Happy Thanksgiving to all Canadians

 I hope everyone will celebrate this day healthy and happy and to say thanks for the things that they are grateful for, no matter what will be served for dinner. Over the years I have prepared several turkeys as a way of tradition for this day, but in recent years I have not. Our son is hosting a family get-together (we were invited) and a large butterball turkey will feed everyone. 

Reggy and Elsa also are wishing you a happy Thanksgiving

At this time of year many folks think, or are preparing to leave for their annual trips down south. However, with the two recent hurricanes, many vacation and RV Park destinations in Florida might not be readily available. Benno had been looking forward to visiting the annual Miami boat show in February. It’s several months off, so we’ll see if this will happen. But as he does every year, Benno did grease the wheel hub bearings of our travel trailer on the sunny and warm Thursday last week and gave the whole rig on Friday a good major wash and wax down from top to bottom. So if we wanted to, we would be ready to take off now.

But, Benno is not the one to sit idle and keeps working on our project, the refit of “Albatross” and I help as much I can do. The master bedroom (haha), our forward V- berth cabin is done now with a few minor things that are up to me. Like finishing up the covers for the mattresses and a coat of paint on the shelves under the berth. If you have never done woodwork on a boat, you will have no idea how time consuming and difficult it can be. This is to say, Benno has been busy, but it takes time to show results.  I am happy that he has moved on now to the main cabin where my galley (kitchen) and the settee (seating area) will be. 

Our boat is covered with shrink-wrap to keep the dirt, rain and snow off and out of the boat. We have a zipper door to get in, but that door which is attached to a separate piece of shrink-wrap, is getting loose. As well  the shrink-wrap has already too many patches that don’t hold together anymore. We think it will not survive another winter and strong winds, so we have booked the mobile crew that does this kind of work to come and replace the whole cover and to make a new door. Hopefully it will happen before the weather deteriorates as these guys are busy.  

What else is new? We hosted my sister and brother-in-law who live 3-1/2 driving hours away in the suburbs of Toronto. Their visits are always filled with fun and laughter and I wish they were more frequent. Sadly I learned of the passing of a cousin that not long ago I had reconnected with after we lost contact for so many years. 

I leave you now with some photos of the forward cabin that got done just recently. 

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving if you celebrate it and everyone thanks for dropping in.

Things of interest and boat interior progress

 Today it’s raining and quite wet outside. We haven’t had any rain for over a month, I think, so it’s welcome.  It inspires me to sit down and tell you about the last 10 days since my last blog post.

I promised more photos of the ongoing refit of our pocket trawler “Albatross” and I will post some at the end of this post. There is steady progress, but between kick-off time of epoxy, drying time of varnish, paint or the cutting of wood, completed sections ready for showing seem to take a while. So not to tire you out with that exclusively here are some photos I took of other subjects.

Photo taken with my iPone

Every so often on a Sunday morning in the summer there is a powered parachute flying above the shores of Lake Erie. It must be the same woman who has been doing it for years! The last time this happened I got my camera out and captured the approaching pilot. I had to be quick though, it was coming up rather quickly and disappeared just as fast. What a fun experience this must be to look below and view everything like through a bird’s eye.

Here she comes

And before you know it, she is gone

Goodbye

On the same day I spotted 8 hawks cruising together overhead, this one came close

Capturing objects of interest I just happen to come across is not always easy for me. Usually I have two leashes in my hands with two doggies pulling me along or I’m driving and can’t stop. However, I can entertain you with the cormorants having a morning meeting on a log that I photographed while driving over a bridge across from the Wheatley harbour. I thought they looked funny and since there was no traffic I stopped briefly and took a photo with my phone through the window of my truck. 

That is the best I could do with my iPhone through the truck window

Don’t you think that his mushroom growing out of a tree branch, I noticed while walking my dogs, is pretty to look at? And for more cuteness, this little bird kept watching me from the bird house above while I was picking cherry tomatoes below in my garden. I thought nesting time was over but it seems the birds like to hang out in them all the time.

Finally, what you all have been waiting for, more boat project photos.

Benno is cutting the moldings to assemble the door frames. 

The doors are drying. Three sides of the frame were epoxied together and laid out to dry overnight. Two equal insert panels were glued together with spray adhesive. After drying the three fame pieces the double insert got slid in and the top frame piece is then epoxied on to the frame to make it a complete door.

Oops, for lack of space on the workbench, Benno placed the insert panels on the shrub outside the garage and then sprayed 3M Super 77 Spray Adhesive onto the back of the panels, it looks like the frosting on a cake or snow, I was a little ticked off. 

Once you sprayed the glue and attached the panels, do not try to rearrange or take them off, this glue sticks like sh.t!!

After installation of the trim, the screws are hidden with plugs. Those plugs are epoxied into the holes and when dry are cut off flush with his Dremel Oscillating tool where the space allowed him to, otherwise by hand with a Japanese Pull Saw. Benno then sanded the trim smooth and it got revarnished by me and rubbed down with oil and steel wool.

Here I am laying beads of caulking along the frame of the counter. Hard on my hands as it does not flow easily, but I am not a sissy!

Benno is inserting the solid surface counter top onto the just caulked frame to glue the top into place. It is also held on two sides by trim.

Counter top is in and the new lamp is installed. On the left is the new 120 volt breaker panel with AC Volt and Ampere Meter. Our 12 volt panel is up in the wheelhouse.

Frames for the doors are done and holes are plugged.

Trim is finished and the upper two doors are fitted including door knobs.

Close up of finished upper part of the cabinet.

You can see the doors are hinged and are magnet-spring closed/opened on the upper and lower frame.

The other doors for the lower part of the cabinet are in various stages of drying time and will be installed in the next couple of days.

Thanks everyone for dropping in and taking an interest in the progress of redoing the interior of Albatross.

Mid September happenings

After two days of fall like weather temperatures, summer has returned to our area here in southern Ontario. That gave us a chance to enjoy a few more evenings on the deck without wearing jackets and for the most part it was bug free.

While I was hunting for some interesting photo opportunities in my garden to post in my blog, I came upon this creature and I don’t know what it is, but hope it will transform itself into something more handsome than its present state. There are also an abundance of grasshoppers around eating holes into the leaves of my plants, but it’s useless trying to shoo them off.

And then I came upon this photo on the Internet which made me chuckle and so I thought I better change the subject of garden creatures and such and talk about other things going on around here.

We had more visitors! Last winter we dropped in to see Barb and Chuck in Tucson, Arizona. They are cruising friends from our time with “Diesel Duck”. You can read about that post here.  Barb sent me a message that she would be helping her girlfriend Jeri to drive her camper van from Maine to Missoula, Montana. They would be driving through Ontario with a stopover to see friends in Napanee (close to the northern part of Lake  Ontario) and then head towards the US border in Windsor. So of course we offered them to come for a visit and spend the night here before continuing their journey. 

Barb

Barb and Jeri

Jeri’s husband fitted out this RAM 2500 ProMaster van into a comfortable camper van that Jeri and Barb were happy to stay in. We wish them a continuous safe trip.

Jeri's Camper Van

At the boat refit progress, I’m holding off with photos of the forward cabin until the dresser/cabinet is close to finish. Last week we purchased a piece of solid surface, cut and polished made for us by "Designer Countertops" here in Leamington that is the top part of the cabinet and now Benno is working on the trim around it. For the trim we needed more wood that we got from "The Wood Mill" in Windsor and that they milled down for us. It is 2 boards of excellent 98x10x2” quality “Sapele” wood. Part of the wood Benno cut and routered into long edge moldings which I then varnished. The rest of it will be used to build cabinet door frames etc.

Two large pieces of Sapele wood

While we were in Windsor I went to the Fabricland store and bought material that I intent to use to cover the V-berth mattresses with. There are two sections to the mattress. A while back Benno made an insert for the top of the V-berth so it closes the gap between the two mattresses but it needed a cushion. There was a seat in the forward cabin that we eliminated by building this dresser/cabinet. I used the rectangular seat cushion to cut the foam with a bread knife into a trapetze size form to fit the insert and plan on making new covers with the new material I bought. That will be a big project to come for me.

The wood inseert

Seat cushion

I cut the 5inch foam with a bread knife

Foam cut to size and the Dacron glued back on for tight fit

About 11 meters of new material

So we keep being busy doing things for the hobby boat and around the house and property. 

Thanks for dropping in again

Friends Visit

 Well, I better squeeze in a blog post before we start another month. Last week was again very warm down here. Actually it was really hot! Amazingly the grass keeps on growing and the weeds and crabgrass are spreading in overabundance all over our lawn. Oh well :))

At this time of year the waterlilies emerge in the marsch areas of Lake Erie, just a short distance from where we live. Really pretty to look at.

Not so pretty were a cluster of Webworm Caterpillars I discovered in our front yard berm. They quickly defoliated a branch of our tall shrub. These fall webworms develop into small white moths and the adult moth lays her eggs, a few hundred at a time, on the underside of leaves in hair covered clusters, which hatch in about a week. When I looked again, the web was empty!

Lots of hungry webworm caterpillars

I needed to renew my passport and at the same time decided to have our two dogs microchipped. This is a new requirement the USA has put into effect since the beginning of the month if you want to bring your dogs into the country. Apparently Canada is exempt, but I could not find verification that it’s true. Their distemper (rabies) shots are not due until November, so I have to book another vet appointment for them. 

The external tags for the microchips

We were expecting Marcie and David, our longtime cruising friends who circumnavigated the world on “Nine of Cups”, to come for a visit before they would again cross over to the USA after their extensive travel through Canada including northern Quebec and Labrador this spring and summer on their up-fitted Promaster 1500 van, which they lovingly call “Blanche”. You can read all about their travel on our side menu: Our Blog - Just a Little Further.

We sat out in front of the house because the deck got too hot

Photo of their van is from their webpage

David is explaining the interior

Amazing all the clever storage arrangement

However, another longtime cruising friend, Richard, who cruised with his sailboat “Pandur” and who we shared anchorages with during our sailing years on “Najade” surprised us for a visit on his land yacht, i.e. his beloved Chief motorhome, a Dodge Sportsman, just a couple of days ahead of Marcie and David. So Benno and I reminisced in cruising tales and the wonderful times we all had on the water with our friends. Gosh, we should do that more often!

Richard with a care package for later

Richard explains the layout

And last, although lately there was quite a bit of cooking going on, I forgot to take any photos except of the almost demolished Zwetschgenkuchen / Pflaumenkuchen (blue plum cake) that is a German specialty cake for the month of August and is eaten with a generous dollop of whipping cream.

Oops, almost ate it all up before the photo

Let’s hope September will bring a bit of relief in the weather so Benno’s project will keep progressing!

Wishing everyone a happy Labor Day and thanks for dropping in.