Catching Up the Blog

Day off in the Adirondacks.

  Catching up my blog is like trying to catch the bus you missed by one stop. You're behind and can never run fast enough to beat it even though you can see it at the next stop. So little has happened boat-wise this past year and yet it seems impossible to get it all into words. Nevertheless, I will attempt it.
  Last summer after trailering Cassandra home from Greencove Springs, FL she sat in the driveway on her trailer. I had intended to launch her but I was called in to work for a month, almost non-stop at Merry-Go-Round Playhouse, MGR, and then spent ten weeks away in the Adirondacks working at Long Lake Camp of the Arts. I then returned to work once more at MGR. By the time I had any free time most of the summer was gone. I was able to get on the water as crew for a week or two bringing my friend's new-to-him Valiant 40 home. Big boat. Nice boat. I find it intimidating, and I am a little in love with it. :)
  My two dinghies, Adra the puddleduck racer and Hope the pram, spent the summer laying atop one another beside the shed and suffered for it. The gunnels on both are rotten now and will need to be replaced. Adra will simply have her sheerline lowered by 3 inches. This should reduce her weight slightly making her easier to carry and a little faster on the water. Hope, I hope, will just need the old gunnel material removed and new will be epoxied in place, taking care to really encapsulate the pieces and prevent future rot. Pictures of both repairs may follow.

Hope in progress

Adra on Lake Ontario

 That brings me to current day. I have a month long contract with MGR again this summer working on Saturday Night Fever. To fill in the time and the coffers until that job starts I have been assisting a friend with his canvas business. Today was my first day back on the lake in what seems like years courtesy of  a client's boat. Sailboats are once again beginning to fill the docks at the marina; it is refreshing to be around sailors and friends again. Occasionally I am struck by the number of things I know from the obsessive reading I am wont to do. Sometimes it seems I know more than people who have been sailing twice as long as I have. Of course, most of what I know is simply book knowledge and theory, and we all know how much that does in the real world.
  Keep sailing.