Doran Beach (5)

Yes, this is one of our favorite spots, and this time we even tried a new loop and discovered we liked it better than our stand by favorite site. There is a beautiful view from the first loop and we spent the laziest possible day Saturday, just staring and not doing much.

It was a wee bit chilly and it had rained all through the night Friday. It was windy and sporadically rainy outside, which enhanced the desire to be lazy where it was warm and heated. I got a report written and Richard did some work related thinking, but mostly we just talked and snacked and watched the tide go in and out.

Not much of a report, but I can say that I experimented with scratch repair the past couple of weeks. There are lots of tiny beauty marks all over Dory, mostly from road rocks. They don’t really bother me and I figure they’re like wrinkles in that they are the physical evidence of a life well lived. There is this one scratch though. It happened when I was washing Dory with a microfiber cloth head thing attached to a long, expandable pole. It’s the kind that screws onto the pole like a mop head. On one of my forward pushes, the cloth head fell off and I put a big swipe right on the front that left a dark streak. It’s the kind of thing that pulled my eye to it every time I went in the garage. And that is just a terrible feeling. So I looked up a bunch of YouTube videos on scratch removal and bought some stuff. I experimented with a small scratch on the outside storage door and all I can say there is that it looks no worse after all the work I put into it. No better. But at least I got to go through the steps with the products.

Before starting, Dory got a nice bath to get all of the smoke filled rain residue off. While I was at it, I gave the rugs a good hosing as well. Then it was time to nervously attempt the touch up, hoping not to make it worse. The scratch on the front had clearly gone past the clear coat layer, so I had to use touch up paint. And I had to use sand paper. That’s the scary part and once you’ve done it, you’re committed because it looks awful until you get to the polishing stage. I spent a lot of time getting the touch up paint to not be globby. It is not a perfect color match either, but all I was after was to take away the dark area. The process I used was: clean, wet sand with 3000 grit paper on top of a sponge, precision dab the paint, dry, wet sand, repeat, until it looked acceptable. Then stop. That was probably the most important step. Accept it won’t be invisible and move on. Then wet sand a larger area with 5000 grit to blend in, polish, wax. At the end of the day, I’m not unhappy with it. I can see it, but it doesn’t draw my eye the way it did before.

Super lazy weekend in one of our favorite spots as winter kicks in. We officially like this loop better and the bathroom there gets far less traffic, making it cleaner. Doran has nice bathrooms, but they can get sandy when they’re near the day use areas.