Summer in Baltimore

—Blogpost written by Bob

Friday, July 17

The temperature was relatively cool (70’s) in the morning, so we decided to clean up the dinghy and load it onto the foredeck today.  It turned out to be quite a task that was not completed until shortly after 10 AM.  The dinghy bottom has a lot of soft marine growth as well as a dozen barnacles or so—cleaning the bottom required most of our effort.

While most sailboats are out sailing
during the summer, ours becomes
a condo on the water.

I’ve certainly been doing a lot of reading lately and it continued in the afternoon.  I finished reading Mary Trump’s book about her uncle, Donald, entitled Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man.

This book was just released
three days ago.

This book was just released three days ago (July 14) and it is the first one to probe just why Donald Trump is like he is (constantly lying, bragging, lacking in empathy and emotion, etc.)  The short answer is that he was trained this way by his father and his actions were supported by their family dynamic.

The book mentioned that Donald had five bankruptcies—I only previous knew of three.  One thing I thought was interesting was that while he was going through his bankruptcies in Atlantic City the banks put him on a $450,000 per month spending allowance—this would be a dream of yearly income for most Americans.

Saturday, July 18

This morning after breakfast, we worked at removing the starboard aft stanchion base from the boat.  By this time it had been soaked with PB Blaster for several days.  I was able to get the backing plate off soon after I started working—the stainless steel screws were severely corroded to the aluminum backing plate.  Soon after, we got the stanchion base (with the still attached stanchion) off the deck.

The just removed stanchion and base
are in the foreground of this image.

I drilled out the cap screw holding the stanchion to the base and tried tapping the stanchion base with a hammer while holding the stanchion—this effort was going nowhere.  So, I soaked all the joints again with PB Blaster.  (I’ll try removing the stanchion base one more time Monday morning before cutting off the stanchion near the base and chiseling out the remainder of the stainless steel tube—this is what I had to do on the last one I replaced.)

Shortly after 11 AM, I retired to the boat’s air-conditioned interior to begin preparing a beef stew with red wine in the crock pot (which will be tonight’s dinner).

Sunday, July 19

I previously pledged to myself that Sunday would be a day off from boat projects but I have to clean the A/C's raw water strainer--this is something I have to do weekly.  (I might even changeout some old gray water hoses under the sink since it is already hot outside at 9 AM.)

Well, I maintained my pledge about boat projects!  I did a lot of reading and relaxing during the day.  There was not much to write about though.

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