Yesterday, Derek completed the stairs over the starboard engine. We have to put the finish on them and of course we still have to do the cork flooring for the cabin soles (you can see the "blue terror," the old indoor/outdoor carpet that is disintegrating and shedding blue fibers -- there was that, a beige pile carpeting in the salon area, and long skinny rubber-backed "runner" rugs over the ply flooring in the galley and navstation... oh, plus a small area of stick-on vinyl floor tiles in the forward section of the starboard hull. The years have not been kind to the polypropylene carpet and the vinyl tiles; nor to the rubberized backing of the runners, and slightly better for the pile carpet, but we're replacing all of it as soon as it's OK for me to bend way over again).

Derek also completed the "box" to contain the compressor for the refrigerator. We are probably going to put bookshelves above that box -- if you know us, you know why we need bookshelves!
[The Box for the compressor]

I cleaned additional portions of the headliner with the astonishingly effective Folex* carpet stain remover (see Folex pics below), and today, Derek mounted the gas hose for the propane to the galley so as to keep it out of the faces of anyone visiting and using the guest cabin.

I have been taking classes to get my captain's license -- the very first one, known as the "six-pack" or OUPV (Operator of Uninspected Passenger Vehicles). This will enable me to drive a boat with up to six passengers on, say, a dive trip. Derek is going to get his, also, but he is on a different schedule: likely he will get his DM (Dive Master rating) in SCUBA before the OUPV.

Grant has also been doing very useful things to help with our new life aboard. He has washed the decks twice since we moved aboard:

Of course, he gets to go to the beach a lot, too, partly because he's doing so well with his schoolwork and boat helping, and partly because it's really hot and a trip to the beach is a nice late-afternoon treat:


More later. The marina is having a party now and we need to go before all the fun has leaked out...!

Later: The party was excellent, the 10th annual such event, John Naybor, our three marinas' owner, and his family provided a band and a huge vat of Jose Cuervo margaritas and many pounds of boiled shrimp... whew! I am so sorry we missed this party last year :-)

Grant also had a great time, meeting some of the boat kids at our marina and getting to know each other a little.

*ADDED 6/12: The Awesome Power of Folex...
This is the review I posted for Folex Instant Carpet Stain Remover on Amazon:
"So good it's scary..., June 7, 2011
...
This review is from: Folex Carpet Cleaner, 32 oz (Kitchen)
This stuff is AMAZING. I am cleaning the carpet-style headliner of a boat of water/rust stains from a former hatchway leak, and it works....like...magic. The bottle says it's harmless to everything: the environment, your hands, etc., but I figure I'm going to have to give some portion of my anatomy up to pay for this some day! "

Seriously, so here's the documentary proof. Keep your eye on the little stain in the center (then later it's in upper left) with the sort-of-cross shape, and the flower edge on the curtain, to keep oriented in the following sequence. We start with random dark brown splotches of something or another staining the headliner:

Before Folex: See the slightly cross-shaped stain at upper center? Orient on that, I cleaned that one last...
---

Poof! The lower left stain disappeared... too fast? OK, here's the step-by-step on the next one:

You squirt the stuff on a small area...
---

Agitate with your fingers or in my case (cracking fingers) the blunt end of a screwdriver... it gets a little foamy...
---

Blot immediately with a clean white cloth or paper towel... ewww, it comes away really brown...
---

And that's it, in almost every case I have tried it's so hard to find the original spot's location that one can't really go back and clean a second time... wow. How could this stuff possibly NOT carry some cosmic karma-balance, like developing gills or sprouting an extra finger?! I'll let you know if any of that happens, but until then, this stuff is amazing. And not expensive, if bought locally (I didn't buy it on Amazon, we picked it up at the exchange -- as you saw, it's a very unassuming bottle, not a lot of advertising. Something that works this well doesn't need advertising).

In case you wondered, yeah, I took out the "registration stain" as well:

It's not perfect, but it's so very much better than it was... and there are some far worse areas that are coming clean without quite so much documentation (taking pics while cleaning slows me down). Score one more for better living through chemistry.