Friday again. Tempus fugit! and a trip to the dentist
05 June 2009
• RNSYS, Halifax, NS
by Mike and Barb
Tempus certainly does fugit. Here it is Friday again and although there has been progress it has been nothing like what I had hoped that I would be able to achieve. I guess that I'll just have to chip away at the work little by little and be satisfied with that, starting on the priority jobs and working through the list. As with our departure last year, the ones at the bottom of the list might just have to wait.
I am doing more of the fitting work at the Binnacle. The owners have asked me to take that on and Matt, the fitter, is giving me more work under his initial supervision. The laid three strand work is stuff that I have done a lot of so he is just leaving that to me, and yesterday he showed me how to use the swaging tool, so maybe I'll be getting more of that work with less and less supervision. The double braid splicing they do slightly differently than I am used to so I will need to practice a bit. I think for the three strand I am going to try to convince the store to let me back braid the bitter end of the line rather than simply whip it unless the customer wants it left open so he can do something different with it.
The walk to and from work is proving to be great exercise. I used to walk about 4 miles home to my parents house from Defence Headquarters when I was posted to Ottawa and was staying with them, and then when I came back to Halifax the mile and a half to and from work in the dockyards at MARLANT HQ, but for the last 9 months we have been living on the boat with little cardio vascular exercise so this is really good for me. The only issue is time, so we are going to break out the collapsing bike and I will be riding that.
I took the photo accompanying today's post so that I would have it before we start our second project and be able to show before and after shots unlike the tool crib project for which I will only be able to show during and after shots. If you take a moment and look at the photo you will see that our companionway has six steps and although the shot doesn't show it very well there is a 15 degree inclination. Behind it is empty space that is accessible through a small cupboard door to the side where I have been storing fishing equipment. The trouble is that there is a lot of vertical wasted space that we'd like to make use of. The solution as I see it is to cut into the rises in the stairway and turn them into either cupboards or drawers that are accessible from the front where the photo was taken from. Then we will be able to move a lot of the cleaning and adhesive materials, that we are presently storing in cupboards to the starboard of the companionway, and store them in the stairway area. This will free up the cupboard space for me to put the freezer on drawer rollers, plus we will be able once again to get into another cupboard which is presently blocked by the freezer. That will be particularly handy, since that is where we want to store some more tools and some of the wet gear such as our boots.
Tonight we will be celebrating the end of another week by dining at the Squadron with some of our friends and frequent Nelleke crew, Pat and Lisa. If it weren't for Lisa's new job we would be dragging them with us to Bermuda this fall. As it is we will try to get them to come with us when we take a holiday break this year. As of now our plan is to sail down to the La Have Islands on the South Shore on a Friday night and explore them for a week and relax. They might like to crew with us on the bridge weekends. Alternatively they might like to sail down in their own boat and leave it there and then come back on the following weekend to bring it back. The opportunities are numerous if not endless.
FROM BARB:
I am just back from getting patched up by my dentist - only a cleaning and one filling but it was an OUCH to the pocketbook. While there, Dr. Keddy asked me if we keep anything on board for dental emergencies - duh, no, was my "intelligent" response - he sold me a small jar of temporary filling material made by 3M ESPE called Cavit - it is a paste that can be applied to a broken tooth or one from which a filling has been lost that will hold the tooth long enough for one to get to a dentist. It was under $30 so it is a great addition to the emergency medicine cabinet.
This led me to think about the fact that we were very lucky over the trip to not have had any medical emergencies - there were the minor bumps, bruises, scrapes, and cuts that go with sailing; Mike had a mild sting from a Portugese Man of War; I bent the third finger of my left hand resulting in a thickened knuckle and the fact that I can no longer remove my wedding band; I foolishly burned my back while in the Keys - managed to put sunscreen everywhere else except my back - and that is about it - pretty lucky, eh? In fact we had the healthiest winter that we can remember with essentially living outside, eating well and getting lots of exercise, and no work-related stress. Not to be omitted is the fact that we were not around other people as much. I worked for 10 years in Halifax in what is known as a very unhealthy sealed building. I only heard this week that although we were assured that the air quality was constantly being tested it was only for carbon monoxide, not for purity! I managed to pick up a sore throat and 24 hour fever after being home for a week but it was all over very quickly with a big "So there, you can't get me!" to the bugs that are around.
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