Tool Time

Spray / Zephyr back on the hard.

Our “To Do” list is long and we haven’t even finished signing all the paperwork yet.  While the jobs all seem relatively simple, I’m getting anxious to sail.  It’s a zoo on the water in southern Brittany in July and August and we’d like to get out for a few good shake-down cruises without too many on-lookers or obstacles. 

Spray (still officially named Zephyr…see earlier posts) is in the boatyard waiting for a water/sand blast (“hydrogommage”) of the hull and keel, and an epoxy job for the keel. The boat is in administrative limbo right now, since we have signed a “promise to buy” with a down payment, but aren’t officially the owners yet.  Last week, we started cracking open our piggy banks to pool resources for the big check, but doing this through several banks takes time, especially in France, especially in May, which has one official holiday per week where nothing gets done. I'm living the Randy Travis tune, "If the phone still ain't ringing, I assume it still ain't you."

But down time is not wasted time and we’ve decided to start going through the garage to determine how many hammers, screwdrivers, wrenches, etc. we have, with any duplicates going into “the boat toolbox”.  We’ll also need to considerably augment our meagre collection to tackle even those “simple” initial jobs already on our list.  I’m counting on the miracles of WD-40 and Duct Tape, myself.