At the midpoint of this project, I am really proud of and happy with the course and progress of my project. So far most of my project has gone to plan with a few alterations. My original goals for boat work included sanding and revarnishing the wood, repainting the steering pedestal of the boat, scraping the layers of paint off of the hull, and deep cleaning the boat for sale. We have made a lot of progress with all of these goals whether that means that we completed them or that we have done a lot of experimenting. In terms of the sanding of the wood, it seems that that will take place many times throughout the project as it is something we will have to begin and come back to many times. Painting the steering pedestal of the boat has been the first task we have completed in full. It was one of the smaller goals we set for ourselves so it was faster to do. It is very satisfying to know that we have accomplished this part of the project. The scraping of the hull was by far the most challenging and biggest project we were going to attempt. After many experiments with the chemicals used to peel off the paint, we discovered the one that worked best for the weather and situation we were in and began to work on about half of the boat. The boat is over thirty years old so there could be anywhere from twenty to twenty-eight layers of paint on the hull which does not make scraping off the paint any easier. After our first attempt, which consumed two full days of working, we realized that we would have to do another layer of chemicals over the one we just did and do the process two more times on the section we hadn’t even started on. This specific project became very extraneous and ultimately unnecessary as we were told it would have no effect on the sale of the boat. We decided against going forward with the work and will just have the hull sanded down and repainted again, which has to happen each year anyways. While the elimination of this on my final checklist has slightly altered the final goals of my project, it allows me to put more time and effort into the other parts of it and even venture into new ones. 

The other parts of my project have not changed since the last check-in and I still plan to complete them all as planned. Though I think I will further examine the community service aspect of my project in relation to the boating industry. The beach that I have most regularly been cleaning is open to a very busy waterway that hundreds of boats pass through during the boating season. After seeing what I have been collecting it is easy to assume that a lot of it comes from the trash that has either been thrown off of or blown from boats. I want to look further into the types of trash I find and to see if it really is an effect of the boaters that pass through.

Halfway through my project, I have learned so much more about the boating maintenance industry and how to do this work myself whether I have gotten the information from my dad, other workers at the marina, or the podcasts we listen to in the car.