Hi Everyone. Just a reminder we update our WWW.OMARSEA.COM site on a more regular basis. Please visit us there when ever you need to suppress your desires to work on your boat :)

2010: With so many things to fix it's hard to know where to begin. The Omarsea is 16 this year. Thats like being 75 to you and me. She bears her age well but that does still mean there are items that must be examined before she goes back into the water.
Among the big items on my list are the drving forces. The engine with an excess of 9000 hours is slated for rebuild and this will happen later this year as I get free time from the house projects. The Shaft prop and cutlass bearing will be examined closely and replaced as needed.
The rudder shows signs of the excessive forces applied during our time in the Caribbean. Stress cracks and corrosion will be tested for signs of weakness and new parts fabricated.
One of the big items on my plate will be re-tabbing the wooden interior bulkheads to the hull again. Over the spring of 2008 we experienced excessive seas on the bow and the aging tabs failed in a couple of places.
In a previous photo I placed on the blog is shown the keel encased in epoxy. This same keel in Bonaire grew sponges some 2' long and attracted so many fish the Omarsea became a favorite night dive destination. We ofetn were awaken by divers right under the hull taking photos of the fish, sponges and keel. Their noisy bubbles bursting on the hull.
We fought back valiently though. The kids would leap from their bunks fighting to be the first to the stereo. We have large speakers in the hull that when the theme music from the movie "Jaws" is played creates havoc among the diving demons. Take that !

My good friend Mike Raddatz and I went down to the boat a couple weeks ago and pulled the Perkins diesel out to rebuild it. Arriving at the crack of dawn the friday of Memorial day weekend, we had but 6 hours to get the engine fully removed from the beds and into the cockpit. This was because Marina staff were leaving early for the long weekend and we needed their help with the crane to remove the motor. Working like fiends we rigged successive feats of engineering magic until the nearly 1,300 lbs of engine and transmission were free of the engine compartment. Mark the manager of the boatyard came over with the crain and in a matter of a few minutes had the engine sitting nicely on our trailer ready for transport home to the shop.
I will get Mike to send me photos of the engine being hoisted to update this blog.
P.S. the two days following our little adventure both Mike and I were so unbelievibly sore we could hardly move. AAAArrrrrrrgggggggg! Good thing I don't plan on putting the motor back until next spring :>)

Ahoy everyone. We are still in the Chesapeake bay area and have the Omarsea dry stored. Preparations have begun to refit her for the future. The kids and I are making weekly pilgrimiges to Tilghman Isle, begining the long process of putting her back into Blue water condition. Repairs include the rudder , rebuilding the engine, re-tabbing loose bulkheads, wiring, and my most ambitious boat project to date - the fabrication of a stainless steel arch that will hold our solar panels and the dinghy at the stern. I say ambitious because I have not done any serious welding in many years. But with the equipment we now have on the market and a more mature approach to these projects I am anticipating great results. If anyone has any advice on tricks of the trade I would love to hear them.

Important Omarsea update.

Hi everyone we have shifted gears and are now living ashore in Maryland.

In light of this we are moving our website to http://omarsea.blogspot.com and will continue to update you on the adventures of the Trefethen's as we explore the East coast of the United States from land.

As you know we are not a family to just sit still.
Jean is planning on working for the federal government again and I will continue to homeschool the kids. In addition we are buying a home in MD and I will plan on renovating the house completely over the next 18 months.

We are keeping the Omarsea and plan to sail her around the bay in the summers. There is also talk of a trip to Burmuda in a couple years. If you have ever wanted Blue water sailing experience this might be you chance.

There are many exciting changes coming up this fall and we will keep you posted.

Please note the Sailblog site will no longer be effective after October so visit our new site http://omarsea.blogspot.com right away and save it to your favorites so you don't miss any of the action :)

Gods Blessing be with you!

The Trefethen's

I am building my own games. I have a 2d game engine I use called "gamemaker". Right now I am building a game called pyramid. It is where you run arround battleing Boses collecting points by picking up coins and trying
to get as many points as posible before some bad guy kills you.
I started with Torque game engine and found that it was so advanced it was too hard as a beginner. I could create great landscapes but making my own characters required I buy more software and loads of time. I really like making my own games and letting others try them out.

Penguin Gamer phot courtesey CoolGamesource.com

Have you ever gotten stung by a bee before? If you have you will understand how it feels. I was visiting my cousin Michelle at her grandmothers house. We were clearing out the back yard to help make room for our TeePee's. Her grandmother decided that pulling the weeds was too slow and that the weed wacker would do a better job.
When she went to cut a large fern suddenly she was attacked by yellow jacket bees. Michelle and I ran into the house to get water to wash the bees off her grandmother. Stung many times she fled into the house taking us with her. I got stung two times one on my hand and one on my leg. Michelle didn't get stung thankfully. We rushed to the emergency room in order to make sure Michelle's grandmother was all right. The Doctor told her everything was going to be fine. It was quite an exciting day!

One of our favorite haunts is OMSI the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.
Stevie: The "Case of good health". It displays what you should do with your body and how to take good care of it. How to take care of our hearing and a bunch of other stuff.
The CSI exhibit is really not for young kids. Mabey ok for 16 and up. It is really gory! There is stuff on real murder and its not that very good for young kids to see.
We did science! Chemistry and the study of bases and acids. I tried mixing baking powder with cabage. It turned base in ph. When you shake the test tube it becomes the lowest color when a base. That's how I could tell.
We ran the container ship crain model. Then went for lunch in the cafe and I had a peanut butter and honey sandwich. After we built boats and tested them in the water. We built both sail and power boats. They still had the earth quake house and we experienced a 6.5 richter quake. What I liked best was the room with millions of balls that we got to use electricity and air power to knock them around.
Photo courtesy of www.omsi.edu website

On our way up the Potomac from St Mary's we stopped at the Washington Plantation, Mt Vernon named by Georges older Brother after a British Admiral. The channel and dock are narrow and shallow. If you have over 5 feet of draft you are better off anchoring just downriver about a 1/4 mile from the plantation. We set a hook just inside the close3st green marker and took the dinghy into the dock. Make sure you inquire about where to place your dinghy as there are numerous ferries that come and go here. The tickets can be purchased at the giftshop down by the water . We toured the estate that Queen Elizabeth once refered to as " A quaint little cottage" from the fields to the manor house and all the shops for smithing, carpentry, gardening ect in between.
Washington was inovative in a couple of notible areas. First he was the first to grow wheat as a cash crop instead of tobacco and he began the process of rearing mules for farm labor instead of using horses. We learned that tobacco depleates the soil entirely after 2 years and it takes 25 years to put the nutrients back into the soil. Though the acting staff were using a horse to plow that day there were several mules on the property which we learned had come from stock that were given the Washingtons from the King of Spain. Mules as it turns out are harder working, need less water and are smarter than the horse in that a horse will work itself to death where a mule will simply stop working. The saying "stubborn as a mule" comes from the mules propencity for self preservation.
George and Martha are still intered here on the property just down the bank from the main house.
If you visit be sure and plan the whole day as there is so much to see.

While taking the tour of old St Mary's we came apona young woman who works in the printing house. Here she sets type and prints the flyers used around the village. She gave us a wonderfull introduction to the magic of the printing process. Ever wondered where the terms Upper and Lower Case came from. Well type setters had a large tray in front of them with numerous pockets for each piece of type. The smaller letters were more numerous and used more often so therefore these were placed in the lower trays "Lower Case" and the Capitols used less seldom were placed up out of the way in the Upper Case.
All three of the kids stepped up and made themselves handy doing all the various facets of running the press. We have a copy of a notice stating that after more than 300 years the Catholic cathedral after being newly rebuilt will be dedicated on September 30th 2009.