Friends, Flutes, Decks and Indexing

A lot happens at the marina in spring. People come and people go. The shrink wrap inevitably gets large holes shredded out of it before it comes off for good. The air sings with sounds of saws, hammers and other various tools as people work on this project and that. Friends gather and celebrate the coming of spring.

And because of all of this, we haven't gotten the chance to update the blog as often as we have wanted. I wanted to post a few pictures now, and soon we will update with more details of what we've been up to.

Susan invited us aboard "Me Too" for a going away party.

Mind you, this is a 28' boat with 11 people on board.

Justin tries his hand at playing the flute.

What has taken all of my time is indexing. I'm a living, breathing organizing machine. I've been staying up very very late and getting up early just to finish up the next book. I'm beginning to really look forward to my new found freedom of having only indexing to worry about. I still have the rest of April at the library, so being a full time indexer is still a few weeks off.

And what has taken all of Justin's time is the deck work. He's been sanding, fiberglassing, sanding more, cleaning, power washing, and painting the decks. I'm not posting much on this one yet because we'll be making a larger post on this one as soon as we possibly can, but here's one picture in the meantime of him beginning the paint job!


Oh and in other fun news - the shrink wrap is off!! Hello spring!

Columbia Bicycles

It turns out that Jenny and I are not the only boaters excited for bicycle season to begin. Our friend Christina, who bought the Fitzcarraldo from us, found herself an old gem of a cruiser bike on craigslist this weekend. It's such a neat bike I wanted to post it here. Some sort of old Columbia brand bike, probably 1960's era. Neat. As you can tell, she is very proud of it. Yay boats and bikes!

Nantasket Beach, Kite Flying, and Spring Fever!

The weather has been beautiful here the past couple of days. Really feels like spring, 50+ degrees and bright sunshine is great for lifting the spirits a bit. My old college roommate and best friend Jason was out here for the weekend as well. He is from Indiana but every once in a while comes to Boston for work and gets to take the spare weekend to hang out.

Jenny, Jason and I decided to drive out to Hull Massachusetts and visit Nantasket Beach on Saturday.

Nantasket beach is somewhat steep with a ton of rocks. The waves were rolling in pretty heavy and it made the best sound ever when a big wave would come in and drag all the rocks back toward the ocean... Just a big giant crunching grading sound that was also so strangely soothing. Really neat.

Skipping rocks in big waves is fun. Jason and I were trying to see if we could get get rocks to skip right over the breakers.

There were also some brave souls in wet suits out there surfing the cold Massachusetts waters. I think it looks like great fun. If I had the sparetime and cash for a board I'd love to try it sometime.... we'll see.

After the beach we went and had lunch at a place called Barefoot Bob's on the beach. The food was great but the service was SO SLOW. No matter. A good time was had by all.

Then, I know that the highlight of Jenny's weekend is that we went to a kite shop in Hull. We have both wanted a kite for some time-- Jenny especially. We spend so much time on beaches and whatnot that it just makes sense to have one. Well, usually they take up too much space to keep on our small boat, but we found the Parafoil Sunburst. The owner of the shop was really nice and that link is for the same store. If you live on a boat and want a kite, buy that one. It is a 2 foot parafoil made of ripstop nylon (spinnaker material) that uses no sticks and folds down into a small baggie that it comes with. Perfect!

The next day Jenny was able to fly it a bit by our marina. It flies fantastic. So easy to launch and stays in the air quite well.

In the meantime, our friends Dave and Keith brushed up on their juggling pin skills. Sometimes, our marina really is a circus.