October 31, 2017
Steadfast 5
Tuesday
I’d never had cause to use my shop generator setup since having the proper switch and circuits installed about two years ago, so with just a little trepidation I prepared my old portable generator, which started on the first pull, and hooked up the cable to the shop. Success! I’d had a few circuits wired up for use with the generator, including the heat (not needed now) and the lights and two walls worth of outlets in the main shop. So I was in business.
During the morning work session, I stripped the old finish from the bulwarks and rubrail on the port side, starting at the stern and working forward.
After lunch, I got going on the starboard side, this time starting from the bow (direction of strip chosen based on the required juxtaposition of the heat gun and scraper for me). I’d not been working long under the din of the generator before I received a text from my wife saying the generator at the house had stopped, which immediately concerned me. But then I got the second part of the text: because the power was back on. This was great news, as I’d been expecting a much longer outage based on all the information I’d seen (and at this writing there were still nearly 300,000 statewide outages). So I took a few minutes to kill the generator and get back to normal power usage before continuing and finishing the starboard side stripping by the end of the day.
Total time billed on this job today: 6 hours
0600 Weather Observation: Clear, 40°. Forecast for the day: sunny, 50s