What the Hell

     Seriously, I have no clue how any of this works. I don't even really feel like we are doing anything, and yet days slip by and things manage to get done no matter how much of a mess we try to make them.

     I left New York in a malay of emotions. Somewhere between and amazing going away party, saying goodbye to friends, packing up my life, and a nephew getting diagnosed with a brain tumor I have managed to actually get to California. 

     Andy has been here a few days. His first day was a fairly intense experience. Being here solo and having the whole thing land in his lap was a bit much. I am not going to write much more on that as we will be conducting a dramatic reenactment and posting photos in the next day or so. 

Fraternal twins 6'2" "the kiwi"
and 7'2" "bon voyage"

     So what have we been doing? Well we caught up with two friends from our distant past at Copper Mt. Colorado, Gabriel Ryan Davis (don't call him Gabe, although we all do) and Jeff Hull. It was a good little time warp for the first beer or so. Instantly sent 8 years back. During our subsequent beverages Jeff told us of the progress on our surfboards for this trip.

close up on the brain cloud anchor and signature

     Jeff has his own board company called Resist and he is getting us all set up. Andy and I are more than a little excited for these beauties and this blog post is the first time the rest of the crew will see them. Hope you guys like them! Haha. 

one of our better spinnakers

     Anyway, we have actually done some work with the boat. We have been organizing the work schedule for the next few weeks and deciding where and when each job would be addressed. Once the schedule started to take shape we began dragging sails out of the boat. In case we haven't made this clear in past posts, we have a ton of sails. 5 spinnakers, 3 headsails, 2 mains, 1 trysail and 1 staysail. Yeah 12 f'ing sails. They take over the boat and need to be sorted out. So andy and I start carting these things out to the small yard at the entrance on the dock.

another spinnaker all chute'd up

After dragging out 6 of our 12 sails, we found most were pretty beaten and one or two pretty good ones. One of the cooler things we found was the spinnaker was flying in a photo mounted in Aldebaran's nav station. With a huge bull in the middle and the eye, Aldebaran in the constellation, as a star. I was hoping we would get this sail but he had said it was blown out. It was tucked away down in the V-berth and had a huge tear through the whole thing but luckily the entire graphic was intact, so we salvaged that section and will use it for something. 

What a load of bull

     Andy and I will tackle the exhaust manifold when it gets here on wednesday, and the prop will get re-pitched one day this week as well. Maybe a trip to the used marine store. Then around next weekend we will set off for the land of tequila and spring break regret. The biggest addition, or maybe "rework", to be added to the crew will be Andy's new tattoo. The artwork is being finalized as I sit here in the tattoo parlor harassing the artist with my camera, torturing Andy with evil thoughts of doubt and impending pain, while occasionally typing a bit of this gibberish. Check back tomorrow for the complete tattoo post. 

Clutching his soon to be colorful forearm

Thankfully, Silas' prognosis is looking good so far. Get better already would ya!?