warning

I feel like this post should come with a warning, something like "not for the faint of heart". I'd like to say that the situation looks better in person, but it doesn't. These days its challenging for one person to get around Me Voy. Stick another body in there and things get dangerous.

It might be hard to imagine that one day soon we will be living here, and all the dust, scraps of wood, gooey materials, and tools will be either neatly put away in their designated compartments or just plain gone. But that vision, now imprinted  in my minds eye,  shines from beneath the surface of the chaos revealing an underlying order that is calm and reassuring.  Strangely,  I can laugh at this chaos now, seeing it for what it is, a temporary ripple on the surface of a deep and still lake.

However, as a favor to the outside observer, I have imposed my own order and labeled the various sections that are currently being developed.  So go ahead, jump in, the water is only chaotic on the surface.

9 lives

Lately most of our evenings consist of sitting around out little teak table, drinking hot tea, and dreaming up the design for Me Voy's galley.  This area really got hit hard by the various leaks that were left unattended by the previous owner, and now that we have finished the replacement of the hull planking, the time has come to have some fun! 

This is my favorite phase of any project; the design of the space and the picking out of the materials. 

We are changing things up a bit from the original design, combining what was the aft stateroom with the galley, into a larger galley space and a small workshop. We figure with two berths and five possible sleeping places already, a workshop space will be more useful. After all we have to have some place to keep our collection of Epoxy resins!

After nearly four years of boat restoration we have  a West System epoxy for any occasion

But it hasn't been all talk either. Travis, after years 

of working on other peoples boats, has turned to working on our boats full time.  We figure the most important thing right now is to get our boats into a state of "finishiness". We both realize that neither of these boats will actually ever be finished, as there is always something to make better. But a state of finishiness is totally within reach and even seems likely with Travis Ahsum on our side. I know I'm biased, but seeing T's work I am amazed with the quality and speed with which he makes things happen. Looking at the big picture, or the previously mentioned elephant, this project gets overwhelming, but when I see all these small things getting chewed at I can see this whole thing coming together soon.

However none of this was really the point of this post. What I really wanted to remember, was sitting here, with incense wafting, tea steaming, Chopper sleeping with his bone but alertly keeping an eye on everyone and Billy... dragging his soaking tail in the salon!? WTF? It seems Billy went for an evening swim in the frigid water. How this happened will remain his secret. We heard nothing and saw nothing except for the poor disgraced cat coming down into the salon with a walk that reminded me of a old man disgusted with the world around him. He seemed to take it in stride as I wrung him out in a towel,  and Chopper licked his ears. The whole scene was a bit surreal, and if it wasn't for the wet towel, that now smells of cat, hanging over the stair railing, I swear the whole thing was a bizarre dream. Its a wonder these animals don't run away from home.

Strippers

Over time we have tried many different strippers. Some smelled very very bad, some made my eyes burn,  some made my skin burn, some made me cough and gag, but none, did the job like this unassuming "natural" stripper called Citrustrip. This stuff is a miracle! It smells good, doesn't burn the skin, and its biodegradable. And what ahsum boat store did we get this from ... Wal-Mart!

Elephants

Q: How do you eat an elephant?
A: One bite at a time.

Aboard Me Voy, Travis is a blur of activity. This pic is taken in the salon looking aft.

Here I am standing near the companionway looking forward at all the elephants still to be eaten.

OK, the time has come to get serious. It's Feb. already and I haven't worked on a boat in more then 2 months. Someone said that objects in motion tend to stay in motion, but since my butt hit the couch after the canvas job, I just haven't been able to get anything accomplished. I am however practicing contentment, and as such I am content to walk around the marina taking pics. Check out the frozen shrouds...so cool!

The Zen of Duck Watching

There is so much Nature around us here in the middle of the City. Yes, its true, they did pave paradise and put up a parking lot, but turns out paradise is a stronger opponent then we initially thought. After all, a little plant bursting thru the cracks of a sidewalk, has only one mission- LIFE! And that's a pretty ahsum force!

I watched this duck pedaling his way thru a break in the ice, towards open water. His determination inspired me to procrastinate and write a haiku. Travis joined me and then there were two. Feel free to write your own in the comment section, you may win something! Here are ours:

M:
Above, cold white light
An opening in the way
My toes are freezing

T:
Icy waters hard
Breaking thru carving struggling
Shitting where I eat

And it was my birthday!!!!!

I was just reading Maggie's blog about the snow and the power outage and the driving conditions etc. But nowhere does she mention the most important bit of news, that I turned 34 yesterday. It was weird being without electricity on my b-day so we have continued to day two of the birthday celebrations today. She is taking me to see STOMP in D.C. tonight and she has given me another day off from boat work. It is good to be 34. I hope everyone has enjoyed my birthday snow as much as I have. Maybe with a lot more hard work and good luck we will be celebrating on a sunny beach with a frozen cocktail for my 35th. Everyone is invited. BYOB

This year we said goodbye to the 2x4 and railroad tie and got an ice eater to do the breaking for us

Everyone is talking about snow.  How much did you get ?, how long did it take you to get home? etc etc. Some of these answers are more exciting then others, like, "it took me 8 hours to get home, and I live 45 min. away". Now I don't mean me, no I left work early to avoid the insanity that  seemed inevitable after all the stewing and brewing going on over the radio, TV and internet, concerning the upcoming storm. Yup I was safely aboard when the wind, snow, and thunder hit. You heard right, thunder and lightning made an appearance during this snow storm. Eerie right?

Was that thunder?

The big story wasn't so much the amount of snow but its weight. This was a wet heavy snow, that broke a lot of tree limbs and snapped some power lines. We were lucky enough to be in the power out zone and got our first taste of off the grid living in Tara.

Unlike Me Voy, Tara is an electric baby. We have done some things to improve that situation, like switching most of our lights, and all our  pumps to 12 v, but everything else including heat, cooking stove and even our speakers are 120v. Cooking and heat were easy to take care of. We pulled out our trusty propane  Coleman stove  to make dinner and used the kerosene heater we use on the back deck for heat. It worked great keeping us at an average of 64. Travis even jury rigged a carbon monoxide detector we had lying around to avoid that death thing that we hear can sometimes be a problem.

Kerosene heater , 12 volt lights and cake. Power outage what power outage? 

Jury rigged carbon monoxide detector 

All in all being forced off the grid  ( 26 hrs. in total) taught us some things.  For one we really need a
"green" way to charge our mobile devices. I ended up charging our internet hot spot and phones at work,  but that just won't do - I am after all, aiming for early retirement! Two, we really need some 12 v speakers in here, and three living on a boat is  better then living in a house. My co- workers talked of stumbling around in the dark and cold, and, although I don't usually like to compare myself to others to make myself feel better, I couldn't resist being a little smug as I thought about our warm and bright little nest floating somewhere out there in the darkness. Don't worry though, that smugness soon evaporated as I realized how far we still  have to go to voluntarily disconnect ourselves from that little spinning meter.

WTF?

We may have found our dinghy.  No its not the Portland Pudgy that we are pining after, but, it has all the qualities we are looking for, rigid bottom, fairly light weight and its 9 ft length would fit neatly on top of the deck house. Now it just has to unfreeze a bit to see if we really got something we can work with.

Yesterday...

...was full of my favorite kind of work... thinking.