Don't spill that paint.............

"Tom, you didn't ruin my brown towel did you?"

 What ? Are you F____ing kidding me ?

"No, mahn.........bottom paint eez $400 US per gallon". Gulp. We needed four gallons, too. I eyed the door of the store and the security camera. Could I just pick them up and run. No chance. Each gallon is packed with barnacle killing chemicals and weighs like 25 lbs. Maybe 25 years ago but no way now. "Kirstin, put this under your shirt"............no, that won't work.

My pulse started racing. Damn, I picked the wrong day to give up muscle relaxers, didn't I ? Well, boats are boats, right ? Kirstin and I are back in the water after completing our half-time maintenance. Based on a bad dream, I ended up re-checking to make sure I had screwed the propellor on as tightly as was possible.........things like that.

While on the hard, we've met some amazing people. Joern and Renate are these super cool Germans who commiserated with us during our boat work. Many times, we were the only four boat owners in the yard. Joern is a master builder in Hamburg, and prior to this he built airplanes for Airbus (apparently some obscure manufacturing concern that also builds airliners). Having him nearby was a great security blanket in case we did anything really stupid on the boat.

Kirstin with her grease gun 

Speaking of old friends, our Finnish homies are back in Prickly Bay. We're going to try to get Hendrik to serenade us again at some point.......his price is a few cocktails, so we should be "in".

Between Joern, Renate, Hendrik, and his wife Arja......we feel like we don't have cool enough names. Tom and Kirstin ? Boring. We're considering assuming sailing names in the way that actors do. How about if I become "Masala Dhosa" and Kirstin can become "Dina Panini". Sounds much better. We'll see.

It was weird watching them lower our boat back into the water. Our house, our clothes, and all our possessions being dropped into the Caribbean Sea. Guess we'd live under a tree if we forgot to do something important and L'ORIENT sank like a sack of batteries. But it all ended well (as of this writing).

Tonight, we deserve some rum punches because of our hard work on the boat. Not sure what's happening at the town square but we're there regardless.

All done and ready to "splash"