Wow, we are back home for a while after a 12 day "stint" at the boat. It was so hard to come back home, except for the smell from the newly painted floors. Yes one of the last things I did before we left was paint our wood floors. What I must explain first off is originally the boat had this shall we say "God Awful" carpet laid down in the whole boat and yes it was the original carpet. Let's remember the boat is a 1973, you can do the math. Yuck! So one of the first things I did after we took possession was strip all the carpet out except what was in the State Room. Mike wanted that to stay for a while. You know, no cold feet when you are getting out of bed. Anyway, underneath all that carpet was well plywood painted flooring. Nothing to write home about I assure you, it had several places where there was adhesive from the old carpeting, and just some spots well I never could figure out what they were. Well I found this new repair paint stuff (sorry I can't remember the exact name) at Home Depot that I thought might be a good thing to use to cover our floors. At this time we can't afford the Teak and Holly floors we would like so we are going with this for now. The important thing is that it adheres to the current floor and is slip resistant. It seemed to be able to cover all the bases so to speak so I bought a can. As I believe I wrote before I came to find out it has a 24-48 hour curing time so I had to do this right before we left. The paint had all kinds of "WARNING" signs on it and I must admit I was at first a bit hesitant to use it because we were going to be in a bit of a closed area. Well I opened all the hatches and turned on all the fans and Mike stood by in case, well in case I passed out or something. It went pretty well, other than the fact it was like trying to paint with cake batter (really thick stuff) and the smell well it brought back the days of when I used to color my hair. And those of us who used to or still do this knows exactly what I mean. Ammonia smell. But I think it is going to do the trick and Lord knows it helped unify the look of the floors. I will post a completed picture later.
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| Where we used to watch the boats |
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| Entering Huron |
One thing that happened this past week is we went for our first longer cruise. After Mike spent a morning working on the raw water intake valve. This is the piece of the engine that brings the raw water into the engine in order to cool it. Without it working properly we would surely have burned up the engine. Thank God I am married to a mechanic. Anyway after that was fixed and everything was in working order we took a trip over to Huron. Now by care that is only about a 20 minute drive from our marina, but by boat it was a lovely hour and half cruise. What was so wonderful about this our first cruise to another "port" was that we used to drive to Huron and sit on the waterfront and watch the boats come down the channel and thinking to ourselves one day that will be us. Well that day it was us and it was better than Christmas morning. We both grinned from ear to ear while Mike steered the boat through the channel and this time we waved to the people on the dock. It is times like this that all the hard work we have put into the Lady J has truly been worth it.
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| Exiting Huron Bay |
I think I mentioned too that Mike was able to get the antenna hooked up so that we can get a few television channels. Well on Sunday night my dear husband was in heaven, yes a football game was one (the Hall of Fame Game). So now he can be on his boat and still be able to watch his football games.
One little side story before I end this blog entry. Yesterday before we could leave we had to take the boat over the to Pump Out station. Well not sure if everyone knows exactly what that is, but basically it is a dock that you pull up to and then hook up this huge hose with a tight nozzle that fits over your black water tank. And yes the black water tank is the "poo tank". It's one of those things all boaters must do if they have a head on board. So we took the boat over to the dock, hooked her up and started the process. Mike was on board holding the nozzle apparatus to the boat (it does have a suction cup thingy to protect from... well you know). I was on the dock pushing the start button. I pushed the button and everything seemed to be going well, but I did think that the machine itself was shaking awfully hard. Well all the sudden the pipe going into the underground tank came apart and yes you guessed it, the shit hit the fan, well actually the rocks surrounding the tank. At first we just looked at it along with the the young man working the dock. It was sad to say gushing everywhere. I quickly turned it off and the poor young man at the dock just stood there for a minute and had a look on his face of "Holy Crap" what do I do now? (and yes pun intended). Well long story short, he called the maintenance guys for a repair and we ended up moving the boat to the other side of the pump out station dock to complete our task. It was kind of gross but now we think about it we can't stop laughing and needless to say it is another story to add to our adventures. Okay I am going to end this blog with some photos taken from our boat. Enjoy
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| Early morning view from the bridge. |
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| Sunsets, I can't get enough |
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| And yes even more. |
