Hi again....

I have been busy. Not a lot to talk about so have not been posting.

  I am constantly amazed at how difficult my physical recovery has been. That and the fact that it is still ongoing. At this point... I am just about 2 weeks with no real pain meds. It is hard to consider a 600mg ibuprofen and a Tylenol pm at bedtime as real pain meds.

  When I bought Mary Lee, my brain seemed to think my body could somehow just miraculously recover and push on through to completion of future plans. My body did not see it the same way :-)

  My legs still have much nerve pain. It still radiates out from the L-1 to my hips and points south. Getting to sleep at night is difficult at best. However... even though I still have to be careful about what I do,(especially now that I am not taking anything to ease the affects of overdoing) My brain is coming out of the drug induced fuzziness. I am pleased :-)  I hated taking pills long before the back injury in March of 2006. April 16th is 2 year anniversary of buying Mary Lee. I could barely stand without a cane when I bought her. That was on 120mg of oxycontin a day. I had to ride the wheelchairs through the airports. WOW!!!! What a battle it has been.
   Even though I have not moved along at the pace I had planned, I am still doing all I can do every day. If I do to much or do something wrong... I may be several days before I can even continue. Still... I do what I can on the slack days. I have a goal.... I will not be detoured.

  This is beginning my 3rd year with Mary Lee. I have a busy summer planned. I will get a lot of sailing done this summer. A few changes to Mary Lee. Solar panels and wind generator installed. I have a garage to work in and most tools are now bought and shop is set up.

  I built a good solid table to work on. I still need a set-up for doing mortise and tenon joints. Also need to pick up a dovetail jig. I am looking at building a permanent dodger for Mary Lee. It will give me a place for solar panels. I have sorted out how I want to re-fit the galley. I am happy with what I finally came up with.

Lumber delivered for dinghy build.

Because inflatable is selling. I just want a wood dinghy that I can also sail.

  Have plans for nesting dinghy. put together it weighs just over a hundred pounds. I think I am going to build a few different styles of punts, prams and dinghies this summer and find something that I like. I will certainly build this rascal. But not quite yet. Besides... as long as I can sell my experiments, I can let the proceeds pay for some upgrades.

  I am not jumping in blind. I am making sure to read all I can for those little tricks that make projects go easier.

  Spring has sprung. Yesterday was spent enjoying the sun. Long walk on beach was overdoing it a bit. But nice anyways.

Still baking. Spaghetti squash with fresh bread.

  Remember this. Holding tanks. It turned out that following advice is not always the best advice. Capping off second tank only keeps it from being pumped out. It still fills. Putting in suction tubes that are not only the right ones but also installed correctly makes a big difference. Moral of the story??? Never assume that what you are looking at was correct to begin with :-) Murphy said something like. "Never enough time to do it right.. ALWAYS enough time to do it over".

I like the idea of a composting head more all the time. That may be on the list.

   I will be sailing all I can this summer. Building dinghies and refitting a bit on Mary Lee. Of course... The battle to make my back stronger is ongoing. Did I mention I am now riding bicycle? Pretty big step. I have ridden as much as 14 miles on one day(that was not all at once and I had trouble not only finishing, but for days afterwards. But... I did do it) and will be regularly riding 3.5 miles from Mary Lee to garage in the morning and the return trip when I have done all I can and head back to Mary Lee
Tonight Mary Beth is helping me set up her total gym so I can start doing as much of that as possible. The daily plan will be to go for a short sail in the morning. Ride 3.5 miles to Mary Beth's and garage. Spend a short bit on the gym and then build for as long as I can stay on my feet, then ride the 3.5 miles back home. I will set aside one day a week(or more as it suits me) for work on Mary Lee and one day for nothing but sailing.

   I know it sounds like I am planning to overdo it.... Maybe, But I am heading south the first part of October this year and I intend to be as ready as I can. This is it. Whatever shape I am in come October, I am heading south.
At this point... I am wrestling with the idea of going back north next summer to explore the Maine coastline. I keep hearing about how great a place it is to sail. I have even heard it is the best in the U.S. I may have to see for myself.
   Need to get my passport this summer. I am not sure how the other plans are going with Peters sailboat. Refresher... I do not remember if I mentioned it. Peter(from Germany) is refitting a 65 ft. ferro-cement sailboat where I fixed my prop. He and his wife are planning to take it to Cartagena, Colombia sometime around November this year. I have an opportunity to ride along if the schedules work out. I would like to go check it out. Time will tell.

  Lee(south Korean) bought a 57 ft. sailboat in the same yard. He is planning on taking it to South Korea when done. I have an opportunity to go but I think My schedule is to full. Also. North Korea is pretty close to destination. It would be interesting to go along as far as the passage through the Panama canal.

  So you see... Not a lot of exciting things to blog about. However... there are some things about to fall into place. The dream is slowly approaching a point of fruition. I just need to keep my head down and keep pushing along.

Not much time for anything else. I will have to leave out all thoughts of any kind of relations beyond friendship, and certainly any dating, until I have made a pretty big dent in the work load. I have been alone this long. A little longer does not matter. My lesson last winter will keep my nose clean :-) (some of you know about that)

I am constantly making new friends. That makes this experience a rich one for me. I have not forgot anyone I met so far. Everyone has left a permanent mark. Final analogy for today. If it was over tomorrow... Everything leading up to it has been so worth the effort.

Certainly not the way I planned it.  Every minute of my day hurts, whether I move or not. But (if hurt I must) better to have a life and hurt, than to lay around doped up hurting and wishing for a life.

 

 

Hi... It is I.

Sorry I have not updated in a while. Lack of updates are due in part to lack of service when I have time. Other reasons are hurting to bad to want to. I guess everyone is used to this one by now. The other reason is just being busy. Visiting with new friends and emailing and texting pen pals and friends. Somehow... by the time I get all caught up it is usually very late and the blog is put off again.

So everyone knows I had a broken prop.

There it is. I finally got Mary Lee towed to a yard about a mile away and had her hauled out. I thought about just having a diver do it but in the end I decided I better have it hauled so I could see what everything looked like. I hauled at Anchors away. Once Mary Lee was all blocked up they informed me I could not stay on board. Now what???? I had made a friend.. Mary Beth, who told me I could stay at her home until my prop showed up. She is the manager??? of the Old Baldy Lighthouse on Bald Head Island.

I tried to make this download upright but blogger is just not letting me. Since I was so graciously offered a place to stay while awaiting parts, and I needed something to do. I did some volunteer work out at old Baldy.

I repaired a water line, put price tags on things for gift shop, coat hooks in bathrooms. Repaired a handrail, turned up dirt in one of the flower beds to get it ready to plant. I still have other projects I have offered to help with but first things first.

I enjoy cooking all the time. This is pan dulce. Also known as Mexican sweet bread. I have eaten it much but only store bought. It turns out I had a very successful first batch. It is so incredibly better tasting made from scratch that I will never buy it again.

My dinner rolls are a little on the large side.

I also experimented with a different topping for my cinnamon rolls. Very gooey and rich. You can hold these in your hand and eat without making a big mess either. I have a bit of a change in mind for these. It is going to be a very good one.

Meanwhile... Back at the ranch. I thought Steve and Linda Franko would get a kick out of a different kind of Yesterdays dream.

Everybody thinks it is steel until you get a closer look. Fiberglass. Looks like that dream happened yesterday :-)

Prop is on. Key slipped forward and prop would not seat properly. Do not laugh. This Makeshift prop puller worked.

So next time you think things are bad at your marina. I had to run about 70 feet of extension cord and use an adapter to get power. That is my orange cord on the right. I really did not want anything to do with this potentially dangerous set-up but when you need to plug in.
The other yard. Hampstead boat yard was a much better place. I did not know there were two of them using the same slip for haul-outs. I know now.

I can make a pretty good oyster soup.

One of my favorites. Fried potatoes, onions and eggs. Not even close to fish and chips with a side of gravy... but we'll take it.

I finished up a 24 day water fast just a few days after pulling Mary Lee out. I had gained quite a bit of weight in Baltimore. I was 248 pounds before Christmas and I know I gained after that. The 248 was at the doctors office. I dieted a couple weeks and then fasted. I weighed 202 pounds when finished. I feel sooooo very much better.

Back in the water she goes. I am so excited I want to jump up and down. Maybe I did... I am not telling :-)

A friend I met at Anchors away saw me waiting at figure eight bridge in Wrightsville, Nc. and took this with his phone as I went through. Thanks Tom.

It was cold but sunny. Wind kept getting worse. Finally I made it into Snows Cut near Carolina Beach, NC. I got here about 4:00 pm. No wind. I knew I did not have far to go but It was so nice here. I anchored for the night. I spent the afternoon texting, emailing, phoning and just enjoying the sun. It turned out to be a real nice anchorage.

I had it all to myself the following morning. Not even the slightest breeze. It looked like a sheet of glass. I could not have asked for much more. Maybe a sail up and no engine running. Of course a companion who enjoyed it as much as I would be nice too. I am busy but who knows. Maybe someday. Point is. Until they made me share it with other boats... It was pretty spectacular.

I am going to be using Mary Beth's garage in Southport to set up wood shop 101. I will build a few nesting dinghies to sell and also one to keep. Do upgrades on Mary Lee and hopefully have her where I want by the end of the summer. Mary Beth has treated me like family. Something I am finding a lot here in the south.

The people in the boating world are also a breath of fresh air. I am going to miss all of it when I head south. I am amazed at the people I have met and the friends I have made since starting this adventure. To think I could have paid cash for a house in Idaho and staggered around a garage for the rest of my life. I chose to buy Mary Lee and it has certainly been an adventure up until now. I made the right choice. Not the easy choice, but the right one.
     So many wonderful people have all become a part of this in some way or another that the comment I made to a friend about being hurt so bad for so long that my soul just felt sick no longer applies.  I know this may sound odd. But go through what I have and then tell me about it. I spent years thinking all fun in life was over and wondering if there was anything left for me. It turns out I had to take a desperate chance and force a change. Good change. I would not trade what I am doing now for anything anyone else is doing.

So Mary Lee is tied up to a new dock. The weather is getting warmer. I have a very busy summer planned. Muuuch to get done. Sailing weather is upon me and Life is great!!!!!

I promise to update more often. I will have a lot to share as the summer passes. This next winter I will be in warm weather :-) :-)

 

 

Today has been a very good day for me.  Well.... There is one thing that bothered me just a tad, but that comes after a very good day and it cannot spoil my mood :-)

It was cold for a couple days. Yesterday was beautiful. Today was starting out the same. I felt the best I had in a long time. I will get to that also in good time.

I decided after the 3 days it took to get clothes dry and condensation out of Mary Lee from the last laundry day. I would be careful and only do it on warm days when I could have everything open . I would also limit how much I do. I packed up what clothes I thought I would do and decided to check weatherbug quick (on phone). It is indeed going to rain. I poke my head out and decide those clouds out on the horizon did kind of look like the type. Hmmmm.... Guess I am not doing that. So now what. It accurs to me that I was waiting for a nice day to fix latch on forward hatch that broke the other day.

First things first. It is warm and I want to take a walk. I have time. Off I went. I made it about 5 minutes and ended up talking to the harbor master and another gentleman for another 10. Finally figured I better move or forfeit. I made about 100 yards and it started to sprinkle lightly. Walk is over. Back to Mary Lee to get that hatch done.

It took longer than planned. Gee...where have I heard that before (maybe I should quit planning). I laid in the v-berth to do it. If I had gone topside I would have been rained on the whole time. The hatch would have needed to be all the way open and then I would have a lot more to dry out. Nope.. Did it inside. I was dry and the hatch only needed to be open a little. Good all the way around..

Well that picture is not very clear. You might remember the box I built for this on an earlier post. I decided today would be a good day to hook up my gps inside and have a closer look at what all it does. I had really only had time to figure out just some precursory settings and wanted to know everything in that little box. Yes..That is a 19 inch led monitor.  It was a good buy and I decided I liked seeing things. The intention with buying this kind of set up is to eventually have a monitor below with the gps and a monitor at the helm. I will set everything up out of the weather then go up and play. There are alarms for anything and everything that might bother you while unaware. Even the anchor watch alarm if you drag anchor at night. I don't know how well these things will work yet but it is a good idea. Of course having it set up where you can hear the alarm would be necessary.

Could not get the camera to focus on the screen and the gps at once. You have to admit, that screen will make things easy to see. It zooms in much closer.

Practice what you preach. I was in a hurry last year when I wired the gps and screen. They got separate power plugs. I set it up so it would take just a minute to unplug and put away. I changed to one plug today. Turned out good. Next, since I was standing there was the in-line fuse holder for the marine radio.

Thought you might like to see my electrical box. I have worked on a lot of stuff out of here. This is top tray.

The bottom. Notice it is packed tightly right up to where the tray reaches. I have at least 5 different types of soldering irons, 4 different types of strippers, etc. Everything I have for working on electrical is not here. Apparently I still have a lot of things in storage that I would like here.

I started looking for a clamp to hold gps box down with. This worked beautifully.You can see the weight of the box will go forwards. I didn't have to tighten this. It is just close. The weight of the handle locked it down nicely. If I had a dog or kids running around it may not be good but it is more than stable enough for me.

I said the day went beautifully until the end. The waste is not pumping all the way out. My tanks are overful again. Yep... That is exactly what I thought. I know the cure. All that replumbing I did two summers ago is coming out. I will use pvc and put it the way the factory had it. All of it. I will replace everything including the hand pump-out.

I was in pretty tough shape my first summer working on Mary Lee and I was concerned with the differences between a boat and a car, house,etc. (pretty much everything I had ever built or fixed) I figured I would just ask those that were doing boats and follow their advice. To date. Some of the advice was good but a lot more was not.

From now on. I walk my own path. Capping off that other waste tank was a huge mistake and I should have made sure the syphon tubes that pull the waste out of the bottoms were correct. I know the cure. I forgot to take pictures of the first mess of hoses the last owner had but I will remember to take pictures of what I was told was the right thing to do and what I will do this time.

That was not all the story but I have to get up early and take care of Mary Lee before the wind picks up.

Truth be told. I am not really bothered by this in the least. Better I know this now when it will be easy to fix. I will be sailing all summer. If all these little odds and ends are tied up now I will be much happier enjoying the fruit of my labors.

Yesterday I decided I had put off doing laundry as long as I could stand it. Before I get to that, I should mention that although nice and sunny there was talk of snow for the evening. I had my mind made up. I asked the harbor master and he said I would have to do it in the shower as it was not allowed outside and when done I could not hang clothes outside either. Hmmm....I will deal with that when I get to it.NEVER DO THAT!!!! I had quite a pile of laundry built up so decided half would be plenty to do. This was the smartest thing I did all day.

I went and got my 5 gallon bucket,washboard,laundry and shower bag. I will take a nice long hot shower when done. Good plan....right?

So it begins. It turns out doing the laundry here was not bad. Nice warm place. A little slow filling the bucket in the shower but acceptable.

Halfway there. All the heavy shirts and sweat pants are done.

All done :-) It does take a bit of effort. But if you remember, this is not about the easy way. I want to recover the health that I lost when I got hurt. I decide the heavier clothes that are harder to wring out should keep dripping while I shower. Then I can wring the bottoms out again before taking them back to Mary lee.

I don't know if anybody else has tried shampoo for shaving. I never heard of it, but I was curious. I had always used barbisol and had gone to the neutrogena on the right. It is a small tube and fits everywhere. You only use a dab about the size of a quarter to shave. It works very well. I ended up using the same amount of the head and shoulders. I could not tell the difference....really. I don't know if all shampoos will work the same. I have this big bottle of head and shoulders that was on Mary Lee when I bought her. Since it was new I just put it aside. There are a lot of shaves in this bottle.

But back to laundry day. I took a long, nice shower. Took my time getting everything picked up and ready to go. Headed out the door and was looking at cold rain and wind. Great. I have a half mile walk to the boat with the little cart full of laundry and shower goodies. Like always when things look trying, I thought for a minute about not doing it :-)  I know the rain has just started and will only get worse. It is a cool and wet walk but hey....I got a 2 mile walk in today overall.

This was in my shower bag and I thought I would share it. It is a piece of leather cut to the basic shape of my hair on the back of my head. When cutting my own hair I realized that the back was near impossible. This is easy. I slide it on with the elastic on my forehead. The ends line up evenly with my ears making it pretty much how I want it in back. I then take the clippers to it. I pull it off, comb hair again and do one more time. That way if there was something I missed I should have got it. I also trim the hair on my neck at the same time. When you take it off,the hair that was mashed down the most also fluffs back up the most and it is sort of a blind mans taper.

When I was hurt the most. I tried everything to make going for a haircut easy as i just couldn't sit up in a regular chair for long. I even made appointments and would end up in a straight backed chair waiting sometimes a half hour or more for a haircut. I finally realized that I had seen enough haircuts to do my own. I got fairly good at it. I mean I had paid for worse than I could do. Eventually I bought a flowbee. That worked beautifully. I could do all but trim the back in about 3 minutes. So back to laundry day.

I got back to the boat. Figured out how to hang all the clothes, decided it was getting cold and nasty enough that I didn't want to dig through the cockpit lockers. Materials for putting together my improved shower sump pump/box can wait. I realized in an hour or so that I was going to have a water condensation problem. I wasn't suure quite how to alleviate it yet so let it go hoping some things would dry a bit.

1:00 am. time to do something about condensation, if I leave it, things will surely get ruined. All clothes that were not dry went into the head/bathroom. I spent some time wiping everything down. Opened a port window for air and fired up the propane burners for a while. I didn't look at the time when I was done but after a while, between the fans and heat, it looked like I could give it a break.

It was sunny,40 degrees and windy in the morning. I had no choice. I needed to open everything up and get Mary Lee dried out. I put on a stocking cap and coat,opened it all up and let the wind do it's job. It took about 3 hours before I was satisfied. At this point I have 3 pair of sweat pants, a towel and 2 heavy shirts that are mostly dry hanging in the head with a little heater going on them.

There was clearly a lesson here :-) I tried to cut corners by piling up my laundry and doing it all at once.  I got bit by doing it the wrong way. The right way. The way I will do it from now on. I will wash the clothes I change out of when I go to shower right then and there. One change of clothes is pretty easy to deal with. That and I really do not have room for a big laundry bag laying around.

So how does this all tie up into a single statement? Murphy's law states "not enough time to do it right... always enough time to do it over". True but I feel it lacks somehow in the definition. Not only does this mean you get to do this at least two times.... BUT, You also get to learn what happens when something you spent time on is wrong. All the disappointments that go with realizing you not only did it wrong but depending on what it is you may get to tear it all back apart, buy new materials and spend even more time this time doing it right. Or you can just cobble everything, hope you get by and leave it for the next person.

I have one last thing that I get to do.

When I opened up the forward hatch the rivets finally broke off on this little rascal. Without this one corner won't latch tight and is going to make the hatch leak next rain. I thought I could just pop the rivets out for now and use screws and a little sealer just to get by. I broke off the head of one of the screws trying to see if the screws I have would go through. Now I get to dig drill and bits out of the cockpit locker so I can drill the proper holes. I guess I will use 5200 to seal it when done because I won't be doing this twice :-)

Sometimes we need a little challenge

I notice everytime you mention working on a boat someone says "That's boating". I thought about this. Everything man made wears out. When your car needs a tune-up,oil change,tires,brakes, whatever. Nobody says "Thats driving". If your house needs painted,lawn mowed,toilet or disposal quits, window breaks. Nobody says "Thats housing"

My world is a mechanical world. I see everything as a puzzle. Things must be right or they won't work. Everything man-made breaks or wears out. Maintainance is key here. "That's living in a modern world with conveniences. All the things I have fixed on Mary Lee up to this point were caused by the previous owner trying to do it himself. It is evident that he was not mechanically inclined or tenacious enough to get the job done right. Therefore I get to.

I not only get to work on things, but I also have to figure out if what I am working on was right when I started. I have to admit. With the exception of the engine and a few smaller things I have never worked on some of these things before. Most cars and houses do not have these exact things. I have a mechanical mind though. Fixing things has been my lifes interest. Figuring out how it works. I do not believe they make anything I cannot figure out. I mean really. A man built it right?

Then there is fighting it out until it is correct. Sloppy work brings on more trouble. Did you tuck that wire away properly? Solder the connection and seal it so it never gives trouble again. A very excellant tool for running wires is a hot glue gun. First leave some extra wire on the end you start with in case you ever have to work there again. Then start running wire. Go a little way,then clean a spot well. I use a good cleaner and then rubbing alchohol so all soap residue is gone. Squirt a little hot glue, press in wire and hold until glue cools enough to do the job. I have used this on four wheel drives for years and even after all the rough roads I have driven in the woods it never broke one loose. I have even used it to seal a connection when nothing else was available. Run the wire nicely. When at the other end, again leave some extra. Trying to work with a wire that is to short later is a problem we do not want. How about Dialectric grease.

Did you put a small dab on each end of that fuse to avoid corrosion? How about that light bulb you just put in. It also helps make a better connection. A dab of that on those wires you just crimped before you slid them into that connecter will help stop corrosion..

I mention this because I have been working on electric connections this week. If you think corrosion just happens on boats then you need to open the hood on an older car someday and pull the first connector apart that is not factory. But that is not the big project of the week. It seems as if the cobbled up goodies just keep on testing me to see if I am going to keep fixing them.

So back to my toilet and assuming it was correct when I started fixing it.

This piece. See how it opens?

This is where it goes. I assumed the flapper was right so I fought with it. When it was obviously wrong I pulled it apart and thought about how it all should work. The flapper was facing straight away from the toilet but the drain was at at a 45 from the pump. Hmmm... wouldn't it make more sense if the flapper opened up towards the drain so the toilet paper did not have to fight around a corner to go down? I thought so. Once again. This is new to me but common sense usually wins the day. Back together. Works fine. Then....

I actually didn't want to talk about this at first. After the head was fixed it suddenly started acting up. It had not been used much so I assumed it was the vent. I pulled up the deck and had crap all over. CRAP. What do you do? Well...after a disappointing few minutes of not wanting to deal with it I decided that I had to. First was to clean up so I could find out where it was coming from. I did not like that. After I got it clean I went in head and flushed again. This boat has two 30 gal. tanks. One for grey water and one for waste. When I bought Mary Lee the grey water was just opened. He had taken off the hoses but not capped it off. It also had a tangle of hoses you would not believe.

The advice was to just cap off second tank as it was not being used anyway. The grey water from shower was pumped out by this neat little box that he had installed on a piece of plywood that covered the lid on the second tank. When I worked the toilet waste came out of a lose lid. GREAT. Talk about a problem growing. So another cleanup. I need tank pumped before I proceed. I  am thinking I need to run another hose to this tank so it can be pumped. The next boat I buy will be looked at more closely. I know even new boats have problems but at least somebody that cannot work on them hasn't get to repair them yet. Who knows. I love my boat and am really not that far from getting the bungled jobs fixed. Maybe by by the time I am done I won't ever want to part with her.

The new prop is not here yet so tomorrow I idle her over to the fuel island to pump waste and fill water. It is only a stones throw away but I am a little concerned because it only has a 2 blade prop and one blade is gone. If it was much further....well I don't know. I gotta have a head. It is a half mile walk to the marinas and I can't have the waste tank overflowing.

Update. Today I moved Mary Lee over to pump waste and fill water. Trip over went very well. Everything went well. Trip back was a little tougher. I should have done it about a half hour sooner. I didn't want to rev engine if I could help it so needed to slide easily into slip. Naturally the wind had picked up and by the time I could get Mary Lee moving backwards the wind would blow the bow over far enough I would have to start over. I am tenacious though. It took 3 tries and I found an angle that would let me drift slowly back and in before the wind put me off again.

Not difficult or stressfull. If I'd  had any kind of thrust I was lined up right the first time. I see it as a learning experience. If that is the biggest struggle I ever have then life is truly blessed. I am starting to get anxious to get the last few things fixed so I can be out there. I don't even care where right now.

Last but not least. The toilet works beautifully :-) I wonder how many years somebody fought with that bungled repair. God forbid the boat came new like that and nobody fixed it.

Adventures with Mary Lee

Yesterday was a pretty busy day on Mary Lee.

While traveling south Mike had got something stuck in toilet. Naturally being my boat made me also the mechanic. I know what you are thinking.... I thought that too.  However, it is my boat and I had never taken one of these apart so I did. It was not my favorite thing. A regular flushing toilet in a house is a much nicer thing to work on. I made it happen. It was fairly simple actually. It was the clean up that was disgusting. I thought to myself " I hope I don't have to do that again any time soon". Never ever, ever, think it, because sure enough, you might just get to. It turned out that I just hadn't tightened one of the little plastic pieces enough. I didn't want to break it. It is tight now :-) I also bleached the whole head from top to bottom.

Since my work is done in the head. It is time to go through the galley. It looks small but I took everything out and gave it a deep clean. I know it looks small and at this point it has no oven but I bet I can cook some pretty good stuff in there. I will eventually need to get an oven installed. Yes, I will be the installer. It really isn't going to be much of a project. I remember thinking when I first started working on Mary Lee that I was going to be eating pretty simple stuff. How could you cook a real meal in there? I watched Steve Franko cook some pretty good meals on Yesterdays Dream. I know how to cook. No reason why I can't also cook better meals.

 My problem has always been being to busy and then just eating whatever is handy. I am not going to do that anymore. Part of the idea behind buying Mary Lee is to slow down and smell the roses. I know, you are thinking "how does a guy who was laid up for so long figure he needs to slow down?" Trust me, I always found things to do, even if I couldn't get up to do them. If nothing else, I read a lot. I can get buried in a book if I have nothing else to do.

I remember when I was in the Navy standing watch at the chiefs barracks. Well, it was more like a motel for chiefs. I had almost nothing to do all night as my 12 hour shift was from 6 pm to 6 am. They had a big screen tv and a small library full of westerns. I didn't grow up watching tv much and wasn't really interested in it. I did however read 5 to 6 of those little books in a shift until I had read all they had. I don't read many westerns anymore they all seem like "ground hog day" (the movie) same thing book after book.

I am still going through Mary Lee deep cleaning and figuring out what to keep and where to put it. I am also scrubbing it all down and wiping down the wood with the right stuff.

You might remember these pictures. Plenty of wood to wipe down. I am also changing my computer over to Google chrome and searching out appropriate apps. I see google is no more by the end of the year. Might as well get an early start. I have daily walks that are important as well. The cockpit lockers also need to be cleaned out again. When the exhaust piece broke it gave everything in there a coating of diesel soot. That should be fun. Then re-torqueing the head, exhaust and intake manifold bolts. I know I don't have to do this but well really I do. The engine was just rebuilt and that work does have to be done and unless I want soot on my hands every time I get into the cockpit lockers, I have to do that also.

I got hurt in March of 2006. I am rapidly approaching my 7 year anniversary. In all that time I dated one gal last year who turned out to be so exactly opposite of me that it was almost scary. I did decide, however, that   I shouldn't give up just because The first gal in a long time was not the gal of my dreams. I am going to be more careful in the future. Opposites do attract and I need to just keep an open mind and not dive into anything. Hopefully the search is not to difficult.

I decided not to give up on dating. I like meeting new people and I especially enjoy a womans companionship, but better off alone than with the wrong one. It is funny how an extended period of being laid up with a good case of getting "matured" changes ones way of thinking. Finding a nice gal won't change who I am but it could very well alter my plans. I'll just be me and leave the rest up to fate.  Everything happens for a reason even if we don't see it. Who would have thought I would ever be living on a sailboat AND in North Carolina? I didn't see it coming but whatever life throws at me, I can take it.

I better get started. I have a short list for today but sometimes the list takes longer to get done than I thought :-) Who am I kidding, It always takes longer

February 8, 2013

I have been looking through my old posts since I have been back on Mary Lee. It is interesting to see how far I have come since I started this journey.

 My first summer working on Mary Lee sure was a tough one. I had almost forgot how the nerves in my legs would just be on fire at night from crawling up and down the ladder all day. Let's not forget the atrophied muscle. I do not EVER want to rebuild that again.

I was pretty beat by the time I got to Thompson falls, Montana last winter. Between the yoga and then spending every single day in the gym once I started there I really made a lot of headway.

I got back to Mary Lee Last summer and it was such a different story. I could not have managed the engine build that first summer. I also have to admit. I think it was still all beyond my capabilities that first summer. I was still taking pretty strong pain meds and it really was hard fighting the atrophied muscle, the back pain/nerve issues along with working on things similar to things I had done before. But cars are not like boats.

Yet, I ground it out every day. The bright spots were the people I met. Steve and Linda Franko (live aboard retirees, Steve was recovering from a broken shoulder) Lance and Mary from New Zealand (Came to America and bought a trawler to go on their own adventure with) . Lets not forget the people at the marina. I was a mess when I got there and everyone was very helpful.

I spent most of this winter in Maryland and I have to admit. I like the weather in North Carolina better. Of course it is still very much winter in North Idaho where I came from.

It would appear that I would have nothing to do while here on the boat in North Carolina in the winter. This does not qualify as winter to me. This is cooler months. You do not have winter where you have palm trees. Sorry... You are just used to warmer weather the rest of the year. But I digress. I have been slowly going through Mary Lee cleaning and "still " trying to figure out how to have a place for everything and everything in its place. I Have a fresh water leak that I am trying to nail down, Gauges to get working properly for engine. Of course I need to get in there and retorque the head bolds and a few other things one last time.

 The weight is falling off. I won't go into to much detail but I am not meant to be heavy and I won't be. I am naturally lean at 200 pounds and with the lifestyle and diet I have adopted I will be back to 200 pounds by summer. By the end of the month I will have lost most of what I gained this winter in Maryland.

Standing on the dock with Mary Lee. It looks further in the picture but I can easily throw a rock and hit the Marinas office. If I want to use their shower, or pack fresh water from there as the water on the docks is shut off to prevent freezing. It is a 1/2 mile walk to get there :-) I know, how ironic.

I have to go here.

Then here.

Then here.

Then here.

Looking back at the last one.

Then here.

And there it is. That building I could have hit with a rock. Try to make it from the boat to here if you gotta potty. Good thing I have one on boat. So basically, I have a nice quiet place to walk and I do quite a bit of it. 7 complete trips on my best day so far. I will be picking up the pace as this is flat land and takes almost no effort at all.

Not my most exciting post but I am getting to it. The adventure is coming. It is going to be an exciting summer. I may spend it up in the Morehead city area or maybe????? Either way. This summer I get to sail instead of work on the boat and hope to go sailing.