Where to begin? I suppose a personal note is in order first.

 I have noticed this week, for the first time since buying Mary Lee, I am anxious to get things done and get her back in the water. Previously, I was such a wreck, between the pain, pain meds, atrophied muscles  I had to fight with to respond and a general overall exhaustion, I just had to fight to keep moving. It is still not what it would be if I had never been hurt, however, I suppose if I am ever able to keep up with my plans I will know I have recovered.

 Think about it. I have more time to plan when I hurt too bad to move. When not hurting, I am too busy to plan so far in advance. I am otherwise preoccupied with projects.

Mary Lee is starting to look like somebody cares.

I had much elbow grease into the scrubbing at this point. The whole stern end was pretty yellowed.

Enter the magic cleaner. Toilet bowl cleaner that is. Two bottles for under $3. 6 bottles will do the whole exterior of a 33 foot sailboat. Spray on. Let set for a few minutes, hose off. Gel coat is now white and ready for a quick buff and a couple coats of wax.
It had a side benefit. All the stainless on Mary Lee was looking pretty rusted. Last summer as I was weening myself off pain meds she just sat on a transient dock soaking up the salt spray. In about 20 minutes the rust was gone.

I wish I had taken a before picture. You would have to see it to believe it.

This was actually from a couple days ago. After four straight hours of scrubbing on this rear quarter you could still see the yellow stains. All white now. Deck hardware is off. White non skid should have been here this morning. Not a good area for getting boat stuff. I will take pictures of the topsides with grey non skid before doing the white. I had bought white in Baltimore. Had someone say" you won't like that, it will give you a lot of glare". I took it back and got grey. The grey is like having a heating element on top of it all day superheating the boat. I want the glare thank you!!! Even with a breeze blowing through it all day and a big fan from Wal Mart blowing on high. It stays well over 90 degrees until after midnight.

I had one other mistake I made when putting on the grey non skid. I listened to advice in bedding deck hardware with butyl tape. Steve Franko warned me. He said"Once there is pressure applied to that hardware it will start working and you will get leaks". Well...He made sense, but, I have always been willing to try new things. There are moments when I wonder about my willingness to do that. Having one now. Redoing a job right now. :-)
So I was telling this tale to another friend and he said....butyl tape is great, you just have to countersink your holes. NOT MINE!!!! I am not doing this one more time. 5200 is $11.00 a tube at Lowes. Guess what I am using?

So this week I built a makeshift bandsaw. I know...it looks just like a jigsaw fastened to a board. It is. It sets in router table with blade sticking up. Now I have two hands to control the curved cuts I may be doing. Pull a few screws and it is a jigsaw again.(jigsaw is actually recessed into a pocket I routered in the thicker board, otherwise the blade would not stick out far enough. Thick board is glued to bottom board because I wanted the strength)

I cannot remember if I showed how I designed extension table for tablesaw. Keep in mind that I have a space under the v-berth for this woodworking stuff. It goes south when I do. I have given considerable thought to compactness and usability. Everything going will break down quite small. I should be able to build anything I could need with the set up I have.

This last Saturday was the neighborhood yard sale on Vivian's block. Vivian cleaned house(so to speak).

Just found out that the local marine service center that promised me the white non skid today, MIGHT have it tomorrow. If not...for sure Friday. Well, the decks are sparkly clean today. If they don't have it tomorrow before 3:00 then Marine west can have it Friday. Cheaper. The guy seemed to think it was no big deal that they lied to me....Hey, he said, It isn't supposed to rain this week. Yup...But I get to clean the deck again early Friday morning so I can apply non skid. Go figure. I guess I am buffing and waxing first thing in the morning. I need to get it done anyways. Vivian's son Jon (the soccer player) is going to help sand bottom paint off this weekend. I have drive shaft to pull out. It will be busy.

So a small set back or two. A new chemical for cleaning. Did I mention the big fat rust colored hornet that got me on the hand this morning? Some would say"That's boating)! I say"That is not boating....that is trying to go boating" :-) Am I sorry I started this adventure?  No!!!!  I am so close I can taste it.

Closer to my dream than this guy.

It is wood of course. 20 foot cat boat. Weighs about 2000 pounds and has some serious rot in some critical areas. Gary is the proud owner. His first sailboat. He seems optimistic. I don't know him well enough to know if he is in over his head. It needs a cradle so it can be flipped over. I suspect I will be learning about this when not sailing this summer. It is the leftovers of a pretty neat catboat. I understand how it was built. I also feel a sense of happiness in knowing it is his project.  :-)  yes...I will help him build a cradle and figure it out. I don't know that I need one more project....but I tend to help out when I can. I am sure it will be an experience

There you have it. Depending on how many obstacles I run into. Mary Lee goes in the water the weekend after memorial day. Well....in on Friday and in Georgetown on Saturday. That is the plan. I see no reason why that plan will not come to fruition.

A little over a month in the gym and I am feeling a bit better. Lost two pounds but really made some important muscles a lot harder. I have my plate full now. No time for the gym. I am just a couple days from starting cabinets for out in the garage. I have bottom shelf of build in cabinets done above Vivian's washer and dryer.

When finished, there will be doors to close over the baskets.

I finally figured out how I was going to add extension to table saw. Now I will be able to rip full sheets of plywood down the center with a fence. It will have a stationary fence attached at 24 inches. I will make spacers that fit along side fence for narrower cuts. Existing fence only allowed for an 11 inch wide cut. Work bench will double as an outfeed table so I won't need anyone to catch the pieces for me.

When I started putting workbench together. The first two pieces were glued together and then I cut to length. I decided to see if I could chisel the pieces apart. The pieces were twisted a bit and not having enough clamps to really pull everything tightly together, I thought it would be easy to get them to come apart. Not so. Don't let anyone tell you that waterproof wood glue is not strong. The wood was splitting apart but not the glue. I had to saw them apart after I figured out how to get the chisels out.

I built a coffee table for the youth's tv room. All inch boards and 2x4 legs. Glued and screwed. 38 screws. I think you could jump up and down on it without hurting it.

All edges are routered.

I need boxes for tools and fasteners so I can find what I am looking for on work bench shelves.

Since this was scrap I decided to make a few boxes out of it. It took about 20 minutes to build as I had to make a couple cuts and set up the router for making grooves to glue bottom in. I wanted to see how strong this stuff is. There is a stack of it in the garage left over from new construction. I intend to build cabinets in the garage with it. Once again I have given it a lot of thought(I engineer everything I do now that my brain is functioning better again) I am very good at visualizing and tend to build and rebuild everything in my head before I actually do it. I have always done this. Thinking is free so you can do all you want. I rarely have a radio going when I do things. I just tend to get lost in thought.

I had picked up a radial arm saw. We had one back in high school wood shop. I never cared for that one. Care for this one even less.

I think a good chop saw with a table set up so I can measure once, put up a stop on the mark and cut as many of the pieces as needed all exactly the same without measuring each one is truly better for the stuff I will be doing. So I took the legs off it for the new router table.

My first router table. I have done most of my routering by hand. This is nice and it opens up a lot of possibilities. Also, as I am unable to use a dado blade on the table saw, this will cut all the grooves needed for the cabinets and drawers. Oh!! Did I say drawers? I must be jumping ahead to the boat. But first. I have some finishing to do with all this stuff I am building. I bought a sprayer.

I saw them used for paint and polyurethane on a wood working program. Very little over spray. I will know soon. So....back to Mary Lee.

  Started on her yesterday. She got a very good bath. I have some wetsanding to do on the gel coat and then she finally gets a good buffing. The grey non-skid gets covered with white non-skid. She has been unbearably hot since the grey went on. I had a white companionway board laying in the cockpit baking in the sun. The yellowed gel coat and the grey non-skid.
   The board was cool when I stepped on it. The gel coat was a little warmer. The grey was scorching hot. Bye Bye grey. I won't go into detail but I had white non-skid and I was told by a weekend cruiser that the glare would be terrible, I would wish I had done it something darker. Most of the jobs I have had to do twice were from bad advice. Setting out in the sun, even with a breeze blowing through and using a big box fan from wal-mart, it would be almost midnight before it finally dropped to below 90 degrees.

I have been splicing the ends of the new running rigging. All deck hardware including stanchions will be pulled off to do the new white non-skid. It all needs rebedded anyways. I intend to have her spit polished for the summer. I finally figured out the proper way to take care of drive shaft issues. It turns out I openened up a can of worms when I started working on Mary Lee in Baltimore. I wish I had not been on pain pills back then. But it is what it is. I am taking her to Florida November first.

Georgetown, South Carolina for the summer. Vivian and I will spend weekends sailing. During the weekdays I will be sewing new canvas and finishing up the projects here and on Mary Lee.

If all goes as planned, Vivian and I will take her to the Islands for a Christmas break. Then I will work my way down to Marathon and have a look. Probably work my way back here for next summer. Possibly go up to the Chesapeke Bay and see what I can get into.

Three years since I bought her. The triumphs, the let downs. I was really to doped up and hurt to be doing this. If not for a good dose of will power I would not be this far along. Vivian thinks I need to write the book about everything from the injury forward. I had planned it, I just have so much to fight through that I have no juice left in the tank for something like that. I do have some journals from while I was laid up and also that first summer working on Mary Lee. I had a hard time finding much good in a long time. Yet...as I say that, I have met some great people, make new friends constantly, have a great adventure ahead of me and I did the right thing.
   I saved myself from laying around waiting to die by investing in a dream.

   Because without something to look forward to, are you not just waiting to die? I also think that when we are finally lucky enough to reach an age where we can no longer do the things we wish, we can be one of only two types of people. The ones who can enjoy fond memories of the things we have done and possibly find someone to share them with, or, we can sit around thinking of all the things we wish we had done.

I plan on reaching 100 years of age. I turn 50 in September. I have 50 years to collect memories, if not more. I am never going to stop moving. I will always stay active and force myself to when it seems like I can't.
Rain imminent today or I would be over working on Mary Lee right now. Out to the garage I go to splice some eyes in the end of more new lines.

Almost forgot. I decided to grow hair out a little and this is what I have come up with so far. Facial hair is long enough. Hair on top will get grown out a little more.