FINGERNAIL FILE Perhaps my fingertips will grow back again some day. Just perhaps. They disappeared, you see, the day we sand¬ ed every last speck of paint off our boat’s keel. I hadn’t noticed my finger¬ nails were going with the paint until it
was much too late. It all started when my husband John impulsively decided that this was the year we would do our own bottom - that is paint the bottom of our boat ourselves. Previously we had always
Children are always easy marks for the old Tom Sawyer' play.
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driven our boat to the yard, told them what color we wanted, and picked her up a few days later. What could be simpler — other than one evening’s Delta pipedream: “The Three-Minute Drive-Thru Boatworks”. X “Everybody we know does it,” said John trying to sell me on the idea. “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised,” I replied. “No, I mean painting the bottom, it will save us a bundle of money.” Now there was an idea I could relate to. “We’ll have the yard haul the boat and we’ll do all the rest. It’s simple, you just rough up the old paint with sand¬ paper and then slap on the new paint.” I have never undertaken a project of this sort without researching it thoroughly. So I began to ask around. “It’s no problem,” said Chris and Nedra. “You get these big cinder blocks to sand with and it takes three people about eight hours. You paint with pads and it’s a snap.” Lynn and Bob said “There’s nothing to it, we sanded for a couple of hours and then put the paint on with a roller in no time at all.” Then Doug said “No sweat”, and I began to worry. I know from experience that when Doug says ‘No sweat’, you’d better start sweating. Nevertheless, John forged ahead with plans for us to do the bottom ourselves. We made a date to have the boat hauled and ordered the bottom paint. I went to the hardware store for paint brushes, wet & dry sandpaper, and a gallon of thinner. I was appalled at the cost of brushes, and then the salesman asked me how much I had paid for the paint. When I confessed to $90 a gallon, he shamed me into buying good brushes and a comb to clean them with. The yard lifted the boat out Friday afternoon right on schedule and clean¬ ed the bottom off with the high-pressure hose. At this point John noticed that the keel was badly pitted and asked for ad-
