Day 16 July 8^th 2013

Well after waking in our wavy NE anchorage of Bell Cove, we head over to Mosquito Cove for better shelter.  Today is a work day.  It is the first day we spend at anchor by ourselves when we weren’t sailing 12 hours to get north to our home sailing grounds.  Order of business was to get to some of the tasks that were further down on the list.

Julie continues to be the “assistant” to the blue jobs.  Julie decided to tackle cleaning the dodger and bimini canvas so that a coat of rain repellent could be applied as it leaked like a sieve on the only day of rain we have had.  Well the scrubbing stopped once the scrub brush went through the dodger.  Upon looking at the areas scrubbed the fabric was disintegrating.  All cleaning of the canvas stopped immediately.  The rain repellent was applied to dirty canvas.  Oh well!  We were hoping the canvas would last until Annapolis but for sure we need to get it replaced in the next month.  Hopefully we can find a reputable company near Sarnia to do it while we are in Newfoundland.  The one company recommended is busy and booked for those 2 weeks.  Darn!  Perhaps Port Huron.

One concern about living on the boat was “staying in shape”.  Both of us wondered how we would achieve this.  Today I realized that maybe the cardio needs a bit of encouragement, but burning calories and staying active is no problem.  Little things like manually grinding the coffee, priming our water system with about 400 foot pumps, then after scrubbing the dinghy for about 30 minutes, we bailed it with the suction bailer which worked our arms and keeps us moving much more than our office jobs did.  Forgot to mention we chose to row over to the beach to clean the dinghy and row back.  After getting back to the main boat Julie applied protector to the dinghy, then scrubbed one of the princess chairs.  Dawson continued to try to solve the plumbing issue.  Our pump kicks on when it shouldn’t because there is a small leak in the line somewhere.  It is annoying.

Had the day been a bit sunnier, we would have fit in some swimming exercises too.  Alas it was a fabulous overcast workday, but not a swim tempting day like the past week.

All in all, a fabulous day.  Dawson broke even on his plumbing task: fixed the prime he lost while trying to locate the leak which was not found.  Julie did not, and will not be able to fix  the dodger, but the dinghy is clean now as is one of the princess chairs.  Next chair gets tackled tomorrow along with a new bunch of tasks.  (second coat of rain repellent, sourcing out a slip for the boat while we are in NL, polish all the stainless and chrome on the boat, measure and mark the anchor chain, figure out the rigging on the assymetrical sail, rig the halyards so they don’t clang at night.... the list goes on).

Cheers Julie and Dawson