July 3rd

July 3rd. A little recap of the past week or so. We’ve done a lot of work on the boat during the last week. I disassembled and cleaned a dozen sea cocks and replaced one faulty seacock. We stripped, sanded and put 3 coats of Cetol on our rub rail and toe rail. We also added a swim platform to Veranda’s transom and polished all the stainless.

Then we compounded and waxed the hull. We repaired the scratch below the waterline then painted the bottom, removed, serviced and reassembled the Max Prop. Put on new zincs, repacked both stuffing boxes and installed a new cutlass bearing. We’ve been busy while the boats been on the hard.

Earlier in the week I had a problem with a tooth. So for a couple of days I couldn’t really eat then I had to have the tooth removed. The dentist had to cut the tooth in half after working hard to try to remove it whole. Let’s just say that it was no party.

The day after the surgery it was 90 degrees, I’m still unable to eat anything substantial and I’m on Percocets. So of course delirium was the next reasonable step. I don’t even remember what I was doing when I decided that the 10 foot ladder wasn’t the place to be so I went and laid down for a couple of hours in the shade of the cockpit. The fog of my delirium soon lifted but not before I had a very vivid dream about 37 children all named Landon running around the boat. I must be getting old because small children scare me almost as much as Pelligators. First Rumboy then Delirium Lad, good grief who’s next………

Flash was good enough to come down to the boat on Monday afternoon (his day off) and put the boat into the water. I wanted to get it in on Monday because I had so many potential leaks to check after servicing so much of the underwater gear. It all went well with no leakers so we had the evening to put the interior of the boat back together.

Tuesday morning we pumped out the holding tank and filled the water tank then headed off for Toms River. There’s a very impressive fireworks display there every year and we wanted to get there on the third to insure a great viewing spot.

Our friends, Nick & Edie on Cirrus were waiting for us as we came out the Forked River. The two of us had a very pleasant 14 mile sail even though we had a five minute encounter with the bottom as we approached the Toms River. There’s only about a dozen boats scattered about but tomorrow will bring at least another thousand. The wind is supposed to build to 15 to 20 knots tomorrow evening so it should be interesting. A stiff breeze, alcohol, explosives and tiny anchors……….could it get any better?