it just didn't make a good rung

Of all the positive things we do for the boat, every so often, there are repairs that just don't work.  I've already found a great replacement ladder that will be perfect for our application, and I think I got it figured out what I'm doing with the nav table and the galley counter-top - of course Tami will probably be with me next time and she may have something to say about all that.