October 23, 2007:

Bah!  It hasn't been a very productive couple of weeks, and we need to get back into boat work mode soon.  Brian's work schedule has been sheer nonsense, so it's been difficult for him to throw himself into boat projects when he drags himself home after the tenth 12 hour workday in a row.   Alicia's used her ample "alone time" to plan the holidays, thoroughly clean the boat, give Louie his fall hairdo, experiment with some new recipes, and endlessly repeat Radiohead's brilliant new album.

A couple of nice things have happened:
  1.  Alicia's dad came for a sail and a belated birthday dinner, which was lovely.


Alicia makes pasta for her dad / Tom Collins takes the helm!

2.  Last night we discussed and drew our potential shrink-wrap structure for this winter.  We've dubbed it "The Festivity Bubble" in anticipation of the mess of holiday decorations we plan to festoon it with.  We're going for size this year, with lots more headroom than last year's bubble.  We want plenty of space to enjoy the greenhouse effect (on cold, sunny days the bubble can reach interior temps upwards of 80 degrees) and work on projects.  Seems like it's going to look like some sort of deranged circus tent with a silly arched door!  Observe the mild insanity:

a= wood beams    b= Brian    c= decorative Christmas star    d= Alicia    e= arched doorway    f=anti-precipitation angle


Last year's bubble had a few irritating features, the worst being how snow and rain used to pool up right over the doorway, randomly soaking or avalanching door users.   This year's bubble will be all angles so the weather can slide right off!  Plus, with our mast and shrouds gone, it'll be a much more solid, tight drum of plastic.

It sounds like there's to be a shrink-wrapping festival the first weekend after Thanksgiving, with our efforts combined with those of our buddy boats MANATEE and ESPERANZA.  It's always a fun day when you get to go around blasting a flame thrower, so we're looking forward to it!

In the meantime, we hope to get a few more sails in before it's time to pull the mast.  Hopefully there'll be one this coming weekend with some friends.

We hope everyone's well--take care!