Friday Funny 04-24/20 (Sew Sew Sew your Boat)

I tapped into my courage, and decided to finally tackle the new bimini project. The zippers were failing, and flaking, and we knew that once we took this bimini down, it would never go back up.

"A Bimini top is an open-front canvas top for the cockpit of a boat, usually supported by a metal frame."

Wikipedia

The old bimini with the reinforcement I put on a couple of years ago.

We haven't taken the dodger down yet, one piece at a time.

It's off.

It was a wonderful sunny day, and we ended up with two in a row. It was enough to get the materials laid out on the dock finger and cut out to be ready for assembly.

Gus is helping.

The topside is really dirty, and the chafe guard on the leading edge is chafed. 😁

The underside I kept clean with regular washings. 

Except for the bimini being dirty, the zippers failing, and the rigging holes at the aft edge leaking rainwater, the material, and stitching was in pretty good shape. That's a testament to quality material, and good UV Lifetime thread. The previous owners let us know that this enclosure was made in 2007, in Trinidad, and it hasn't been down since.

It clouded up, and we've had nothing but rain since. I've dashed out a couple of times to try and lay things out straight to measure, and seamstick it together, but I usually have to gather it all back up, and dash back inside.

Water buckets.

Bill draped the Noah's Tarp over the framework of the bimini, and we tried to keep the rain out, and provide a dry place to work in. It was a no-go. The rain created pockets, that didn't run off, and the wind gusts kept flapping it around. We didn't want to ruin the tarp, so we took it down. 

So now I have the space in the pilothouse to work in. I can lay about half of the bimini out at a time, and Gus loves to help.

"I'll just hold it down here, Mom"

I'm about half-way done, and I've gone slow and sure, I'm going to do a larger write up about the process when I'm done. On the Facebook page, "Sewing on Boats", I've been asking questions, and answering questions, and I'll need a post about what materials I used, and why, and about the process I took. Sailrite has terrific how-to videos, but my bimini is far more complicated than the one they create, so I had to do a bit of my own engineering.

As always, we enjoy hearing from you, either here in comments or on our Facebook Denali Rose Sailboat page.

Friday Funny 04-03/2020 (Keeping our Social Distance, still)

I don't know why I don't own this already! You can purchase one for me here

We're fine with social distancing, it's what we do on Denali Rose naturally. While we've been at the dock lately, we only go into town for once a week groceries, mail, and the very occasional take-out meal from our favorite cafe, Zaks.

We have a question for our insurance company, and as soon as that is taken care of, we're going to go cruising. Alaska has a directive; no travel between communities, (among other directives), and some of the SE Alaska communities, have totally closed their "borders" to all incoming travel. They just don't have the medical supplies, hospitals, or personnel to deal with a major outbreak of virus. Most only have a nurse practitioner, and a small clinic, if that, so any illness or injury can be catastrophic.

The result for us, is that we will still cruise around bays, coves, waterways, fish, relax, have fun, but when we we need to come into port, we will return to our slip in Wrangell. Then we can off load  garbage, get fresh food, check mail, and protect ourselves, as well as others. It's not what we originally planned for the summer, but as we say, "our plans are written in sand", and this year, the tide has washed them away.

Everyone needs to keep their spirits up, and the memes, jokes, cartoons, and humorous videos abound!

I found some at the bored panda website, I laughed out loud at several.

Yeah, so what's with the toilet paper hoarding anyway? Hand sanitizer I could understand, we get ours by the case from Amazon, so we have plenty. Shhh don't tell anyone.

I know I'm supposed to be productive, I know I have many projects staring me in the face, but somehow I just haven't had time..  hahahaha. What I did instead, was add the STARZ channel to my Amazon Prime, and I've been OD-ing on the series Outlander. I've been making cards, and watching videos. Isn't that a good use of my time? Sorry, I can't show any of the cards to you, the recipients haven't received them yet. If you want one, send me your address, and I'll make it a priority on my project list, I'd rather make cards than deep clean any day.

Or

Alaskans eat alot of Pilot Bread.

And

All good information, in easy concise graphics. And for those of you who remember, Hill Street Blues, good advice.

As always, we enjoy hearing from you, either here in comments or on our Facebook Denali Rose Sailboat page.