Time to take a break! I have achieved DEFCON 1 level of frustration.
I have been rebuilding a Stiletto racing cat over the last several months. I knew it would be off the water for a while. I knew it would be many man hours of work and many dollars from my pocket. But DAMN!!!!!!
I swear it seems like forces are conspiring against me. Did I offend some supreme being or something? Did I cut off a buddist monk in traffic? Some bad Karma back from a past misdeed???
If a part breaks or needs replacing it will of course be extremely expensive (usually for no reason), extremely rare, or extremely difficult to remove.
If I manage to find the part, it will either be extremely difficult to replace, not fit as designed, be damaged while attempting to fit it as designed, or just frankly be the wrong part.
Lately here in good ol' Southwest Florida, it has been raining every G*D D*MN day AND feels about 1000 degrees thanks to about 99% humidity. I particularly enjoy working in the forward hull, with no ventilation, with solvents, with temperatures that would make a sauna jealous, with buckets of sweat in my eyes, while trying to tighten a through bolt in the farmost corner of the bow where I have about 2 degrees of room to turn the wrench. 20 minutes in and I have advanced the nut down the bolt by 1/2" YES!! What progress!!! And such comfortable conditions to boot!!!
Oh, I forgot to mention. After I paid enough money to buy a small country for a new paint job, I now get to screw it all up by walking on the deck after accidently stepping in 3m 5200...Black of course! Accidently tightening a through bolt too tight and crushing the core while pulling in a huge 3" divot into the hull. (tried to save some effort with a power drill to drive the bolt and had the clutch set too high....cause I wasn't thinking thanks to a body temp of about 125 degrees or so)
Or, my favorite development. Modifing a boat stand with an angle grinder. All seems fine until I notice after the rare and unusual rain here in FL that apparently all the steel fillings have floated accross the driveway and around to the boat pad and have settled on the boat finish....leaving of course thousands of tiny rust stains!!!
Or how about the metal top coat that proved incompatible with the Zinc Chromate primer.... so everything had to be sanded down and redone.
Or, trying to save time by having the old paint sandblasted and having the moron blast the cr*p out of my stainless fittings so they look an old fishing lure one might find on an old gravel road.
Or, trying to replace my wire halyards but discovering that apparently the original manufacturer was trying to break some record by making the world's most skinny sheave (of course impossible to find) and placing it in the world's most narrow mast head slot (so any normal WIDER sheave replacement would be impossible)
Or, finding that some moron tried to pull a giant cable up through the mast conduit... got it stuck.. cut it off flush and pushed into the mast. Thus preventing me from being able to replace any of the existing mast wires. Including a VHF cable that looks circa 1901. Oh, and the non-refundable EXPENSIVE LED deck lights I bought.... Well unless I just dangle the wires down the side of the mast... I guess that won't be happening.
AAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
I swear I am a few seconds away from discovering how fast an epoxy hull can burn down!!!:hothead :hothead :hothead
Time for a drink and a good sail..... Of that's right I can't 'cause my boat in in 2000 pieces!!!
