Chain Plates

I've been really busy this summer working on a variety of boats.  I started out doing a lot of work on an IP-38 and the owner wanted me to rebed the chainplates.  The caprail on the boat was in such bad condition that I could only guess what shape the stuff underneath was in so I recommended a Factory Refit.

I was right but did not know to what extent till I saw this!

Anyway, once the boat comes back later this year or early next I still have lots to do.

In the meantime we continue to work on transitioning to Texas and building our dream home.  Lesley continues with Agility training with Lewis and I continue to be untrainable!

New home plan is shaping up

We had a nice surprise yesterday when our Architect emailed us a front view of our newly planned home.

Another Lagoon 450!

Last year I worked on a Lagoon 450 and was able to make significant major changes to the AC and DC systems on board. 

This week I've been working on a DC system on another Lagoon 450 - this project is not nearly as involved but I am replacing an 840AH AGM battery bank (Exide bateries) with Massive Mastervolt 6V AGMs in a series/parallel configuration.  When I'm finished will have 1300AH of house battery capacity - still sorting out various charge options!

Photos later!  Time for a swim!

Hooking up with the past!

I grew up in the South West, Barstow, California to be exact, and my best friend and his sister lived 2 houses down the street.  I've been in and out (mostly out) of touch with them over the years but today I had the pleasure of hooking up on the phone with Joan.  I last saw Joan and her husband and kids in Costa Mesa, Ca probably in the late 70's or early 80's!  We talked for over an hour and exchanged some info and tried to catch up - long story but if I could have picked a dad it would have theirs - David (the dad).

Now I'm waiting to talk to my best friend David (the son).  I called and left my phone number but wasn't sure that I had the right David, but Joan confirmed that I did.  After all, his last name is Swink and he lives in Swink, Oklahoma!   Had to get in touch with Joan in Lincoln, CA to be sure!

Custom Home

We received a call from our architect yesterday afternoon!  He will have a new conceptual presentation of our estate home that we plan to build in Kerrville Texas available for us to review next week.  We took a long hard look at our plans for our dream home and decided that 2 stories just did not fit.  If/when I get old I don't want to deal with steps and so we totally redid our concept and are now going with a single floor layout.

We also did not want to deal with a crush of humanity anywhere near the I-95/I-75 corridors so we staked out our little piece of Paradise here. When we first returned to the US we lived in Northern Virginia.  We very quickly decided that this part of the county was not for us.  We enjoyed a lot of the things that the area had to offer but not the traffic and in some cases the attitude!  So, on one of our several road trips, we drove through the Texas Hill County and the rest is history. 

We've been fortunate to live all over the country, all over the world and have always had the dream of building a custom home.  That dream is nearing realization as Mickey will present his plan to us on Tuesday using gotopc.  This is interesting in itself since Mickey is about my age and is using state of the art CAD and current technology to design dream homes in the Hill Country.   We've seen many of the homes he has designed and they are awesome.  More later!

Factory Refit

I've been working on an IP-38 for several years and got to the point that some of the items needed required a major refit.  Shipped the boat up to Largo last week and will update periodically with photos and narrative once work is underway.

In the meantime time I'm still busy, Leopard 44, IP-380, Hunter 33, an Albin Trawler, and a kitchen rennovation!

Diamond Back

We received a frantic call from one of our neighbors yesterday late afternoon - she had seen a GIGANTIC snake slither by one of here sliding doors.  I went down expecting to see maybe a small python etc but was really shocked to see the BIGGEST Eastern Diamond Back I've ever seen.  Man was it big!

I tried zapping it with a shovel but was not willing to get close enough to be able to deal with it.  All I did at this point was piss it off.  Lots of rattling and then it moved to the side of a nearby home.  We tried calling 2 calling 2 different animal control offices - both open 9 - 5 only, then we call 2 different Sherriff Dept's - they referred us to the Cape Coral Police who then referred us to a private animal control guy.  He was busy so he referred us to another guy who was about 30 minutes away.

I did not want to risk loosing track of this snake so I asked Lesley to go down and get my gun (.177 cal air gun).  I was able to hit the snake with two shots to the head and that seemed to immobilize it but did not kill it, yikes what a monster.

The animal guy arrived and got his snake tool out and managed to lift the thing up away from the house.  It was not dead and started going with the rattles again.  He moved the snake out into the front yard and held it up for all to see. At least 6ft long and 3 - 4" in diameter - way big.