A great weekend indeed! You, my ever faithful read (the few of you there are!), shall have to endure now another weekend update of our time aboard Living Light. My work in Chattanooga has kept me so busy that I went up to the boat Thursday and we just got home today (Monday). It made for a great Father's Day weekend though! Since I was working Tarne and the kids didn't make it up until Sunday. Saturday afternoon I had a boating friend come by that lives up in Knoxville as he and his daughter were in town for the weekend and they had never seen Living Light. We had a good time visiting and a nice boat tour. When Saturday evening rolled around though, and after a long and fruitful few days, I could not resist going out for a solo evening sunset cruise around Harrison Bay.
One of my favorite places to be. the lower helm on a pretty evening, the quiet little diesel rumbling below me and the sound of water passing by....SO relaxing!
The view from the lower helm as the sun gets lower:
And the heavens open up! WOW!
Sunday, with Tarne and the kids, we cast off the lines again and anchored out at one of our favorite spots. I pretty much spent the day either swimming or relaxing like this with my feet propped up:
And best of all, I won the Dad Trophy, compliments of my wonderful family (and picked out by Caleb!):
And for another great Father's Day gift, Caleb and I talked and decided HE would captain Living Light back to her berth AND dock her himself! It really made for a great cruise home and priceless, once in a lifetime memories....
Here he is about 1/2 way back to the marina, keeping a sharp watch for obstructions, shallow water, or a crazy boater ignoring the rules of the road:
And one of my favorite pictures in a long time, Caleb checking for the channel markers with the binoculars:
Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of Caleb docking as I was too busy making sure all was going well and helping to coach. He really did an amazing job. He brought her in slowly towards our dock, taking her in and out of gear to maintain a safe and proper speed for docking (enough forward motion to maintain steerage but nothing more in case we ever hit the dock). I had sat next to him on the bridge the entire way just coaching slightly and watching. In the final 100' or so I stood up at the controls right behind him and helped coach a little more, "Forward, neutral, harder to port, reverse for a moment, neutral, forward for a moment, ease her in...." I was and am SO proud of him. Grown and capable men are often afraid of docking a single screw trawler without a bow thruster and yet our growing, smart, and capable 8 year old son brought her in like a pro. He is becoming more and more a capable deck hand and skipper. I am pretty sure in just a couple of years he will be ready to teach piloting lessons to new boaters young and old!
This morning, I decided to take out all the canvas that has been stored under the forward berth. I knew it was there but never took it all out to see where it went. Two huge trashbags full of stuff! I laid it all out on the dock trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. Some pieces we found the right spot for. Some I am convinced have to go to someone else's boat! A lot of it had no angles or shapes to be found on our Monk so I still have no idea where it all goes.
Here is a picture of about 1/2 of it all laid out on the dock:
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\I did discover we seem to have a flybridge mooring cover that was in pretty good repair so that is good. I need to get a pole for it and reinstall the snaps but I may actually start using this right away to keep the darn spiders off the boat at the dock:
I also found 3 window covers that were cut to fit (2 shown in the pictures below), along with a giant length of canvas that covers the side windows forward of both cabin doors and the forward facing salon glass as well. It is a huge affair as it actually attaches to the base of the flybridge and goes below the windows. It's huge!
For our next project we have decide to upgrade both heads on the boat. We have semi-decent Jabsco electric heads right now but I have been told installing new heads is a must. So, we are ordering two new Raritan "Marine Elegance" heads this week with most likely the "smart flush" controls. It should be an interesting project which will most likely eventually also involve installing a new and 2nd holding tank for the aft head. We will also be switching to freshwater flush instead of raw water flush. Only boating enthusiasts will this all of this news about new heads is remotely exciting!!! :)
And to end on a more fun note than new toilets, here is a happy picture of Sarah Grace with a fish she caught on the dock this morning with a hook and tortilla shells for bait. She caught 2 in a row! Go Sarah!!!!!
