Happy Tanksgiving!

By Mia on Sailing Vessel Black Cat.

Although we are not cruising, it feels like we are with many of the cruisers we are meeting in the boat yard or at the City Docks.  Among them, we introduced the family and crew on Sailing Vessel Black Cat (Bernard, Karine, Mia, Victor, and crew member Alain) from Montreal, Canada to their first American Thanksgiving.  We enjoyed turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, green beans amandine, broccoli salad, wine, and Canadian maple syrup pie.  Mmmmmmm.  Hope you had a happy Thanksgiving (or we should say Tanksgiving).

Bernard, Alain, Karine, Mia, and Victor aboard their boat Black Cat.

We just bid farewell to Black Cat and crew Sunday morning on their journey to the British Virgin Islands.  We hope to catch up with them somewhere along the way.

Adding another layer of caulk around the leaky chimney.

What have we been up to lately?  Just finishing up a few house and boat projects before putting Layla back in  the water.  After three weeks of rain, we discovered that our one year old new roof had a leak around the chimney.  This was exceptional rain.  In just one day, we had over eight inches of rain.  Our roofer has made three attempts to fix the leak.  We may know after tomorrow when it is expected to rain again.

Measuring the memory foam topper to fit the new split mattress for the pullman berth.

Another project entailed making it easier to access the storage under our pullman berth.  First we did a test run with our old mattress by cutting it in two pieces width-wise at our knees. It worked great. Now we could easily gain access to storage without both of us holding up the heavy mattress.  By cutting the mattress at our knees, we would not "fall in the crack".  We then bought a 5" queen size mattress foam from Mill Outlet Village fabric shop in New Bern, NC, and used the old mattress as a template to cut the new split mattress.  We then made covers for the two pieces.  To make the bed even more comfortable, we bought a 2 1/2" queen size memory foam topper which we cut to size to fit the split mattress, and also made a cover.  We can't wait to sleep on the boat again.

As you may see, we have modified the format of the blog, just for something different.  We hope you like it. Send us a note.