GroupWBench

Ivy and I ran over to Kemah, Texas boating central, just after Christmas. We had a couple of goals there beyond just escaping from home for a couple of days.

First, we stopped at the Boaters' Resale Shop. This place is pretty much a junk heap to rival anything Fred Sanford ever had. I love the place.

Downstairs is full of second hand and craft odds and ends. Upstais is pure gold. The place is full of boat parts and boating stuff. There are piles of everythng from marine air conditioners to sails to brass portlights and other cool stuff all over the place. This is the kind of place I could spend all day wandering through just finding cool things.

We wanted to see if they had any winches that might be better than the ones on our boat. Self-tailing winches are pretty nice and we'd like to have some without paying the bill for brand new ones. It turns out that they are pretty hard to come by on the second hand market and the trick is to keep an eye on their web postings to snag them quickly.

While we were looking around, Ivy found something we did need. On our boat, the line to raise the main sail is held in place by a camming cleat. It holds just fine, but it can be a major pain to release. Last time out, Ivy busted her hand pretty good trying to yank the line out of the cleat. At the store, Ivy found a second-hand-but-unused line clutch. These things can lock down a line, let it run free, or let it ratchet in one direction depending on the position of the lever on top. Ivy found just the perfect one for a great price.

We ran out to the boat today and managed to pull the old cam cleats, epoxy the old mounting holes, and drill new holes, mount the new line clutch, and bed it with butyl tape today. Butyl tape rocks.

The second purpose for our trip was for a get together with a bunch of sailors. Ivy is part of an online group of women who sail. This is a pretty helpful, supportive, and highly competant group of women who exchange information and socialize. There are a bunch of the group members in the Kemah area and they get together once in a while.

The host for this get together has kept an online blog about the work they are doing on their boat in preparation for escaping to the high seas. I've been following their blog http://theceolmors.blogspot.com/ for several years now. The lengths  they are going to in order to ensure their boat is ready to go is very impressive.

Everyone at the gathering was very nice. It was an interesting group. I'm not terribly social by nature and being in a room with thirty other people all chatting and drinking usually sends me into a corner where I can glower until I can escape. My flight or fight reaction barely set in for this party. Mark, the host gave me some reassurance that my plans for working on the fiberglass of our boat were on track. I enjoyed talking to him about what he was doing on his boat. We had a very nice time and it was really fun to meet these people. My one regret was that I forgot to ask Mark and Cidnie how to say the name of their boat. I can think of a half dozen different ways to say Ceol Mor – all of them probably wrong.

We are moving closer to redoing the windows on the boat, but need a week or so of good weather to do it. Fortunately, winter here in Texas will give us some good weather windows for it.