It’s harder the second week
The first week on land was filled with urgency, progress, and success (as detailed in the previous post). The second was filled with less enthusiasm and more questions for the boatyard about when they’d actually start working on our hull and when we’d be back in the water.
Since the day we moved onto the boat, Joe insisted on carrying an American flag the size of a football field (maybe not quite, we’ve never unfurled it) in the hopes that some 4th of July, the winds would be strong and we could fly ‘ol glory’ in all her glory, extending three lengths behind the boat, hovering just above the water by pure patriotism…but instead, Scooter was on land, with no inhabitants this year, and the flag remained in its dry-bag taking up most of our important storage locker.
I desperately hope I can reference this update in 363 days when Scooter is dwarfed by the flag next independence day… or when our sail rips and we have to use it as a spare head-sail to make it back to land.
Tay and I left briefly for Montana to see family. Hannah and Joe were stuck in portland with an anxious dog (fireworks have some drawbacks), and Scooter was stuck in a parking lot.
Anyway, back to the important stuff: they have finally touched our boat (barely) and we think we’re within a week of being ‘splashed’.
Last week we made progress on our motor, waxing the hull, removing our propeller shaft, fixing our grill, step 1 of fixing our rudder, and a few other things.
This week is more cosmetic.
Boat windows are all acrylic (logically) but they scratch and oxidize badly. This is after a thorough cleaning.
sand sand sand
The big windows will be the most satisfying change, but we finished the first one after dark so the before/after pictures didn’t work out.
The ‘coote’ project was the best (our helm chair contains most of the ‘Scooter’ decal). This restoration made me so proud of Scooter. She must’ve been a looker in 1989.
Also, we adopted a kitten…
Meet Captain Eunice. Taylor (and my aunt Anita) saved her from her un-interested barn-cat-mom. Bottle-fed her and her brothers. And after all that, we just happened to be back in Montana 8 weeks later which, I’m told, is prime adoption time.
I told Taylor in our vow’s that I’d take care of any pet she brought home. But, it felt like exploiting a loophole cause I had to help drive the dang cat home.
If you’ve read this far, you care about the little things so this one is just for me. I found out its possible to operate a navigation system from a raspberry pi. It took me a few weeks of troubleshooting but our Chart Plotter is up! It’s basic right now but the possibilities are endless.
For someone used to this world, this isn’t impressive. But a marine navigation system could easily set back a budget $10,000 so doing it on a $40 computer is exciting. I hope there’s more to come on this topic.