This week I worked from Wednesday through Friday on the boat repairs in Cape Charles. There are no more back consultations or deployment home comings on the agenda and I expect to stay for a spell at Cape Charles. I am still in the clean up process. In order to get in all the nooks and crannies it requires disassembling all the built ins, the galley, head cabinets, under berth lockers, removing the holding tank and kerosene heater a hundred wires, etc. Some of the brass screws have corroded in the saltwater and are impossible to bring out, involving drilling off the heads. Very time consuming but it will be a good excuse to revarnish the interior, repaint the ceiling and replace the original pink… formica after the structural repairs are done.
Before and after. The mud has been scraped and vacuumed then in the 2nd picture washed down with the water hose and scrub pads and sponge. I do this in as little clothes as is legal and feels like warm water therapy in a mud pool.Next I hand pump the bilge water overboard.
If I abandon this foolish project and leave unpaid bills behind you can blame my oldest daughter, Lisa. Like many other concerned family members and some friends they wonder and suggest that I could save my self a lot of hard work and money by buying an other boat. On the telephone a couple days ago I argued with her that I don’t want a plastic boat, I want nothing but a Naja and that there are none to be had any longer, I meant North America. After I hang up she sends me a mail with the following ad: http://www.apolloduck.nl/boat.phtml?id=503172 $5,000 wit a little work and an engine replacement, in England. With my second shipwreck I must have stilled the appetite for Apollo Duck to mention that another Naja, the “Fleetwood”, has circumnavigated. I saw this on a couple ads in Europe for used Najas before.
This is a photograph of a picture hanging in the harbor master’s office at the Cape Charles Yacht Center. I added the texts. This shows the entire southern tip of the Virginia Eastern Shores.
I have found a shortcut to walk to breakfast in town, the beach cruiser has a flat front tire, along a railroad track. And I keep discovering new plants I have never seen before. There is so much more variety here in the wild flowers, trees, butter &-dragon flies and song birds, compared to the West Coast. Since I have arrived here on June 2nd there has never been a need for watering the lawns and everything is lush and green. I want to reincarnate a farmer in eastern Virginia, growing lush crops of corn, cotton, peanuts, soy beans, tobacco every conceivable cereal. The accented scents by the warm humid air. I like it here.
note the fruits/seed pods on this vine
note honey bees
Buckeye on the inside of the netting on my tent, next to “Fleetwood”
a water spout off Cape Charles Yacht Center, photographed on 8/25 by Rob Maguire, the Harbor Master
