Ready to float (after lots of work)

Another month goes by and it seems like all I’ve done is work. I haven’t even had time to write in this Blog since it entails getting in the car and driving up to town to find an internet connection, so, there are quite a few entries that I’ve backlogged and will be posting soon. The shore “to do list” though, is very short and the Snow Goose is looking good. Today we go back into the water and will find a spot in the bay to anchor for a few days to wait for the weather to change before we leave for Washington DC. IE: anything but north winds. Because of the storm that blew thru the last 2 days, I haven’t done much work to the boat but I did get the main water tank lids pulled off, the tank cleaned and re-sealed. (the tank leaked when full of water). I also ran a new vent line for the black water tank (yuck)! A very hard job that I’ve put off for 2 years. I also Finished painting the bow thruster. Now, into the water and another year of adventure and hard work.

Getting ready to leave

It turns out that Anna’s car needed a new fuel pump but I didn’t want to drop the gas tank to change the pump... So, a friend told me that he had cut the bottom out of his kids trunk (with a grinder) and took the fuel pump out through the opening. Now, that sounded too good to be true so, I took the seats out of the van and cut up the carpet and then took a grinder to the floor! In a ½ hour the fuel pump was replaced and the floor was being bent back into place. (I did put a piece of metal over the cut up area so that we wouldn’t lose any grand kids through the floor when we were going down the road.) The repair took 1/3 of the time it would have taken to drop the tank to do the job, and since the van is about ready for the junk yard it seemed like the appropriate way to handle the repair.

The last week is here and I still have a few more projects that I have contracted to do. You would think that I would have had enough of working for the time being but people keep wanting to give me money for doing what I enjoy doing so, I keep agreeing to “just” one more job. Anyway, two more projects to complete, and we will be off to Virginia and back to the Snow Goose this weekend.

In other news, we have another great grandchild! Here is the newest one only 2 hours old.

I’ve also finished the new davit mounting hardware. I tried to buy some “starboard” to build the mounts out of but up here the price for a small strip of the stuff would have been over $100 opposed to the cost of the stainless which was $5.00... I went with the metal.

Hope that you enjoy the upcoming year of travels. Now that the summer recess is over with we will try to keep the web site full of interesting things (or if not interesting then just full). Email us with any comments or suggestions.

Bath time

It's getting close to the time for us to leave Grand Rapids and so, Edie got her much needed bath....She didn't think it was fun at all.