Everglades Challenge: Grinding for Dollars

The sound is reminiscent of the dentist's office: eeeear-eeeear-EEeear. But these teeth would be in the order of T-Rex magnitude. It's rather early on a Saturday morning and TwoBeers is wielding his grinder.

The noise is annoying, but the dust is awful -- sparkling in the sunlight, the tiny bits of glass fiber just waiting to find its way to bare skin, into bronchioles, under eyelids. 

Still, as the lovely old phrase goes: "Needs must when the devil drives." I suspect, like all the cool kiddies, the devil drives a fiberglass boat. 

According to the Glasspars and Tempest websites, here's a brief history of fiberglass: 
Thin glass fibers have been used for various things since ancient Egyptian times (they thought it was pretty). In the 1870's, insulating "mineral wool" was made of glass fibers. A fabric of silk and glass was patented as early as the 1880's. 
Modern fiberglass came into vogue in the early 1940s after a scientist at Corning Labs figured out how to make fibers quickly (blast molten glass with compressed air) and British spies stole industrial secrets about polyester resin from Nazi Germany and applied the secrets to the Allied war effort. The rest is is Mid-Century Modern history:  resin + glass fibers = airplane parts, ugly chairs, Corvettes, boats, etc. 

This led to a new skill-set involving toxic resin, fiberglass cloth, and releasing agents. As fiberglass workers know, the key for making fiberglass cling to fiberglass is to create a voidless, toothy, but level join between the two surfaces. 

Hence TwoBeers' incessant grinding.  

He's been cleaning up rough edges (fiberglass is not just itchy, but sharp) and adding anchor-spots inside the hull for the floatation devices.  The bow bag -- essentially a big yellow pool floatie that fits into the bow of the boat -- and stern bags (same but at the rear of the vessel and not yellow) MUST stay in place when needed. 

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Fiberglass anchoring-point.

TwoBeers securing floatation bags.

If Frankie were to swallow a big gulp of water, the floatation is designed to buoy the boat and its contents (including TwoBeers and his crew!). But a pool floatie will try to wiggle away from anything that weighs it down; an anchored, nylon buckle-strap (like the ones on a backpack) from Masthead Enterprises should do the trick quite nicely (knock wood). 

Including the four industrial-strength rollers that will help Frankie hurl himself down the beach like a hatchling turtle seeking the sea, there will be a total of ten separate airbags. When underway, there's one bow bag, five IODA-style tubes aft, and the rollers will fit along the sides. 

One might hope that all this floatation will serve as cushion rather than swim-aid, but it's a big wild world out there.

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