Falcon's Log 7

Falcon's Log 7

March 5, 2009 - Seafood Shack Marina - Cortez, Florida

A couple of weeks ago I made the decision to go with propane cooking aboard Falcon instead of the nice oil stove I already
have. I really wanted to stick with a single fuel aboard the boat and eliminate the need for multiple fuels on multiple tanks. I
SURELY didn't want the dangerous and explosive fuel 'propane' aboard. The Kenyan two-burner with oven unit I have is old,
but all stainless and well made. And really? I KNOW I can get it to run on diesel with a minimum of effort.

Well, sure, yeah, true, it needs to be cleaned up and gone through, but it's an excellent boat stove. Anyway, once I'd made
the decision to go with a counter-top propane unit (still struggling with where to put the tank - rats) I tried to come up with a
good way to move the Kenyan unit. Badda bing badda boom - Espin finds an post in the Seven Seas Cruising Association
website discussion forum where a guy is looking for a two-burner kerosene stove. I left a post, he emailed, I dug the unit out
of the much ballyhooed storage truck, cleaned it up a bit, and am now waiting for his response to the pictures and description
I emailed. Another fork in the road and on with the mission to finish Falcon.

That was actually just another piece of yesterday. Obviously, I guess you can tell I'm feeling better after finishing with
Dulcinea. Today, I'll make more headway around Falcon and get back to the removal of the lead. It's only 7 AM right now.

March 6, 2009 - Seafood Shack Marina - Cortez, Florida

Espin is back from the great white, bitter cold, frozen north wild country of Florida's panhandle. Pensacola, I think. It was so
desperate and desolate up there that ha actually fell back to reading this blog. Naturally, he mentioned that I'd forgotten to
mention that he'd driven me around for four hours on the day that we picked up the turkey fryer. I'll have to go back and
check. Be right back.

Okay, it's true, I didn't mention that he drove for four hours or so, but then, I also didn't mention that his interest in the trip was
to check out a Cape Dory 25D that he was interested in buying, but I, being the true friend I am, talked him out of it, thereby
saving him days and weeks of profound depression and anxiety for wasting his meager funds on such an arcane and
life-sapping dead end project. Wait - I have to find out what 'arcane' means. . . . . . . . . . Okay. Looks like I lucked out and it
fits.

Anyway, I probably would have been the first to say so if he hadn't blurted it out to steal my thunder.

I have the headache today and have eaten one of the Benadryl brain-foggers which has the interesting side effect of almost
completely curing the headache. Oddly enough, I haven't accomplished anything of value yet, but promise to write about
anyway. Oh, look! I already have. Well, done for the day! Time for a nap! It's amazing that I can keep up a pace like this day
after day.

March 7, 2009 - Seafood Shack Marina - Cortez, Florida

Times goes on and I have decided to scrap another section of the site and integrate the Sailing Tales pages into the Logs.
When I first started with this site, some things seemed different enough, or something, like 'out of sync', so as to require a
separate page or section. Now, it just doesn't seem all that different. I suppose you could call it 'back story' or 'recall' or
something, but the subjects related in the Sailing Tales pages, like the old Cadillac thing, can live here just fine.

I caught the sunset just as it looked like this and was actually able to get the funky focus software of the camera to zoom in
and capture a pretty good close-up of the trees masking the sun. Looks cool.

~~~~~~ Beryl S 22' O'Day ~~~~~~

My first boat was a Jafco 20 foot inboard with a 105 HP Gray Marine 6
cylinder. I should tell a few old stories about that one sometime. It was fun,
but it liked to sink more than I liked to raise it. Besides, I really wanted a
sailboat.

When I was about 12 years old, a new show called 'Adventures In
Paradise' came on TV and I was forever and completely hooked. Oh, yeah.
Captain Adam Troy on the fabulous Schooner 'Tiki'. To this day, I love that
boat. (In truth, and on a personal note, my childhood was one long,
miserable horror show, so sailing away on a big, safe schooner really WAS
my dream.)

The financial world around a hundred foot schooner proved to be a land in
which I was not admitted entrance, so I got a 22 foot O'Day and moved
aboard.
I named the O'Day 'Beryl S' after Beryl Smeeton, the wife of Miles
Smeeton, because her performance during and after the pitch-poling of
'Tzu Hang' 900 miles off Patagonia was nothing short of incredible.

I loved living aboard immediately and began writing seriously almost as
soon as I'd moved aboard. At the time, I was still drinking (that's Southern
Comfort in the glass) and smoking (note the cigs) and writing with pen and
paper. All that's over.

There has NEVER been a time when I enjoyed being on another persons boat, as a guest or some sort of accessory to be
told what to do, so I learned to sail by motoring away from the dock and putting the sails up. What could go wrong?

I don't wanna talk about it. A lot, and most of it did. Still, I didn't sink or require stitches and I learned to sail. I did crash into an
island in broad daylight. Never mind. The point is, after a lifetime of not fitting and not belonging, I found a world where I was
comfortable and at home. Of course, to put my jeans on I had to stand with my back flat against a very low ceiling, then kneel
to button them up. I didn't have room to roll over in bed, and I couldn't store an extra jacket, but still, it felt right because I
could untie the docklines and take off any time at all, and I've always loved the sunrises and sunsets on the water. Four
months later I was dealing for and picking up my next boat.

Steve Papuchis, a great old friend from back home, came down for Bike Week at Daytona and took Saturday to drive the bike
over to Cortez and visit. Steve is shown in younger days on page 5 of Building Falcon, and was there with me the day I
bought the hull in Rhode Island. He successfully runs his own electrician business now and does quite well. This bike is
punched out to 95 inches (or stroked out - I forgot to ask - you can do it either was with S&S parts) and has cams and other
goodies to boot. It stampedes up a hill pretty good. And makes me look younger than I do in close-ups. We had a great visit
and talked non-stop for five hours or so, then he headed back to the other side.

~~~~~~ End of Beryl S 22' O'Day ~~~~~~

More March 7, 2009

After only having the O'Day for four months, it didn't seem fair to have to
give up such a good name, so I didn't. The new boat, a 28' Winthrop
Warner Cambridge Cadet, (don't ask me about the model name, I don't
have a clue), had 6'3" of headroom and more than twice the interior volume
of the O'Day. It was like moving from the cellar to the big barn, in country
terms.

And the Warner sailed like a real boat. Though she was narrow in the
beam at about 9', she had 5' of draft and displaced 14,000 pounds. The
mast, seen below, was a masterpiece of Sitka spruce, as was the 18'
boom. The boat had just been completely refastened and renewed, and
she looked and sailed like it. The man actually took the O'Day in trade. Go
figure. Some guys will do anything to get back in the big bed.

What an incredible difference headroom and an onboard head, a galley
and some of the other accommodations of the bigger boat made. Of
course, now I could get rid of the second car that served as a storage
shed, and load up the boat. Some people at the marina in Lynn stopped by
and complimented the boat and I had to admit that I was fairly pleased with
it myself. I hardly ever sailed her, but she was loaded down with 500 books
and far more claptrap than any man who isn't in the junk business has a
need to own.

Midway through the first winter, I also discovered deck leaks (that soaked my bunk) rotten wood around the cutlass
bearing/packing gland (that threatened to sink her) and that twice the space of an O'Day 22 was still a desperately small
place to live. Still, the truth be told, I loved my new life and environment - I just needed a bigger, better boat. The two pictures
above I took from the masthead, where I frequently went for a smoke and to look around. I climbed up hand over hand in
about a minute. It was good to be young. Okay, yeah, yeah, - just being young won't do that for you. I can DO stuff. That's
right. I said it. DOOOOO stuff.

~~~~~ Beryl S (again) 28' Warner ~~~~~

~~~~~ End of Beryl S (again) 28' Warner ~~~~~

March 8, 2009 - Seafood Shack Marina - Cortez, Florida

It's now daylight savings time again. I had to set the clock ahead and watch an hour of my life vanish, again, never to be seen
again, again, until we turn the clocks back in six months and get it back, again. The stress is overwhelming.

Still looking around at the mountain of work left to be done on Falcon and wondering where to start. Of course, it's easy to
say 'Back to the lead!', except that I just HAVE to clean up and fix stuff up some first. Today, I removed the Bimini top along
with the sun shade over the cabin top and scrubbed them both with a mixture of water, laundry detergent and a touch of
bleach - to remove the green algae growing on them. They came out pretty clean, but I'm going to do it again tomorrow before
putting them back on.

I've been toying with the idea of moving 2 or 3 of the big 8D batteries from beneath the cockpit floor to the center slot beneath
the main cabin sole. Three of the heavy brutes would amount to about exactly 500 pounds, dropping the amount of lead I
have to remove down to about 300 pounds. It would still be better to REMOVE the 800 pounds from the boat than to simply
shift more than half of it. Plus, the additional cables, or, ganging the four batteries into one giant one, but that would allow
one bad battery to kill the other three good ones. Blah, blah, blah. I just have to get the lead out. And that's going to mean
pulling the engine and moving it to get it out of the way. Oh, well. . . . . . . . I just took another long, hard look at it. Tomorrow I
will begin again and kick some lead ass. It cannot discourage me or make me turn away. I will be glad when it is removed and
the boat will be much better for it. End of decision.

So, when Al Giles was here we got to talking about an incident that happened way back in, . . . hmmm . . . it had to be in 1975
or so, and it brings up the issue of my first boat, so I might as well tell the tale here and now. It's about the old 20 foot Jafco
Runabout.

~~~~~ 20' Mahogany Jafco Runabout ~~~~~

I've searched everywhere for pictures of the old Jafco without luck. I know I had some, somewhere, once, but don't seem to
have them any more. Anyway, It was a 20 foot speedboat with a mahogany foredeck, a windshield, a bench seat, and a big
square engine cover in the rear cockpit, which was actually the dead center of the boat, where the six cylinder flathead Gray
Marine engine lived.

The hull was painted black, but everything else was either varnished mahogany or polished stainless steel. I got it for $800
and was able to use the guys trailer to bring it to the water, but was not able to use a launching ramp. He insisted the trailer
not go into salt water. So, okay. I was married at the time and my wife assured me that, while she was not at all able to tow
the trailer back to the sellers house after the boat was lifted of by a crane at the launch site, she was more than capable of
driving the boat to our berth at the Polish Yacht Club in Salem, Massachusetts. Okay, what am I gonna do? I have no choice.
She gets in the boat and I drive the trailer back, drop it off, then meet her at the dock in Salem. The boat is almost out of gas,
so I point to the marine gas pumps a quarter of a mile away and tell her to make sure she fuels up before heading out the
Danvers River and into Salem Harbor.

"No sweat," she assures me. I drive the trailer back, drop it off, then dash through traffic through three towns, Middleton,
Danvers, and Salem, and still get to the dock before her. Oh, please, no. Now what?

She gets there in another half hour - to this day, I have no clue why it took her so long - and announces that she didn't stop
for gas - because she was too scared to approach the fuel dock. There is no cure for this kind of behavior, so getting upset is
not an option. It was then that she explained to me that she'd never actually driven a boat, but she'd watched her previous
husband drive his boat and it didn't seem hard at all. Being a dimwit, I got into the boat and told her to do whatever she had to
do with the car and come back and get me in an hour, because I was going to go back to the fuel dock and fill up.

She agreed and we both headed out on our respective missions. Well, I was within sight of the fuel dock when the boat
sputtered and stopped. The wind was blowing me toward the starboard shore and the tide was going out. This was in the
days WAAAYY before cell phones, so I had nothing to do but sit there and watch as I was blown onto a rocky beach as the
water slipped away and the sun set. In half an hour, the Jafco was sitting high and dry, completely ringed by about eight
granite boulders the size of washing machines. There was nothing to do but take out the key - as if that was going to do
anything - walk ashore, climb up to Route 62 and start thumbing rides back to Salem. Now it was the wifes turn to sit at the
dock and wonder where I was.

I got back there and told her what happened and we went home to the apartment, where I called Al Giles and told him what
had happened. Always up for a good time, Al came right over with a bag of weed to compliment my case of beer. The tide
would not be coming in until midnight and we wanted to enjoy the four hour wait. Of course, we stopped and got 5 gallons of
gas and my wife dropped us off on Route 62 at the boat.

As you might imagine, by the time the boat began to shift around and rock near midnight, we were doing a little rocking of our
own. I primed the engine and fired it up before it was time to go, just to be sure, and as the big boulders around us
disappeared into the inky dark water, it occurred to us that we no longer had any idea where they were - only that we were
floating and they were all around us, just under the surface. Don't ask me how we got out of there without hitting anything, but
we did.

We had flashlights and heavily bloodshot eyes and slowly started picking our way through the shallows toward the mouth of
the river a couple of miles away. At first, the mud flats around us were really mud flats, but after a while we couldn't tell dry
land from floating skunge. Now, it recalls as one of the most ridiculous episodes of our lives as we dodged and wove through
one imaginary danger after another, completely unaware that we were in at least 20 feet of water from the moment we got to
the center of the river. We were completely exhausted from stress by the time we got to Salem Harbor, but we had laughed
hard for most of the trip.

The commodore of the Polish Yacht Club didn't like me because I rode loud motorcycles and he was a cop, and because I
wasn't Polish. Besides, the Jafco was the prettiest boat there and many folks said so. He sank it on me four times. I know this
because other members told me. Well, I wasn't up for another war after coming back from Viet Nam, so I just traded the boat
for another motorcycle and went my way. It was a good boat - after I replaced one bad plank.

I did a search on the Internet and though I didn't find a 1960 model, these pictures are of a boat almost identical to mine. I
also remembered that I'd named it 'Sundance', and it was black outside and gray inside on both the deck and the sides. And
the engine cover was upholstered on top.

~~~~~ End of 20' Mahogany Jafco Runabout ~~~~~

The last picture is of an 18 footer, but it looks so similar that I've included it.

March 9, 2009 - Seafood Shack Marina - Cortez, Florida

Espin and I are heading off to Marine Surplus and General Propeller this morning. He needs me to look at a deck hatch to
see if I think it's strong enough to place in the cockpit sole of Ajax to allow him easy access to his stuffing box. I need to go to
General propeller to have a prop reconditioned and re-pitched, and have a heavy bronze steering wheel bored to fit my
Edson steering gear. I've never really been thrilled with the wheel I have. It was given to me by Pam, a girl I dated for a while
who bought it for me from a curio shop. There is a certain amount of speculation that it may have been intended as a
decorative item and not as a real ship's wheel. I also have a small concern about being tossed into it in a high seas situation
and having one of the pointy handles greet me in the goodies and put me on the deck gasping for a few highly important
minutes when I should be trying to save the boat, and my life.

I have been thinking about adding video and audio components to these pages but haven't tried any yet. They come with the
SiteBuilder software provided by Yahoo and I'm tempted to try to spice up the Logs, but I sometimes find those things
annoying when they pop up on other sites and cause everything to slow down, or start blasting out some awful noise that
only a wrecking crew could like. I'll try it out on one of my 'ghost' pages and see what I think.

Meanwhile, it's time to add another chunk of the old Sailing Tales pages here. I know it might be boring for some, but the
sections are easy to skip right over. I'm also thinking about a Guest Book, but not too hard. I'm not sure what it 'says', if you
know what I mean. It might be a bit of ego candy or something that I surely don't need. On the other hand, it might be nice to
know if some of the cruisers I meet on the way are readers. We'll see.

March 10, 2009 - Seafood Shack Marina - Cortez, Florida

I'm reconsidering adding video or audio tracks to the log pages because I tried it yesterday and the files are so big that I'm
afraid they will slow down page loading. I've also decided not to add a Guest Book. The sections I still have left to transfer
from the old Sailing Tales pages are big - and poorly written - okay, okay, I said it - and I'm going over them prior to
transferring them in. A little at a time the site is shaping up.

Yesterday, Espin and I went to General Prop and I got a couple of good surprises. First, it would only cost $60 to bore the
steering wheel. Second, it would only cost $100 to recondition the prop and twist it up to an 18 x 14 from an 18 x 12. Hot
diggity. We headed over to Marine Surplus to investigate his cockpit hatch and only five minutes into the ride I got a phone
call. General Prop - the hub of the steering wheel was a hollow casting and they couldn't bore it. Okay, okay. Well, what are
you gonna do? No problem. I'll stick with the old wheel. Ten minutes after that, still en route to Marine Surplus, I get a second
call. General Prop - the prop I dropped off isn't an 18 x 12 - it's 18 x 10 and there's no way to twist it up to a 14. Plus, the alloy
is pretty 'pinkish', meaning a lot of electrolysis damage. Do I still want to twist it up 2 inches? It might crack and be junk. Sure,
give it a shot. If it cracks, toss it out and I'll be back over to pick up the steering wheels. I haven't heard back yet either way,
but one way or another, two money/equipment issues are resolved and I can cross them off the list of things to do.

Yesterday I also scrubbed the Bimini one more time. It looks great. All signs of green gone. I also washed off the deck and put
the sunshade and Bimini back on. I also put another load of dock debris in the rolling storage locker I sometimes have to drive
around for transportation.

March 12, 2009 - Seafood Shack Marina - Cortez, Florida

Espin drove me over to General Prop yesterday morning and I picked up the prop and wheels. Sure enough, the prop is just
about as corroded and scabby as can be, but it survived the re-pitching to 18 x 12 and will make a good spare. I'll open up
the hub on the wheel myself.

The next thing I did (all day) was to work on getting the lead out of the keel area beneath the companionway steps and
working back under the engine. Was a grueling pain in the ass. I managed to get about 125 or so pounds out so far, but the
good news is, the stern is coming up. I don't know how much I will ultimately remove, but I'll know by watching the waterline.
Once the boat is properly balanced again, I'll stop. And the truth is, right now, the fuel tanks are full to the brim, and I will
probably not keep them like that - it's 1300 miles worth of fuel - however, I need to be able to fill up without squatting the stern
of the boat.

Above left are the two wheels. The one with the potentially offending white spokes is what I am presently using, while the
other, a fine wheel with nice lacing on it, has a tapered 1" to 3/4" mounting hole. I will open up the hole myself and keep both
wheels, using each until I'm satisfied which I like best.

The the left is the lead I managed to wrestle free of the bilge yesterday. There is about 125 to 150 pounds there. It's hard
telling not knowing, and I can't be bothered getting a scale to find out. Besides, the amount of weight in numbers doesn't
count - it's the height of the waterline to the eye. The more pain I suffer doing this job, the lower the waterline will be
acceptable. I want to get out of here.

The three shots below are cryptic and difficult to discern, but they are very much a part of my present nightmare, so I thought
I'd include them. The big cross-beam in the first and third is trying to kill me. Most of the lead I removed yesterday is directly
beneath it, and that is where I will continue working today. I've only bashed my hands and arms into it about a hundred times
so far, and look forward to more of the same. It is amazing to me that someone who sustains as many minor injuries to their
hands as I do, does not have a simple box of Band-Aids aboard, but I do not. The dirty bilge pump in the center picture is
squarely beneath the middle of the engine, so once I make it to that area, I will be forced to pull out the engine and rest it
against the mainmast compression post. I'll be sure to include a shot of that process as well, because it's so much easier
doing this than the real work.

March 13, 2009 - Seafood Shack Marina - Cortez, Florida

I worked pretty hard yesterday but still only got about another 50 pounds or so of lead out. I may make this something of a
'light duty' day and do laundry and fuss with some other stuff - like the steering wheel hub. I still might tackle the lead for a
while, but we'll see. Every day, the air blasting from the air chisel blows up clouds of old fiberglass dust and makes me itchy.
Very soon, I'm going to have to roll a coat of some color paint over the entire interior to completely cure that problem. It's
annoying. Of course, then I'll have to grind it off again in those areas where I'll be installing shelves and other things that need
to be fiberglassed to the hull. Well, then, I'll only be able to paint areas that are completed.

So, have you heard how Florida Alligators only grow to a maximum of 14 feet or so? And any seen larger than that are the
exception, and seldom more than 15 feet? Yeah. Check these pictures out.

These pictures were taken by a KTBS helicopter flying over Lake Wiess
about 90 miles north of Birmingham , Alabama.

That has to be a HUGE gator to have a whole deer in its mouth!
The deer was later found to be a mature Stag and was measured at
11feet.

This alligator was found between Centre and Leesburg , Alabama near a
house! Game wardens were forced to shoot the alligator- guess he
wouldn't cooperate...

Anita and Charlie Rogers could hear the bellowing in the night. Their
neighbors had been telling them that they had seen a mammoth alligator
in the waterway that runs behind their house, but they dismissed the
stories as exaggerations.

"I didn't believe it," Charles Rogers said, but they realized the stories
were, if anything, understated.

Alabama Parks and Wildlife game wardens had to shoot the beast. Joe
Goff, 6'5" tall, a game warden, walks past the 28-foot, 1-inch alligator he
shot and killed in their back yard.

Remember that 'gator in the old horror movie where everyone said, "You
could NEVER have one THAT big!" Yeah, maybe.

March 16, 2009 - Seafood Shack Marina - Cortez, Florida

It is Monday and I have been a little off today. I woke up at 2 AM, wide awake with no hope of going back to sleep. By 6:30
AM I had a nasty headache and took one of the Benadryl day crushers. The headache went away sometime during my three
or so hours of drowsy TV watching, so I got up and have been doing little things and visiting around the marina. Yesterday I
went over to Regatta Point Marina to visit with George and Kim who have returned from their second trip to Amsterdam. This
batch of pictures has more blurry shots than the last, which either means they had more fun or were less patient. I don't know
which. We all went to the monthly Regatta Point Marina indoor barbecue dinner and ate like pigs, then watched the Space
Shuttle take off. It was spectacular. Right at sunset, with the smoke trail blazing bright red in the sky from the sun. We could
actually see the rockets break away and begin falling. I just measured our distance from the launch site at 140 miles on
Google Earth, so that was a pretty good show from so far off.

I've included 4 shots from George and Kim's trip to Amsterdam, because it's way better than talking about the stuff I didn't get
done as far as work on the boat today. Espin is rounding up and fixing to settle in around his cockpit floor hatch, so I expect
to get involved in that soon, though I will be doing a minimal amount, just enough to be sure it's done right. He will do most of
the work - I think. We'll see.

March 17, 2009 - Seafood Shack Marina - Cortez, Florida

It's St. Patrick's Day, so I'm wearing a green T-shirt so the bilge knows I'm in the spirit of the day as I chew away at the lead.
Everything is all set and prepared and I am about to start work, but before I do, I thought I'd finish my morning coffee and stop
in here. Espin reads this (how often, I don't know) so it's always a crap shoot to talk about him in here. Of course, if I say he's
just the greatest sailor since Ahab rode Moby Dick into oblivion, he's not sure what I mean so he stops at the 'greatest sailor'
part. The funny thing that's going on is that, now that I've agreed to help him with the cockpit sole hatch, he thinks he's going
to cajole me into designing and building a special mount for his transom that he can put his dinghy outboard on, should his
Yanmar inboard diesel ever fail. But that isn't going to happen. I have had it. I am now on Falcon and that is that. Except for
some of his cockpit floor hatch. Be back later.

March 18, 2009 - Seafood Shack Marina - Cortez, Florida

I worked non-stop on St Patty's Day wrestling lead out of the bilge and actually made good headway. But I was a bit played
out at the end of the day and didn't get back to here. Yesterday, I started off all guns a'blazin' and fired up and once I got
down into the bilge and got started, I had a great epiphany - I was bruised and sore in far too many places to be doing this
today - so I rested and got started again this morning.

Well, there I was, hunkered down chiseling and elbows flying lead not budging and me taking stock and making a new
evaluation, and I made the turn. Now, I know what you're thinking - "He's saying he's gone 'round the bend", so to speak - but
no, it's not that, and even if it were most folks couldn't tell for sure anyway, but what I DO mean, is that I've done about all I
can practically do from the front of the engine, and now I have to pull the motor out and get busy on the middle of the engine
bilge area. So, the battery is back in place and I'm getting ready to pull the engine. I'm not sure how much lead I've actually
removed so far, but estimates of between 500 and 600 pounds would probably be fair. If I can get just another 200 pounds or
so, that'll satisfy me.

Meanwhile, Sandy from Tarquin gave me a set of photos she took recently, including some from the last dock party and some
dolphins from their last excursion. I'm about to go through them and upload a few here.

March 25, 2009 - Seafood Shack Marina - Cortez, Florida

I can't believe a week has passed since my last entry. Okay, yeah, I can. It has been a fairly uneventful week. I've been
mining lead from beneath the engine and finally gave up, convinced I would have to pull the engine out to get better access.
This decision made, I now went about a few other chores, not so much really, and got them done. My sad little DVD player
gave up the ghost, even though I slammed it straight on the head a number of times with hard objects, so I had to go get
another. $39. The world is changing, as the narrator said in 'The Lord Of The Rings'. I remember when DVD players were
$600. Walmart. I also found a bathroom scale for under $8 and snatched it up. Turns out I had 300 pounds of lead waiting on
the dock, so Espin took it and we agreed the other shipment to Volkaar was probably around 200. Half of the first batch was
from the bow areas, so that means that I've removed about 400 pounds from beneath the engine. I will keep going until I'm
either exhausted, happy, or both.

Sandy from Sandy and Ken, or 'new' Sandy, gave me a CD with some pictures she's taken. She is clearly gifted and I will be
posting some of them here. The two shots below are hers. The one of Falcon was taken on one of those rare days when
Randy was out on 'MoonDream' and Falcon was visible from that side. The other is a recent sunset.

After fussing (internally) and preparing for a couple of days, last night I took about 30 to 40 minutes and pulled the engine out,
moved it forward and secured it so I could get busy on finishing my career as a lead miner. Gratefully, everything went quickly
and easily and I have to commend the builder on a superior job of design and implementation. The boat is flawless. Well, a
little bit flawless. I tried working at the lead a bit this morning and now realized that I will need a sledge hammer, so, off to
Home Depot. I hope they have 8 pounders - I have no desire to try to wield a ten pounder with one hand all day.

The access to the lead beneath the engine is now as good as
it gets. I will now use the 6 foot chisel and a BIG hammer and
chop out another 400 pounds, hopefully. We'll see.

Tonight, we are preparing for a little dock party, expecting to
see George and Kim over from Regatta Point Marina. They
were expected to arrive in 'C Joy', their 28 foot Westsail, but
talking with George on Sunday revealed that the new Chemo
he's on is kicking his butt and he may not be up to sailing, so
they will probably drive over.