Getting Back to Normal (whatever that is)

I have been back to the boat for almost 4 weeks now and finding it hard to get back to the normal life aboard again. Two things have been going on. One is that in March I had promised the church here to install hurricane shutters. Someone donated the money to buy them and I was to install them. Then I got called to work for Exxon in Louisiana for four months. I have been working for the last two weeks to install them. They have a school at the church so I have to time everything so as to not disturb anybody and that has proven to be a royal pain, but I hope to finish them up this evening. The second thing is that it is hot here, not unbearable if you do nothing but hot If you are not in the shade with some air moving. We started using the air conditioner at night so we could sleep. It is still nice sitting on the bow in the evening with the cool breeze. I am looking forward to next month when things start to cool off.

Sharon has given notice that she will be leaving her job. We plan on moving the boat to Key West next month and haul out to do some much needed maintenance. Island Queen has not been out of the water since 2004. We will get rid of some through hulls that are no longer being used, replace the two that are and then apply Coppercat on the bottom. We also will install a bow thruster at the same time. (thank you Exxon) We are looking forward to going someplace new. We have been here way too long, but you do what you gotta do.

I love setting on the bow and watching the sunset.

New bow thruster and tunnel

Finally back home

After 127 days in Baton Rouge working on an Exxon project I finally got back to the boat last night. Now to take care of some deferred maintenance. With a bit of coin in m jeans it is time to haul Island Queen and do a bottom job. We are also going to add 4 more Trojan T 105 golf cart batteries giving us 8 in total. We have not been hooked up to shore power for nine months now, so we can make it with the current setup but it will be nicer to have the extra capacity. So far our solar arrangement has worked very well. Eventually I would like to have a wind generator as well, but that is low on the priority list.