I have been poked a few times by some internet friends to discover the reason form my absence from the blog and I was startled to see just how long I have been away. My apologies. I have only two excuses: first, there have been a lot of events going on in our lives over the last month – I have parted ways with my job at the Town of Shelburne (I guess I am just not cut out for dealing with small town politics), Nelleke has been put up on the hard and winterised, I have been actively engaged in a wine coop and have only just put 48 bottles of Chardonnay and 130 bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon into our cellar and my dear old Mom has taken a turn for the worse which has necessitated her going into a full care home and for us to be planning an urgent trip to Ottawa to see her; and second, my old reliable Inspiron laptop has finally gone to its reward and I have had to save up my recently unemployed pennies to be able to afford to buy a new Acer Aspire V5 with which I am writing this now. Not really excuses and I promise to be more reliable in future.
As I mentioned Nelleke is again up on the hard for the winter which we all hope will be at least as mild as last year if not milder. Barb and I are both anxiously looking forward to getting back aboard next year and traveling back down what I call Expectant Path towards Florida and the Caribbean next fall. We have begun the preparatory work already with fixing some of the problems on the boat. The major ones had been the anchor windlass, the autohelm and some of the interior carpentry. There are still a number of projects to be finished, many of which I think I can get done over the winter for completion in the spring either prior to or just after launch.
Barb, on the other hand, has entered into a business partnership with our next door neighbour and is doing a number of glass fusion projects which she sells at Farm Markets or, over the next couple of months, Christmas Markets. I, in turn, have started woodworking again, both for some of the interior projects for the both but also on some lathe projects for Barb to sell at these markets. I am getting adequate with turning wooden bowls and, in particular, like turning larch because of the excellent and varied grain patterns you end up with. Much of the result is due to the materials used in finishing. I have hit upon an oil that can have food prepared on it followed by a beeswax polish to give it a bit of a shine. We are hoping that the sales will offset our splurge for Christmas this year and perhaps to pay for some of the preparatory work on the boat.
Our son has moved back to Ontario so we will try to drop in on him when we go up to visit my Mom. We will be departing on the 26th of this month
We are still looking at heading south no later than Labour Day next year and spending some time poking about in the Chesapeake before heading for points warmer in October and November.
Well, that should suffice for starting up again and trying to get my fingers busy again on the keyboard. I can’t promise to get the time for a posting every day but I will try to get something done every few days.