Lighthouse Work Party

Worked on Harbor of Refuge yesterday. Had a 12 person crew and six were first timers. It was nice to have some new people. I hope we didn't scare them off with what we did. They all said they will be back. It was a paint day. We were working both ends. We were removing old paint and putting on new paint. A crew covered the watch room with paint remover. A second crew started on the next level down with scraping loose paint off the walls and windows. The third crew started outside on the caisson.
After getting the paint stripper on, the first crew helped on the next level with the scraping. The stripper had to sit for 4 hours before removal.
The caisson crew hand ground the rust off the bad areas and got a coat of black paint on about 85% of the caisson by lunch time. We were a gallon short of paint, but will get it finished in August.
The other crew got the the living quarters level scraped and a coat of primer on the walls. We also got the windows covered with a coat of white enamel.

After lunch everybody pitched in on the watch room. What a mess getting the paint stripper off and everything cleaned up. We managed to get finished about 15 minutes before the work boat arrived to take us to shore.

Next trip we will coat the walls on the two levels with Lead Shield to seal in any lead from the paint that remains, then will apply the final paint on the walls. We are getting closer to having two levels finished.

We also will complete the black caisson painting, the railing on the first level, and start painting the white portion of the lighthouse. What a difference a coat of paint does to the exterior and interior surfaces.

The summer weather is supposed to arrive this week. They are calling for the nineties on Wednesday and Thursday. Will be the first of the summer. Don't know if I'm looking forward to it or not. The low eighties have been nice.

Also, finally got the boat ready for the water. Plan on getting it in this week sometime.


Charley