by Judy Handley | Aug 16, 2015 | Cape Cod, Sailing Logs Year 10 |
Day 310, Year 10: Sanding and Scraping . . . The Hard Way
Date: Sunday, August 16, 2015
Weather: Hot and Sunny
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, North Falmouth, MA
First off, congratulations to Heather and Jed’s neighbor and good friend, Melissa, for completing the Falmouth Road Race today! Melissa’s goal was to make the seven miles without having to be sent to the medical tent and she made it. When we were having dinner together last night, Melissa shared her goal and we said our ‘road race’ goal for today was going to be completing the sanding and scraping away of varnish from the cockpit cap rail. Unlike Melissa, we didn’t make our goal. It was a frustrating day, to say the least. Our orbital sander seems to be on its last leg and you sand and sand, removing very little varnish. I definitely think it needs to be sent to the medical tent. And the wrong choice of scraping tool complicated the job further.
Our entire cockpit enclosure has been taken down for the sanding project, so there is no protection from the sun. And the sun was fierce this morning. I had barely gotten started when I realized we weren’t going to be able to continue without some protection. So I stopped and put up the piece of material we use as a sunscreen to immediately shield Mark. Then I worked on the harder job of putting up a tarp. Putting up the tarp meant taking other things down that are attached to the boom and, of course, they were not easy to get down. But eventually, with Mark’s help, we got the tarp up. Then I was sanding, oh so slowly, and Mark was using a tool for scraping the varnish off the rounded edges, oh so slowly. I had never seen the scraper Mark was using, but I just figured he was trying something new. In the afternoon, his fingers were hurting too much for him to continue, so we traded jobs. I assumed the scraper he was using was sharp, but it wasn’t. It just took brute force to scrape off the varnish. Without the proper tools, the job was just too hard. After nine frustrating hours, we both decided to quit. Mark will continue in the morning. We have done this job before with much less trouble and it wasn’t until we quit for the day that Mark dug out the scraping tool we have used in the past. Both of us had forgotten about it. We tried it out and it was sooooooo much easier. The cap rail is a flat piece of teak about three inches in width that sits on top of the cockpit coaming. If you are sitting in the cockpit, the coaming is like the back of the seat. The cap rail is rounded and overhangs the coaming on the outside edge. So you have to scrape off the varnish underneath and on the rounded edges rather than use a sander. Taking off all the layers of varnish is never easy, but today wins the prize for the hardest job ever because of our lack of proper tools. It won’t help with this job, but we will buy a new sander. And Mark will use the proper scraper tomorrow and might be finished with the job by noon. I’m not sure I’ll get a coat of varnish on tomorrow, but by Tuesday I should have at least one coat on. Slowly, ever so slowly, we will get this one job done.
We were too tired to cook dinner, so we went out to eat. Dinner at Stir Crazy (Cambodian food) was definitely the highlight of the day. We had hoped to come home and have a few minutes to relax before going to bed, but that was not to happen. While we were gone, a water hose under the sink in one of the bathrooms came loose and all the water in the water tank drained into the bilge. The bilge pumps are turned off since we are on land and are not supposed to be dumping water on the ground, so thankfully the tanks were close to empty. Mark worked on fixing the leak and I drained the bilge. Then we had to reconnect the hoses we used for washing the boat last week in order to refill the water tanks. We have to use about 275 feet of hose in order to reach a water source, and Mark had to walk the hose all the way down to the dock to connect it. No rest for the weary tonight.
by Judy Handley | Aug 15, 2015 | Cape Cod, Sailing Logs Year 10 |
Day 309, Year 10: Yard Sale
Date: Saturday, August 15, 2015
Weather: Partly Sunny, Hot, and a Bit Humid
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, North Falmouth, MA
Up at 6:30 am to get ready for the yard sale. We were done by 1:30 pm and packing up the things that didn’t sale to get them to the Swap Shop at the dump and the local thrift shop. We certainly didn’t make a lot of money, but I’ll call the sale a huge success as it reduced the amount of ‘stuff’ in our storage unit and in Heather and Jed’s basement. We spent our profits on a huge sushi dinner with Heather and Jed’s neighbors, the Keefes—Melissa, Brian, Molly, and Joey. They were also celebrating a successful yard sale. Tomorrow Melissa will run in the Falmouth Road Race and Heather and gang will go to cheer her on. We are back on the boat tonight and will stay here tomorrow and sand, sand, sand. We hope to get the entire cockpit cap rail sanded and prepped for a first coat of varnish on Monday morning. Mark thinks we’ll be back in the water by Wednesday or Thursday, and it sure would be nice to have the initial coats of varnish on. So the beat goes on.
by Judy Handley | Aug 14, 2015 | Cape Cod, Sailing Logs Year 10 |
Day 308, Year 10: Gearing Up for a Yard Sale
Date: Friday, August 14, 2015
Weather: Hot and Sunny, Upper 80’s F
Location: At Home with Heather, Jed, and Boys, East Falmouth, MA
We took the day off from normal activities and just stayed at home with the Goldpebbles. Heather and her neighbor Melissa are having a yard sale tomorrow, so we spent some time bringing things from our storage unit to sell. And we helped the boys make some decisions on what toys they would like to sell. Sometimes staying at home all day with three little boys can spell disaster as the brothers start to bicker over this and that. But today it was like some magic spell had been cast over them. There was no fighting and fussing. They just relaxed and enjoyed the day at home. They went in shifts with Mark and me to storage to get some boxes and they played with some treasures they found in those boxes. A vintage Fisher Price cash register kept them busy for the longest time and a Jedi village with Star Wars figures was also of great interest to them. We’ll sell the cash register but the Jedi village and figures will be sent to Ziggy. These were Justin’s and Ziggy will enjoy playing with them. During Ollie’s nap, Sam and Jonah took all of their plastic outside toys out of the shed, hosed them down, and decided on which ones of those to sell. I got a real kick out of watching Sam ride around on the little sit n’ ride train his Grammy and Papa Goldstone gave him on his first birthday. Do little boys ever grow up? I think not! Their toys just get bigger.
We are spending the night at Heather and Jed’s so we will be here early in the morning to help set up for the sale. Once it is over, we will head back to Windbird and start the sanding project on the cockpit cap rail. This time, we’ll sand the whole thing and do it right. No more varnish patch jobs. The fiberglass work on Windbird’s rudder started today, so we will be anxious to see the result of that when we get home late tomorrow afternoon.
by Judy Handley | Aug 13, 2015 | Cape Cod, Sailing Logs Year 10 |
Day 307, Year 10: Happy 50th to Linda Stuart
Date: Thursday, August 13, 2015
Weather: Another Gorgeous Summer Day–Sunny, 80 degrees F
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, North Falmouth, MA
Hey, Linda. Happy 50th Birthday! Linda and Mike Stuart are our friends that are now in their second year of bike touring. This summer they drove across the country in a car with their son Garrett and got him settled in San Jose, California. He graduated from college in May and is now at work for a company called Accenture. Accenture is a multinational management consulting, technology services, and outsourcing company with its headquarters Dublin, Ireland, and offices in San Jose. Mike and Linda are now off and running on the next leg of their adventure. They are still not far from San Jose so we hope Garrett got to join them to celebrate Linda’s big 5-0. I emailed Linda last night and got a message back this morning commanding Mark and I to have fun on her birthday. So we did. We returned to Wood Neck this morning to ride the tide out of the marsh and into Buzzards Bay. It’s just a like a ride at a water park. When we did this about a month ago, Ollie needed a lot of help getting on his boogie board, but today he was able to hop on all by himself and even stop himself at the other end and get out of rushing current. As the morning progressed, the boys tired of the ride and we eventually worked our way back into the marsh area and did what we always do when we are there. We caught crabs and fish and shrimp. I did this with the boys while Mark went back to the car to rest. The morning in the sun just about did him in. The cancer therapies make him extremely sensitive to the sun and he very quickly loses all energy. When we got home, he and Ollie both took afternoon naps while the big boys played at a neighbor’s house. Ollie took a shorter than normal nap and as soon as Mark got up, I took off for our storage unit. I returned with about a dozen plastic bins of books and other miscellaneous items to sell at the Saturday yard sale. Tomorrow I’ll make another couple of runs to get more things to sell. What doesn’t sell will go to the dump, so by the end of the weekend, our storage until will be significantly emptier than it is right now. And that is a good thing!
by Judy Handley | Aug 12, 2015 | Cape Cod, Sailing Logs Year 10 |
Day 306, Year 10: Beach Day, All Day
Date: Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Weather: Gorgeous Summer Day–Sunny, 80 degrees F
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, North Falmouth, MA
Today was just one of those magical summer days—clear skies, 80 degrees, beautiful beaches. I left Mark on Windbird this morning to do some boat jobs and took Sam, Jonah, and Ollie to the beach closest to their house. Menauhant (men-ought) Beach is just over two miles from ‘home’and always seems to have rough seas rolling ashore. But the boys enjoyed jumping in the surf. Jonah jumped the waves, Sam dove into them, and Ollie rode his boogie board to shore on them. They built a fort intentionally close to the water so that they could watch the waves knock it down. This must be a ‘boy’ thing. They build as fast as they can and then enjoy watching the waves take it down. By noon we were on our way to pick Mark up as he was going to help with the afternoon shift. We drove back to Heather and Jed’s to pick up a second car and he took off to do some errands while the rest of us drove into Falmouth to pick up Galen and Raynham at the Falmouth Yacht Club. They spend their mornings there taking sailing lessons and this afternoon we wanted to take them to Wood Neck to explore the marsh and then the beach. We normally go home in the afternoon so Ollie can nap, but he really wanted to be with the big kids, for at least a little while. Granddad arrived at Wood Neck shortly after we did, but he sat in the car while Ollie played. It was after 2 o’clock by the time Ollie was ready to do home for a nap, but he went willingly after a few, “Oma, can I just have 3 more minutes?” What a good little guy he is! Just after Mark and Ollie left, Heather arrived (after running/walking 2.7 miles from the trolley stop). We had collected hermit crabs, fiddler crabs, and tiny Asian shore crabs, and played all sorts of games in the marsh. So by 3 o’clock, everyone except Jonah was ready to go to the beach. He was cold and exhausted and just wanted to lay in the warm, shallow water. But we convinced him to go with us and I stayed with him on the beach while Heather went with Galen, Raynham, and Sam to play in the surf. Galen is 14, Raynham is 10, and Sam is 8 and the three of them never seemed to run out of energy. They rode the boogie boards in the surf and dove in the surf relentlessly while Jonah and I sat on the beach just enjoying the afternoon. After an hour of the surf frenzy, Heather was exhausted and tried to lure those with boundless energy to come to shore so we could drive to Woods Hole and get ice cream. It worked, so off we went to have ‘dessert first’—dinner later. Mark and I stopped at the Peking Palace on the way home and had a sushi dinner. What a perfect ending to a perfect day.
Tomorrow morning Mark will go with us to Wood Neck to ride the incoming tide as we did a few weeks ago. Low tide is in the early afternoon, so sometime after 10 am the tide will start rushing out of the marsh. That will allow the boys to ride the tide in what is called Lazy River. It’s better than any water park ride and is not so lazy when the tide is rushing out. Wood Neck is a truly special place with so many different things to do, all different depending on the tide and which side you are one—beach or marsh. How lucky we are to live near so many beautiful beaches and marsh areas. While we are busy having all of this fun, juvenile osprey are soaring overhead and juvenile sea gulls are playing on the sand bars with us. So special.
This morning when Mark stayed on Windbird he made a sun cover for the kayak, checked all of the plastic cockpit curtains to see if any of them needed to be resewn, removed the bimini and bimini hardware from the cockpit so we can start the cockpit cap rail sanding, and on and on. He got a lot done in one morning. But tomorrow he will go with me for the day. Tomorrow afternoon we’re hoping to enlist Sam and Jonah into helping Oma bring boxes of things from storage to sell at Heather’s Saturday yard sale. While we do this, Granddad will stay at home with Ollie while he naps . . . and maybe Granddad can nap a little, too.
by Judy Handley | Aug 11, 2015 | Cape Cod, Sailing Logs Year 10 |
Day 305, Year 10: Rain, Rain, Rain
Date: Tuesday, August 11, 2015
Weather: Overcast with Rain All Day and Evening
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, North Falmouth, MA
If yesterday was all about work, work, work . . . today was all about rain, rain, rain. It was just beginning to rain when I got up at 7:30 am and it rained for 12 straight hours. About 7:30 pm, the rain started to slack off and hopefully we have seen the end of it for now. Mark and I arrived at Heather and Jed’s at 9 am this morning with the rain, but it then slacked off a bit. We tried to get the boys in the car and get to the downtown Falmouth Post Office before it started pouring, but we didn’t quite make it. We were heading to the PO to get passport photos taken. The boys have never had passport photos and Mark and I need to apply for a renewal as our passports expire on the 15th of this month. So we all descended on the Falmouth Post Office to get the photos taken. It was time for lunch by the time we got home and in the afternoon Mark went to check on our old Yamaha while I stayed at home with the boys. The Boat Guy explained to Mark that he can get our Yamaha 15 hp engine running, but that it will not be the motor it once was unless he replaces all the electronics and the drive shaft. So we asked him to just get it running and we will attempt to sell it to someone who might have the time and expertise to do the work on it. In the meantime, we will continue to look for a replacement. The Boat Guy sells and highly recommends Honda outboard engines. So we will do the research on Yamaha versus Honda and see what we come up with.
Tonight we had dinner at Heather and Jed’s with their friends Jo and Drew and their two children, Galen and Raynham. It was great fun to reconnect after so many years and it was so nice to see the kids have time to get acquainted.
