Work, work, and more work

Life on the lake is always more fun when one of the grand kids comes up to visit. On Father’s Day, my first grand son and my son came up in the morning and we went three generation fishing on the lake. Jackson caught a nice bass and it only took two tries before he would actually hold the fish! Catching was fun but holding it was not!



The IRS decided to take all of the money that we had saved to redo the house so it’s time to earn some more. I’ve taken on some contracting jobs to help us out. I’ll be replacing several decks for a friend and repairing water damage inside of a house. It’s a bit of a pain but it’s nice to have work to do and to see the results when your done.

The next job to do will be on little Ginger. Ginger is a 20 ft. Cat boat that I own and I’d like to get her back into the water this summer. 4 years ago, before we left to live on Snow Goose, Ginger was offered to me on the condition that I rebuilt her. So, for 6 months (before we left), I went from stem to stern and did a complete rebuild of Ginger then put her away into storage. She’s a wonderful little wooden Cat boat and I hope that she will be a delight to sail. Here’s a picture of her when the rebuild was almost done.

ready for bottom paint

 Over the next few weeks I’ll show you the sequence of what it took to rebuild Ginger. Hope that you like it!

Then the other day, my friend Ralph asked me if I’d like to go for a ride in his airplane!

I jumped at the opportunity and got this nice picture of our lake. The lake isn’t that big but the water’s clean, deep and warm (at least for the next month or so) and we are grateful that we were able to find this house. Until the next time, enjoy the summer!

Double click on any picture and it will get larger!

Back home again



A foggy morning looking down at the lake.

Back at the Lake House and the work never ends. If it isn’t regular car maintenance IE: oil changes, exhaust replacement, electrical issues, then it’s house troubles. I had planned to walk a small section of the Appalachian Trail on the way home but Anna called the day before I left saying that the well pump had given out and they had no water in the house and that the garage door had also broken in the up position. So, back to Michigan I drove only to find that if she had moved the shovel out from in front of the electric eye, the garage door it would have opened fine. The pump was another story. It took a new pressure switch to make things right in that department.

I came out of the garage and found this large snapping turtle laying eggs in the garden! It had wedged it’s head and one foot in-between the tines of the flower holder so, I moved the holder and left her to her work. In about 6 weeks we just might have little snapping turtles running around the yard.

I had to tunnel under the walkway.

As far as the house goes, I dug a 45 foot trench in front of the house and laid in a new drain pipe for the area between the garage and the house (it collects water there and the old drain pipe was less than useless). Then it was on to the barn. Even though I have a 30 x 40 barn it’s getting crowded in there. So I’ve built a 150 sq ft mezzanine to store stuff on for as we all know, we always have ‘stuff’ that needs to be stored.

This is the "good" side of the tanks, the bottom's are much worse.

I have an old (seems like everything I have is old) Ford truck that had both of its fuel tanks rust out. The last time I used it I found that I could only put 3 gals of gas into one of the tanks before it would start to leak! Not a good thing! So, After ordering 2 new tanks, I spent a day fighting rust as I replaced the tanks. YUCK! The only good thing to say about the job is that it’s done. Toss in a bunch of work for others (hey, when there’s a maintenance man around people tend to ask for help) and I’ve yet to have a day off since I got here. Hope to change that situation around soon. Hope that your summer is going better than mine. Drop me a line and tell me what’s happening with you this summer.

Dragons of North Carolina

Oriental (where the Snow Goose is for the summer) is known as a "dragon" wildlife area and so it's a protected area for the hatching of dragons. In many out of the way places you can still catch a glimpse of a dragon guarding it's egg.

 

These eggs are unique in that the shells are transparent and you can see the dragon within. Since it takes years for a dragon egg to hatch many of these sites have been marked to keep the public from moving the eggs and subsequently being eaten by the adults who are guarding their eggs.

 If your ever in Oriental be careful of walking around for if the mosquitoes don’t bite you the dragons just might!

Small jobs

Before I left Oriental I was asked to build an arbor. It was a small job but it turned out to be very nice. As soon as the flowering vine grows up and over it, it will make a nice entrance to the garden. Now, back to Mi.!

Holes in the hull

well, it took 2 horriable long filthy days of work but the centerboard riser is replaced. I found about 5 places in the old one that were either rusted thru or almost rusted thru. I'm glad thay it's done.

This is what was there, notic all of the rust stains?

I took a hammer and punch to the metal and found that I could punch right thru the thin steel.

I had just cut the riser away from the boat and found that it was nothing but rust inside.

The captain is NOT happy

The new riser is already welded together and sitting in place while I fit in the last part into place.

All welded up and painted ready for the kitchen wall to be put back together.

Mast, part 4

The rebuild is done, now comes the long process of 10 coats of varnish and re-installing all of the hardware. When it was all done, the splice area didn't look too bad and reinstalling it on the Goose only took 30 minutes. Ready to sail again. Next, the hull leak.

This is a tricky part to do. It doesn't look like much but it has to be done perfectly so that it will match up with the steel straps that go over the top of the mast.

New/old winch. The bronze winch is about as old as the boat but should work good as a main sheet winch.

Nice looking winch!