Last 2 weeks at New England Boatworks

After returning from Florida with our car we had a wonderful week of cooler weather. So we put ourselves to work on the boat to complete some necessary work. Jane started working on cleaning and waxing the smooth deck top and then worked on cleaning and waxing the non skid deck top...all 43 feet of it. That took 3 days of elbow grease. Thank goodness for the clouds!!  Peter started in the forward head to fix our leaky and very noisy manual pump toilet. It requires taking the pump assembly off and changing out some parts before reassemble and greasing it. We are happy to report that it now works perfectly. It's a shitty job but someone has to do it!  Next Peter tackled the 4 winches, He took each one apart to wash with mineral oil, sudsy water, then re lubricate. Each winch had so many parts which needed to be put back into place. It reminded us of being in Georgetown, Exumas when the wind generator came apart and had to be fixed. Boating is just fixing things in exotic places!

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We left on Saturday morning to visit friends in Quincey, Carmel and Martin. We had an Irish breakfast brunch and stayed the afternoon talking and talking...and talking. It's great to catch up on everything again. We left late afternoon to spend the weekend with Jane's brother, Jim. He lives in Shirley, MA and we had not seen him since September. We had a lovely time eating out Sat. and Sun. night and visiting Rockport, MA. This is one of our favorite places we travelled by boat. We stopped there 3 times!

Motif #1
Called this because it's been painted
so many times.

US Coast Guard training sailboat

On the way back to Rhode Island Jane stopped by the cemetery in Framingham to visit her parents grave and her grandparents. Always a sad moment in time.  Once back in Newport we headed to Sarah's house to celebrate Jane's 63 birthday. We went to Goat Island to an outdoor bar, Pineapples, at the Hyatt. Then back to Sarah's house where Natalie met us and we had dinner there. Sarah made an "island pork" roast in the slow cooker. Yummy. It was so nice to have my 2 girls with me again.

Our last week at the marina brought Florida weather....hot and humid. We spent our time doing errands in the air conditioned car and going back and forth to Sarah's house. finally on Thursday we packed a lunch and drove to Cape Cod for a visit to a few marinas. That made the day a little more bearable. By the time we got back to the boat, apx. 4:30, there was a severe thunder storm at our doorstep. We made it back aboard just before the deluge. Jane was standing on the companionway steps watching when we heard an explosion. Jane saw lightening hit a mast with sparks flying. the boat was on land so it's mast head wad in a higher location. This is the second time we have seen severe lightening very close since being back in RI.

This weekend we saw many boat friends before we leave the dock...hoping to see them again before we return to Florida!  So today is Tuesday, July 24 and our month is up at the marina. We will push off the dock later and start cruising around for the next month.