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07/10/2006: "Fourth of July weekend"
Here is a quick recap of the Fourth of July weekend.
It was just another weekend since I had to work on Monday and Tuesday. The big event of the weekend was the Tall Ships in Beaufort. Unfortunately Beaufort is a small town and is not set up for thousands of people descending on it. With an idea of how bad traffic and the crowds would be we chose not to attend. We decided we were right when others came back telling stories about two and a half hour waits in line to tour just one of the boats and a half hour wait in line to buy a lemonade. We spent Saturday on some boat projects, reinstalling the air conditioner and cleaning the bilge. The air conditioner was removed last fall to see if the reverse cycle heating could be made operational. Unfortunately it cannot, but it does a good job of cooling. The bilge needed to be cleaned since earlier in the week we had a fuel leak. We found that the fuel line had been rubbing against something and eventually wore through and leaked fuel into the bilge. Earlier in the week we had replaced and rerouted the line, pumped the bilge as dry as we could but it needed a good cleaning to get rid of the residual fuel and smell. Later in the evening we joined with friends on their powerboat and went to Oriental to watch the fireworks from on the water.
The big event at the marina was a 60th wedding anniversary party on Sunday for Chuck and Barb, who live here on their trawler. The clubhouse was decorated; there was a lot of food including a half a pig, a hundred pieces of chicken on the grill along with several racks of ribs. The party was topped off with an almost exact replica of their wedding cake which brought Barb to tears. The party was supposed to be a surprise and it was, pretty impressive with everyone in the marina notified and invited months ago. I, on the other hand, did my best to help empty the keg, which made for a tough Monday morning at work.
Tuesday, the fourth, was a mandatory workday. The trade off is for either of the next two Fridays off, giving us a three day weekend. Since I had to work Cori went in and helped in the warehouse in order to also have the Friday off.