10/4/11
I was so tired last night that I think my eyes were closed at 9:30pm and out in 2 minutes.
Why was I so tired you ask? Physical labor is great for ones sleeping – don’t you think?
Yesterday we adventured in our skills. Taking things off is one thing but we all know that it is the putting them back that is important. How many times have you taken something apart only to find you can’t remember how to put them back… well unless you are Paul Nygren who has a photographic memory for things like that… which I don’t. BUT I do have a camera!
So Ben took off our stern pulpit (we are gradually doing wood stripping and sanding as we gain more confidence.) Well if you talk “wood” – then I am all there! Wood and I are happy together unlike machines and me. (more on that a little later)
Ben and I went through the boat yesterday and pointed out what wood we are going to strip to it bare-ness and leave it (or possibly only teak oil it). This varnish stuff is for the birds. Yes we knew that when be bought the boat. We still love our beautiful wood look. We will just have 2 looks – natural and varnished. Teak stands up in any weather as long as it does not sit in water… well then it could rot. Left to its own nature it will last for a super long time – How does God do it?
We pulled out the heat gun and bubbled the varnish then stripped it with a knife. Easy and fun for the first hour… actually we had fun all day. It was Ben’s first time with the heat gun so he was so happy.
We bought a Fein tool. An amazing sander and tool to strip the black strips they have in teak decking. I can’t wait until we use that a few time. The sander is none like I have used!!! Why don’t they make them all that way? Germans – they know their tools.
At 1:00pm we had this cute lady come (the Winch lady, Gina) to show us how to maintenance our winches. BUT none of us could get off the break band. Well to our credit we did not have the right tool. She could not find her tool. She went to town and there was no tool to be found. Her brother, Rocky, manager of the boatyard said he was going to make a tool today for us. Sweet. If not we drive to Jacksonville about 40 minutes or so away. (seems not far when you have to drive that just to go to church like we do in mpls.)
So for most of the afternoon we went back and forth from trying to get off the break-band to stripping and sanding. By 3:30pm I had enough of manual labor for my first day back after being a desk jockey for so many months this summer.
Sooooo I looked on the master list and thought… “what can I learn about now?”… Bilge pumps are important and seem like they should be easy. So google here I come.
I read about why you need them… how many one should have aboard… what size… but I was looking for repair. I searched and searched… So I stopped my search until after I open up some lockers and look below to see what we have then I’ll better get a grip. I went back to something easy and needed… started balancing my business checkbook which is no small affair! Each month the bank has mistakes (I never thought they made mistakes but for some reason Quickbooks software and Usbank don’t talk to each other in how they process deposits. When I accept visa the bank puts them in funny batches so I’m not sure which deposit from which person is in that amount.) Blah blah blah…
I made egg cheese sandwiches – a favorite of mine. We went to a coffee house for wifi to see if the signal is strong enough for a web meeting with the staff for today. It was. I’m trying to get skype to work… well gmail webcam works. So if you want to chat with me on skype or gmail or webcam just let me know.
Oh yesterday Ben was working on pulling off our Stanchions which many are bent. Those are the short poles that hold the safety lines around the boat so we don’t accidently fall off. He had a funny joke but too embarrassed to write it so I will, “My stanchions are kept straight while watching my wife strip.” Or something like that…Ha ha I was stripping wood and he was straightening stanchions. Ha ha ha
Ben just woke up and he said he blogged last night so I'm sure he has the pictures. He is the night owl and I'm the morning dove.
I'm ready to start my day!
smile
Pam
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