August 22

Breakfast of shrimp omelets (well, scrambled omelets). The shrimp looked much bigger in the water. Showers, then Cindy gets started on the mast, and I go up the hill to the store for ice, anticipating a quick fix then out of there. You can tell when the ferry's in, a flood of people are walking up Spring street as I'm walking down with 40 lbs of ice. Cindy discovers that the “stainless steel” hose clamps were not stainless enough. So, back up the hill to get the right stuff at West Marine. Back to the boat, get the mast clamped, then loosen the port shrouds to get everything back on the step plate. Re-tune the rigging. Then we have to get the turning block off the side of the mast and back through the deck, where it won't put that stress on the mast any more. Oops, we don't have the right tools. Back up the hill to that hardware store, they don't have the right stuff either (we need a really long drill bit and a drill that will get really close to the mast). They recommend the building supply store, a call over there confirms they have what we need, so another mile later we have the right tools. Back to the boat, and pay for another night's stay. As we get started on this repair, we are hailed by a guy on a sailboat three slips down, asking if we needed any tools. Why yes, and electric drill would make much faster work of this. He had one, and also some ideas on some other stuff we'd been working with. That chore went much more quickly. After dinner I play guitar for a while, and we invite David (they guy with the drill) and his wife Linda over for some social time. They are from Canada, she works for their equivalent of the IRS (a bean counter, like Cindy), and he does social work (like Doug and church youth). We stay up way too late, but it was a really good time sharing sea stories and boat repair and even politics and religion.