After posting to the blog yesterday, my first priority was finding EternaBond tape to seal the crack in the roof I wrote about. I rode the scooter down Pinal Avenue to The RV Store. It wasn’t much of an RV store despite the name. The guy behind the counter had never heard of EternaBond.

I rode north to an RV lot, but they didn’t have it either. When I came back to the Casa Grande RV Resort, I saw a truck advertising RV roof repairs and a man and a woman setting up a ladder and equipment next to a motorhome. I stopped and asked them if they had any EternaBond they could sell me. The guy said he didn’t have any with him, but they had some back at the shop if I wanted to stop in next week. I told him we would be in the Phoenix area next week and that maybe I should just wait and get it there.

He asked me why I needed it. I described the ridges over the roof bows and told him there was a hairline crack in one of the ridges. He asked me where my coach was. When I told him it was just around the corner, he said, “Wait a minute.” He dug around in the back of his truck and then set up a tube of sealant in a caulk gun. He told me the acrylic sealant was an industrial-grade product – not something I would find in an RV store or Home Depot. He said I should lay a thin bead of it over the crack and smooth it down. He claimed it would adhere and stay pliable for years. He gave me the caulk gun and said to use it, then put tape over the tip and bring it back to him.

When I got back to the coach, got the ladder out and climbed up on the roof, I was in for another surprise. Yesterday, when I was up there, it was late in the day. The sun was low. The guys were power washing and the roof was mostly wet. When David, the wash guy, told me there was a crack, I wasn’t able to get a really close look – I could just make out what he was pointing at from where I was standing.

Today, the sky was overcast. I was on the roof at noon and the surface was clean and dry. With the flat lighting, the ridges weren’t very noticeable. I think the low sun yesterday made the small ridges cast shadows, exaggerating their form. With the roof clean and dry, I got down on my hands and knees and examined the crack. It turned out be surface checking in the gel coat – a cosmetic crack. Yesterday, when David pointed to the surface crack and said my fiberglass was cracked, I took his word for it and thought we might be in for big trouble. Today, I feel much better knowing it isn’t a structural problem. I still believe the deformation of the fiberglass is the result of the stress I described yesterday – it’s just not as severe as I feared.

For peace of mind, I put down a bead of sealant over the gel coat crack. While I was at it, I sealed up a couple of other fittings on the roof. Then I returned the sealant and caulk gun to the roof guy. They were doing a complete roof reseal on a 40′ National Islander motorhome. That was one of the coaches on my short list when we bought our Alpine Coach.

By the time I was done, Donna was heading out for a tour of Caywood Cotton Farm. A group from the RV park had booked the tour. Donna rode there with a couple from Saskatchewan,  Keith and Dorann, and Keith’s mother, Marian. The tour took the whole afternoon, so I stayed home to watch the NFL playoff games.

Donna took pictures of the tour and learned a lot about the cotton industry. I’ll post her pictures after we settle in Mesa. Tomorrow is a move day, so I probably won’t post again until Tuesday.