July 11, 2010.

We’ve been fiberglassing a bit more. It’s a long slow process because we can only do sections at a time. Then it has to dry overnight before we can do a bit more. Couple that with the fact that I’ve been working some OT, and progress is a bit slow. The windows are ready so I’ll pick them up in the morning and the “h” channel arrived yesterday. So once the glasswork is done we should be all set to finish the dodger. Once that’s completed I’ll start the hard bimini. It’s a little simpler so it should go faster. I’m hopping to install the whole shebang by the middle of August.

We’re also juggling a bit of a social calendar, because I’m such a social butterfly. Actually, its more like people want to see Christy and I’m allowed to tag along. Inamorata is back in the Chesapeake so we got to spend an afternoon and share a meal with Jeff & Tessa. Then Freedom passed through Annapolis on their way to New England so we supped with them as well. We haven’t seen Jim & Deb in about 2 years so it was good to catch up with them.

Last but not least was the arrival of the Tall Oaks Yacht Club cruisers to the Chesapeake. When we still lived in Jersey we were members of the TOYC. Every year they take a 2 week group cruise. Usually its north to Long Island Sound and out to Block Island. This year it was south to the Chesapeake. It was great to see the group from Forked River and we were lucky to be able to spend 2 evenings in their company.

On the Veranda Christy is still turning out fabulous culinary experiences.
But I think she might have finally gone around the bend a bit. Yesterday we received a huge box packed with dehydrated foodstuffs. She swears these things will come back to life once they’re rehydrated. They’re supposed to retain a lot more of the vitamins and taste and such that the canning process robs from other vegetables. We’ll see. There’s even dehydrated diced tomatoes. I dunno but I can’t really see these little hard lumps of crap coming back to life resembling anything like a diced tomato. Like I said, we’ll see. If they do resurrect themselves into something resembling food they will save us a ton of space and weight when it comes time to provision for the islands this fall.

Christy is in her element in the galley and I think the pressure is getting to her. Her recipe binder recently morphed from one binder into another. Man, she’s got a shit load of recipes.