Interim Preparation Step - Boatyard Blues Or When Will It All be Done?

 Sailing, sailing over the ocean blue... Yay!!  We are sailing!!!

Okay, I'm joking... but Bill insisted we post a photo of us sailing just to remind ourselves that this is why we are doing all of this!











 Waitin' for the boatyard...
Waitin' for the workers...
Waitin' for the work done...
Oh Yeah!  

(A song composer I'm not  however all this waiting does tend to drive one to strike out into new projects...)

I must say one has to take a different philosophy when one wants to have work done on ones boat... ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm (picture the two of us sitting cross legged with tip of pointer finger and thumb of each hand lightly touching and making that weird humming noise) ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ...

No - that would not be an activity that would suit Bill and I...

... so instead we decided to work on readying our new anchor rode that we just purchased.

Approximately 50 fathoms (or 300 feet) of combination of chain - not just any old chain but Hot Galvanized Grade 43 High Test 5/16" Windlass Chain with a working load limit of 3900 lbs chain and 25 feet of heavy duty nylon line. 

 Skookum!!

Bill lost a few nights of sleep trying to work out how we can mark it so that when we let it out when we are anchoring we will know how much has gone out (i.e. how close to the "end of our rope" are we anyway?? heh heh)...  We finally came up with the idea of spray painting marks (colour-coded) to indicate depth.  Now the big question was - which colours?  I insisted that we need to be colour coordinated with our beautiful hull of black, burgundy and off white... so off to Home Depot we went and came out with... red, dark green and bright white!! - hmmmm... not quite what I had in mind...oh well, close enough since it will spend most of its life hidden deep in the anchor chain locker or in the depths of the ocean!

Off we went to the boatyard and started our painting project:

A view from the bow makes that heavy duty rode laid out in 3 fathom lengths look like a fragile chain necklace!!  And that is what our lives will depend on when 'hanging on the hook'?  Gulp!  Good thing we know just how skookum it really is :-)

Enjoying a 'cold one' ...well, more like lukewarm... in the cockpit after all that hard work! 

Lucky thing we have had beautiful sunny days so we could get this work done - and it turns out that when it is sunny in this area of the world the wind dies... so not great sailing weather, anyway (I don't think that reasoning will fly with Bill, but I try!)...





Okay, I promise, my next posting will describe what we will do for our denaming/renaming ceremony (of course I am hard at work searching out our appropriate wardrobe for this auspicious occasion)!

Soooooo... see you when we see you!!
... and fair winds...

Cath and Bill