glad that's settled

Billy loves air conditioning and yoga

If you read the previous post then you know that Travis and I have been perfecting the "rolling and tipping dance" while planning a small wedding aboard Lucy Maru. Well it all got to be too much. We kept coming back to our back up question in times of uncertainty ..."what would 'normal' people do"?

Indeed it seemed ridiculous to be restoring a boat with an arbitrary deadline of early August, so we can invite our parents, who in our eight year relationship have never met, aboard our boat/home to perform the equivalent of a theatrical production surrounded by decorations that cost way to much. OK, so as you can guess, we are not going to do that. Phew!

Instead we are going to get a marriage license in a nice and private courthouse ceremony, just me and T, and invite the folks to meet each other when its convienient for all involved. This plans feels so much better!

Having made this decision we decided to relax a bit and have some fun. We have, after all, in three weeks, painted the hull of Lucy Maru, painted the deckhouse, painted some overhead sections, and painted and varnished the stern. So yeah, we're beat. Coz you see when I say painted, what I really mean is we sanded, then wiped down, then painted... then sanded then wiped down then painted again all of the above mentioned boat sections, all while keeping our day jobs, which are not the usual nine to five grinds, but still take their toll. Ahhh...relaxation is well deserved and well appreciated.

While Me Voy waits, T perfects his skillz on something a bit smaller

Lucy Maru's hull is all painted!

Chopper watches as Travis goes sailing. The stern we worked so hard on the last week, is now varnished and ready for letters

Lucy Maru is such a pleasure to live on! We are so privilaged to live on this classic cruiser. I only hope we can simplify with grace when it comes time to move aboard Me Voy.

We must get Me Voy out of this Satellite Hell as soon as possible, which

looks like next Fall perhaps?

I know its summer

Me beginning work on the transom.

I was the only one in the marina working outside today. I had the stern to finish, and the Epifane varnish was not going to listen to excuses like its too hot to work. I had already put that job off, and my 72 hour timeline in between coats was wearing thin, which meant I had to varnish today with no sanding, or varnish some other day with sanding. The answer seemed pretty simple to me. I have to say here that I love the Epifane varnish. Other then the no sanding between coats, which is an obvious blessing, it covers well and smooths out to a nice gloss. I learned that flat surfaces like rails should be Epifaned out of direct sunlight as the finish will flash and look matte, but as this was not a factor today, I slathered myself in sunblock and began the work.

A small piece of the transom was rotten and needed to be replaced.

Travis works on filling the previously removed bungs. We drilled all those little plugs out last year to expose the screws so we could replace the whole plank. This year, that seems like a bit of an over kill, and we have decided to replace only the small rotten section instead.

T and I have perfected the dance called "rolling and tipping". He rolls the paint on and I follow with a brush and smooth out his bubbles. We're using Petit Z-Spar which gave us good results on Me Voy. Its tricky to get just the right mixture of paint and solvent, but when that magic happens, the paint lays beautifully, with great shine and no brush strokes.

I'm not as happy with the final coat on the deck house as I would like to be. The paint was very runny, and there are some obvious runs. Yuck!. I hate it when something turns out less then perfectly acceptable, but I'm think I'm gonna have to let this one go, and move on.

Lucy Maru has become our sole focus as we are trying to get her ready for this upcoming wedding. Mixed feelings abound as to this ritual that seems so strange to us but so important to both our families. How do we make this experience meaningful for us? We'll be working on that and the rest of our Lucy Maru list this week. So, if you're sitting in your office, or your home or even your boat, take a little air-conditioned breath, send us some good vibes and pray for rain in the Baltimore area.