Saturday, May 30, 2009

Michigan City Indiana

We finally see Nicole after many months of her moving to Texas. She looks great, but feels terrible, as she has a cold. Hopefully not swine flu. Yikes. We are all here for a wedding as I mentioned earlier. Michigan City is a nice surprise so far. We found a great place to eat, and have a few beers last night. The Shoreline Brewery had a great menu, and the scotch ale was very tasty, though strong :) They even had a good food selection for us leaf eaters. I see that the sailing weather is not very good in NY. I was supposed to help my pal move his boat to Sodus Bay today, but the timing was not good. Hopefully Gary will play it safe today, and not go alone. Should be pretty cold out there, but a following sea and wind will make it feel a little warmer. Sleeping was not good last night as we had to listen to the snorting, and coughing of the sick one. Needless to say we are a little tired today, and slept in a little. Got to rest up for the wedding tonight. Should be fun, if we can stay awake. If I ever find my camera cable, we will post a picture page. Kind of gloomy weather here, no sun, but warmer than NY.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Boat Blogging

This week went by pretty quickly, as I sit at the nav station typing this out. I've been living on the boat during my temporary layoff week. I managed to get a few projects done, and some general cleaning of the old tub. I'm not the best at remembering all the things I need for a lengthy stay, so sleeping without a pillow, having only two pair of pants, no shaver, toothbrush, and no shampoo is making me look a little homeless, which explains the looks I got in the hardware store. I do have plenty of beer, chips, dogs, t-shirts and underwear. Life is good. We now have a new shower drain pump. The old unit used to wake up the marina. It would growl, and vibrate against the shower wall, and suck the water down in a loud slurping swirl. The new Whale Gulper 220 quietly pumps it out. Not much of a gulper though, as it takes a while. More like a Sipper 110. Things got a little cold in the cabin the other morning, so I fired up the space heater. I heard a sizzling, then a crackling, then the GFI tripped. I installed a new GFI. Another project completed. Our water here at the marina is from a well, I believe, so it gets a little brown from sediment at times. I went out and got a filter to prevent the brown silt from accumulating in my hair after a shower. I got all the fittings, and hose I needed, and got her all hooked up. No filters. They didn't include a filter cartridge in the filter housing! Cheap bastards. Then I see the filters are made in China. They probably use old animal skin, and asbestos to make the filters. Got to remember to keep my mouth shut in the shower. I found the camera! I can't find the cable. My week here is almost over. Last day. We leave for Indiana, to attend a wedding, where we will see Nicole. Yippee! Have not seen my baby in a while. The couple getting married are Nicole's friends from college. We have only seen these folks while tailgating at Purdue games. I feel like I should pop the rear hatch, and drag out a cooler before the wedding. Wouldn't that be classy. I better get the boat cleaned up before I leave. Deb is going to wonder what the heck I was doing out here all week.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

She floats

Well, we made it to the water, and Alert is floating and not pumping any water from the plumbing job I had done. If there is one thing I absolutely hate to do in this life, it's plumbing. So, I was actually surprised to find the seawater was not coming into the boat through the ball valves I replaced. Good deal. Not sure why, but we are really behind in our boat chores this year. I said to myself, I was not going to stress over the boat, as work has been stressful enough, so maybe this slowed me down a bit. Deb has been taking on more chores on this boat than ever before, and this helps, but still we're a day away from actually sailing. We got the mainsail rigged yesterday, but as I type this I remembered that we had not put the reefing lines in. Deb would normally remind me, but she was a bit distracted, and I'll leave it at that. She knows what I'm talking about. Today we have to put up the canvas, and get the jib hoisted, but now it looks like spotty showers are in order, so we'll see. If I knew where the camera was, we would show some pictures. Maybe I better take that b-12 vitamin today.