Wow!
18 April 2013
• Shelburne NS
by Mike
Will our pals south of the border never catch a break?!
Every time I turn on the TV there is another shooting, or some whack job detonates a bomb, or there is an industrial accident...... I guess in a highly industrial society that is generally very wealthy with a high GNP that could be expected, but it just seems that the average Joe, who always seems to bear the brunt of this sort of thing, is due a break. Anyway, our thoughts are with the folks in Boston, Mass and West, Texas as everyone tries to piece out some reason from the chaos. It is going to be very interesting to see how the chips fall after the investigations are all concluded. There is an old saying that my dear old Nanny used to always use, “Only them that has them can lose them.” I can extrapolate from this that most of the people that have it out for the US are mostly those who are envious and only want to knock down what they don’t have.
Back here now, work is progressing on Nelleke. I have the cockpit floorboards all nicely varnished and ready for replacement; Barb has scraped down the starboard waterline freeing it of the barrier tape that I had put on it a year ago and forgotten to take off. Although it is advertised to be easy remove the fact is that if you are stupid enough to leave it on for as long as I did there is much more of an adventure to scrape it off. Barb has been gracious enough to agree to tackle that job. Hurrah! Thanks, Babe.
I have bought the anti fouling and perhaps this Sunday the weather will allow me to clean off the underwater profile to get ready for the paint. Then we would be able to apply the antifouling as the weather allows. On the weekend of the 11-12th of May the docks will be back in the water at the club so we should be able to arrange for a launch after that and be back at the dock before the end of May. I am already planning our first cruise for the weekend of 31 May-2 June even if it’s only across the harbour to Islands Park. My fingers are crossed for decent weather.
I have some work to do on the mizzen step to strengthen it before we do any more offshore passages but we should be OK for local gunkholing. I also want to set up the middle cabin to double as our office when we aren’t full up with guests and there is the whole list of electronic hookups and rigging that I can do in the evenings while wrapping myself around a few wee tots of rum. Those are my favourite projects, the ones I can do rain or shine on board all the while contributing to the profits of the distillery industry. Before we retired I had set up what I called a deck lazarette on the foredeck which we were using to store sails etc. It didn’t stand up to the torture test in spite of the fact that it was heavily fiberglassed. Barb has suggested that now we have greatly diminished the amount of stuff that we originally had on board, we should look at stowing the sails below and removing that box to give us back some foredeck space on which we can lounge. After all we have some great folding canvas deck chairs that we just don’t have anywhere to set up. It would also give us some additional working space. I guess that was just another good idea that failed in the application. I seem to be just full of those, don’t I?
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