The play days are over as we near our departure date from Rick and Bret’s house. We will be leaving on Tuesday for St. Thomas as our friends, Portia and Steve, arrive there on Thursday. We want to have the boat just perfect for their arrival, so today and tomorrow are work days.

While Mary Margaret stayed with Rick and Bret and spent her time baking two berry pies and doing laundry, I drove down to the marina where Leu Cat is patiently waiting for our return. Once there, I spent a few hours doing a number of small projects that were on my “To Do” list. These included changing out the portside headsail sheet rope clutch, running all four heat pumps to make sure they worked and there were no leaks, replacing the downhaul with a new line that I bought at the local Home Depot and applying some gel coat to a few places where it had chipped off. None of these were big deals, however, each one took a fair amount of time. Four hours later I was done and ready to return to Rick and Bret’s house.

Once there, I dove into preparing the spare ribs we had bought the other day. We were going to have ribs and potato salad, along with one of Mary Margaret’s berry pies and vanilla ice cream for dinner tonight. I first boiled my ribs for about 45 minutes in vinegar water to break down the fat and to give the meat a little lip-smackin’ tang. Once that was done, I threw them on the grill that Rick had fired up for me. I grilled the ribs for 10 minutes on a side to turn the outside of the meat to a crispy golden brown and then spent the next 30 minutes painting each side with sauce over and over again. By the time it was over, the ribs had built up a nice, thick glaze of bubbling sauce without burning. Yum!

With an ice cold beer in hand, we all sat done to a three napkin meal. It takes that many napkins each to ply through the ribs and wipe the sauce from one’s face and hands. The meal was made complete with Mary Margaret presenting her berry pie topped with two scoops of vanilla ice cream. Rick splurged even more by spooning out some chocolate sauce onto his ice cream. The man knows what is truly good!

Tomorrow, Mary Margaret goes to Leu Cat to clean the guest suite and salon so that it is ready for Portia and Steve. I will come along to sand down two of the areas that I gel coated today.