Journal

Day Thirteen in Fort Pierce, aka the Official Home of Those With Nothing Left to Lose Penultimate paint, AC, logistics, logistics, logistics The boat is beginning to look beautiful. The blisters and our patchings have now fallen under a thick layer of bottom paint, stylish black on the forward two thirds of the hull, and […]

Day Twelve in Fort Pierce, aka Isle of Mange Monotony shattered by visit of friend 10 am – 2 pm: Four layers of barrier coat. At one in the afternoon, long-lost Chris Calvert arrived in the wasteland that is Florida’s central eastern coast. This visit threw a wrench in the machinery of monotony that has […]

Day Eleven in Fort Pierce, aka Skid Rowmanson For want of materials, the day was lost Enough of this. Not enough of that. The need for a few (six) small canisters of brownish powder (barrier coat additive) could not be had at the Fort Pierce or Vero Beach West Marine stores, nor “The Boathouse” store […]

Day Eleven in Fort Pierce, aka Thumb Jockeyburg Short work, long evening We filled the holes in the hull. Tomorrow we will sand them. Also we will put on the barrier coat. The next day we will put bottom paint on the hull. The day after, another coat of bottom paint. Then we are gone. […]

Day Ten in Fort Pierce, aka Rover Point Returns, taking turns, sharp turns Our elliptical disc sander lasted ten minutes. That was all it took for it to decide it wanted no part of our project, so it simply quit. We, fresh back from a trip to the library (which was closed) and the Wendy’s […]

Day Nine in Fort Pierce, aka San Franwanderer Holes plugged, West Marine sucked dry, obnoxious neighbors Today saw us buy the Fort Pierce West Marine’s last canister of 410 Microlight Fairing Filler, so we took a trip to the next closest West Marine, 20 minutes away in Vero Beach. Thus restocked, we finished a first […]

Day Eight in Fort Pierce, aka Fort Beggar Expensive white powder, more latex gloves, Vero Beach At West Marine, a haggard man placed his items on the counter. The woman at the register rang it up and announced the total cost. From here, it is unclear precisely what was said, but we believe it went […]

Day Seven in Fort Pierce, aka Vagrantshire Building a hull of glass, watching neighbors disappear, chimichangas By now the routine is set; we get up before eight, have cereal, and cover ourselves in potentially dangerous chemicals for most of the day. Heaven knows we’ve ingested enough acetone, acid, and aspirin to kill a family of […]

Day Six in Fort Pierce, aka Gypsy Gulch Manual labor takes a back seat to intellectual struggle Rain fell this morning, fortunately squelching any possibility of going to work on the blisters with mysterious chemicals. Instead, we went to the library (freer from mosquitoes than our boat) in order to plan the process of reconstructing […]

Day Five in Fort Pierce, aka Vagabond Village Grinding to a halt and driving to Miami and back I woke up at 6:30 am, and woke Aaron up at 6:45. We skipped breakfast and went straight to work, grinding away the last traces of the cancer in our hull and wiping the open sores with […]