I finally broke down and purchased the 28V (battery operated) Milwaukee portable metal cutting band saw that David has been ‘pining for. Since John left in July for Canada and took his similar saw with him, David’s been asking when we’ll get our own. So, it showed up via UPS Monday and David has been working out all that pent up “metal cutting” energy since then! Lots of little projects. He also cut the bronze fitting that was used at the aft end (heel) of the bow sprit and modified it so that it can now be a pivoting bowsprit. We actually had all the materials on hand for the project with the exception of a 3/4″ ID bronze tube to hold the rod that the bowsprit will pivot on. The bowsprit project is going along nicely.

The weather has taken a turn for the “chilly” so that now when we use epoxy as an adhesive, we use the “fast cure” catalyst and every night we say we’re going to re-install the companionway door–soon–as the boat is quite cold by morning. The door is in sad, sad shape and therein lies the problem–it’s going to be a lot of work to rebuild it and it’s something that CAN be done once the boat is relaunched but we hate to re-install it on Mahdee in its present, raggedy, shape.

Yesterday was a rainy, rainy day too. We learned via the hours of drizzle, that the brightly varnished companionway sliding hatch is definitely in need of sealing up. It drips water through the cracks in its tightly fitted varnished wood planks. Maybe 10 more coats of varnish? The other brightwork is now a bit muddy from the rain and mix of sawdust, paint dust, and dust-dust. I hope we’ll find things much cleaner once we’re relaunched.

We didn’t feel like watching hours of election results on TV as they slowly became available so we watched (on the computer) back-to-back DVD episodes of The Waltons while awaiting the results of the election. I had the Bloomberg News page up on a separate monitor so each time a state was called, we could see the update they did. We finally turned on the TV tuner and learned–right after the episode where Mary Ellen is trying to grow bull-frogs and John-Boy falls in love for the first time–that Obama had won the race.

We listened to his victory speech wondering what the next few months will be like with the economy so upside down and the president-elect having to “wait” to do anything. We called our friends, Maurice and Renee, in Washington, DC; we knew they would still be up watching the TV and celebrating the results. They told us that all around town there were crowds of people celebrating-in front of the White House, U Street, everywhere. As I got off the cel-phone and looked into the quiet darkness of the San Diego boatyard, I thought how different it is to be here rather than there during this historic election.