The Micro Wave is in Finally!!!!!!!

First there is sad news to report from The Marina at Green Cove Springs. Yes the Rabbit has died. The VW rabbit that is. You remember from past posts that one of our neighbors was having a difficult time with the brakes on his VW rabbit convertible. Well it died last week and is now pushing up daiseys at the wrecking yard.

It is Hot down here. We knew that and are determined to tough it out. The temps have been in the mud 90's and the humidity is reasonable. 70% in the morning but as the temps rise the humidity has fallen to the 50% level. The first night on the boat was pretty hot. Thats all it took, and our other Whitby owner friend here in the marina, Dennis asking how we can put up with out AC. Ok so after Survivor we made a speed trip to Walmart and bought a a cheap AC unit that fits in the hatch to the aft cabin. Haven't found a way to get the cold into the main salon yet but that will come. Last night was actually cold. We slept great. Boy we are tough, 2 days and we crumble.

The microwave is finally in. It was a pretty interesting installation. Murphy was definately in the house. I thought the the dremel tool would be the savior. I had to cut the back of the shelf off of the hull. Amazing craftmanship in this boat. They didn't just mount the shelf on brackets on the fore and aft bulkheads. They also layed one layer of heavy glass cloth along the hull and overlapoped on to the shelf and then epoxied the shelf to the hull. This all said it meant have to cut the joint with the dremel tool, except that there a wood dowels tourned to hold glasses that got in the way. See the pic. The space was too small for anything bigger then the dremel. So half of the joint had to be cut with a hacksaw blade by hand. FUN.

Our stuff arrived yesterday, the Relo-Cube is a great way to move stuff. Probably to good since there is no way everything in there will fit in the boat. I think. And it was only half full. Unloading the cube from the truck was an interesting adventure. The guy that showed up had never delivered a relo cube before. So he had never driven the fork lift off of the semi trailer either. He was having trouble so I finally figured out what had to happen and basically gave him step by step instructions (from a safe distance of course) on how to get the fork lift down to the ground. And then the same in reverse. Now I know how they do that. You learn something new every day.

Now that the micro wave is installed and our stuff is here, Patti can get moved into her galley. Our next projects are to finish getting the old home port city and state off of the transom and the new home port put on. That will take some work. The old homeport was on for 8 years, so there is a substantial difference in the gel coat condition under the letters vs the rest of the transom. After that I will take the main off so we can take it to the sailmaker and have some restitching done. We will probably take all of the sails off if we end up pulling the masts.

The prop is still in Everett getting re furbished. It had some pretty serious pitting due to the previous Owners (P.O.) not keeping up with the zink maint. The gears in the prop will all be replaced and the blades will be re-sheathed. This is a maxi prop. The blades rotate so that they are fared when we are sailing, and then rotate to 20% pitch in forward and also in reverse.

Once the prop shows up then we will put the engine back together and do a preliminary shaft alignment. We are replacing the Cutless bearing and installing a dripless shaft packing and drive saver.

Well thats plenty for now

The Admirals Corner:

It is still Hell week! We are still buried in stuff, and we haven't even unloaded the relo cube. It gets unbearably hot during the day. It was 96 outside, and 86 inside the boat today. The AC does a good job of keeping the master stateroom cool, but I've done all the work that I can back there. Can't believe I was complaining about the rain back in Olympia!!!

Today was James' birthday party. He is now 7 years old!! He is doing well in school and plays T-ball. We got to see a few of his games while we were home. We also had our very own birthday party for him. We gave him his very own astronaut orange jumpsuit, that we got when we were at the Kennedy Space Center. It was a big hit!! We hope to have Matt, Jacinda and James visit with us while we are on the Chesapeake in August. That way they can also see where Austin & Cindy are, and see the sights around the DC area.

Matt and Jacinda just got back from their delayed honeymoon to Maui. They had a fabulous time, and even managed to have their picture taken with the parrots! While they were there, the foundation for their new house was being poured. It should be ready by the end of July.

Cindy is in the midst of finals, and is almost 2/3rds a lawyer! She works very hard and is doing excellent. She will be doing an internship this summer with the Southern Poverty Law Assoc. in Atlanta. Meanwhile, Austin is still working hard at the Marriott. Thank goodness! His discount has saved us a bundle of money!! We love you Austin! We hope to see him quite a bit this summer.

Love & Hugs