It's a quiet Friday night in Jolly Harbour, and we're wondering if the winds of Hurricane Noel are starting to howl in Nova Scotia yet. Here we are, checking the weather a couple of times a day to make sure nothing is coming our way, and all of a sudden, we're wondering if everything is secure in Port Maitland. Perhaps it will all quiet down some before it gets there -- we hope. Randy is reminded of reports that state "the storm passed land and went harmlessly out to sea" -- except for all the poor buggers on ships out at sea.
While our families in NS are battening down the hatches, we're piling on the bug spray. We've been alongside the dock for two weeks and we're just about ready to shove off. After days and days of chewing away at the lists of jobs, Nancy is starting to look really spiffy. Randy spends part of every day walking back and forth to Budget Marine (aka Bludgeon Marine, Bodge-it Marine), and as I mature, he deems it okay to give me the responsibility to paint things. Usually, he paints things, because I'm not so good at it, but apparently, if you paint a few acres worth of complicated bits and pieces, you eventually get better at it. I'm still covered with splatters by the end of the day, and he still cleans brushes, because after painting, I don't have enough energy to clean to HIS satisfaction, but whatever, everything attached to the boat has a coat or three of paint. We've been called the prettiest boat on B Dock by the Horizon charter boat guys.

Marjorie, our rowboat, looks fab. Pale yellow interior this time around (Budget Marine didn't have off-white - dat finish), and all the black and white redone. The swim ladder is off-white, the inside of the dorade vents are scarlet, a nice bit of snazz, and the oars for Marjorie and the boat hook are blinding, shining white. It all looks so clean and well maintained. What a unique show of boatiness.

The masts are gleaming with another four coats of varnish, and the booms were taken down to bare wood for the first time and have six coats. More to come. Peeling varnish off is very much like popping bubble wrap - very therapeutic in a weird way. Next, the teak caprails. Sanding, sanding, more sanding, then varnishing. This probably won't happen until we've moved somewhere else. If you waited to get to the end of the jobs list before you moved the boat, you'd be stuck to the bottom in no time.

I went up the mizzen and the main today to re-tape the spreader boots. If this was a union shop, I'd have a case for demanding two new pairs of shoes (that's the deal, one new pair of shoes per trip up a mast), but as it's not, I'm figuring that it's a goodwill gesture on my part to keep it to one pair of shoes. Plus, there's no place to put anything else unless I throw something out, and I need the ratty old flipflops for a few more dirty jobs.
I did make the trip into St. John's earlier this week. Missed my girlfriends, but did manage to get new pillows and new underwear. I forget the name of the store where I bought the underwear, but the logo on the shopping bag said something like "We gon kill you with clothes."

See below for photos of us working on our tans.