Throw back Thursday- Mr Sandman - Sail Joana Charters

There’s an indescribable feeling that a boat owner gets when you find a hole in the hull. Obviously it is better to find it when you are on the hard, but that horrible pit in your stomach is still there.

Worse yet is that feeling wasn’t letting me enjoy my lunch. It wasn’t just the hole that was causing my despair. First, I hadn’t called Cath yet and I thought it would be best to do some research first (ok, it may also have been a procrastination technique). Second, we were on an island and a fairly large one at that. There was one sand blaster who was all the way on the other side of PEI and another on the main land of Nova Scotia, which was actually closer but still a ferry ride away. Either way, I was looking at a hefty fee for the long distance transport cost.

I had decided to only sandblast from the water line to the bottom of the keel in order to keep the cost down. We weren’t looking for a perfectly smooth finish on the topsides so I thought we would leave those alone for now and concentrate on the most important part…not sinking when we finally splash!

So, all said and done, we were looking at a possible few thousand in sandblasting fees, definitely a reason for my stomach ache and cold feet calling Cathy.

Well, it was now or never. I took a deep breath, dialed the phone and waited. “Hey Cath. You may want to get a big glass of wine for this one…”

As I am trying to explain what was going on, I hear a commotion behind me. Here comes Dad with an excited look on his face.

“Hey! Hey Buddy” he calls out. “Ssshhhhh” I reply, pointing widely to the phone.

I continue to try and talk to Cath but he is jumping about like the little bull dog in the cartons that seems to be saying “Hey boss! Hey boss, what we doing,where we going..” I knew he wasn’t going to stop so I told Cath I’d call her back in a bit. She very reluctantly hung up the phone.

My dad wasted no time in explaining there was a guy down the way sandblasting one of the fishing boats. Dad did what he does best and chatted him up. His name was Glen from Glen’s Place – Large Style Autobody. Hey, it’ll do.

So Glen (who will now be renamed Sandman) had been blasting all day and the last thing he wanted to do was discuss another job, let alone a massive job like ours. He was starting to pack up his gear and I knew I had to kick that Nova Scotian charm in over drive for this deal. I had learned from the best so I gave it a go.

First, weather talk. “Ahhh, the weather has been something, now hasn’t it?”

Then some work talk, followed by where abouts are you from talk and you know so and so. And then the closer, “You must be getting hungry. How about a good meal and some cold beers?”

Well, that did the trick and he said he’d do it. All we had to do was secure some Nippe Ceramo, which is a primer we sprayed on the hull just after he sandblasted it so she wouldn’t flash rust.

A day or two later the sandblaster was ready to go. We parked our trusty old truck by the boat, lashed a tarp to it and to Joana and we were off.

Sandman started blasting, showed me how it was done and I took over for awhile.

Finally, after two days we had enough grey sand to make a nice little beach but she was done.

Now it was bill time. Don’t worry, I had called Cathy back to let her know we found someone but no one was really sure of the cost. It was the end of the day and we were all tired. We couldn’t be bothered to climb up the ladder for some paper so Dad found an old pen in the trash and a take out box. Sandman did some high level math and viola! Joana’s sandblasting and spray painting bill was served.