« January 2005 | Main | March 2005 »

February 13, 2005

Just Around The Corner

Boating season is just around the corner. Are you ready? I'm exciting about it and ready to go. I'm itching to get the boat de-winterized and underway. Now is the time to review the latest safety bulletins, learn new tricks and tips, take a safety course, plan for a summer cruise, or just get involved with your local yacht or sailing club. The buzz is on the streets; people are already talking about their first rendezvous or raft-up.

If you're part of a club and would like to pass along any information, please contact us. If you're not part of a club, we can get you pointed in the right direction. We also welcome everybody to join our community and live the excitement of boating.

See you on the water.

Posted by Jerry on February 13, 2005 01:59 PM

February 05, 2005

New Bridge Canvas

Today was beautiful. It was 60 degrees, blue skies, and a gentle breeze. It was boating weather. It was almost tempting to de-winterize and to take the boat out. Hmmm. Not just yet, that March snow storm still looms around the corner. Still, it was a nice day to install the new canvas for the bridge.

We went down to the boat today and tried to install the new canvas on the bridge. It was suppose to be a simple install – once you had all the tools in place. It was just a matter of locating the key snaps and working from there. We spent several hours collecting the right tools and then headed over to the boat. After removing the temporary tarp, we proceeded to install the new canvas. Hey, this was going to be simple, right? Not so fast.

The new canvas came with a bag of snaps – about a 1,000 of them, give or take a few. I tried to install the first snap – crack goes the snap tool. So, I grab the other snap tool, the one that looks like a pair of pliers. Snap! Maybe I squeezed too hard or something, but I don’t think tools like this should break in your hands. So, I grabbed the snap adapter kit that you use with Vise-Grips. Guess what? That one falls apart too. It must been the cold weather or something. So, we took a trip down to the local marina and picked up another snap toolset – actually we bought two of them.

Once we got back to the boat, everything fell into place. There were no problems and the whole installation took less than an hour. It’s all about the right tools. I must admit the new bridge canvas looks sharp. Just in time to unwrap the boat for this year’s boating season. It is just around the corner.

Posted by Jerry on February 5, 2005 05:45 PM