Robbins Reef Trip Report, Thursday, August 2, 2018

Crew: Megan Beck, Laura Kennedy, Eileen Montanez, Leslie Petosa, Annie Rech, Erin Urban

Weather: Sun and clouds, 80’s, humid

Access: We left Miller’s at 9:20 AM on the Nicholas Miller captained by Carl Hoerning and came back at 3:00 PM on the Nicholas piloted by Tony Semple.

Purpose of the trip: We had to continue to address the deteriorating polyurethane on the windows sills and doors. We wanted to finish painting the stairwell entry door surrounds and put a coat of paint on the beadboard base of the Lantern Gallery wall. We expected to paint the interior ladders.

Laura painting the beadboard in the Lantern Gallery.

Task accomplished: Because of the high humidity, we did not do what was planned. Megan, Annie, and Leslie took down the under stair closet door in the sitting room and peeled deteriorated polyurethane from it; they decided not to varnish it, and rehung it at the end of the day. Laura put another coat on of varnish on the window sills we addressed last week; Erin worked on the sill on which varnish had been mistakenly applied on top of polyurethane and got it ready to varnish. Laura painted the entry door surrounds to the sitting room and bedroom.

Eileen and Laura worked on the Lantern Gallery. Eileen removed the screened ventilation disks in the interior walls and decided to take them home to work on cleaning them. Then she and Laura painted the beadboard walls. Erin and Megan scraped the dog door edges because it was difficult to open, and loosened up the dogs; it closed easily when we left.

We expected to paint the interior ladders with high gloss paint, but it was too humid. John Tretout had given us black paint for the exterior, however, and we decided that Annie would scrape the Lantern Gallery railings and then we would paint them; she spent the morning working on them. However it was so windy on the balcony that when Laura went up after the break to paint what Annie had scraped, she found that the paint blew off her paintbrush on the west side of the balcony and barely got one section painted. Later Megan managed to get some paint on the east side railings where it was less windy. It looks great.

Next steps: We have to remove the deteriorating polyurethane from all the interior doors by scraping and peeling it off, and then apply Man o’ War marine spar varnish to them. Weather permitting we will paint the interior ladders black. We will determine the procedure for painting the stairwell steps, choose what color to use, prep and paint them. We will continue to address the Lantern Gallery and put another coat on the walls and reinstall the ventilation disks. We will continue to address painting the exterior features of the Lantern Gallery black. Michael McWeeney offered to make a new threshold and when he does we will install and paint it.

Scott Van Campen is making rims for two of the operable windows on the fourth floor; he will fit them with glass, and we will install them. We have to clean up the Lantern Gallery hatch cover and put it back and address any leakage from the windows up there. We have to grind off the rusted hinges on the exterior door to the cellar and weld on replacement hinges. We have to grind the casements on the kitchen windows so that we can paint them and make shutters for them. At some point this season we will paint the exterior walls and railing around the Watch Gallery and Lantern Gallery balconies.

Steve Kalil has completed the cover for the hole in the kitchen wall caused by super storm Sandy; he met with Scott Van Campen to discuss installing it. Miller’s will get it out to the lighthouse.