Spring Outfitting - Day Seven

We spent today in the varnish room (except for when we had crew lunch at the chinese buffet!) It's the only heated room at the shipyard and it's the most dust-free place as well. That doesn't mean that it is dust-free though. We're constantly battling random dust settling into our varnish and paint. It can happen when someone slams the door or when someone walks by a piece that has just been varnished. Ideally we prep items in the morning while the heater is on and apply coats in the afternoon without the heater blowing air and dust every where. Then we leave the room and, hopefully, there's little or no traffic while the coats set up. Then it's like Christmas the next day when we see which pieces can be moved to the "Done" pile. Everything gets at least two coats and most items get several coats.

You can see we have a lot of items in the room. Some include:

-the wheel
-the swim ladder
-mast hoops
-head doors
-all the windows
-topmast shroud spreaders
-both light boxes
-two hatch covers
-a butterfly hatch
-some companionway doors
-the boxes from the heads (for storing extra toilet paper)
-two deck boxes
-the ice box lid (taken down to bare wood this year so we're building up lots of coats of varnish)
-the mug tray
-three sole pieces (access ports for the bilge)
-the chain box
-four oars
-pennant stick
and
-a topmast iron

Phew! That's a lot of stuff!