January 27-28 & February 3-4
At the moment there are two planks missing from Restless. The light that shines through the gaps is eerily beautiful, in a haunting sort of way. It is like looking into the light at the end of the long tunnel. But we don't want to go into that light. We want to board it up and paint it blue.
I studied philosophy for one year in University so I like to think that I have read some interesting ways of thinking. In that time, I don't remember any philosopher, poet, disciples, or rappers ever saying that February is the most productive month, and I can now confirm that little of consequence happens in the shortest - and worst? - month. If T.S Eliot thinks that April is the cruelest month I declare February the most dastardly month.
This is not to say that we have been sitting around the last two weekends thinking of new ways of avoiding the boat and the outdoors. We did go to the boat the first weekend in February and we did the rough cut out of the second plank! But we have yet to fit the first plank. We had various obstacles, like not having the fasteners, not having the first plank fitting perfectly against the ribs to drill holes, and Ted and me arguing about the next step.
Using Sarah, the circular saw, I cut out the second plank. After watching my dad do the first one for us I worked up the courage. I am still not as good as him, but it was not awful!
After we did that we decided to start working the curve of the hull into the first plank. We cannot put the plank straight onto the ribs because they are curved so to ensure we have a tight fit we have to plane the plank down on the edges to make it slightly curved.
Mahogany dust is one of the worst wood dusts to breath in. When I started working with my dad and we were planning down planks he made sure we were wearing masks. After breathing it in for years you can develop an allergy to it. Apparently, it can get so bad that you cannot not even be on a mahogany planked boat! Seeing as Restless is planked with mahogany and so is my Folkboat, this would be bad!
Eye see you!
We fit the first plank against the ribs, it just needs a little more fiddling. We think that we will be screwing it in this weekend. Fingers crossed! We would have done it last weekend but I had a cold. On Saturday, we decided that we would be miserable working in -11 degrees Celsius and seeing as was sick it seemed like a good excuse to take a day off and go full on on Sunday. However, after waking on Sunday I felt even more sick! As I said to my mom, "I feel like a slug with growing pains!" I felt terrible, not just because I was ill but because we were not able to make any progress. All in all I felt very guilty about the weekend because of my lack of ability to complete anything!
So far February has not been our best month, but we still have two more weekends before it is over and three weekends before I leave Ted up to his own devices. It's thoughts like that leave me lying awake at night, it's either that or the cat that seems to only likes to sleep on my neck.
