Tank Update

That's right, I am still working on the tank. Having someone weld it sorta fell through so I bit the bullet and decided to open it up and fiberglass the entire tank, using my delapidated rusted tank as a mold in the hull. I spent about four days cutting the top off then scraping out the tank and grinding it clean. Then, as long as I was down there, I spent a day and a half cleaning about 12 inches of 15 to 30 year old crap out of the bilge. That pretty much did me in. I have been sick for the last three days. Feel like a truck ran me over, my throat is so swollen up I cant swallow and I have been hiccuping for about eighty straight hours now. Dammed if I know why the hiccups but I figure it's got to be related somehow. Oh well, enough whining. The work has got to go on and I am glad that petrie dish I call a bilge is now clean; one more coat tomorrow and I'll be ready to glass on the lid and run my lines.
I would have taken a day off but we sent the cushions out to get reupholstered, so Susan and the kids have no place to sleep on the boat and are back at the hotel. This kind of work I'd really rather do while they aren't here. Oh yeah! I didn't tell you about the cushions. Before I came down I got a really good deal on fabric for the sailcovers, dodger, and cushions thinking that I would learn to sew and put them all together. Well, with the fiberglassing I think that I am learning on the job enough for now. So I asked Pancho (the bottom scraping crocodile scrapper) to find me somebody to put them together. The fella he brought by seems really professional and the price we agreed on was more than fair, 6000 pesos ($450) to do all nineteen cushions, replacing the foam in eight of them. You can tell by the price he doesn't usually work on boats. Hopefully he is done with them tomorrow, I am really anxious to see how they look. And yes, we will post pics, but not before we're done. Right now we look like hillbillies with junk hanging off the boat and halfway up the dock so I dont want to post them until I'm not embarrassed of the way it looks.