August 31, 2009.

Things are good here. I ended up having to go in to work on Saturday morning to replace the drive saver on a Gulfstar 50. If I were to ever buy a sailboat based solely on the engine room this might be the boat. Glorious room to get at every part of the engine, room for a generator and access to all the peripheral bullshit that goes along with running a sailboat. Really nice.

But, what I’m really getting to is that the ceremonial flipping of the anchor chain didn’t take place as scheduled. So after food shopping on Sunday morning I started on the chain.

I pulled the chain out of the locker and strung it out on the dock. It was not as easy as it sounds. I believe the chain weighs about 1.3 pounds per foot and has a mind of it own as where it actually wants to go. I was able to impose my will upon it and soon had the chain laid out and marked every 30 feet to make it easier to figure out how much chain we’re deploying. The galvanizing on the last hundred feet of the chain is as good as new so now that chain will be the first part into the water. So, it looks like we’re good for the next 1000 nights.

I also painted the anchor chain locker. I put a second coat on it this evening after work and tomorrow I’ll clean up the anchor windlasses wiring. I should be able to pull the chain back into place afterwards.

We’ve also been waiting for some new light fixtures to arrive by mail. They’re made by a company called Alpenglow and are supposedly the cats ass when it comes to low voltage high intensity lighting. The box came today so I was anxious to get started on the install after putting the second coat of paint on the anchor locker.

Unfortunately Christy had spent several hours today empting the vee berth. Piles of stuff was spread about in the salon of the boat. Crap. We had to put it all away before there would be any new fixturing happening.

It took a few hours as we have to catalog everything as we put it away so we can find it when we need it. I’m completely in favor of selling our bicycles while Christy feels compelled to keep them. In the spirit of compromise our friends Jeff & Tessa have agreed to let us leave our bikes in their spare room. So we’ll get to keep the bikes but not have to have them on board. Although what good is it to have bikes at someone else’s house, I dunno but we’re keeping the bikes. Because we evidently have to keep bikes that we won’t be able to ride. But we’re keeping them…… ( I even offered to let her buy another pair of shoes, which would bring her up to around 50 pairs but she wants the damn bikes)