As many of you may know, we're buying a condominium at the Harbor Square Condominium complex on Bainbridge Island, WA.

Thanksgiving week we traveled north from San Carlos to close on the condo. Here are some pictures of the weather and the condo.

It's been cold, to say the least. Doubly so for us because we're used to 80 degree days and 60 degree nights.

John and Linda

Snow falling in Eagle Harbor. Current temperature today: 25 degrees F

Bath

View outside on the balcony.

Kitchen

Pictures of New Hatches

Here are the before, in progress, and after pictures of our recent hatch refit. In addition to this we're removing the teak decks and replacing them with fiberglass non-skid, fitting new overhead material over the existing overhead, and revarnishing the interior.

Now with the hatches done, we feel like we've got something to show for the work so far. We've also made good progress already on the overhead, and with the updated hatches the interior is really taking on a new look.

John

Original butterfly style hatch over salon.

Original forward hatch over head. Together the teak hatches weighed almost 100 pounds

Salon hatches with fiberglass frame edges cut off and plywood in place to build new frame.

Forward hatch with fiberglass frame edge cut off and plywood in place to build new frame.

Salon hatches after plywood has been fiberglassed and epoxied.

Forward hatch after plywood has been fiberglassed and epoxied. (Note: you can see where the teak decks have been removed in this picture.)

Looking up through salon hatches after frames have been cut.

Looking up through head hatch after frame has been cut.

New Lewmar Ocean 50 hatches after installation.

New Lewmar Ocean 60 hatch after installation.

Red Light, Green Light

6 November 2006
San Carlos, Sonora, Mexico

We made another trip to Nogales, AZ (John's third, my second) to pick up boat parts and misc. supplies last week, and got our first red light at Mexican Customs! Fortunately we were prepared with our paperwork, and it turned out to be a non-event anyway. After unloading everything from the truck onto their table John realized that last out (so first to be seen by the officer) was the bin with all the beer on top. But he just asked John what we had to declare, took a cursory look at the beer (and not much else), and wished us a good journey. The trip was actually worse going north into the U.S. because it took us two and a half hours to cover one mile in stop and go traffic to the border!

John installed the last of the replacement hatches and should be posting some before and after pictures soon. He's now working full time on the new Formica overhead which is probably going to be the job he hates the most. Cutting the Formica sheets is fairly straightforward, but fitting all the bits of teak trim to cover up the seams and edges is driving him to frustration.

Hopefully listening to Howard Stern on our new Sirius satellite radio will help ease the pain. We still have the XM radio and we'll decide which one to keep after we've played with Sirius for awhile. So far I think I prefer the Sirius NPR programming, but I hate the thought of giving up Bob Edwards for Howard Stern - not a fair trade! It's a good thing we have plenty of radio to listen to since renting DVDs at the local outlet has turned out to be a bad idea. Out of probably eight movies, we've only seen one straight through without any problems, and half of them were completely unwatchable due to heavy scratches. So I'm giving up on that as a waste of money and time.

We made a successful trip to the Enpalme (a town south of Guaymas) tianguis (flea market) yesterday with the SolMaters to buy a 20" screen TV to go with the cable service they had installed in their little rental house (they had to purchase the cable service in order to get the internet service - see how things snowball when you move to land...). So now we have a place to watch football where the beer and snacks are free - or at least the prices are lower and we don't have to tip the waitress.

Nights are cool and the days are sunny and warm. What are you doing up there?

Linda and John