Just finishing up.....

We are trying to finish up all the things we have either started and just needed one or two small things to complete and the little “not that important things…..”
Schyler came up last week and dropped off our new Deka Gel 6 volt batteries which Jon is working on installing this week. He is also changing the oil and antifreeze which was a pain in the butt, he bought a kit for changing oil which has a pump and a couple hoses which one will always stay connected to the place you drain the oil on the engine so hopefully this will make changing it easier .
Jeff finished our new cabinet and bookshelves and they look great, all he needs to do is come back to install our spice rack, knife holder, wine rack and a few other small last minute thing we can’t do without:).









We installed the E80 into the cockpit cabin wall and wired and connected everything. This chartplotter is awesome. It has so many more functions than our last one. I ended up buying the Maptech Chart Navigation Pro for the computer and started buying some of our paper charts for as far south as the Chesapeake.


This past weekend our good friend Diane and her daughter Ann and husband Shaun came to go sailing and get in a little R&R. We had a little wind so first went for sail then anchored at the bluffs for a nice swim and to try out our new anchor and windlass for the first.time. Diane has been my good friend for years and years, so good of a friend that she has offered to receive our mail for the first year we are out there. Now that’s a good friend……..



Maya learns to snorkel

The Water Lover

Thursday morning I drove to Brockport in order to sell Jill's car and give her mine. I got there before noon and we headed to a ‘mobile DMV’…BEST THING EVER…we only had to wait about 10 minutes before being called and taking care of everything. It was all just a reminded to me how much I try to avoid going to the the DMV. Even scarier is the fact that I am good at dealing with all of their bologna makes me even happier that our estimated time of departure is getting closer. I heard several people feeling the same way and when they left they basically said "I Hate New York!" It went fairly smoothly although there was some kind of insurance confusion with the buyer, but it was nobody’s fault, and by noon Jill’s Subaru was sold.

After the DMV Jill brought me out into her field where she works because she had to take care of some things before coming up to the boat for the weekend. Originally we were going to do stream measurements, but her professor had some of the equipment so we ended up filling in some loose ends and showing me around. Apparently I wore the completely wrong attire for this event. I came in shorts and my sandals, Jill questioned this because apparently she normally goes out in pants and boots; for good reason. On our adventure we went through weeds and grasses that were about 3 feet tall, then we went through a farmers field which I am pretty sure was recently fertilized, and climbed down some pretty steep slopes. A normal day in Jill’s field work, luckily she didn’t bring me through some other places she had planned on going.

Here is a picture of Buttermilk falls, not the actual Buttermilk falls in Ithaca. Walking up to this was very weird because it was all flat and you would never know that there was a 90ft drop here. The only hint to the falls was the sound of the water and the mist as we approached them, and then came out of a clearing and WOW it was amazing. Normally, doing her research Jill climbs to the bottom of the falls to collect samples of the water coming out of the bedrock, but because of my attire we stayed up top. The bedrock that Buttermilk falls is cutting away at is the Onondaga limestone which is the formation that Jill does her research on. The formation has lots of fractures, which I saw, that alter the groundwater flow in the region; normally water would be flowing north here, but instead it flows east. Jill was explaining to me at different locations that it is important to understand the groundwater here because in 1970 a train spilled with 30 tons of Trichloroethylene, which is a highly carcinogenic cleaning agent used in factories. The train spilled all of this into the ground and polluted hundreds of homeowners’ wells, who had to get special carbon filter systems from the state or go on public water.

This was very interesting, I am glad I got to go see what she does.

Fun on the lake

Jeremy arrived Sunday and we decided to take Tim up on his offer of using the jetski. We had a great time till the storms came through. Those things are so smooth we are trying to figure a way out to put one on the boat:).....(Thanks Tim).

Jill decided to take my car so we had her out driving it Sunday morning. It's a standard and thats one of those things she just never cared to learn. She was a pro right away at it. I will go to Brockport on Thursday to do the paper work and say good bye to it,man I loved that care. That will leave just the Dodge pickup which we will leave here till spring. We have someone that will take it at that point so that will be easy.

Man I will tell you one thing, I Know Why Most people just talk about leaving and never Do It, IT'S A HELL OF A LOT OF WORK......................

PS.......Hi Cyndy

Up Up and UP!!!!!

I went to the top of the mast finally and got to see the whole world. Jon and Dick decided to hoist me up to take the topping lift off and to measure the wind instrument that had a crack in the plastic part so we can reorder one. It was very cool up there.

Jon needed a hair cut and he’s been asking me to give him one, So I ended up clipping his hair last night very short and I think it came out pretty good. No more barber bills for us. As a matter of fact I think this could be one more job out there for me. I will have to see if I can cut Dicks hair next!!!!!! If I cut it like Jon’s he could go at least a couple years:).

Summer has arrived

This past few weeks have been filled with installing lots of new gear for the boat.
It was like Christmas morning when the UPS driver showed up! However that excitement soon became reality when Jon said “man do we have a lot of things to install”. It reminded me of the time when the girls got new bikes under the tree. The only bad thing was when we started reading the directions and figured out that not only could we not understand half of what they were talking about but we were also missing some of the parts!

So far we have finished installing the new Lewmar windlass. We split the chain locker in half to use the smaller section for the 200 ft of 8plait and 20 feet of chain on the original 35 lbs CQR anchor.


The main locker has 200 ft of all chain
and the 45lbs Manson Supreme anchor on top, which we will finish putting on the boat Monday.




Jon installed a new Garhauer rigid boom vang; which looks really nice under the boom.

He also installed our new Raymarine Ray 218 radio and remote Raymic. I decided to get our ship's radio license just in case we cross over to the Bahamas this winter. I needed to get the code for DSC anyhow so I just decided to go for it. We also installed our final water bladder, a new foot pump for the galley and ran the new wire for the macerator pump. We added more insulation around the engine and added more LEDs around the boat.

Jill came up last weekend with her friend Alex. They are working on a project together for the Army corp. of Engineers.


We ended up going out sailing for a short time before a huge storm came in. It was a fun time since the wind really picked up in front of the storm. We made it back to the dock and closed everything up just before the storm hit.


Over the weekend some of our sailing friends here came over with their son and his friend and they brought their guitars with them. They played some Jimmy Buffet with me! OK! OK! I only could play about one cord with them but it still sounded great……..



Some fishermen pulled in on Wednesday and offered a nice Salmon to us. Jon was really excited about it untill he realized it was not filleted.

Howevcer just then Big John drove up in his Golf cart and offered to help Jon with the cleaning at his RV on his awesome fish cleaning station….. THANK YOU JOHN!

This weekend was the marina’s huge summer party for which we offered to help setup and cook. It was a great time with lots of wonderful people and great food. Jerry always does such a nice job of getting everything ready and it looked so nice, but then again it always does. I have been helping clean the bath houses here for a week now because the lady who usually does it, Mary, broke her leg and is out for awhile. They have had other girls in but they just don’t do a good job so Jerry asked if I would mind cleaning them for a couple weeks. Not sure what they pay but I think I will ask for a raise!