Wee projects

A few wee things going on of late. I lucked out in having two glorious weeks of weather at the beginning of June as I decided to take two weeks vacation. Since I couldn't afford to leave town, my folks came to visit. I LOVE this when that happens 'cos my dad likes to be useful and I usually have plenty of things lined up for him to help me with.

First, out went my broken dishwasher. It gave up the ghost shortly before leaving Mitchell Island last year and I was only using it to store the metal chaffing dishes in the top left corner. Yes, a clear violation of efficient use of space, but I needed my "Round Tuit" to come back into town to assist such an endeavour. I suppose I could have perused the Craiglist in search of a new-to-me dishwasher or gone to see our guy Len as he's got the barn full of stuff and probably a dishwasher he's keen to sell too. (More on him in another post).

Besides, isn't that why one has kids around but for doing the dishes? Bah...storage space makes my toes curl more than the idea of a new dishwasher. I just have to make a curtain to go over it to keep the dust out.

Of course I am coveting the idea of one day getting new cabinets for these are thrashed and in need of replacement.

And falling under the category of a Tana-happy-project is this funky torchiere lamp that I picked up at an antique store in New Westminster. I paid $10 which cleaned up one can find ugly ones for around $175 minimum. But it is destined for my office at work when it gets done. I've been stripping down the metal and it is a mix of brass and pot metal so some of it will get re-painted and I will just polish up the rest of the brass.

It takes one of those Fat Albert bulbs in the top. Those tend to be pricier than regular bulbs but I like the tri-light functionality. Popping the three light part off turned out easier than expected and you can see the durn thing doesn't work too.

Yup, that grotty wire is going and I will replace it with proper insulated stuff. Here is a project Dad would have loved to help with but they skipped out too early for me to add this to his list. That's OK, I'd just as soon do it me-self.

In my "infinite" brilliance however I took apart one of the lights too "joyously in my journey of discovery" when I should have just left it as is. I lost a fine screw when it fell of my work bench, between the boards in the floor and into the river underneath. I have an alternate screw but I'll have to grind off the business end for it is a wee bit longer than the one I lost. Sigh.

And here are some wee babies. Yup, I think these are the same batch of swans Rhianna saw as there are eight babies here too. Mama swan gave me a wee nip in the upper arm when she thought I was getting too close to her babies.

And it was finally wee skiffy's turn for a buff and polish. Greig thought it should be renamed and put out the call for new names but nobody came up with anything more brillant than the name it has already. I think wee skiffy has been with us now some four years. It didn't come with that arch and some time ago Greig had Wei Tang weld it on for us over at Mitchell but getting round to painting it never came to fruition. I felt we were always going to call it wee skiffy and that it should be kept. And so I won.


There is a pile of sand leftover from the hydro installation so when the innards of the boat was still tacky I had Greig get a bucket of sand from the pile and we scattered it onto the wet paint for anti-slip. Oh yes the fancy boatyards like Arrow use crushed glass for that function but we aren't at all fancy down here on the Fraser river Bayou. Just regular dirt please. A second coat made it all really purdy...I printed out and made a stencil for the name on the bow and...

And speaking of purdy don't Miss Stacey (she is mama to Payton, Dyllon and Denis Jr.) look grand in the new life jacket? We lost a bunch when the Goblin sank last winter during last winter's Cold Snap from Hell. Still need more. They are on the list.

And away they go!

Fresh cruising season

A week or so ago had us getting back into the charter season groove on Eloquent. It was a glorious, but windy day and a wee bit bouncy on the chuck. I think the first cruise was a burial at sea or some such thing. The last burial we did a few weeks previously had the family members all screaming at each other. Thankfully only English Bay that was dramatic that day.



Alas it was so windy my voice on the recording is totally lost. Bah, I probably wasn't really saying anything of significance anyway. But I think you can see from the rise and fall of the railing an idea of the swell height. Nobody barfed. Three stars!

And as we were leaving the dock on the first cruise we saw a few notable things. The first boat is the Lazy Gal and every time Greig sees it he practically drools. He HEARTS that boat large. I do believe it is a Chris-Craft. And soon after a Monk cruised by. It was really the first nice day we've had here in the city after such a long wet spring and it was a bit busy.

We came out of our docks at False Creek and went round Stanley Park (click here to see a Map of Stanley Park) into Coal Harbour. HRH Prince Edward just was in town doing a dedication. (I'd post the link but it doesn't seem to be working yet.)

Just taking his snake for a wee bit of exercise

On Monday, when everyone else was sick from the heat, we had a gem of an opportunity to do some family fun. Bui had a professional day and was off from school as did Dosha. This rarely happens that we are all off together. Neither Greig, Bui or I had been to Buntzen Lake and so I decided we had to go for the afternoon to see what it was like. I knew that it would have been stupid busy on the previous day for many folk from Coquitlam, Burnaby and Port Moody go up there and it is crazy on weekend.

Bui and Dosha were playing catch just at the water's edge and suddenly screamed when she got started by this fellow taking his snake for a bit of exercise. Funny though as she says she likes the critters but she caught the attention of everyone on the beach when she yelped.

"Gee," laughed Greig, "I actually never thought I'd see the day to witness my daughter walk on water!"

At first I didn't notice that there was only the one snake but there was another up by his neck.

What we found particularly funny is that off to the right of this photo is a partitioned part for people and there dogs. An otherwise lovely thing for not the constant barking of one dog all afternoon. I was amazed at how many on the beach were offended by this fellow out with his snakes. They were quite under control and came to him when he called to them. Best of all they didn't bark either. Funny that.

Off with the tarp!

Denis Jr, and his gal pal Rowan prepping the wood for Denis Sr.

We've been waiting for a good bout of weather to rip off the tarp and go hard on the roof. Seems like I took my first batch of vacation at a good time too for the weather is screaming hot (breaking records of 41C in the Fraser Valley. Alas the first day off roofing was about 33C and we were so unused to it that the next day had everyone hurting from heat/sunstroke. Well almost everyone as it seems I managed to escape it. Fortunately, the proceeding day gave Denis Sr a breeze so it made all that all so much more tolerable.

Here Denis Jr. and his mum Stacey work on finishing off the sheeting. It has been
partially done since April of last year as Greig started this a week or
two before we did the haul out.

Plastic sheeting covering the bed and Denis Sr. raised the skylite so it can
be removed when we feel like doing so.

I've lived under tarps of various storts for some six years. Once lived for a bit without one but that didn't last very long. I've had a tarp on the floatie for pretty much as soon as we got it for it leaked so bad. I don't know what it is like to not have one on it. Turns out, it is pretty bright.

Greig looking at the beautiful roof and thankful he's not
doing it.Those redhead's can't take the heat very well.

Here Miss Rowan and Stacey take a break on the back of the Express to
do Stacey's hair. A wee bit of roofin' and some hair-doo-in' in between...

It is almost done. Denis Sr. is putting down the last bit of middle as I write and I'll post the finals when it is all done. It looks beautiful and we've added a hatch to get up onto the roof so we won't have to get onto it from the back. I think that I will put down a floating deck so we can put a few chairs up there for it is a primo tanning spot. We have to suss out a proper drip edge for around the front as we've got a slight curve to it all. To have it done for that width would cost more than all the roll on put together. I think we can come up with an alternative that is far cheaper.

Spring and summer do list

(I have been trying to write this post for about a week now. I thought I would try using newest version of MS Word and try directly publishing from it into Blogger but it didn't work and made a hell of a mess in the back end code. Furthermore it wouldn't publish. Not very impressed Mr. Bill.)

I am a gardener's daughter. Spring comes and I get the itch to dig. Not as bad as my dad does but I do know I come by this urge naturally. Some of the contained plants have survived and some not. The nettle is growing amok in the pots and it has no intentions of waiting for me.

I had great ambitions of growing some hanging tomatoes (not cherry ones, something a bit bigger) and the topsy-turvey bags look a bit stupid to me. Plus there had been a re-call on the things. A cheap and cheerful old pail will work just as well and is certainly more substantial. My ambition got ahead of me and I curtailed myself a bit when I thought of WHERE I would hang then and realized I'd have to ask my landlord about that too. And while he didn't say, "No" to my green intentions, his suggestion for an alternate location had potentially too much work when I've already enough.

And I wondered why it is that I set myself up? I have all these THINGS I want to do and then I complain about not having enough time for other stuff and the plain and simple truth is I just take on too much. It is actually more of a priority to fix the things on my float house this year than it is to ensure I have a nice yield of tomatoes. Besides, there is always next year.

In the meantime, the needs of the float house scream at me a I've got a rather ambitious list to tackle.

Here is the slide show instead.

Muddy Waters, redux

The freshet is running again and Brian Lewis in today's Vancouver Province Newspaper had another article about dredging of the lower Fraser River. Of course they always talk about the main channel from the Surrey/Delta docks and it is all the other channels they neglect. There other stakeholders along the mighty expanse of the Fraser and they too are at risk. It is Buck Passing 101.

"He also says the lack of secondary channel-dredging is reaching the point where it's about to impact tourism -- especially Delta's emerging plans to redevelop Ladner Harbour as a major tourist destination. "

"They want to make it attractive, with shops, parks and picnic sites. But the fact is that a Fraser River mud bank is not something that's attractive for tourists to look at."

Ladner, New Westminster, Richmond are only a few of the communities affected by it all though they are the most downstream of it all. Oops and Vancouver too...

Why oh why does it take having to swing the tourism bat for anyone to take it seriously? Stakeholders all along the river have been jumping up and down for years about this. It seems easier for the Port Authority to go picking on individual lease holders to make this right without having to do their part in any of it. It is my observation that it loves to sling the mud it refuses to take responsibility for.

Anyhow we will see how this run off will effect us for we're new in this spot. I tell you though I certainly don't have to contend with the logs that we used to at Mitchell and I don't miss that one bit.

Maybe they'll surprise me.

Floating around in the gyre

A couple of years ago, I adopted my cat Tobias from my friend Sparrow who, forty-something and single with a grown child, decided to go walkabout. Her family is Hungarian (though she was born in Canada) and thus, that was her first destination. She has since made her way back to North America by way of Italy, the Caribbean, and now hangs her hat at the Pidgeon Point Lighthouse Hostel where she currently works. Yes she's indeed a bit of a gypsy. She's been making it in the news lately for her discovery of a rig worker's hard hat that wound up on the beach near the lighthouse. She managed to track the owner of the hard hat down too and is getting some 15 minutes of fame from it. The Anchorage Daily News published this, and CBS Morning news has been calling her too.

I had never heard of the Pacific Subarctic Gyre, and this is a pretty neat map to what that looks like too.

Kitchen Chemistry 101

Many thanks to Sir Seb of the Wendy Ann II for his simple way to clean portholes, I've been putting his method to work in a solution of cola and vinegar for a week or so. Of course they say the real thing is the bomb for cleaning anything that way but I was filling up a garbage bin so I opted for the cheaper no-name variety. He soaked his for a month or so but I don't think it will need to take so long really. And I twelve or so portholes to clean-up to mount into new construction.

These came from the Bowie as we had taken them out before selling it at the end of the summer as they were starting to get ripped off by the crackheads and others over there. At the time it was best to remove them for at least we'd keep them as intact as possible, the provenance. notwithstanding, they could at least go from one WWII subchaser to another WWII subchaser. We had negotiated to return them in the sale pending that the new owner would return a few other things off the Bowie but he failed in his end of the bargain. (Of course we should have known we had yet another wanker on our hands. Did I mention that we found out much after that he was was a convicted pedofile? Yup. Really, how could we have known as we were so glad to just get OUT of there. Honestly, I couldn't dream this crap up if I tried.)

I've had stored them away in safe local and I dragged out a couple of parts the other day to finally have a go at them.

Here I started to chisel away at the old double-thicknesses of ply
before having the where-with-all to photograph.
Oh, and can I have a "YEA baby!" the new workbench?

I wanted to show just how thick that old Bowie ply was!
A double layer of REAL 1" thick. Seems true 1" ply you get these days is shy of a true inch.
Apologies for the overexposure as it was hard to photograph with the left and
hold the ruler with the right.

Cola and vinegar smells just de-lovely, and these were covered
in paint the day before.

These letters spell out Eloquent, the main charter vessel Greig CDs and engineers on and so I threw them into the sauce too. There are two sets of brass letters.
Oh how I love typography!

Here is a view after chipping away for two hours. This one is too big to put in the garbage bin though I had parts of it in a Rubbermaid bin which it stretched all to heck and I could only get a quarter of is soaking at a time.

The screws into it of course are flatheads and covered in paint. (I'd like to change those to Robertsons if I can find them to match). This is one of the larger portholes. Attempting to get a good turn on these is impossible for me as the metal is so soft and you can easily wreck the screw head. I think the sauce was doing a good job of delaminating the ply in what bits I was able to submerge. I figure I was making pretty OK time with all of it. I do enjoy picky chores like this for I putter and get in a meditative zone. Greig is dreaming up of a faster way to do all this. I had also considered doing slices through the ply with the sawzall blade and then chiselling the ply away. However, I couldn't figure out how to put a shorter blade in the sawzall as the one on it was 14" long and a recipe for me to slice off my hand.

I've been nursing a bad thumb for almost lobbing off the end off it with a mandoline cutting prosciutto and as it turns out, thumb. I had visions of another visit to the Royal Columbia emergency given my luck. There has been too much of that too lately I think they are getting far to familiar with us.