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Dec. 11th, 2022 07:45 pmI keep using intellicast because it shows specific charts with specific wind speeds and wind direction and precipitation over time, but it's always wrong, so I'm just falling for the precision fallacy. But the National Weather Service is so incredibly vague ("rain likely" applied to the whole day) that it just seems useless. If the rain is going to break for a few hours during the day, I want to know, even if the relative amount of rain or exact time is off. But intellicast will do crap like "0.359% chance of 0.0132 inches of rain" and it rains cats and dogs, leaving 4 inches of water in buckets in the morning while it's still raining. I know weather forecasting is hard, but how are we so bad at it? That doesn't happen infrequently... they frequently forecast almost no chance of almost no rain when it's pouring buckets. You can check the site and see the rest of the days forecast "for probably not any rain, at least not much if so" while the sky is black and water is streaming off of every surface. So, in a way, Intellicast is a somewhat reliable forecast for me... if they think there might be a few drops, batten the hatches.
Goal is fiberglass the bronze chainplates in to the deck to stop the leaks. I could never get the stainless ones sealed with 4200 and little stainless plates that go around the chainplates and over the hole. My opinion of 3M 4200 continues to drop. Seeing a forecast predicting some light sprinkles on Intellicast a week ago, I decided to seal the temporary chainplates to the deck really really well until I could install the new ones. Glassing bronze in is a-ok, by the way. So I had a quarter tube of left over silicone sealant from doing the cutting board style work surface in the galley, and I put all of it on there. Big mound. Yesterday morning, it was screaming and driving rain, so I went to dick with stuff and thought, oh, I want to poke the silicone and see how nice and rubbery it is! And it was wet and slimy. It didn't cure. It had held for about a week just as uncured goo. This morning, port temporary chainplate was leaking again. During the break in the rain (which weather.gov didn't mention and Intellicast did... and in fact, weather.gov, tho I pulled up NorCal weather, only talks about SoCal weather in its useless blurb: "numerous hazards across the West, including heavy mountain snow, high winds and heavy rain in southern California"... it can't even zoom in on the correct half of the longest state in the country) I wiped the silicone off, cleaned it with solvents, got about a quarter pound of butyl rubber nice and soft in front of the space heater on high, and made a little black science fair style mountain out of the port chainplate.
That bulkhead has two problems the other doesn't. It isn't painted on the side where the chainplates mount, and there's a moulded fiberglass medicine cabinet, micro-counter, and mini-sink, for the head, all right under where the chainplates end, and all of that serves to trap water against the bulkhead. I may take it out. So, I'm trying not to rot my bulkhead out, but, with all of the handing over the original chainplates and waiting waiting for new ones fabbed from those, and temporary chainplates, and trying to seal the temporary ones and failing, while it rains non-stop, this is not going super great.
Ordered some wood for backing on the latch on new companionway hatch cover and 2.5 weeks later, after a begging email, it came in. Dealing with TAP Plastics was also annoying. They kept losing info I sent them, even when I started sending every piece of info with every email so they would have no excuse, but they wound up being quick. Still, because they initially lost the order, I wound up with a temporary plywood hatch cover that bought me time, and I'm glad I just went and did that. So much temporary stuff. So, oak that showed up got tung oil and then a coat of spar varnish on the rough side and is hiding in a dock box. The moisture will make the varnish cloudy which is why I did the rough side. The plastic is smoked and about 30% opaque, so it'll hide that a bit, and then if there is ever any nicer weather in the next week, I can do a coat of varnish on the outside after assembling the thing. Or even if there isn't, cuz I have to do that.
I believe this has been the pattern in California... getting a bunch of rain all at once so everything grows like nuts, then as quick as it started, it stops, and everything burns, but it wasn't enough to make typical annual rainfall expectations, so it's a drought and water tables are being drained.
Intellicast is predicting 0.02 inches of rain. Better buckle up. It's already coming down hard.
Goal is fiberglass the bronze chainplates in to the deck to stop the leaks. I could never get the stainless ones sealed with 4200 and little stainless plates that go around the chainplates and over the hole. My opinion of 3M 4200 continues to drop. Seeing a forecast predicting some light sprinkles on Intellicast a week ago, I decided to seal the temporary chainplates to the deck really really well until I could install the new ones. Glassing bronze in is a-ok, by the way. So I had a quarter tube of left over silicone sealant from doing the cutting board style work surface in the galley, and I put all of it on there. Big mound. Yesterday morning, it was screaming and driving rain, so I went to dick with stuff and thought, oh, I want to poke the silicone and see how nice and rubbery it is! And it was wet and slimy. It didn't cure. It had held for about a week just as uncured goo. This morning, port temporary chainplate was leaking again. During the break in the rain (which weather.gov didn't mention and Intellicast did... and in fact, weather.gov, tho I pulled up NorCal weather, only talks about SoCal weather in its useless blurb: "numerous hazards across the West, including heavy mountain snow, high winds and heavy rain in southern California"... it can't even zoom in on the correct half of the longest state in the country) I wiped the silicone off, cleaned it with solvents, got about a quarter pound of butyl rubber nice and soft in front of the space heater on high, and made a little black science fair style mountain out of the port chainplate.
That bulkhead has two problems the other doesn't. It isn't painted on the side where the chainplates mount, and there's a moulded fiberglass medicine cabinet, micro-counter, and mini-sink, for the head, all right under where the chainplates end, and all of that serves to trap water against the bulkhead. I may take it out. So, I'm trying not to rot my bulkhead out, but, with all of the handing over the original chainplates and waiting waiting for new ones fabbed from those, and temporary chainplates, and trying to seal the temporary ones and failing, while it rains non-stop, this is not going super great.
Ordered some wood for backing on the latch on new companionway hatch cover and 2.5 weeks later, after a begging email, it came in. Dealing with TAP Plastics was also annoying. They kept losing info I sent them, even when I started sending every piece of info with every email so they would have no excuse, but they wound up being quick. Still, because they initially lost the order, I wound up with a temporary plywood hatch cover that bought me time, and I'm glad I just went and did that. So much temporary stuff. So, oak that showed up got tung oil and then a coat of spar varnish on the rough side and is hiding in a dock box. The moisture will make the varnish cloudy which is why I did the rough side. The plastic is smoked and about 30% opaque, so it'll hide that a bit, and then if there is ever any nicer weather in the next week, I can do a coat of varnish on the outside after assembling the thing. Or even if there isn't, cuz I have to do that.
I believe this has been the pattern in California... getting a bunch of rain all at once so everything grows like nuts, then as quick as it started, it stops, and everything burns, but it wasn't enough to make typical annual rainfall expectations, so it's a drought and water tables are being drained.
Intellicast is predicting 0.02 inches of rain. Better buckle up. It's already coming down hard.
