Winter projects have begun....and so has the snow

The first project of the winter is to remove the main water tank, which was leaking and holding tank, which had to be repaired when we bought Kasidah but only as a temporary fix till we could replace it. FIRST PROJECT DONE...that was fast. Jon spent the weekend up at the boat cutting and removing the floor because the water tank was put in first when the boat was built and then the floor with no access to it (I guess they thought it would last forever), The tank was so wide that Jon had to cut it in half to get it out the companionway door. Next on the list is to rebuild the floor supports, replace old water tank with a 42 gallon flexible water bladder which has been purchased and will arrive in time for this weekend. we will take the holding tank to a guy who can make a new one out of steenless steel and at that time have a guage installed so we can stop guess at just how full the crapper is. Jon will replace the floor with marine plywood for now with access lids but we will wait till later to replace the floor itself because we are just not sure of what we want and I like having a rug under my feet so that will be fine till we decide.
Snow came early at our house and with it ice and 40 mph winds. We lost a couple trees including a huge apple tree which was full of apples over our driveway so that will be my project next week. Of course we had a couple that were suppose to look at the house from out of town today so thats not going to happen. Oh Well.......

They just keep getting "BIGGER"

Amy just sent some new photos and thought we would share them with you. They landed this at the base she is at so they could all get a look and feel for what’s next. This is a C-17 cargo plane. Amy was very excited about getting the opportunity to sit in the pilot seat and have a look around. This is what she has been training to fly.

Sometimes good things take awhile

The boat is out of the water; it went smooth and is on dry land. She looks good no she looks “GREAT”; we did a excellent job painting her bottom last year and she still looks in awesome form. It was sad to see her come out of the water. Lots of things were passing through my mind as we put her up on stands. One of the things I wanted to mention is that sometimes, and in this case, good things come from bad/sad things. By this I mean the sad thing being that we did not sell the house, we are still on land and in New York for yet another winter, but the good thing that came out of this is that right now if we had sold the house and left, our money would have been in the stock market. So I suppose no matter how sadly I look at the fact that we are not sailing for the horizon right now we do have some good things going for us and it is always nice to have something positive to look at. We have great kids, a successful business, supportive friends and family, no health issues, no bills, a wonderful spouse, and still lots of time in our life for our future adventures!

Interesting trip to Kingston, Ont.

We left Saturday morning October 4th around 6 am for Kingston, Ont. Crew consisted of Jon, myself and Sean. Winds all week were blowing upper 20s and they were to calm down Friday night to around 10 to 15 and waves 2 to 4 ft. Everything was fine until about 2 hours out when we could see the line of dark clouds that you could tell was a new front trying to make it's way down from Canada. The whole line as far as we could see from East to West had Waterspouts lining up to drop. Now that was not in the Forecast....... Sean was at the helm and just looked and grinned. The night before Sean and I were talking about weather on the lake and he had mentioned that he had never seen a spout out on the water before and that it would be interesting(well did he get what he asked for and a little more). The boat rode the large waves perfectly and we made Kingston in time for happy hour (10 hrs.). We had a really good time up there even though it was off season and quiet. On Sunday a float plane came in and docked at the fingers that we were on, that was very cool..... The sail home was a nice one with the wind behind us so we ended up having a lot of fun surfing the large waves. It ended up taking two hours more than on the way up because we stopped into Oswego to check-in with customs, not that they check anything, it's pretty much like this- "Are you US citizens - ok have a nice day......"
Jon kept commenting on how much he loved his Offshore weather gear the whole way there and back, he said that it was well worth the investment(he bought it from the Sailboat Shop). I kept warm by zipping my new canvas up on the back of the boat which made an unbelievable differents coming home.