Robbins Reef Trip Report, Thursday, August 30, 2018

Crew: Megan Beck, Eileen Montanez, Annie Rech, Erin Urban

Weather: Sun, 90-100°s, windy

Access: We left Miller’s at 9:15 AM on the Julia Miller piloted by Ryan Novak-Smith and came back on the Nicholas Miller piloted by Michael Durrant at 3:00 PM.

Purpose of the trip: We wanted to work on the Lantern Gallery window casements and railings. We had to continue peeling poly from the interior doors and varnishing the surfaces that are sanded. We wanted to put UV filters on some of the windows and see if they help with light damage. We brought the Watch Gallery hatch cover back from Erin Urban’s house to continue removing paint from it in situ.

Task accomplished: Terry DeMeo provided transport for the new enclosure for the generator that Miller’s purchased for us and sent Vinny Doria to carry it up and help assemble it. It’s great not to have to lift the generator every time we have to use it; we can simply roll it in and out of the enclosure.

Though the temperature was 100º in the Lantern Gallery, Eileen taped and painted six Lantern Gallery window casements and sills. Annie scraped the exterior casements but it was too windy to paint outside. Megan and Erin scraped, sanded, and put a coat of varnish on the two interior doors from which we had removed water-based polyurethane, and continued to remove ploy from another door. It’s a slow process and such a sorry waste of time considering that the doors were done and hung, and we now have to remove each of them, get the poly off, sand and varnish them, re-install the hinges and doorknobs, and re-hang them.

Megan put UV filters on two windows, one facing Manhattan and the other facing Staten Island. We will see how they hold up before we apply them to the rest of the windows. She and Eileen put a second coat of paint on the Watch Gallery ladder. Annie worked on poly removal. Erin worked on removing paint from the Watch Gallery hatch cover; that will bring the effort to about 12 hours worth of attempts to strip it with Peel Away, a strong solvent donated by John Tretout, Goof Off recommenced by Halina McCormack, and finally a citrus-based stripping product.

Watch Gallery hatch cover in progress.jpg

Next steps: We will continue to remove the deteriorating polyurethane from the interior doors by scraping and peeling it off and then apply Man o’ War marine spar varnish to them. Weather permitting we will finish painting the interior ladders black.

We will purchase a solar-powered fan and install it in the Watch Gallery door. We will also purchase a door from the kitchen to the cellar and put a vent in it; moist, hot air is billowing up from the cellar.

We will continue to address the Lantern Gallery; finish painting the interior window casements, start on the outside casements and walls, put another coat of paint on the railings up there, and paint the exterior of the roof. We will build a threshold for the dog door because we have done so much work that is being compromised by leakage from there.

We will determine the procedure for painting the stairwell steps, choose what color to use, and prep and paint them. We have to find or fabricate metal rims for two of the three port lights and install them.

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 around the Watch Gallery and the exterior walls and railings around the Lantern Gallery.

Steve Kalil completed the cover for the hole in the kitchen wall caused by superstorm Sandy, and Miller’s got it out to the lighthouse. Both services and all materials were donated by Steve Kalil and Glen Miller. We are waiting for Scott Van Campen to put the cover over the hole.