While the Cat's Away...

...the mouse works.

The kids and I have taken a few days to visit my Mom in Victoria, BC for a few days while Mark has stayed home because he has to work and having some uninterrupted time on the boat means he can pick away at some projects he can't get done while the kids and I are there.

One of the projects we have bought supplies for way back during our first shopping trip for the boat was a paint kit for the caribe dinghy. 

Our poor dinghy has been kind of neglected since we got it, it came with the boat and we pretty much plopped it in the water by the boat and left it there, every once in a while we'd pump the rain water out of it.

It's a nice dinghy and one of the better makes but of course our previous owner had damaged it, I think in a previous post I mentioned the large metal motor mounts he had attached to the stern of the boat, they turned out to be completely useless and on top of that, he drove the dinghy into these sharp metal protuberances and punctures the dinghy. So when we got it, air was leaking pretty profusely out of it, we patched it up and it held for almost a year.

Mark hauled her out of the water once the kids and I had left and spent hours scraping the marine life off the hull, it was bad and we will not be keeping the dinghy in the water unless we are using it.

Once he got it all cleaned up, Mark re-patched the holes and started painting it.

Mark has wanted to do this for a year but I kept putting him off, there were more pressing projects that I needed completed and there still is but since I am away it was the perfect time for him to get this done.

Meanwhile in Victoria... Sprinklers

Washing Nanas car

Watering the lawn.

Body outline chalk drawings

CSI on a summer day.

Fun with faces.

The boys and I are heading home tomorrow, Aislinn is staying with Nana for another week. Mark has taken next week off to hopefully put a final big push on the last of our boat projects, lifelines completed, lazy jacks, trampolines, propane locker built, soft spots on deck repaired, bilge pumps finally wired... It still seems like a long list but compared to everything we have completed and how long the to-do list was a year ago, we can finally see the end in sight.

Next week is also Race Week at our Marina, a yearly event they put on, hundreds of boats will be arriving this weekend and there is always a lot of festivities going on and of course the races. The week after that my Dad is coming down to help finished up whatever projects we don't get done. Hoping to end July on a productive note and have August to relax and finally get out and enjoy some sailing.

On a side note, the hot water heater has been sorted out, turns out the batteries that came with it from the factory were old and we just needed two new D batteries and it works again. Something so simple, wish we had of thought of that a week ago.