Logo Arrives!

heat index hits 100 degrees

Warm, hot and stormy squalls off and on today.
today is Sunday a perfect day to not get anything done except to praise our Creator and enjoy the community around us. Sundays are visiting days. I feel like I'm back in kindergarden where you go up to someone and you say, "Hi my name is Pam and we live on Cricket, what's your name." "Dick and Anne we are on a sister boat wanna play?" "sure" well it kinda goes like that everytime we meet someone. Now we meet people from around the world that have sailed here. Dick and Anne are from New Zealand! and Ben asked if they were from Australia, they gave a look of disgust... (I was quite impressed he knew the difference in accents of british) "No we are from New Zealand, people from Australia come from criminal stock." we had a good laugh from that statement. I will post the Cricket logo they created for us!
Today was the normal church funness and saw our friend Keaton. Then we biked to Keaton's house to go swimming at her beach. (since it was so hot we of course said YES!) When we got there her neighbor told us she broke her wrist by falling off a ladder! He said we should till stay and swim... We did stay to swim! Ben and I looked from her shore out to the open Chesapeake and said, "OK enough is enough it is time to light a fire under the butts of the boat yard to get us in the water!" and tomorrow is monday and that is the day we always go up to the office to ask the status of our boat! We'll let you know how it goes.
That's all for now folks, a pretty mellow day!
Blessings to you all! Hey Rebecca is you visit my mom can you tell her our phones are out.... maybe you can show her some pictures from the blog. just ask the staff where the computer is.

lazy saturday - oh and AT&T tower is OUT! no text or email now

Lazy... yes... but this morning laying in bed about 6:30am the travel lifts starts it engine. This is life on the hard even on saturday the workers are all here. 6:45 Music from the next boat that is getting worked on starts up. Then the sander to the starboard boat goes. at 7am I think it time I get up. Ben can sleep through anything he puts his mind to... and he does. I had dreams of getting more wiring done but not the motivation to do it. It was 90's hot again. see Ben's picture all he is doing is drilling a hole and he is covered in sweat. We did go to the hardware store for more screws. We went to get more bottom paint (we ran out) and our order got lost in shipping and they don't know where it is. so monday they will try to track it down or order more. we went and picked up orange juice cuz we got free ice. Here is a strange phenomena about me: I'd spend $1.87 plus tax $2.05 on a coffee but I won't spend $2.50 for a bag of ice just so I could make a slushie even in 90 degree weather but I would gladly take free ice from someone so I could make a slushie and slushie I made two! Oh wait we did get an accomplishment that we had been meaning to do and have tried to do a few times and that is make a logo for the boat, now before Kimmer and Nola get excited to see what it looks like... here is the story... we took our usual morning walk along the docks wishing we were in the water and there was our new friends from New Zealand, Anne and Dick a delightful couple as we were drinking coffee and chatting we found out they owned a graphics and signage business for 20 years. Dick said what do you want your logo to look like and we said, Nordic/celtic and look like a cricket. He pulls out paper and pen and lick-it-tee-split out came a logo. he said he would touch it up a bit and get back to us. so you will all have to wait to see it then we can make emblems or something fun out of it. We can colorize it or whatever. Ben and I both liked the logo that he made in oh 5 minutes. We went to a movie for rest-pit, Ironman 2. It was as good as a james bone movie complete with car scenes, women, gadgets and more.Blessings on your day all!

wiring & bad cell phone 6-11-10

first let me say our cell phone coverage has totally died! We have to drive nine miles to talk to anyone. you can leave message on our phones. Please do and we will call you back when we venture to town. We can get text and email about every so many minutes. that is why phone does not work, I talk 15 - 30 seconds it drops the call, goes to no service, waits 5 minutes boots up again and repeats the process. very frustrating this has been going on since last week monday so almost two weeks. so if I have not called you don't worry you are not forgotten.

Wiring more wiring. Success today! since we are on lsland time even though we are holed up in a boat that is on dry land we still manage to take our time in doing projects - why hurry? tomorrow will come and we will still be on dry land. so we get up, drink coffee, chat a bit, then dive into a project with the close watchful eye of Mike. So today we took the wires that are run up the mast and we continued them under the soul (floor). tearing out old wires stringing new wires, re-zip-tieing them tightly back into neat bundles of wire. The electrical inspector from Burnsville would pass our job with flying colors and he is one tough-guy!

Ben did most of the work as I did so well what I was born to do - keep a watchful eye on quality control and give my advice, hand him the right tool before he needs it, sort all the screws and have them ready. Given all that I still earned my way today cuz my hands are very tiny and can fit into places Ben's could not. So together we are "Team Cricket". Woot Woot!

My back has turn a corner and is on the mend! Finally! I can walk and climb down the ladder without wincing. Progress there too. All in all a great day! I can't wait for tomorrow where we will continue stringing wires. today we made it half way, tomorrow is a little more complicated but I will save tomorrow for tomorrow!

Here are a cute picture of me with my backpack going to work. See the building in the background that is the marina lounge on the bottom floor where stronger wifi lives. this was taken the day the mast was put up. I just cleared out of their way and did work. (what work could I do? I balanced the work check book which is quite a feet! it is a big mensa puzzle. Good thing I have always loved math!

to Becca and Jason's house 6-10-10

I'm super tired and ready for bed but I would be remiss if I did not mention the great time we had once again with our good friends/family!!

we drove to meet them at their old house in Glouster then move to the new house in williamsburg. A super fun day of catching up on life, going to williamsburg (again it keeps getting better), we laughed, ate, and just plain had fun. I'd give this more time but bed is calling me. Next time here are a few pictures of the day.

yesterday 6-9-10 (I fell asleep at 9:30pm)

so yesterday...

welp...

we had Mike come and show us the wiring, but we don't have all the cables yet so we could not do that project but we had one other project: Run two cables thru the Hull in the same place as the last wires. sounds easy! (not!)

what normally would take the guys one hour took us all day... here are the steps

1st. take off old white mount. (check! easy)

2nd, run wires thru (not! these wires are bigger and need a bigger mount)

3rd get bigger mount (check Mike had one)

4th cut bigger hole (Not... not big enough drill bit)

5th ask Dave, other boat owner if he has a bit ... nope

6th try his bits (Nope too small)

7th ask the boatyard (Of course not)

8th go to the store buy a bit (check)

9th drill hole (check Ben did an excellent job drilling) (Im just a talking face giving my two cents)

10 fill the old screw holes that held the old mount (Check)

11 oops the holes were not completely filled

12 instead of making more epoxy we just caulked it (that's what my dad would do)

13 predrill new screw holes (Hummmm what size holes? if it was wood Ben would have guessed right.... keep reading)

14 screw in new screws (nope the holes were too small for the screws and the torque of the screwdriver spinned off the steel heads. ooopppss and the screws cracked the jell-coat)(Oh I told Ben to use the screwdriver drill, that was wrong he should have hand drilled the screws in and then they would not have broken ... well possibly... the holes were still too small)

15 start over

16 ask Mike what to do... (We love Mike! In the picture he is scolding us in a happy teasing way! he also said everyone has done that before. We thought he was just being nice.)

17... ahh we have no drummel to shave down the broken screws

18 Hey Mike... (he ran and got a drummel and sanded down the screws)

19 make more epoxy to fill the new screw holes that we goofed!

20 sand down smooth (check)

21 drill bigger set screw holes - 4 to be exact

22 go to store to get more screws buy 6 even though we need 4 (check)

23 screw in screws by hand (check!)

24 drill two holes in the rubber seal that goes inside the mounting case (check no problem)

25 run the cables

26 screw on top of mount!!!!

27 have a party and take pictures to celebrate!

speaking of celebrating here is a picture of Tom he helped with out mast and it was his birthday yesterday. so we ran out and bought a cupcake for him brought it back and sang happy birthday! We love Tom too. he is not political in the politics of the boatyard he tells you what is on his mind. Which we like cuz he is more real that way. Sweet man, I know he is sweet cuz I over heard him talking to his wife on a cell phone call and at the end he said, "I love you." always a good trait!

Back to the 27 steps and all day to do a project that would normally take an hour! Our lesson:

1 appreciate all the yard workers

2 it helps to have the right tools

3 wood is different than fiberglass

4 make sure your preset holes are big for fiberglass

5 only hand screw into fiberglass

6 make sure you have a guy that you can ask directions

7 understand there is always a learning curve to be had... we are so much more knowledgeable

8 be thankful in all you do! AMEN

Picture from Williamsburg from a few days ago. nothing exciting that is why I thought I would recycle the picture.

really nothing to report. Oh accept sounds like we were the perfect squeaky wheel! this morning, Matt one of the owners came to talk with us that we will be getting going soon! tomorrow we will put the mast back on! Mike, electrical guy came by with his schematics of the wiring! Then ha ha Sean came by to say the same thing as everyone else plus to tell me that Ben and I are treading on a fine line of doing the work ourselves. How can they certify their work if we run the wires? I assured him we can run the wires but we won't connect anything. I also told him the longer we wait the more we will do. with all of that we still did not get the cables/wires from the boatyard so we can start. Sean said he did not have all the wires and connectors. yeah yeah yeah. I laid around most of the day - just resting the ole back. on the other hand, Ben was a busy beaver enough for both of us. I'm sure he will tell you. Lila laid around with me most all the day long. Normally it is so hot during the daytime that she is hiding in the woods probably on cool dirt. Not today! today she was hanging with me. it was only 83 degrees today. Do you see the big smile on my face? it is on there! welp time to end this... all sleep well. Blessings to you all! I miss you! Oh our phones are the worst! At first we had Edge (slow processing) then one day our phones died and then up popped 3G! yippy but since then now we have 3G, then it goes to edge then it drops the call. it has been so frustrating! still call but we might get hung up on a few times. still worth the call. toodles!