Varnish and Orcas

The above photo is after 4 coats of varnish to the combing.  Looks pretty good.  Have to see how non-slip they are.  I didn't smooth them down too much between coats.  Might have to add some non-skid tape to the heavy traffic areas.  Wouldn't do to slip on them.  Lots of hard bits to land on. 

Those winches weren't too bad to rebuild.  Did all four in about 5 hours.

Got all the winches done and this was in the box.  Grrrr.  AND I had to figure out which winch it belonged to.  The last one of course.  Ugh.  Thanks to Max for seeing this and helping me get those buggers back on.

 Installed the new foot pump after the old one turned out to be unrepairable.  The screws kept breaking in the old pump so I shit-canned it and will use most of it for spares.  The rebuild kit will also come in handy.  I found what looked like a plastic bag in the old pump.  Must have been what was causing all the trouble.  How in the hell does a piece of plastic get caught in a pump?  Must have been in the tank or something.  Very weird.

Took Appa out for a sail on Tuesday with some friends from Delaware.  Great night.  Only went out for a bit.

So we were trucking along in about 10 knots of wind and I see a HUGE tug coming, pushing this wall of water.  I know the kids would get a kick out of punching through some waves so I altered course to hit the biggest part of the wake.  We are getting pretty close to the waves (the tug is way past at this point) and I see something in the wake.  Holy crap the tug is towing something.  No.  ORCAS!  8 orcas were following the tug in full on power mode.  Everytime I've seen them they were these docile beasties, going slow, etc.  Not now.  Coming almost out of the water, they were going fast.  The kids screamed with delight.  Or maybe it was me.  Either way, I was amazed that I got to take friends out for their first trip on a sailboat and we saw orcas.  Still smiling about this.



Not my photo but damn close to what we saw!



Now this is the weird thing.  Just before I got to the boat, I closed my eyes and made a wish for orcas.  Not praying mind you but it could be mistaken for that.  Do I have to go to church now?