A moment of rest

Its Friday evening and I'm enjoying a quiet moment on the back deck.  Last weekend we had 8 people on the boat (4 grandchildren + 4 adults) and 2 dogs.  We slept in the main berth with Jarvis in his usual place at the foot of the bed on the floor wound into a circle in his bed, the two older boys slept in a tent on the boat deck, Et's mother slept on the pilothouse berth (with Becca her dog on the floor), our daughter and her two younger children slept in the guest berth bunk beds. We had a wonderful time but a bit of quiet is nice as well.  Clarice is currently driving Et back up to spend another week with us (while his dad and new step-mother are honeymooning in Figi). 

We are starting to realize / accept that we aren't going to get everything done in the first couple of months.  We had looked at the photos of the boat so many times and  thought about what needed to be done and we wanted to do that we were sure we had everything planned for the first two weeks.  In reality most of what we had planned has not happened yet because Salish Aire has her own set of priorities that keep taking time (e.g. we had to work on holding tank vents again this week - maybe they are both fixed this time!) In the long run we are coming to recognize that it doesn't need to all be done either.  The boat functions just fine as a home and is eager and ready whenever we have taken her out of the slip.  We intellectually gave ourselves a couple of years to get everything done - now we just need to emotionally accept that its OK to slow down.

One of the items called out by our surveyor was that our running / navigation light lenses were pretty fogged from age.  We have decided to try to replace items with "good stuff" that will last.  So we ordered a starboard LED light, a port LED light and a new LED anchor light to the tune of $600 (yes, things for big boats carry big prices).  Clarice hauled me to the top of the mast in our bosons chair and I replaced the anchor light while suspended by the halyard (rope to pull things up a mast - usually a sail).  After a major fall from a ladder while replacing light bulbs in a church and falling off a roof, I'm not real comfortable with heights but I can talk myself into "dealing with it".  While at the top of the mast my inner fear kept my thighs so tightly gripped on the mast that I came down and my wobbly legs would barely hold me.  Also while up the mast I dropped a drill from the bosons chair pocket; bit down onto our no-longer inflatable dingy (since repaired). So once again small project becomes medium project that becomes large project.

I seem to be writing in reverse time today.  Going back to two weekends ago we all gathered in Portland for our son's wedding.  It was a lovely affair held outdoors in very sunny weather.  I don't thing the bride ever knew that about 1/3 of the flowers that had been carefully prepared into bouquets had frozen in the storage refrigerator as everyone pitched in to make the bouquets arise from the ashes.  The best person's dress was redesigned by Clarice the night before so it fit her rapidly changing figure (something about bearing a child 2 weeks prior) better. And finally the bustle on the wedding dress was emergently  sewn up between the ceremony and the reception with some sewing floss our daughter had along. When all of this happens and everyone keeps focus on the important stuff, it bodes well for the future of the marriage.

We also got to meet the Goldbergs who owned Salish Aire when she was Duet.  We had a lovely time with them on the new Duet (a Nordhavn 50) and learned a bit more about the boat's history.  (They also told us to look for THE BOOK (since found) with all of the wiring diagrams, plumbing diagrams, etc that Ron had put together)