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You don't need an administration to make it happen, just a tiny fraction of the electorate sufficiently organized and radicalized. Not advocating for that option, just pointing out that it is entirely a possibility.

I wear a 3M 7502 half face respirator behind my 3M Speedglas autodark mask and it fits just fine. A proper integrated system would be nicer but this setup is safe and works for 1/10th the price. Also if it's not too hot and humid I can leave safety glasses on which is convenient for grinding--just flip up the visor and go for it, no safety squints needed.

This was my experience exactly working on a welding crew when I was 19. We worked 12s 6AM-6PM (or 6PM-6AM if on a night shift) and often worked longer. The longest shift I worked was nearly 20hr, which was great because every hour past 8hr was worth 1.5x.

"Safety" was "watch the fuck out and don't get hurt." I didn't have access to a respirator even if I had known enough to want one.

I did have enough sense to listen to the old guys who said your body can't take that kind of work for more than about 15yr without starting to break down, and that I should go to engineering school instead.

There was one (1) female welder that crew of at least 20 and she put up with a ton of overtly horrible stuff. She was also incredibly good at welding, I saw her once burn an entire 7018 rod without looking, no helmet, just by feel, and the slag came off in one piece.


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What the fuck? Explain exactly what you mean by what you wrote. Actually, never mind. I don't care. Just please delete your worthless comment.

For anything remotely complex flowcharts tent to break down for me, I prefer pseudocode for describing algorithms. But the article makes a very good observation about complexity.

This was a very informative article. It seems they should have shut down the generator and hvac and closed the vents. Pretty wild that a 45° heel angle caused it to ship water, that sounds pretty scary, as does the 75° righting angle with the keel up.

My tractor from the early 00s doesn't have a turbo. Plenty of VW and Mercedes Benz cars built in the 80s and 90s don't have turbos.

Backpressure aft of the turbo is something you really want to avoid because it makes the turbine much less effective. The whole point is to use a pressure and thermal gradient to do work.


You should have positive righting moment with the keel up and sails rigged, otherwise it's totally unsafe. When you're sailing downwind you have the keel up for speed. If you get knocked down in this situation--a broach, for instance--the boat needs to be able to right itself otherwise you probably die. This boat sank when it got knocked down, and it doesn't seem the keel had anything to do with it.

Do you know that raising the keel when sailing downwind was standard procedure on ships like this, or are you extrapolating from experience on dinghies and small keelboats? There are many yachts where keels are retractable, but left down when sailing downwind (the Hobie 33 comes to mind).

The keel should have helped stop it from being knocked down, by shifting the center of gravity down.

Bottom paint is about $250/gal. It takes us about half a day to sand the hull and roll on a layer. My 40' sailboat can be covered with 1 generous coat with 1gal with a little left over. $7k for bottom paint must either be a huge boat, an expensive crew, or both. It's just not all that expensive if you're willing to put in a little effort.

I’m no boat expert but doesn’t your statement imply some level of ease of dragging a boat out of the water to perform this operation? Something tells me that pulling a 40 foot sailboat out of the water, turning it over, painting it, and returning it into the water isn’t necessarily the most straightforward operation. A lot of complexity is probably loaded into “it takes us” and if we took a gander at the hourly rates of everyone involved in said operation as well as the upfront cost of the equipment to perform said operation as well as the safety measures required to execute the operation properly I feel like we would be a lot closer to the $7k number than the $250 number

You just take the boat to the travel lift and it hoists out pretty easy. Under 1 or 2 boat bucks for in/out lift, dry storage, and paint if you DIY is reasonable for smaller vessels, like under 30’.

The tough part is scheduling and finding a boatyard if there’s not one close.

Your nautical mileage may vary


You have to pretend the DIY is free, or even fun. Boat people are usually not cheap to hire.

> Boat people are usually not cheap to hire.

Costs a lot of money to make people put up with boat owners.


If you don't enjoy working on boats owning one sure would get expensive. I guess I'm lucky in that I don't have to pretend? Sure beats office politics, I wish it paid nearly as well as computers.

This can be done for free by just beaching the boat and working during low tide. Although that can be illegal nowadays in some places. Plus a 40 foot boat is much larger than required for cruising anywhere you want- if your boat fits on a trailer it is not only easy to paint, but probably can get by without any.

I didn't factor in haul out and storage because that's a separate thing from bottom paint. Haul out and transport costs about $1k/yr and storage cost over the winter is a further $1k.

Hourly labor rates are $0, I share ownership with 2 other people and we all pitch in.


Turning it over seems unnecessary. Good point overall, though.

If you're an engineer, I'm just going to x3 to x10 that time estimate to come to something realistic, just like I do with the engineers at work.

That way it includes going to buy the paint and sandpaper, putting the boat in a drydock or otherwise on land, finding and dragging out the tools and getting power to them, drying the boat, cleaning it, eating, toilet breaks, taping off the edges etc, letting the paint dry, cleaning up everything afterwards, putting the boat back into the water and probably tons more that I missed.

x5 sounds about right for this one.


It depends. For example, if the previous paint contains environmentally harmful compounds, you can not sand it without the infrastructure to collect the dust. The details depend on the location (regulation), but typically you need to hire this out.

Sanding takes multiple person-days and can be the wrong method (depending on details). Media blasting (like soda) is much preferred but requires machines and infrastructure to collect the run-off. In ideal situations, sanding is not necessary at all.

It can be several boat bucks, or just about a hundred dollars. It depends.


It does contain harmful compounds. It wouldn't work to prevent growth otherwise. You use a random orbit sander hooked up to a shop vac just like when you sand anything else (unless you prefer dust going everywhere).

For a 40' sailboat it doesn't take multiple person days, it takes about a quarter of a person day. More if you really have to take off a lot of layered up material. And you're right, blasting would work better in that case.


> It does contain harmful compounds. It wouldn't work to prevent growth otherwise.

Nowadays there exists bottom paints such as polysiloxane based ones that work by creating a very hard and smooth surface that critters find it very hard to attach to, rather than poisoning them.


Interesting! I'll look into that. My boat is overdue for a full paint job so that could be an option.

There are levels of toxicity. For some old paints, allowing the dust or run-off from pressure washing to touch the ground would be violating some regulation. Removing those old paints is more complicated. They need to be removed completely and cleanly, so sanding is a bad choice.

This isn't the case for any paint now purchasable, but most still contain biocides that you want to avoid for your own health when cleaning or sanding.


No, it's not an "estimate". It takes half a day. If it took 5x that I would have said so.

Hi, 45' boat owner here. Steps are pull the boat out by travel lift and block it. Power wash the bottom. Put up dust barrier. Don tyvek suit and mask. Sand with dust hose. Power wash the bottom. Paint first coat. Dry. Paint Second coat. Dry. Lift boat move blocking pads. Paint pad area. Dry. Paint Second coat. Dry. Launch boat by travel lift. Paint is $320 per gallon I need 2 gallons and a quart. Total time is 2 days if they hustle, 3 if the pull is late in the day. Lucky for me, they have not found blisters or any thing that takes fiberglass work, that adds time.

Last time I had it done it was $6450 including tax. 7 boat bucks.


Your process, while undeniably more correct than mine, is substantially more involved. Mine goes like this:

1. In the fall, drive the boat onto the hauler's trailer, unstep the masts, and transport it to the yard. Place on blocks and pressure wash.

2. Winterize the boat, wait for spring.

3. In the spring, break out the shop vac and sander and sand the hull. Since it's a multi season ablative paint, don't sand it all off--just enough to smooth it out and get the dried, hard top layer off.

4. Roll on a coat of paint.

5. When the truck arrives to splash the boat, slap some paint on the spots where the stands' pads were, and where the blocks were under the keel.

6. Step and rig the masts.

7. Splash the boat and go sailing.

Steps 3-7 take place on two consecutive days, along with a bunch of other maintenance activities.


7k$ is about what yards quoted for such a job in NorCal. It's easy to DIY if you know what to do, but (1) it's a nasty job (2) it's toxic (3) it takes time and (4) you still end up paying about 2k$ if you're thrifty (in NorCal). I both hired and DIYd the job and it's a wash as to whether one prevails over the other. If I were doing nothing else but boating fulltime, I'd DIY it. But I have a job and family.

It is a nasty job, respirator with VOC filters mandatory and the clothes you wear doing it will never be the same again

But those rules of thumb worked, mostly.

Of course they did, after all humanity has been plying the seas for thousands of years.

Just pointing out that naval architecture, as a branch of engineering involving stability calculations etc., is much younger than 500 years.


Just don't crash it into an iceberg and you're all set.

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