Unfinished post from July 21st:

The below is a quote from my blog of August 18th, last year https://cometosea.us/?p=4863 :

I received the below pictures from Mike and Roxanne. The triplets showed up in the marina with their grandfather Mike and his friend Roxanne a few Tuesdays back. Later that afternoon I came upon them again and one of the three princesses had dropped her flip flop in the bay. Not her, but her sister stood there sobbing. I rushed down to the marina, grabbed the first boat hook from two sweet lesbian sailors and saved the flip flop which was just about to disappear under the dock in the current.

Today the girls stopped by the boat once more with their grandfather and Roxanne. It is their annual summer visit from their home in California to the North West.

Gracie, Izzie and Emma.

Aug 14 addition: I just received a picture their grandfather took of the 4 of us and I now have the names straight:

L.R.: Emma, Izzie and Gracie.

Now I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that there will be another picture of these triplet dolls from their next year’s visit. Great suspense what kind of hair style they have in mind for the next picture. The bad news is that the locals here in Gig Harbor have to put up with me for another year. I have just paid my annual subscription to the local NPR radio stations. The corrections on the Dutch version and the translation of the English version of “Soloman” have been taking much more of my time than I imagined. I made the decision last week to postpone the departure for South America until the end of next year summer.

Today I installed one of the major equipment  items I need for the off shore sailing trip. The Solar Panel. It is a 140 Watt Kyocera panel. I was able to keep the cost to just under $1,000 for the 1-1/2″diam. s/s tube frame and the panel. If any one wants more details/pictures on this, let me know. I was very pleased by the way I managed to tie the single frame in with the two stern pulpits. I plan to add a third tube clamp, in the center.

Gig Harbor is the semi-official home of the Thunderbird. A 27 foot hard chine plywood go-fast racer cruiser. Designed in the fifties by Ben Seaborn, a Seattle naval architect as the winner of a design contest initiated by the Douglas Fir Plywood Association. The plans were given away by the DFPA to promote their Marine grade Douglas Fir Plywood. Hundreds were home built all over the US and Canada and abroad. Ed Hoppen of Eddon Boatshop, here in Gig Harbor, built a number of the first Thunderbirds. The old boat yard and the railway has been preserved as a historical site and is also he home of the N.W. Thunderbird association  http://www.gigharborboatshop.org/ Back in 1961 I sold a set of Thunderbird sails for Molenaar in Friesland to Ed Hoppen. I still have the letter confirming this from Ed Hoppen. The letter took a while to get to me because I had in the meantime been shipped out from Ft. Lewis here in Tacoma to Vietnam.

Last weekend the T-Bird club held informal races in the Harbor on Saturday and down Colvos Passage on Sunday. Twelve boats participated on Saturday, Six on Sunday. The windward mark was just off the pier where “Fleetwood” is parked and while I was working on my Solar Panel I took about one hundred good shots of the racers. You can see all of them and copy whatever you wish at www.cometosea.us/albums/T-BirdsJuly25.   I made a token contribution to the T-Bird cause. Back in the mid seventies Harold Schadt, the international sales manager for the Douglas Fir Plywood Association, gave me the last set of Thunderbird blue prints they had on file. I found it among the few boxes of personal things I have stored in Lisa’s garage.

I just missed the American women win their world soccer championship game. I was going to see it at 7 p.m. but that turned out to be 7 p.m. Toronto time. Anyway another celebration.

I rafted up with about 25 Gig Harbor Yacht Club boats in Quartermaster Harbor on Vashon Island. Just like last year. The fireworks are put on by one local residents, with very deep pockets. Reportedly, about $400,000.  It is absolutely first class. I think this years’s theme was flowers. It is amazing what they can do now to paint these realistic pictures in the sky with pyrotechnics.

There are a few privileges in becoming a Dinosaur, depending on your memory, you discover that you have been there, done that, and after 10 minutes you discover that you have a number of common friends. That is what happened last night talking to John Mulligan, a GHYC member, I discovered that we have a common friend whose trail I had lost. He had Nick’s phone number and I just got through talking to him again. In the early eighties Nick and his wife Ginny were members of my parish in Tacoma. I was married for the second time in a civil procedure, technically this excluded me from the church sacraments. I knew that I had to live on the edges and could not expect acceptance. But this did not keep Ginny from organizing a baby shower for Seth, my youngest son. Something I will never forget. Then Ginny, far too young, lost her battle with cancer,  two days before she joined the Angels Choir, I wrote a letter to her. When I heard of her passing away I was devastated that I had not written her earlier. But then, at the door at St.Patrick Church in Tacoma, after the vigil service for her, Nick said: “Jack, Ginny appreciated the note you wrote to her.” From then on, I had learned my lesson do not put off to tomorrow, what should be done today.

I left at sunrise to get back to Gig Harbor for my “habitual” mass attendance. I was disappointed that we did not sing a traditional patriotic hymn. Not sure why. I will ask.