Yard work

The weather is much better today, so I cleaned and washed down the deck this morning. Since the humidity is still about 50%, I'm going to let it dry over lunch and wipe it down with solvent before I start filling the final nicks later this afternoon. I'm still not planning to mix more than about an ounce at a time, so it might take a few rounds, but I hope to finish it all up today. Right now, it looks great from about 5', but I want it to look great from about 1'.

Weed watch:

It was way too hot to do anything on deck yesterday -- got to over 110 just under the cover and the deck was over 100 -- so I was trying to stay busy cleaning up stuff both on and off the boat when I noticed the kid spraying the weed killer was heading toward us and it looked like he might make it to the boat by the end of the day. As it turned out, he stopped spraying after a few minutes later, but before he quit, I walked over and asked him not to spray near Zoe, and that I'd clear out the weeds around the boat myself so he wouldn't have to worry about it. He said that would be fine and promised not to spray near the boat.

So, since I couldn't work on the deck anyway, I spent most of the afternoon weeding under and around the boat. I didn't get all of it, but did do under the boat and one whole side including all along the fence from my stern to the electrical pole where I'd plugged in my cords, which was about 40'. I already knew there was poison ivy in there, but given the choice of getting covered again or risking Zoe getting into weed killer, I bit the bullet and started pulling weeds. I only ended up with a few patches on my forearms, so it's not too bad.

I still need to clear out a fairly large section along the fence just aft of the boat and along the other side, but it's not nearly as bad as the other side. The side I did was down hill and got a lot of extra watering whenever I used the hose, so it grew really well and parts of it looked like a lawn -- it's all dirt and gravel now. The other side is just regular weeds, so it shouldn't take more than another hour or two to finish it up. I'll probably work on it this evening once I've finished with the deck.

Fresh water watch:

I refilled the fresh water tanks again yesterday and the water looks and smells pretty good -- almost as good as the drinking water in the 5 gallon jugs I've been refilling every few days. Although I've cycled the tank several times, I'm still just using it for cleaning and washing, and don't plan to start drinking it any time soon; I'll keep using the 5 gallon jugs fir the time being. In fact, I might run some more clorox through it a few times just to make sure it's nice and clean. I've also noticed that the electric pump allows me to waste a lot of water very quickly, not to mention electricity, so I'm definitely going to mount an additional hand/foot pump once I get a chance. However, I'll probably wait until after I get in the water, and maybe not until I get to Texas.

Zoe watch:

Went down to watch the Yankees-Texas game last night -- wanted to see Berkman play -- and one of the waitresses gave Zoe a bunch of left over turkey breast. No wonder she always tries to pull me into the place when we walk by. She's sleeping under the boat, but it's threatening to rain, so I may have to bring her on board later -- I think she's dreaming about turkeys right now.