Quick Update

Time has been moving along, hasn't it? I have a few pics I want to upload, but they're on my office computer and seeing as I'm presently in Miles City, Montana, I won't be getting to them for a bit.

As for Montana, I'm going to have to rebuild a soft starter tomorrow because it shorted some SCRs. After that, I hope to get back by Friday night, just in time to prepare to fly out on Monday for a week-long training seminar I'm putting on in Nashville, Tenessee.

As I mentioned before, Jaime is staying with us for a while (Luann's niece) and she is doing very well in school. Looks like both girls are solid A+ students. Katrina's volleyball season is just about over, they play their final game tomorrow. I was hoping to be at her final game, but Montana is just a bit far away from home.

Of course work is still proceeding on the sailboat. I finally did get all new lines (ropes) for the running rigging and a new anchor rope w/chain. The cockpit finally has been primed, painted and the textured surfaces were given the blue/gray treatment like the rest of the boat. I mounted the 7.5 hp Johnson motor on the back of Udara Tanda and started checking it out. Turns out, it's not making any spark. I searched the internet and found some troubleshooting procedures for the electronic ignition. Looks like the firing module is bad, so I ordered one for $50.00. I'll find out if the module was the problem when the new one gets in. I also ordered new hank clips for the jib sail as the old ones were pretty beat. The type I ordered have a snap bail on them instead of the original piston type. I decided to get the snap bail type because I can hook the jib sail on the forestay with one hand instead of needing both hands for the old piston type. I also ordered a big spool of thread so I can sew up the sails to get the patches in nice. Keeping Dean's advice in mind, I need to cut my teeth learning to handle the sailboat with sails that are a bit loose and forgiving. After a while, I'll look into replacing them and getting a 150% Genoa sail too. Perhaps even an asymetrical spinnaker. We've discovered the boat has all of the rigging on her to handle these other two sails, so why not?


Luann, Katrina, my cousin Karen and I went to Lakeland to see Bill Engvall do a comedy bit there (September 9th) and boy, it was worth it! He had us in stitches during the show and even all the way back to the house (Luann bought one of his CDs and we listened to it in the car on the way home).

Well, gotta go. I'll try to have something put up on the blog after tomorrow's activities.