MAX EBB pull something useful out of Lee's lecture, "I should pay really close attention to the forward five feet of the bow, and to the part of the keel and rudder ahead of the maximum thickness point." "For sure. But the five feet is only if you can keep laminar flow up to a Reynolds number of one million at low speed. Much less than that is more normal, especially with that washboard you're calling a racing bottom." "It's not like I'm racing to Hawaii," I said. "And besides, they took away my favorite tool." "That sander should do a good job for you," said Lee. "Back in the day," I reminisced, "bottom work was a much more hands-on thing, and a better social event, with the whole crew turned for that final burnish with pads of wet-dry number 800. All we needed was a hose and a pad of sandpaper for each crew. No suits, no vacuums,
just a lot of water to carry away the dust. This big power sander with the vacuum dust collector makes it hard to feel all the little lumps and hollows like I could with my pad of sandpaper. Look, I snuck
a piece in . . . ." I produced a single sheet of #800, then I wet down a patch of hull with a nearby hose. I looked over my shoulders to make sure none of the yard employees were watching, and demonstrated wet sanding of bottom paint. "Ew," Lee reacted. "There's bottom paint juice running up your sleeve!" "But I can really feel what I'm doing this way," I insisted.
"Hey!" shouted a stern voice from behind me. "You're not allowed to sand like that!" Fortunately it was not the yard manager or the City sanding police, but the owner of the boat on the other side of the one Lee had been working on. He had come over to see if he could audit the rest of Lee's BLT class. "It's just a quick demo," I said as I turned off the hose. But the faucet valve was old and I didn't turn it far enough to completely stop the flow of water. "See, now the flow as gone laminar!" Lee said excitedly as she took the end of the hose from my hand and held it horizontal. Instead of the water pouring out in a solid stream, some of it was dribbling down around the end fitting, some was falling almost straight down, and some water was arcing out slightly from the end of the hose. "See the evidence of laminar flow?
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Navigation, Communication & Weather Page 106 •
Latitude 38
• March, 2012
