I'm moved

Well, I guess the boat is moved. I'm moving.

Saturday, the seller, my buddy "Brooklyn Frankie," and I moved the boat from it's previous slip in Seattle, to my new temporary slip in Kingston. Along the way the owner taught me how to burn the shit out of my hands (otherwise known as anchoring), and how to pull in and out of the slip. It was quite a learning experience. From working on the sub, I'm used to tugs pushing the boat to the pier... Now I have to do it all myself. During the landing I found I was way more afraid of hitting the boat next to me than I was of hitting the pier, which made me pull in too close to the pier many times, only to be bounced away again and again. Eventually I got the hang of it and am ready to practice some more. I didn't break anything! Yet! The whole anchoring/burning of hands debacle leads to another tidbit of knowledge. Buy gloves. I was letting the anchor rode out while practicing anchoring, and it started running away from me as the boat was backing up. I got it under control, and noticed there was blood all over the anchor rode... and my hand. I got two pea sized burns, deeper than any I've seen before (you can see layers of skin and gooey stuff), one on my palm and one on my finger. Yay.

AND...

I'm closing on the boat today. It will officially be mine. Yes. All I have to do is get to Seattle by 4pm and it'll be mine. Oh, and write a big check too.

So much to talk about.

I've started sanding. And taping. Getting ready to make the boat beautiful again. My favorite part is the blue painters tape. If you just start sanding the boat down, the boat just looks ugly. People walk by and think, "What a piece of crap." But... if they see blue tape on it, they all know that it's in the process of being made better. Blue tape is my "effort indicator." In fact, when the boat is done, if I don't like the way it looks, I'll just leave the blue tape on there so people think I'm still working on it...

Jessi and I will spend our first weekend on the boat this weekend. And, oh by the way, we'll be celebrating 6 months together.

Soon to come, stories about yacht club people.

Bated breath.

-Tom