Last Friday, I completed my OUPV (the Coast Guard certification also known as the "six-pack" Captain's license). So I told Derek he could call me Captain Heather... um, that lasted about 15 minutes :-) Derek intends to get his as well, so we will both need the "TWIC" -- Transportation Workers' Identity Card. It's a relatively new requirement (the last three years) of the TSA. Initially, the program was really backed up, but now you can preregister online and that helps a lot; John, who owns the marina, mentioned that he was in and out in 15 minutes recently. Anyway, the earliest we could get two appointments back-to-back was Thursday the 23rd (date of this entry). More about how that went, later (when we get back).

Saturday was cockpit cleaning day... omg, it's navigable!!! OK, as soon as the inside is finished (flooring in), we've got to do an open boat... until then, cockpit is open :-)

The next interesting occasion was Sunday: Father's Day. After a yummy brunch at the Fish House (and thanks, Ryan, for first telling us about their brunches back in the day!), Derek cleaned the outboard and installed new plugs and got a new fuel tank attached, and even a cute little harness to make the engine easier to lift, and the outboard started right up... so we rigged it to the end of the boom (it's heavy and the boom passes right above the outboard's normal stowing place on the starboard taffrail), using a climber's knot to secure it by its harness (figure eight with follow through) and lowered it onto the nice metal plate on the dinghy's transom. Smooth! Derek donned his life jacket and took a bailer and headed out to test the engine.


After a while, he came back, and told Grant that he could drive...

so they took off together under the big bridge, with floatation devices and the bailer. I was working on more curtains, so I stayed behind, but I did take lots of pictures (Ben on Monomoy took one, too, and he's 'way faster posting images: see their blog, ToH to Ben for the pic and to Mark for extra alertness!). Grant was sitting on his floatation device, and I have not heard the end of that! Next time, he'll keep it ON. Anyway, he did look very authoritative driving the dinghy:


Monday, Derek tried a chiropractor for his back: he did something unpleasant to it during some of his interior woodworking last week and it hadn't resolved itself. The chiropractor visit worked pretty well, so he made a followup for Wednesday. Wednesday the power also went out at the marina for a while, which was a little challenging as it was again around 96F; Derek was in the middle of a telecon for the Kepler science team and the internet access went down (with the power outage) and that was OK because we have planned remote access and use a "five spot" setup through our cell phones, but then the power STAYED out and the boat started heating up. Fortunately, by then it was time for lunch, so we all went to CJ's (power came back on just as we were leaving for CJ's... lol!) and then to the library to return the massive stack of books we'd gotten 10 days before.

We've decided to go with curtains as a privacy screen for the forward cabin, rather than the hard plastic swinging window we had planned. It's simpler. Got three more yards of the curtain material and have already cut the piece.

Oh, yeah, Derek used the mount from a kettle-style grill that had previously been aboard and built a small cockpit table out of red oak; it's lovely! He sanded all the corners and it fits on the mainsheet traveler, so it can be moved anywhere along the back of the cockpit and it is large enough to hold the Weber BabyQ grill we prefer. I've been applying coats of Natural Teak Cetol to the table on successive days to waterproof it (it also makes the wood look lovely by deepening the tone a bit). The last couple of nights it has rained, which provides a great demonstration of the waterproofing properties of Cetol! It also allowed Derek to locate the leak in one of the window frames on the starboard side above the galley -- two screw holes that had been left unfilled. Glad it wasn't anything more time-consuming.

This morning we are driving to Chickasaw, the location of the nearest TWIC service center (which, BTW can be tricky to find: it's inside the Finch Logistics building, a large white warehouse, and at that location the street numbers are a little out of sequence, according to John, whose Navigator kept saying "recalculating route" because it was trying to send him to a location that was not his destination). Armed with all of these warnings and a map, I hope our trip will be a little smoother! Will post the results.

Result: The dark little door above the parked vehicles is the entrance. I kid you not!