May 31, 2012

Carol came up for the long Memorial Day weekend, so this week was long on recreation and short on project work.  We tried out the new restaurant overlooking the harbor, went to a free reggae concert, enjoyed a potluck dock party, went for a hike up the Cozy Dell Trail (alas, no farmer), and scored some bargains at the Ojai Library's book sale.  Despite the short work week, I managed to finish the last details on the watertight  bulkheads and made quite a bit of progress on reinforcing the hatch for the aft lazarette.  No sailboat racing for me until my hernia is repaired and healed, but the outrigger paddling seems to be no problem. (The effort is steady and controlled, and it's all done sitting down).  At least I have an excuse for not doing any really hard work now.

 

May 24, 2012

It was a full week, with a visit from my best friend from high school whom I hadn't seen in decades.  We had a great time catching up and he helped me out with my current projects.  Carol came up right after he left and the good times continued.  We took the dinghy to brunch, went browsing the local bookstore, and took a day trip to Santa Paula to check out one of Carol's projects.  By chance, we ran into the local Ferrari club whose members had met for lunch at the Glen Tavern Inn where we were also dining.  I did my first outrigger race of the season by steering for another club's novice paddlers.  They really appreciated my steering and we did very well.  If we had all been novices, we would have taken first place!  The usual Wet Wednesday sailing race was cancelled because strong winds offshore had generated breaking waves at the harbor entrance.  The only sour note came today:  my doctor confirmed I have a hernia that will require surgery.  Having been through it once before, I'm not looking forward to it.