July 2, 2010.

Hey look, its July. The ridiculous heat has finally broken here. We had a decent sized cold front push through bringing gobs of relief. The front ran all the way from Oklahoma up through Maine but if you look closely the only remaining bit of warm front was right over us in the Chesapeake. But it did finally get pushed south and it’s been pleasant here.

The steel trawler that’s been taking up so much of my time is finally done. If you go back a few entries you can see a picture of it when it was all white. I think the addition of the blue and red paint, are a huge improvement. The most interesting thing about this boat is that when all the work was completed the owner realized that he couldn’t pay for it. The guy had a list of over 30 things he wanted done, he got an estimate, he dropped a big deposit, the work is done and now he’s standing there “palms up” saying it was more than he expected. WTF? To say “Bob” is a little perturbed is an understatement. The guys wife is being a huge bitch about it. I have a feeling that the captain didn’t discuss finances with the admiral before he went on a little nautical spending spree and now he’s trying to backpedal his way outta the doghouse.

Christy and I have been spending our extra time working on the hard dodger. We glassed in some extra bits of wood to add some rigidity to the structure because so much of it gets cut away when we add the windows. We also made templates of all the windows we’ll be needing.

Speaking of which, the windows. The glass is cheap enough with the largest piece we’ll need running around 50 bucks. Mounting it in the dodger has presented us with a bunch of different options. I found one place; that if we send them the templates; they will manufacture our window complete with a fabulous one piece frame, ready to be plopped into place. Unfortunately, this pre-framed piece of loveliness would cost us close to $400 for our one largest window. Considering that we’ll need 10 windows….lets just say that he priced himself out of our ballpark. After some internet searching I was able to find some extruded aluminum channel and with a bit of work I think I can whip out 10 lovely windows for less than $75 a piece. So like Lewis & Clark, I think we’ll head in that direction…..