You Can't Keep a Good Craftsman Down

Our plan was to be in Rhode Island by April 1st to prepare our Alberg 35, Mystic, for cruising. Instead, we find ourselves in Minnesota; waiting and hoping for things to change for the better. The lockdown of America and the recommendation for social distancing has been in effect for over a month now. Covid-19 still has us firmly in it's grip.

We remain healthy and busy; very busy, working on house and boat projects which we've begun referring to as Covid-19 distractions. The truth is, if not for the pandemic, we wouldn't have accomplished as much as we have. With nowhere to be, we have all the time we need to knock things off our many 'to do' lists. 

We started filling our isolation time by working in our two upstairs bedrooms; the front room and the blue room. The front room needed a full paint job plus floor refinishing. It turned out gorgeous and is ready for guests!

Front room, refinished floors and new paint

Celebrating a job well done with Liftbridge Milk Stout

Front room finished and refurnished

The Blue Room needed caulking and painting. I made new curtains for both bedrooms, using old white hand-me-downs with lovely antique lace along the bottom. Sailing vessel Mystic has the same curtains which gives me the feeling of tying our two homes together. The Blue Room floor needs to be leveled and refinished but that job will have to wait. It's part of a bigger remodel which includes the upstairs bathroom. It will be a huge job!

The Blue Room
Our varnish room for now

Corner cabinet showcasing Brielle's Pottery

In between the sewing and the waiting for paint to dry, I spent countless hours organizing the thousands of photos and negatives that we collected from the 1980's to 2009 when we switched to digital photography. We enjoyed reliving our life through the photos and joked that after all the work we did putting them in chronological order by year, our kids had better take the time to look at them when we're gone.

Metal cases full of photos and negatives

One of many hidden treasures found,
Dave & Beth 1984

Once we finished the bedrooms, we focused on the huge list of boat projects which we brought home with us last fall. We'd forgotten just how long that list was. It includes numerous woodworking and sewing projects. We started with the woodworking tasks. Dave is a talented and experienced craftsman.  He can make pretty much anything with wood. He built laminated spreaders and a laminated backup tiller. He refinished our salon table with a mahogany veneer. Together, we sanded out our working tiller, swim ladder and hatch board screens. We were able to get 10 coats of varnish on everything. Dave replaced the screens and built a new forward hatch cover to slip over that screen during squalls.

Salon table with formica finish

Applying the veneer

Looking so pretty with 10 coats of varnish

Spreaders and tillers at varnishing station, hanging to dry.

Dave's varnish coat tracker

Swim ladder sanded and ready for varnish

Shiny new finish

Hatch screens, ready for another season

In addition to all the woodworking, I've been baking almost daily; experimenting with making my own sourdough starter. It takes five days of "feeding" to get a sourdough starter active, then you toss out half of the batter each day until you are ready to use it in a recipe. I found the tossing out difficult to do. There are countless recipes available for starter discard so I tried several, including sourdough bread, Irish soda bread, sourdough pizza dough, pancakes, biscuits, crackers and peanut butter/chocolate chip cookies. Each day is a new science experiment and with each new recipe Dave says, "We can make this on the boat!"

Sourdough Loaves

Irish Soda Bread

Herb spiced crackers

Peanut Butter Cookies

May is right around the corner now. We hope to get back to our boat by June which gives me a chunk of time to get into my sewing projects. Mystic is waiting patiently for our return to Rhode Island where the pandemic shutdown is tight. When we finally get there, we'd like to complete teak work before heading back out but we may not have the time to do so. Everything is tied to the end of the shutdown.

The Erie Canal 'Notice to Mariners' is on our watch list. At this point it looks like the opening could be delayed as late as July. It's possible that it will only be opened in segments. This would stop us from making it back into the Great Lakes this year. We are disappointed by how this impacts our cruising plan to complete our Loop in 2020. Instead, Plan B may take us back south for another season on the Atlantic. We're thinking that the Chesapeake might be a nice spot to salvage this cruising season! In spite of the challenges, our cup remains, at least, half full.