It was another exhausting weekend for me down at the boatyard. Susan occupied herself as she usually does lately by sanding almost non-stop for up to ten hours a day (it exhausts me just watching her work). I worked on a few other projects and did a bit of sanding myself but mostly I was busy keeping other lonesome and envious skippers away from Susan. They’d come to her from all directions trying to chat her up. Most seem intrigued and amazed by a woman who not only sands bottoms but seems to enjoy it. That’s all well and good but it distracts and slows her down which is unacceptable. So I was running interference all weekend long. I’m going to have to start using a boathook on them if this keeps up. They’re clever devils too as they’ve taken to working in pairs to do their machinations. First one lonesome mariner will try to chat me up, saying things like; “oh you’re a lucky man to have such a woman yar yar yar” and other such platitudes. All this as his mate then tries to sneak up on Susan hoping that I’ll be caught unawares but I’m wise to their tricks and more vigilante that a German Sheppard. 
So you can see that I’ve had my hands full but in spite of that I’ve managed to get a few things done. I replaced our starting battery that had gone bad with a new Group 31, AGM deep cell that’s rated at 105 amp hours. I’m going to keep the house & starter batteries combined from now on to give us a total of 420 amp hours of power. Our small Honda generator will serve as an emergency backup should the batteries ever get too low to start the diesel. I also manage to fix our solar powered vent and our bow navigation lights. We had some more bad luck with our OGM (Orca Green Marine) tricolor light; the replacement unit that we got from the manufacturer proved faulty, this was our second light from OGM. This time all the lights came on but once we switched on the running lights the unit started to fill with smoke. Funny, they didn’t advertize that it did smoke signals as well as navigation, anchor lights & a strobe. So it went back to OGM and we’re waiting on a replacement. OGM said that they had gotten a bad lot of computer chips and that they won’t have any new units in till at least the begging of next month. They offered a refund but I want to stick with them. I think it will be a good unit if they can get the bugs worked out. Hopefully we’ll get the new unit before the mast goes up but if not I can install it when I climb the mast to install the wind instruments and VHF antenna. Last but not least we just received our Coast Guard vessel documentation. Federal vessel documentation is required for boats traveling between counties. So now we’re all set for that. I came across an interesting piece of history when researching vessel documentation: Issuing vessel documentation is one of the oldest functions of our government dating back to the eleventh act of the first congress in 1789. Of course that was done after establishing several tax acts.
We’ve got another day of sanding to do before we can start painting Gypsy’s bottom. Susan will try to get that done sometime during the week. If she can do that we’ll be all set to start painting next weekend weather permitting. We got eight coats of paint to apply; six coats of Interlux 2000 barrier coat followed by one coat of red Pettit Trinidad and finally top coat of blue Pettit Trinidad SR. 195 days...
