rebeccmeister | Stuff and Things and Projects and Projects [rowing, projects]

I thought I had signed up to go rowing this morning, but then I had one of those mornings where I had insomnia through the night up until the hour before the alarm went off. When I went to check what the consequences would be of dropping out, I discovered I hadn't signed up after all! Whew, off the hook!

But was I able to fall asleep again after that? No, of course not.

So I got up to start working on the hundred things that were on my mind waking me up all night. Namely, dealing with all sorts of Stuff and Things and Projects.

In that regard, I did a bunch of work rearranging various bits of rowing stuff. Well, to begin with, I finally ordered and received another batch of rare earth magnets, so I could finish the project of gluing magnets onto rowing trophy plaques, as seen here, with George for scale (and for aesthetic reasons, naturally):

The plaques got loaded into the pictured yellow-lidded storage bin, carted over to the boathouse, and installed. I'm so DONE with the plaques that I didn't even take an updated photo of the trophy wall.

I've also had several different little stockpiles of electronic items that belong to the rowing club, strewn all over the house: walkie-talkies in various states of failure, batteries for megaphones and coxboxes, charging cables and whatnot for boat lights. I managed to get all the little stockpiles consolidated, while also confirming that no, I do not have any extra pile of USB-C charging cables at home for the newer walkie talkies that use USB-C instead of MicroUSB (ugh, cable standards SUCK!! Well, I mean, USB-C for everything is fine, it's the presto-change-o that sucks!).

After a bit, I loaded up the 3 most recent sets of oars I finished repainting onto Big Red's roof rack, and headed over to the boathouse.

The rowing projects at the boathouse were a whirlwind, as usual. The freshly repainted oars got put away, other oars got measured and labeled according to size, the plaques got put up, and I did another round of the organizing whirlwind across the shipping containers, storage shed, and food/chuckwagon trailer.

Part of the motivation for the organizing whirlwind was getting a handle on what supplies we have vs. what supplies we need for a handful of different tasks. For instance, I eventually determined that we have NO good boat cleaning/finishing solvents. Ugh, that's a bad problem. Nor do we have good sandpaper backing supplies. Nor do we have enough of the tape used to label the oars of different lengths. (Can you tell I started a shopping list? It's long, and complex.)

I also threw out the contents of a bin that turned into a mouse hibernaculum over the winter:

I evicted the mice themselves about a month ago. When I started disturbing the contents of this bin, around 4 or 5 mice shot out, one at a time, which definitely made me yelp, heh.

I'll have to double down on my efforts to get people to store things in closed storage bins, I suppose. There was a kind of nice cloth tablecloth in the bottom of the bin, but it just reeked of mouse pee.

Then, at last, I set about working on some boat repair projects. One of our boats was recently put in slings and left unattended, and then a gust of wind came along, picked up the boat, and dropped it on the ground (the boat was unrigged at the time, so lighter than usual). This is a boat that we had just picked up a week prior from some more extensive/expensive out-of-house expensive repairs from when we (I) ran it up onto a submerged tree in the dark in the late fall*.

Anyway, this damage isn't as severe, but there were some dents and chips in need of filling. Time to finally open up the cans of epoxy filling compound I got for the boathouse!

As the product container says, this is a watertight epoxy filler:

In learning about automotive vehicle body rust repair, I've been learning a lot about filler compounds, and one of the things I learned about for rowing shells is that it's important to work with a filler compound that won't absorb water when the boat is submerged in the water. So this fancy stuff is what's needed.

The old bow number card was a nice, flat plastic surface for mixing up the filler compound.

Prior to application, I sanded around the damaged areas to help the filler adhere better. This is where if I'd had it, I would have cleaned off the area with rubbing alcohol to ensure it was Clean before I started.

The bow section had a bunch of paint chips missing, so it received a spackling:

The sanded area was the worst of the damage. Not too bad, really, all things considered.

The other annoying/expensive damage was that the impact caused a small tab on the skeg to snap off. The tab is a little tooth that is supposed to be sticking out on the lower left in this image:

The small tab is vital for holding the skeg in place, so we'll have to get another one on order, stat**.

Anyway, after that, it was time to dash off for other adventures, and I think I'll just put those into a separate post.

But I have to say: I am SO THRILLED to have all the rest of those damn plaques out of the house, finally! I am also THRILLED to only have TWO sets of oars in the basement right now, rather than the 5-7 sets I've been juggling in different parts of the house recently. I mean, I'm so happy I might just go start sanding down those last two sets right this second, so I can also send them on their way!

Except, I'm tired. No surprise there. So, tomorrow. Thankfully I should have a bit more time and energy tomorrow to keep whittling away at this particular project list.

And honestly, none of it is as bad as the move-out last year. The move-out was just pure, exhausting chaos. All this stuff is just picking up the pieces and moving forward.

*I was sitting in bow seat when it happened, responsible for steering and the safety of the crew. However, the log was partially submerged and it was also pitch black, so I saw nothing and then all of the sudden heard some carbon fiber making some truly awful sounds.

**We might be able to rebuild the tab on this one since the skeg is made from carbon fiber. But I'm not sure I'd trust that we can do a sturdy precision repair like that. Still, these things aren't cheap, so there's some incentive.