A Day Hanging Out

Day 4:  March 29, 2014

We started the day with dry cereal and strawberries that were provided by Lena Bowman.  The berries were really ripe and fresh and great.

I spent some time talking to a young man who was cleaning and polishing a boat and he provided some techniques for cleaning the skid pads on our boat.  These are rough areas in the fiberglass that make the deck surfaces safer.  However, they are real dirt collectors.  Since we bought the boat in the fall, we didn’t take the time required to clean it up so we decided to do some shopping and pick up a few food items and cleaning supplies and spend the afternoon scrubbing down our dirty, salt-covered boat.

The Neighborhood

 

And that is what we did.  It was an all afternoon job that turned out to be  successful.  I felt as though I was a sailor of old who had been assigned the task of “holy stoning” the deck.  Instead of using a brick-like object, we used chemicals, mild abrasives and brushes to clean the minute grooves in the deck.

Nearest Neighbors

I also replaced the brace that supports the fiberglass bow sprit on the bow of the boat.  We were surprised to find that it was seriously bent when we got back to the dock after our breakdown yesterday. We assume that bent the brace when we impacted the finger dock when our motor quit yesterday. I bought a replacement brace at the Hake Yacht Company and repair turned out to be quite simple.  I drifted out to the front of the boat in Damn Dink and accomplished the task.

Stormy Weather

We fired up our new grill and had burgers and garlic mashed potatoes for dinner.  As we were cooking supper, the Bowmans, who were on the road finally, called and asked if were in an area that was under the tornado watch.  We turned on our weather radio and although there was no tornado warning for this area, we did have a severe thunder storm warning with potential hail and wind gusts of up to 60 mph.  We added some additional mooring lines to Second Wind and battened down the sails and hatches.  We did not get the hail but we did have a squall with some high winds.

After dinner, we went for a walk in Sandsprit Park, read, worked on the blogs and went to bed. 

 

Ominous sky taken from Sandsprit Park