HAPPY FIRST DAY OF SUMMER

Today is the official First Day of Summer... Hope yours is a nice one :)

We've had a pretty crappy windy and rainy weekend but it could have been worse.  It was a reminder to put "fix leaky hatches above the bed" on The List. We had a tropical wave pop through which was one of those that might develop into something.  The sky was back to its normal pretty blue color this morning but now it is gray and a bit rainy looking... So It Goes...

I was surprised to see that there's a new weather system (Invest 93) now sitting on top of Curacao.  That is where we had planned to go for this "summer" season (don't use the "H" word).

The first day of summer means today is Fête de la Musique!  Oh, to be in Paris today... It is so cool because there are bandstands set up everywhere (along with stalls for food & drink) and it seems like each time you turn a corner there's someone playing...

One year we accidentally ran across Joan Baez singing at Place de la Concorde. That was a surprise.

Of course it is not just a Paris festival but all over.  It is just that LOTS happened in the Paris area. We had good times in the south as well.

Maybe next year :)

Star Wreck, the movie

Last night we watched STAR WRECK.

It is a low-budget, foreign-made Star Trek comedy and really quite well done.  It is in Finnish, but with English subtitles.  The only problem I had with the Finnish is that when I looked down to pick up some spilled popcorn, I missed some of the dialog that went by :)

We got our copy from of Star Wreck from AMAZON.

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Hey! Where did that "L" come from on the Hurricane Weather Widget over in the right column? Must check that out... NOW!

Oh, it's the same one again... I thought it was something new. We like ZERO percent !!!

Statement as of 2:00 PM EDT on June 17, 2010
For the North Atlantic... Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico... A strong tropical wave approaching the Leeward Islands is producing disorganized showers and thunderstorms as it moves to the west-northwest at about 15 mph.  Although strong upper-level winds should prevent tropical cyclone formation...locally heavy rain and gusty winds are possible in the Leeward Islands and Puerto Rico over the next day or two.  There is a low chance...near 0 percent...of this system becoming a tropical cyclone during the next 48 hours. Tropical cyclone formation is not expected during the next 48 hours.

UPDATE: Friday June 18th : This morning it was back to 20%.  Maybe they made a typo yesterday when they said zero... So It Goes

I wonder what tonight's DVD viewing pleasure will be?  BIG LOVE, perhaps?

Word Processing & Office Suites: Lotus Symphony

We have Apple MacBooks. When we bought these just over 3 years ago (yes, just out of AppleCare Warranty) to replace our previous MacBooks which replaced our iBooks, we decided to not go with Microsoft Office that we previously used.  We had Apple Works on our previous MacBooks but this time we went with the newer Apple product that people were touting which was iWork.

I've never liked iWork Pages word processing application and I have given it a pretty good chance. We didn't get iWorks Numbers app because it was sold separately and therefore cost more and we don't really use spreadsheets.

When someone sends us a Word document it opens in Pages but never quite correctly... Maybe I misunderstood, but I thought this was Apple's answer to MS Word.  Also, when someone sends us an .xls file, I don't have an application to open it and use my Mac's default "Quick Look" viewer.  This works to look at a file but it is still lacking...

So, this morning I found IBM Lotus Symphony which is a FREE office suite package.  Yes, FREE.  I used to use Lotus-1-2-3 way back when in Paris!  I watched their video presentations for the word processor which seemed similar to the Word I used to use.

This was a no-brainer for Ms CheapSeats... Free download of a "Lotus" product.  Cool.

The only problem so far is that it took about 90 minutes to download (229MB), but my connection didn't fail and it installed OK. I had a bit of a problem finding it in my Applications Folder. I looked for "IBM" and "Lotus", then found that it was named "Symphony". Not a big deal, just took a few moments of searching in Finder. It is now residing on my Dock.

There isn't an "import" command, so I tried opening a Pages document with the ".pages" file extension and it was not recogized as a valid file type.

The Pages document I had was of a charter contract which has a combination of text and tables with shaded rows.  Using Pages, I exported this as a Rich Text Document. I opened this in Symphony and tables and text formatting had disappeared.  I then exported it as a Word document and when I opened it in Symphony my tables were still there... HURRAY!  I probably have to do a bit of text formatting, but that's OK.

I just tried to open an Excel (.xls) spreadsheet in Symphony and it worked finest kind.

Looking forward to playing with this new application.

You can find it here and try it yourself:

This is the Beta 3 version
http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/SymphonyBetaHome.nsf/home

I just found a blog I'll have to check out:
http://lotussymphonyblog.com/

This afternoon we are going to make some progress on our new dinghy that we are building. Must remember to take photos... my little pocket digital camera eats batteries. So It Goes...

Jeannie Kuich : Celebration Of Life & Obituary Announcement

A celebration of the life of Jeannie Kuich will be held at Latitude 18 (Red Hook, St Thomas, USVI) from 4:30 to 6:30 on Wednesday, June 16, 2010.  There will be a cash bar.  Please bring hors d’oeuvres.

In lieu of contributions, please give to the Humane Society of St. Thomas, 340-775-0599 in the name of Jeanne Kuich.

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Jeanne Zimmerman Kuich, St. Thomas, USVI

Jeannie, to her many friends on St. Thomas, died June 9, 2010. She was born October 20, 1936 in Louisiana and lived in Houston, Texas from the time she was two. She left for college in 1954. A graduate of Colorado University in 1958 she married Mike  Kuich in Houston August 20, 1959. Jeannie and Mike moved to St. Thomas in 1967 where they went into the charter business. With Michael she co-owned 5 different sail boats ranging in size from the 50 foot Stargazer to the 84 foot Queen of Sheba. An avid sailor, Jeannie sailed the islands from Grenada to St. Thomas many times. With Mike she sailed to Bermuda 5 times, New England twice, Nova Scotia twice with one trip to Norway and all the points in between.

In 1982 she ventured on a two year sail around the world.

Jeannie is the author of the astronomy book “Soap Operas of the Sky”.  She contributed many articles on Sailing and Astronomy to such publications as Cruising World, All At Sea and the Compass plus she wrote the regular feature "Sky Lights" for the VI Daily News.

Jeannie is survived by her husband Michael Kuich, her step sister Sarah in Houston and her many friends on St. Thomas, the BVI and abroad. Jeannie was an active member of the Audubon Society and EAST.

________
Thanks, Sue, for this information.

Summer is off to an early start

The first day of summer is June 21st this year but the summer storm season (don't like using the "H" word) officially began already on June 1st.

So, we are two weeks into the season and they say that Invest 92 might become something...

THERE REMAINS A HIGH CHANCE...60 PERCENT...OF THIS SYSTEM BECOMING A TROPICAL CYCLONE DURING THE NEXT 48 HOURS.

The tracks of this model are higher than they were yesterday.  It is still quite a ways off so maybe they will keep shifting upward and away from us.  Hopefully nothing will become of this potential storm for anyone.

Good incentive for getting those needed boat projects done :)

UPDATE:  HURRAY!!! The 2pm forecast now says 40% chance

Onion Dip Recipe & Amazon Gift Certificates

Bob sent me this link to this Onion Dip recipe at the King Arthur Flour website. (remember the King Biscuit Flower Hour?)

It's only just after 8am and I so much desire some chips and dip... or a waffle :)

Amazon sent me an email this morning about their Summer Reading Store.  We need to get some new reading material so I'll check this out later today.

Father's Day is coming up soon (June 20th) and maybe an Amazon Gift Certificate is just THE gift.  Especially easy for all of the cruisers out there. You can have the card emailed and schedule the date for it to be sent. This is handy... Say you are doing a long passage and your sister's birthday will happen during that time.  No problem. Schedule the gift certificate to be emailed on her birthday.  Cool, huh?

Still nothing on the epoxy delivery front :(

So It Goes...

Mast update

Still haven't received our 3-gallon epoxy order...

We have moved stuff out of Jerry's shop and are moving things out of the parking lot.  We are thinking up cunning plans on how the two of us can move the mast to the dock so we can place it on So It Goes and finish it on the boat.

Ordered a used (very good) staysail from Baconsails.com yesterday.

Popcorn Kittens Video

Bob showed me this YouTube.com video because he knew it would make me laugh & smile.  So right he was!

So, now I'd like to share it with you folks.



Hope this gets your weekend off to a good start. Enjoy!

Mr Zip on Vacation? Active "summer" season

Yesterday (Wednesday) we received our mast's "sock" in the mail. This was shipped Priority Mail on Friday so it seemed to me that we should have received our 3-gallon epoxy kit that we ordered last Tuesday.  I called up RAKA and they said it had been sent but they had a problem at the post office.  The postal employee said it couldn't be shipped via Priority Mail which is odd because they did it 3 weeks ago and many other times, so it is coming First Class. He said we should get it by Friday, but we'll see...

Maybe Mr Zip's vacation replacement just wasn't hip on such things... Probably doesn't even know that he missed Towel Day a couple of weeks ago :)

So It Goes...

On another front... As you probably know, "they" have forecasted that this will be an above-average, super-hyperactive summer season for those sorts of storms. I don't like to use the H-word.

Yesterday, Bob posted the 2005 storm map on BoatBits which had 28 named storms.  I was happy to see that none of the tracks were in our area of the Caribbean.  Check it out!

This morning's Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog reports on the seasonal h*cane forecast issued June 2, 2010 by Dr. Phil Klotzbach and Dr. Bill Gray of Colorado State University (CSU).

So It Goes...

Tuesday was a "two fer"

The sky did not look promising at all on Tuesday afternoon.  In fact, it looked a lot like it did in the morning... GRAY.

But, it didn't rain.  It didn't rain all day which is great because we were able to apply the second layer of glass to the mast.

We were scraping the bottom of the barrels with the epoxy :)  I was surprised that the pumps still worked with less than an inch of resin in the bottles. That was great.  For the last batch of epoxy, I had to decant the resin and hardner into their own cups, then measure using a syringe.  Had enough epoxy plus a bit left over!  We should be getting another 3 gallons in the mail today.

The sock material was sent Friday so that should be popping up anytime soon, too.

Happy day.

Two for Tuesday???

We hope to apply the second layer of biaxial cloth today.  We have applied one 12" strip and hope to do the other, weather willing.

We woke up to a solid one-tone gray sky.  No clouds... just solid gray.

We decided to go and get some water and gasoline.  Gasoline has gone up to $3.45/gallon at St.Croix Marine, from $3.20.  Diesel is $3.19/gallon and if you buy more than 500 gallons of diesel (cash) the price is $3.03.  There is a further discount if you buy more than 1000 gallons. Someone who just passed through Bermuda told us it was almost US$4.00 per LITER.

After returning to the boat it still looked like possible rain.

Quite often it will look like this and nothing ever happens... although usually more often than not, it will rain.

So, we went for it !

It took about an hour...

We will wait for another half hour (3:30pm) and go see if we can turn the mast over and complete this second layer of glass.

Finger's crossed!

Another epoxy tip:  When working with epoxy, try not to drip sweat into the epoxy.

Monday Memorial Day

There were only a few drops of rain last night.  Not enough for Buffy to come inside.

This morning we went and put on another 12" strip of biax cloth. We were going to come back in an hour or so to start on another 12" strip but it rained about 10 minutes after returning to the boat... of course! But we weren't too worried that it would cause any problems.

After checking out the remains of Ace Hardware's tent sale, it looked like it was going to rain some more so we just went back to the mast and put the tarp over it.  Right now, sun is streaming through the ports although the sky still looks like potential rain.  Hope we'll do the carbon tows and the 2nd layer of biaxial cloth tomorrow (Tuesday).

Here's a photo of Woo from the boat s/v Love Inn. Woo and his friend Bob were visiting Jerry at the shop.  He really likes the wind from the fan... his fur was flying all over, wish I took a video.

Hope you are having an excellent holiday weekend.

Sunny Sunday

It was a sunny Sunday and we went to the yard at 1pm and prepared the mast and got the first 12" wide strip of biaxial fiberglass applied.

Hopefully, Monday morning we will turn the mast over and do the in-between strip which is probably 9" wide... Run some carbon tows and then apply a 12" strip of biax.  Then in the afternoon, turn the mast run some carbon tows down that part, and do the other "fill in the gap piece" which will make for two layers of cloth.

Hope the "tube sock" will arrive on Tuesday, but I'd really be surprised if they have even mailed it yet... It should make finishing the mast easier.

That's the plan... we'll see how it goes :)

SUN-day

This morning we awoke to glorious sunshine.

It's a bit steamy outside right down with the wet ground getting heated up.

Last night was quite something though.  We had a squall go through with lots of wind and heavy rain.  That passed and then we had bouts of very heavy rainfall.  We had to pause the DVD a couple of times because we couldn't hear the show due to the noise of the rain.

Willow was very freaked out with the rain.  I wonder if her rain-phobia started with Hurricane Omar? Buffy doesn't mind usually.  She'll even stay outside if it is raining lightly.

I thought Bob was joking in BoatBits today when he said it's been raining for 40 days.  Seemed to me that he was referring to Bill Cosby and his Noah & the Ark routine (I love his album), but it really has been 40-ish days because we started this mast-building gig on April 9th.

So, we'll see how today goes....

Saturday Showers... Rain, that is!

Just went outside and took some photos of Christiansted Harbor, St Croix

When will this let up? Can't glass the mast in this weather... So It Goes

Rain Rain GO AWAY!

Guess what... Yes! More RAIN...

The islands are nice and green now.  WAPA on St Thomas has some kind of water generating problem, but I hope they have been able to catch all this rain we've been having.

My friend Kerry, owner-operator of the charter yacht PROMENADE, took a few photos for her blog.

 Wednesday in Charlotte Amalie, St Thomas

Thursday in Charlotte Amalie, St Thomas

Probably looked pretty much the same today, too :)

Since we are talking about depressing weather, did you see this on Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog ???

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued its 2010 Atlantic hurricane season forecast today. NOAA forecasts a very active and possibly hyperactive season. They give an 85% chance of an above-normal season, a 10% chance of a near-normal season, and just a 5% chance of a below-normal season. NOAA predicts a 70% chance that there will be 14 - 23 named storms, 8 - 14 hurricanes, and 3 - 7 major hurricanes, with an Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) in the 155% - 270% of normal range. If we take the midpoint of these numbers, NOAA is calling for 18.5 named storms, 11 hurricanes, 5 major hurricanes, and an ACE index 210% of normal. A season with an ACE index over 175% is considered "hyperactive." An average season has 10 named storms, 6 hurricanes, and 2 intense hurricanes.

This is an interesting tidbit from NOAA...

We received an email from a client in Reno Nevada this morning. He said that he awoke this morning to 2 inches of snow and 31 degrees. I'm surprised as it's almost June! His local news media said that this May has been the coldest on record in 125 years...

This afternoon I had a phone call from the Irish Hotel Barge Shannon Princess. I was complaining about all the rain we've been having in tropical paradise, and he said that they had a glorious and sunny day on the Emerald Isle of Ireland.

So It Goes...

Thursday RAIN and more coming

Lots of rain...

Tuesday - Rain - Did internet work and went shopping

Wednesday - There were a few dimples to top up after filling in the grooves from the other day.  Got about 3/4 done before it started raining.

Today, Thursday... Heavy RAIN this morning.  They have forecasted Flash Flood Warnings through Saturday evening.

I long for the workshops where we built the Mooses.  Notwithstanding what some local people think (especially Mr. P), we could have completed our mast project within two weeks. Eight to ten hour days in an indoor, lighted, dry workshop that would be large enough to build both halves at the same time.  Easy-Peasy... Pas de problème

Maybe I should put on "Here Comes the Sun" by the George Harrison...

Another Monday Mast Madness

It's Monday, again... Can you believe that May is almost over??? Next weekend is Memorial Day.

So, today we had hoped to apply the external biaxial cloth  but we basically just did prep work.

Bob cleaned up yesterday's groove filling work with the shurform and then sanded the mast.  It takes time to do a 37-ish foot mast :)

Then we set up the sawhorses to support the mast for the glassing stage of the project. Had to level it, etc, and clean up the surrounding work area so we wouldn't be tripping over scrap wood while working.

Once that was finished, it was really too late in the afternoon to start with the next step. But, while I was out buying a 2-litre bottle of Coke and a Snickers, Bob was drawing out our boom. We be multitasking :)

Sunday - Filling the grooves & chickens

Well, Sunday was another productive day!

We filled in the remaining grooves in the mast.  There are a few dimples to deal with, but that stage is now finished... HURRAY!

The water was very calm when we returned to the boat and we had a nice soak after a soggy day of working on the mast... Followed by a Guinness and salty soy nuts!

Monday, if all goes well, we plan to apply the first layer of biaxial fibreglass to the outside of the mast.

There are a lot of chicken stories on various blogs today, such as this one from Crooks and Liars, so here's mine :)

Saw a new hen with 4 tiny chicks running about the work area on Sunday. They are still a bit shy. Can you spot all 4?

Saturday started good...

We were off to a pretty good start on Saturday morning.  We left the boat at 10am.  We only had a tiny bit of rain last night and the plastic tarp was still on the mast.  Great!

While I was cleaning out the plastic pots used for yesterday's epoxy, Bob had a visitor stop by and chat for awhile about this and that.

So, we turned over the mast and wetted out those grooves that didn't get it yesterday, with clear epoxy.

(Kerry, Bob's Promenade shirt just isn't going to survive this project.  This is our last shirt but they served us well!)

Then I started making the epoxy filler goop with my magic powders. I knew that we don't have enough colloidal silica to finish this part of the project (darn!) and will have to buy some more today locally, but I forgot to bring over the 2 bags of wood flour that we have on the boat, so we won't get to work as long as we wanted to before stopping for lunch.

Here's Bob feeling groovy... Getting into the groove?  Sorry, just had to get that in there some how :)

This is my little work area. The table is too low and I have to bend over to add fillers to the pots which is quite a strain after a couple of hours of constant mixing, but as I've said many times, I'm thankful for what we've got.

The other day I bought some Playtex dishwashing gloves (they were difficult to find!). I actually prefer them to the blue disposable gloves that you can see in the photo above.  We have to go over to Ace Hardware (if it's not raining) and see if they have some.

Epoxy tip:

• When I put the epoxy bottles away for the day, I put an old glove on the each pump with a finger going over the spout. Then, if somehow the pump gets depressed or if there's a change in atmospheric pressure, the leaked resin or hardener will be contained.

Looks like it might not rain!  Maybe we can go to the store and get a bit more work done but I expect we'll get back too late.  So It Goes...


We bought some colloidal silica from the local marine store (which was a dollar cheaper than Ace).  For WEST System, it was over $23 for 5.5 oz. We need it now, so we bought it. Tomorrow we'll make another order to RAKA where colloidal silica is $10.75 for an 8 oz bag.

Mast project makes progress

Friday was a very nice day and we took full advantage of it.  We worked from 10am to 5:30pm.  This is hard work, especially since the mast is out in the open with no shade.

Bob planed the mast a bit more and then made wooden handles for sandpaper for a belt sander to manually sand the mast.  I'm impressed as this was coarse paper and really took a lot of effort.  Three or four passes of a 37-ish foot mast is quite a distance!

Most of this was done while I went to feed the cats, check email, and get some take-out lunch for us.

Then, using an air compressor, we blew out the grooves.

Afterwards, we filled in at least 1/3 of the grooves with a thickened epoxy mixture. My camera was wanting new batteries, so no pictures.  I'll take a couple of pictures of the same thing today though... lots of opportnities to do so, except to find the time.  I can't quite keep up with making the filling compound to Bob's application of it... So It Goes...

Make Hay While The Sun Shines

We have made some progress on the mast project... HURRAY!

Monday was a non-work day. It had rained heavily Sunday night and was still raining Monday morning. We took advantage of the bad mast-building weather and took the bus (well, it was an hour late so we took a $2.50 bus-taxi) up to Sunny Isle to buy some cat food and kitty litter, plus some stuff for us. On the way to the dinghy we picked up our mail (epoxy & glass tape) and stayed on the boat as we didn't get back until after 3pm.

Tuesday afternoon (rain delay again) we fitted the two mast sections and Bob did some planing.

Yesterday, Wednesday, Bob did a bit more planing and then it was time to put them together!

Planed some

Ran Kevlar strands down the interior, then wetted out with epoxy

Applied glue and clamped with "Spanish windlasses"

Glueing up a 35-ish foot mast in the sun without any epoxy going off was quite an accomplishment and I'm going to award us a Gold Star.

Well done!

I almost kept up with making the epoxy glue mixture to Bob's application of the goop. I try to use new pots and mixing sticks for each batch to help keep us cleaner, plus there won't be any old mixture accelerating the working time of the new stuff.  When you are in a rush it is easy to not stir the mixture long enough,  but fortunately there was a clock on the wall with a very slowly moving second hand which helped tremendously.

It is taking us longer than our estimated two weeks' building time.  This is because we did not factor in the limitations of building it outside in a parking lot.  We are thankful for this workspace, but if we had a "proper" space we could have built both halves at once, be able to work whatever the weather, had proper storage space for everything associated with the project, everything would be stored indoors and out of the wet, etc. Plus, we could work on building a dinghy while waiting for epoxy to kick on the mast....  But, you take what you can get :)

Epoxy tip:  When starting for the day, pump the resin into another resin bottle so the pump is properly primed.  Same thing for the hardener.  If you don't do this, the first pump may spit as "contents may settle" due to change in atmospheric pressure or gravity or elves or something...

Another epoxy tip:  After pressing the pumps down (especially for the hardener) keep a bit of pressure on the pump as you let it back up.  If it comes up too fast, there's the possibility that it won't fill properly and your next batch will not contain the proper resin-to-hardener ratio.  I hope I explained that OK :)

Time to get going!

We Love The US Postal System

Thursday afternoon we ordered a 3-gallon kit of epoxy from RAKA INC in Florida. We really like this company and buy all of our epoxy and associated paraphernalia from RAKA. They understand about shipping to the Virgin Islands via USPS Priority Mail and are willing to do so!

I called them this morning (Monday) to see if they had mailed our order yet as I wanted to add something. They said they sent it out on Friday.

We just stopped by SURF THE NET (near the Boardwalk in Christiansted and very handy for cruisers) where we get mail and we were surprised that we had a large box waiting for us.  It was our RAKA order... sent Friday and received Monday via Priority Mail.

FANTASTIC !!!

Thank you, Mr. Zip :)

Friday BOAT Cat Blogging

Just had to post this photo... It is Friday after all and we haven't had a Friday Cat Blog in a bit...

Willow says HI !!!

Wednesday is OK so far

Last night we had a couple of heavy downpours.  This morning has been OK but now it is overcast and gray.

We dinghied over to Gallows Bay to pick up a few things for the mast project at Ace Hardware and St Croix Marine.  We also picked up a couple of post-mast project items for this evening... a 6-pack of Dos Equis and a nice hunk of pork loin.  And, for instant gratification, we each had an ice cream sandwich... heavenly!

It's difficult enough to be building a mast in a parking lot without the added troubles that the weather causes.  But, one must work with what one has available and be thankful...

Here's Bob yesterday glassing in some extra reinforcing biax cloth to the interior of mast half #2. We're going to have to order another 3 gallons of epoxy from Raka soon.

So It is Going...