Memorial Day Weekend 2013

It was a 4-day weekend for us and we had decided to make it a full on work weekend.  But, by the time we got everything packed up, to the boat, unloaded and put away it was already mid-afternoon.  With Jason’s birthday being later this week, we decided to start the celebration early and headed to happy hour.  Needless to say, there was no work done this day.

We got up early on Saturday and Jason headed over to his Dad’s boat to help install stereo speakers before starting on our own projects.  I set out for a walk with Maya and when I returned, resumed my teak scraping project from several weeks ago. 
Five hours of scraping and all I managed to get done was the top of the toe rail.  Jason seemed to think I was working harder than I needed to and decided to show me how it was done.  After about 10 minutes he stated that maybe this was a project we were better off hiring out so our time could be spent more effectively.  I will get bids and then we’ll see.


While I was outside scraping Jason finished wiring the new chart plotter, mounted the new autopilot display, removed the defunct rudder sensor, ran some tests to identify our electrical leak, rewired the inside front stereo speakers, fixed the regulator on the barbecue  and rigged the hammock. Obviously his time was better spent.

Sunday we slept in.  No work this morning as we prepped for company.  We had friends to the boat for sailing and barbecuing.  It was another beautiful day on the water with 12-15 knot winds.  And with a crew of our most experienced cruising/racing friends, we decided it was the perfect opportunity to try out our cruising chute. We need to fine tune the rigging, but she flies beautifully.

We returned to the dock and barbecued  on our very recently repaired grill, and enjoyed the evening with good food, good friends and dark and stormy’s.

The last day of our long weekend brought a little work and a little rest.  Jason got the cleaning bug and decided to remove and reorganize everything in the forward cabin.  Being the organized clean freak that I am this made me very happy to see piles of stuff that was designated to the remove from boat pile.  This project turned out to be more beneficial than either of us realized it would be when Jason discovered salty water in the forward bilge.  Now we have a new project on the list – find source of water, fix wood rot and epoxy bilge. And after all that digging around, we were ready for a cold beer and a dinghy float.

We never made it to our big project for the weekend – rewiring the battery switch panel.  But, there’s always next weekend….

A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours. John B. Priestly