Day 202, Year 7: Another Boat Cleaning Day
Date: Monday, May 28, 2012
Weather: Another Beautiful, Sunny Day
Location: At Home with Heather, Jed, and Boys in E Falmouth, MA
The weather was beautiful today so Mark and I headed to Windbird to clean
the outside of the boat. I washed it down before it was hauled out of the
water, but I needed to do it again using AwlWash. This is the soap
recommended by the AwlGrip folks. We had Windbird painted with AwlGrip in
Thailand and we have tried to follow the recommendations to make sure the
paint lasts as long as possible. After washing it down, the next step is to
apply AwlCare which protects the paint. The graphs published by AwlGrip
show that using AwlCare can extend the life of the paint, so we are
following their directions. But we ran out of time and energy today. While
I washed down the cabin top, Mark worked on cleaning the prop. We have used
our Dremel in the past, but this morning Helaine Kanegsberg called after
reading my log from last night and suggested that we try a product called
The Works. This is a toilet bowl cleaner but Helaine says it does a great
job of cleaning the prop. We stopped at Stop and Shop on the way to the
boat but only found GreenWorks, a more environmentally friendly product, but
not as effective. Tomorrow Mark will go to Walmart and see if they have the
recommended product, but he did make progress with the one we did buy. We
then both worked together to wash the hull. It was mid-afternoon when we
finished and we decided to quit for the day. Well, we meant to quit. But
before leaving, we decided to put on the dodger that I cleaned yesterday and
then I decided to spray it with 303 Fabric Guard to help restore the water
repellance of the Sunbrella. The dodger is three years old and I figured it
was time to give it a bit of a boost. I bought the Fabric Guard in Thailand
thinking I would need to apply it before we got home but I just never got it
applied. Now that job is done and we will return to Windbird on Wednesday
to continue working on the hull.
Mark has his eighth chemo treatment tomorrow morning and I will help Heather
by playing with Oliver while she gets some work done. Heather, Jed, and
boys leave early on Wednesday morning for their trip to New Mexico and
Heather has to cut some promos for her new radio program before she leaves.
Then in the afternoon, she and Jed have parent conferences at the Woods Hole
Daycare Cooperative and then a late afternoon ‘Welcome to Kindergarten’
program at the school Sam will attend next fall. So Mark and I will keep
Oliver and Jonah while Heather, Jed, and Sam attend that. We lead a busy
life but we sure enjoy it. The boys are a constant source of entertainment.
Tonight Mark was sitting at the dining table after dinner and he had
obviously been running his hands through his hair and he was looking a bit
like a wild man. Heather and I were talking and Jonah came in. He looked
at Mark and asked very seriously if he slept with a duck. Mark didn’t know
why he was asking that but Jonah asked again, “Granddad, do you sleep with a
duck?” Heather and I were dying with laughter knowing that one of Jonah’s
favorite books is “There’s a Duck in My Closet.” It is about a little boy
that imagines that he has a duck and a number of other animals that live in
his bedroom closet and come out at night to sleep with him. The book ends
with him looking in the bathroom mirror in the morning and seeing his hair
in a wild state. He blames it on sleeping with the duck from his closet.
Out of the mouths of babes.
