The New New Ports & Companionway Cover nearing completion!

The New-New Ports

So the new, more oval, larger ports arrived yesterday. The Sailor's Exchange in St. Augustine were very helpful after they shipped us the wrong/mismatched set of ports and no longer had any matching. They "upgraded" us with a brand new set of Bomar Flagship Molded Oval Ports. My wife had reservations about the new shape not as "birdy" as our Fox's old squinty eyed ones, but I'm going to love the extra light and air flow these babies bring!

Let there be light!!

Well, our intention working on the boat last night was the truest example of "things that happen during mercury retrograde!" We got to the storage place where we keep Firefly and our lock was gone, replaced by another. I called the guy and he forgot that he told us it was okay to move into our new larger garage. For the last two months, I paid the bill online and noticed that the price didn't go up. I just thought he'd get around to it and bill me the difference... NOPE, he plum forgot! So they cut our lock off and couldn't find anything with our info to call us (much rectify this) and put a new lock on it until someone (us) called about it.

So once we got that resolved, another hour had gone by. When you're doing the work "after work", there's not a lot of time in the evening to do it.

The "Good port"

We unloaded all the tools and parts, including the new switch panel and new battery. My main reason for the work was to continue on the new port installation, but when we pull the 2nd port out of the box (stupid me, I opened the one, liked it, happy with it, never even thought to open up and look at the 2nd one.) It was a different type altogether!

The "BAD port"

I purchased the ports on ebay, to save a little $$, ya know? Well... the warehouse screwed up and sent us the mismatched set. So by the time I called today and sorted it out, turns out they have sold out of the shiny stainless steel ones and only have the ugly black plastic/chrome ones!

They were nice about it, admitted their mistake and offered a full refund and return shipping on them. We had to choose a slightly different shape (which although changes the character of the boat from squinty eye sandpiper bird to a bit more wide-eyed sparrow look (sic)) but it's all shiny stainless and cost twice as much for brand new ports still in their plastic. They (ebay seller) took the hit and are sending those out ASAP for the same price including shipping.

Firefly daysail II & the lost weekend on TimeOut!

Well, more like an "ongoing mission" than just a day sail. Corey bowed out to hang with friends, so it was just Stacey, Rachel and I. We decided to head back to Degray Lake.

First we stocked up on ice at the Shell station off the freeway exit.

Then we headed toward Iron Mountain Marina to put in but the lake was up so high that the all of their ramps were closed, including the damsite spillway one!!

So we headed over to the State Park Marina. We were able to get good ramp clearance there again and proceeded to rig her for sail.

Sew Stacey: Strumstick Gig Bags

Sew Stacey: Strumstick Gig Bags: As if Strumsticks  aren't cool enough, I had to go and make them even cooler! Just a plain ole gig bag made of ripstop nylon was not ...