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.

Yay, another post!

It has been brought to my attention that it has been far too long since my last blog post. What can I say as an excuse other than I much prefer working outside and helping with Benno’s boat work than sitting behind the computer screen. 

So even though sometimes it felt like working inside of an oven, Benno made lots of progress inside our little trawler named Albatross. We didn’t like the interior layout the boat came with, so we are trying to improve it with our own design and work with what is given and can’t be changed. There are hardly any straight walls so even making a cabinet has many challenges. 

I snatched one of Benno’s worksheets from the wastebasket to show you the measurements he calculated for creating templates before cutting the actual marine plywood for the cabinet, also for making the wall panels and ceiling.

And here are the photos of that cabinet. Inside there are two layers of shelves that can be removed, and a coat rack for pants to hang up. We used a Kreg Pocket-Hole jig that inspired Benno from a picture in Jim and Barb's Adventures blog a while ago when they were building a cabinet with drawers. He loves that jig and even I was using the jig for drilling holes in the wood framing for easy assembling. Easy peasy!  (Not that I will take over the build :-) After the framing was installed in place I crawled into the cabinet to paint the walls and I put a couple of paint coats on the shelves inside the garage before assembling those in the boat. 

There were many more drawings to create templates for the ceiling panels that gave Benno a headache for sure as those were even more complicated. All looks good now.

While on a parts run at the beginning of the month, Benno found himself stuck in a traffic jam. Leamington hosted again the annual “Hogs for Hospice” and there must have been well over 1,500 motorcycles taking a round trip from Seacliff Park to Point Peele National Park. It sure was a site to see. The lucky raffle ticket winner won just shy of $450,000.

The arial photo is from The Southpoint Sun Newspaper

The flowers in my garden are doing great with the hot temps and a few good rain showers we have had. I am still at war with whatever cat is using my front berm as her/his litter box and planted today a couple more flowers in it so to eliminate any available space for doing her/his business in there. We’ll see how that works.

Our son and grandson spent again a weekend with us. We really enjoyed their visit and wish our teenage granddaughters would find something of interest here too so we could entertain the whole family. 

Speaking of visits, our neighbours hosted their extended family over the long weekend and there were seven tents pitched on their lawn. It looked like a fun event for all.  

On my sidebar under “blogs we follow” I have added Möbius World that some of our readers might enjoy following up with as well. Wayne and Christine are converting a Horton Ambulance vehicle into what I believe will be an amazing RV to tour the world by land. Enjoy the read as well check out their previous yacht and Christine's website with reference to her published books, all of which I highly recommend.

Thanks everyone for your visit. Wishing all of you a great summer!

More boat work

 Did I say we were done with the bathroom or wet bath (called the “Head”) in the boat? Well, it turned out there were more tasks we had to do to finally close the door.

Reggy and Elsa enjoying lazing on the deck

After painting the wall (behind it are the electrical hookups etc) opposite of the sink with an oil based paint, the floor looked kind of shabby. Benno sanded it and filled previous holes with epoxy. The previous paint was epoxy based so that was what we had to purchase to apply on top. It needed four coats with a day of drying time in-between coats. There was a wooden corner cover that hides the water hoses to the shower and I had it painted with the oil based paint. Benno thought it might look better with the epoxy paint to match the rest. However, applying the epoxy over oil did not go well and it bubbled up. That turned into another four days of paint coats :-(  Then Benno decided to cut, router and sand strips of teak wood to screw and glue onto the step in the bathroom to avoid slipping on that now shiny painted floor when taking a soapy shower. After all that a few seams got GE Silicone sealer for water proofing. Finally done with that, I hung the shower curtain (temporarily to see how it fits) and Benno hung a full length mirror on the door. But I’m sure we are done now with this part of the boat!!

In the meantime the awkward hanging locker in front of the V-berth (forward bed) got removed and we are working on a new design. Benno installed a shorter bulkhead (wall) and covered it with the panelling we have. Also the side walls of the V-berth are being covered and that takes a while to do as he has to make a template for each section before cutting the odd shapes. He finished the bow (front) part already, including replacing the faulty anchor winch with a new Lewmar Pro Series.  Pictures of the interior forward cabin will be posted when we have more to show. Oh, and before I forget, we got a new anchor, a 15kg Rocna, that will be our main anchor and be mounted on the bow roller.

So my hubby spends most days in or around the boat while I run the house and outside chores. On Saturday before the long weekend I was going to wash a load of laundry when after filling the machine  the door would not close on my Bosch washing machine. Well, it turned out the electrical magnetic lock was busted. I guess after probably a thousand plus times of opening and closing it was time to go on the fritz. Of course it had to happen on a weekend, right. Thanks to YouTube we (Benno) learned how to remove the broken part, find it on the internet and found who sold the original manufactured part for us to get it. It involved a trip, but we had a trip already planned for boat parts etc. the following week, so it was basically on the way. Reinstalling the new door lock turned out to be a bit more complicated I presume than taking it out as I heard some expletives coming from the laundry room while Benno was working on it. All done now and several loads of laundry finished. 

Although it gets pretty hot in our area most days, we are enjoying this summer weather. Of course having central air-conditioning and a Dyson fan running in the boat helps. Hoping you are all well and make the most of this time of year, I thank you for dropping in again. Until next time.

June happenings

 So you are wondering what has happened in our lives since I last wrote. I sanded and stained the deck again this year which really needed it. The garden is a constant, but I think the garden soil I had purchased on a special deal is not of a good deal quality and all potted veggies and flowers could do a lot better. The zucchini have not produced and I see only male flowers on them, so no good. We had a couple of frosty nights and some geraniums suffered and shrunk. And to top it off, we had a hail storm that lasted over half an hour where it pelted down on our poor shrubs. The hail pellets stayed on the ground for a few hours afterward would you believe it. And uptown they didn’t even have rain, only we down here got punished.

The hail just kept coming

yes, the plants suffered under this torment

Even the birds looked for shelter wherever they could

Someone has to do it!

Progress on the boat is ongoing, some ceiling panels were installed, bathroom walls were painted, a new bathroom vent that runs on 12V and solar got put in. The shower mixer and shower head were hooked up and the floor is currently being worked on. 

Also Albatross has a hydraulic steering system like most boats. This system was manufactured in Australia and is actually a well known quality brand. However here in Canada and in the USA it is lacking a spare parts supply. In the future we would like to add a hydraulic autopilot that can steer the boat to a GPS waypoint that we pre programmed. But, to our dismay, our hydraulic system had a pressure leak which spilled some hydraulic fluid at a non accessible location. Using his flashlight Benno located the leak on a coupling between two hydraulic Nylon high pressure tubing pieces from the steering pump to the rudder cylinder. To fix that we had to pull out the hydraulic tubing line but after inspection we decided to replace both lines und use fitting and tubing from the American Seastar Steering System that is widely available throughout North America. That will simplify the installation of the Autopilot as well.

a bit cramped access under the cockpit

The leaking culprit: A coupling

If you look at the width of the compression rings:
top=small, middle=bigger, bottom= nice large size
top: is the leaking hardware store unit
middle: the Australian Hydrive original which is okay
bottom: the new American SeaStar unit

Once we had pulled out the old hydraulic tubing and Benno found the culprit of a leaking coupling, he noticed that the compression rings were not Australian or American types, but probably came from a hardware store that supplies airlines for compressors and it could not handle the steering fluid pressure. When the new hydraulic tubing and associated fittings from Seastar arrived, I gave Benno a hand to feed the new lines in, which was a finicky job.

feeding the stiff and coiled hydraulic lines

This is the tool to cut the hydraulic Nylon tubing

Last Saturday we participated in the town-wide Yard Sale. We had quite a pile of accumulated stuff. Most people sold from their yards and garages, but we are more remote located and likely would have not too many people come out. We asked to set up on a vacant land in town where the Mennonites had set up several tables and they also had hot dogs on a grill for sale. Turned out we made a good choice and are happy that almost everything we had was sold.

We are supposed to have some hot weather coming our way, so boat related work will have to be done in the early morning hours before the heat in the boat starts baking us. 

Hoping everyone is having a great summer. Thanks for dropping in again.