new visitors, and some old friends

this cute little hitch-hiker won't get very far on our hull in the next few days, but it was fun to watch him scurry across crickets underbelly, just below the waterline.

and our old friends "the jellies" are back!

the dipping

new pictures from today on facebook!

sunday... a perfect day of worship and fellowship! we had a very lovely time in church, then went visiting several new found friends around the boatyard and around the town. a very lovely, and interesting time. t'was a hot day, so we went to our friend, keaton's beach and swam in the bay, enjoying the day with the various birds around.

here's a few samples:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?id=723072638&aid=174905&s=80&hash=0d97d66cc7542e0053847d083eb9a0db

pictures on the ol' facebook to appease for now ; )

sorry about all the blog silence...

guess i'm sorta waiting to get in the water, and get sailing before i'm "really" blogging...

excuses, excuses!

there's some great, new pictures on my facebook of much of the stuff pam's been blogging about!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=174905&id=723072638&ref=mf

later...

getting wired

today; a lot of fiddling with the electrogizmos. i think the yard is considering actually working on our boat. we even had a couple of yard workers do a few things to cricket, and to crickets mast. nice! we’re filling our minds with wires and diagrams of wires, and various ways of connecting wires. also we’re considering creative routes to run wires and all the myriads of stuff that wires can carry within their veins. but when all is dreamt up, and put into it’s proper place it will be a very pleasant thing; sailing around without often running into things!

after all these wirey matters we enjoyed a very fine evening upon the water upon our dear friends darrell and nancy's boat, makarios. they had the pleasure of launching their lovely center cockpitted boat today, and are anchored right out there in the harbor. there was no way we were going to say no to an evening of dinner and stories afloat with our good cronies darrell and nancy and kurt and michael! can't even begin to describe the warmth of friendship we experienced as the cool, torrential rain tried to drown out our conversation upon the bimini's canvas.

check out my facebook for a few more pictures (i'm finding that this blogsight doesn't do these photographs justice ; )

early to rise, early to bed

if i use a large font, that is not black, and a few pictures of the day, would i then be allowed to use less words for this entry?

up early to roll on a gallon and a half of our ol' friend, bottom paint. did i mention how great it is to have such a joyful helpmate to roll along with?

the new stuff, although it is supposed to be great at keeping the little critters off our big, fat hull was a little thinner, and thus a little splatteryer than the stuff we'd been working with, so we were wearing a bit more of it when we finished "earrrliie in th' mornin'"

so we both showered and scrubbed, and scrubbed because neither one of us fears the possibility of barnacles growing on our arms as much as the thought of poisoned paint lingering on our skin membrane.

then ed and nola came!

and then we had a lovely afternoon swapping tales, showin' 'em round the town, eating seafood and ice cream, and just plain being with each other. --------------[}- : )

there is something very special about biking to church! we were singing a little hymn we’d learned some time ago, to the beat of our feet turning the peddles, cranking the chain, turning the wheels... “we are biiiking in the light of God, we are biking in the light of God,” ding-ding on the little bike handlebar bell, “we are biking, biking, we are biking, biking, biking in the light of God,” ding-dinggg!

we parked our bikes outside and found the sanctuary of the phillippi church abandoned, so that they could fill the fellowship room with folks sipping coffee at long tables for the “informal" worship service.

we all started with the singing of a heart filled “what a friend we have in Jesus...” twice, because the pastor felt passionately moved by it, since we were singing it in memory of a beloved member who had passed away a couple of years back. today not only happened to be the day before memorial day, but also this “regular saint’s” birthday. we all felt passionately moved to sing it again. even the kid who handled the c.d.’s of our “virtual organist” didn’t mind switching the disk back into the c.d. player! that set the stage for a very lovely service that consisted of a sermon in which there was quite a lot of good, meaningful dialogue between the preacher and the congregation, a time of freely sharing joys and griefs among the people, more hymns and communion.

we stopped at the little coffee cafe on our way back to cricket.

we’d planned on putting another coat of bottom paint on her, but discovered some spots that were in need of more scraping, sanding and priming. these areas had been previously covered up by the stands that hold cricket upright on the hard. the stands have been intentionally moved to different locations on the hull when we were moved closer to the water in the boatyard. it was grrreat to have a partner to do this work with! so good!

it was a hot day, so when we’d finished up with the dirty, dusty work we showered to rinse off the bottom paint, and then treated ourselves to an ice cream and an iced tea from the ship’s store here at the marina. we went out to the end of the fueling dock to enjoy our treats, enjoy the sight of all the memorial day weekend fun on the water, and enjoy each other’s company. it was fun to capture some of the bay activities with the new canon camera.

after a few visitors on the boat we went out for a couple of beers with my new sailboat friend graham and his author/actress wife lydia. a very lovely time.