Imagination log

Breaker on dock out no ac for ac!

Imagination log

Docked at chesapeake city. Had dinner at chesapeake inn. The dogfish beer was great. The docking was FREE. Electric was ten bucks. We are going to shoveoff at dawn.

Imagination log

In the c&d canal. Lots of current speed down to 4.9 knots. Chesapeake City by 6pm

Imagination log

Passing commodore barry bridge. Doing 9 knots. Al making great sandwiches. All well.

Imagination log

Passed airport problem with the head

Imagination log

Passing under walt whitman bridge

Imagination log

Passing uss united states largest abandon vechicle in philadelphia!

Imagination Log

Passing under betsy ross bridge. Had conrail bridge lift the span to get under.

Road Trip

This is the road trip section of the adventure. We drove two cars down to Rock Hall. Mine is now down there waiting for us to pick it up. We then drove up to the boat in Delran. We dropped off drinking water and gatoraide. We also filled the fuel tank. So we are ready to go in the morning.

Hot day on the river.....

Sorry for the blurry picture I was sweating over my camera phone. It's ours now. I went over it with a fine tooth comb found two things. Bad fuel tank gauge and a bad auto pilot. The gauge is now fixed and the pilot will be tomorrow. Looked over and got familiar with all the systems in the boat and how to do maintenance on them. Then we took the boat for a sail down the Delaware River to check out he sailing systems. Not much wind but the boat moved along pretty good for such light winds. But it is waaaaay to hot today. Left the A/C and the fridge on. Will be cold when Marilyn gets her first look at the boat in the water.

I'm So Excited

I'm just so excited. It will be the "Getting a new boat weekend"! Yahoooooo! Tomorrow writing the last check ( Ouch! ) and boat orientation. Marilyn won't make it tomorrow because of work. I'll also be adding the GPS if I have time.

Getting Ready for Adventure!

Al had called me up last night. We were trying to find the time that we are going to move out on Sunday. Looks like around 8:30. I'm going to stock the boat with provisions. ( Water, Gatoraide, coffee, beer, toiletpaper, trash bags.... ) on Saturday. Also on Saturday,I'm going to be hooking up a GPS chartplotter. The adventure is going to begin on Sunday. I'm ready to do some mobile blogging from the boat so I'll keep all up to date in real time.

Project Dishwasher Completed

The plumber ( sans crack ) came in an installed the dishwasher. Done in record time. He even had time to fix a leaky shower valve. WooHoo the dishes are now clean!

Dishwasher to be installed tomorrow

Lowes. actually the Lowes contractor will be installing the new dishwasher tomorrow! Hey buddy I suggest a longer shirt! Yes, that's a crack aimed at plumbers. Better than a plumber's crack aimed at me!

I'm excited because even though we are eating off paper plates the dishes are starting to stack up!

Imagination Ready

Just got word that Imagination will be ready for pick up this Friday. Now my band of pirates and I can plan on moving the boat on Sunday. This will insure that it will be ready for the Fourth of July festivities!

Broken Dishwasher

The dang dishwasher broke. The door will not lock close and just falls to the ground. We have to run out to buy a new one. This KitchenAide just was the worst for cleaning dishes anyway.

Helicopter Crash

Setting up my big helicopter. Found some stuff still wrong with it. Had two servos wired backwards. I fixed that in 5 minutes and took it into the back yard. It heli took to the air for a couple of minutes. I landed it. Took off again but it was heading for the fence and I landed it. Only the landing was a bit too hard and it smacked the tail boom and bent up a bunch of things. I ordered a bunch of parts and its back to the workshop.

Joining the crew

I've joined the crew that is taking our new boat down the Delaware next week. Next Sunday Al ( from our marina ) his brother, a friend of thiers and I will take the Catalina down the Delaware to Rock Hall. There are too many unknowns for me running it down the river. So I'm just going aboard as crew and leaving Al's brother in charge as skipper. I hope they don't make me walk the plank!

The Treasure

We went out last night to see The Treasure of Seirra Madre at the Ambler Theater. I'm just going to blantly rip off an other blog about the discription and comentary about the film.

Go to, rent or stay up a late night and see this film. It's a Hollywood classic. I'm glad we saw it on the big screen just the was it was supposed to be seen.




In 1926, in the coastal Mexican city of Tampico, Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart, in what is regarded by many as the finest performance of his career) is dirty, unshaven, currently jobless and dependent on asking strangers to “stake a fellow American for a meal.” He ends up taking a construction job, but is later stiffed by his employer for wages.
Dobbs befriends a good hearted American named Bob Curtin (Tim Holt), also struggling south of the border. They spot the man who ripped them off and by working together, are able to beat him up and recover their money. They check into a cockroach infested flophouse called the Oso Negro for the night.
There, their ears are prickled by the tales of an old prospector named Howard (Walter Huston) who tries to warn the men that even if you were to make a real strike, not even the threat of a miserable death would be enough to drag you away from the lure of gold. Dobbs disagrees, saying he’d only take what he set out to get. Howard replies: “I never knew a prospector who died rich. Make a fortune, sure to blow it tryin to find another.”

Dobbs convinces Curtin that they should try their luck at prospecting, but knowing nothing about mining, ask Howard to come in with them. The three men brave bandidos, northers, the jungle and the rigors of mining before they strike gold. Then, just as Howard predicted, “As long as there’s no find, the noble brotherhood will last. But when the piles of gold start to grow, that’s when the trouble starts.”
Directed by John Huston, from a screenplay he faithfully adapted from the novel by B. Traven, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was recently ranked #30 by the AFI for their 100 greatest American movies of all time list. Words like “classic” and “masterpiece” get thrown around a lot, but this is a timeless example of both. Like all great films, it has something profound to say about the human condition; in this case, the danger of greed, vanity and corruption.
Huston had spent a lot of time in Mexico, and the atmosphere he creates here has a very weathered, but richly authentic feel to it. The film was notable for being one of the first to make use of extensive (and costly) location shooting. The night scenes where shot on a sound stage in Burbank, but the daytime exteriors were filmed near San Jose de Perua, and Durango.
The film’s dialogue and action have a ring of truth to them as well. Walter Huston, the director’s father, won an Academy Award as the tougher than leather old sage who’s seen enough and done enough to know that good intentions evaporate once a man’s greed takes over. The cantina fist fight between Bogart & Holt and their deadbeat employer (Barton MacLane) is rough, nasty and staged like the real deal.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre fared poorly at the box office, and Bogart was completely ignored by the Academy for his portrayal of Fred C. Dobbs, but his is one of the great characters in film. Bogart plays destitution, idealism, honesty, opportunity, paranoia and villainy all in one role. It’s one of the best portrayals of a man slowly losing his handle on morality that I’ve seen.
Robert Blake appears as the boy who sells Dobbs his lottery ticket, Ann Sheridan had an unbilled cameo as a lady of leisure, while John Huston, lanky and dark haired, appears as the Man In White Suit whom Dobbs continually pesters for money.
The oft mimicked line “Badges? We don’t need no stinkin badges!” was actually misquoted by Mel Brooks for Blazing Saddles. When Dobbs is confronted by bandidos claiming to be federales and asks them where their badges are, their leader (Alfonso Bedoya) says: “Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges! I don’t have to show you any stinking badges!”

Happy Birthday to Me!

Well it time for another birthday.I was wishing for the best present.... I won the lottery and did not have to go to work today. Maybe next year.

Mobile blogging

Got a new PDA and I'm testing the mobile blogging feature. I'll be able to blog on the run!

Last Look

With all the happy talk of a new boat there is always one loser in this situation. We took the last look at our ericson today. Cleaned out the last of our toys and got her ready for her trip next week up the Delaware to be traded in. We had a lot of great weekends and she taught a lot about sailing. She will be missed greatly. Fair winds little boat, we hope you make new friends and have great adventures.

Book Club

Marilyn had the bookclub over last night. I got off work at 3 to get groceries and make dinner. I made hummus, grilled veggies, lamb kabobs and saffron rice pilaf. It worked out as I got it done just as Meg rang the door bell. The ladies had a great disscussion and enjoyed dinner.

New boat news

Went to the boat dropped off a large check and did some paperwork and now the boat is officially ours. They still have to put in the air conditioner, GPS and other things. We have to clear out the ericson this weekend as they will be picking it up next week. Then on the 20th ( maybe ) the new one will be ready and sometime after that we will have it in our slip in Rock Hall.

The boat's name is ...... Imagination.

Weekend Roundup

We went down to the boat this weekend to try out the new engine. The boat has to make the trip up to Riverside. Anyway the engine worked great! We took it out for a 2 hour shake down cruise. Kudos to the crew at Swan Creek Marina for all their great work. We jumped into the pool to cool off afterwords. This is our first heat wave of the season. Then we spent the rest of the afternoon with Glenn and Carol on their boat, it's air conditioned! Glenn was showing me all the Catalina tips. After dinner a thunder storm brewed up with the worst lightning that I had ever seen. We closed the hatches and ran off the boat to the marina porch then later to the car! This was really bad. I was not going to sit under a large aluminum mast. Well no boats got hit but I did not put in the compainionway boards. It never rains in the boat with bimini cover up. Well it did. What a mess wet cushions everywhere. We cleaned up as best we could. I did not sleep a wink crunched in another bunk. Sunday morning the sun came out. We put the cushions out every thing dried up in a few hours. I had time to do just a little more varnishing. The pool was a great oasis.

The thing that I'm convinced that we need more than anything for the new boat is a nettle net. so that we can cool off on days like today and not meet any jellyfish.

New boat delivery

We were going to sail our old boat to the where the new boat is then sail the new boat back to Rock Hall. That was until I found out how far it really is. From the C&D canal there is about 75 miles of the most scenic urban industrial river that one can imagine. It would have such sites as chemical facilities, oil refineries, container ports, prisons, airports and ship building facilities. All this and having to dodge container ships and tankers too! No thanks, please deliver it. The UPS guy is really going to hate me......

KooZa

Marilyn and I wend out to Cirque du Soleil KooZa laast night. We stopped at Nodding Head and had dinner a a beer. I had mussels and Grog. Then we waled down Broad Street to where Cirque had the tents set up. The shows are always amazing. The clowns are funny and the unicyclist showed there is nothing that can't be done on one wheel. The trapeeze artist had a fall but was saved by the safety equipment. The wheel of death terrifying and you could not stop watching.

Installed the Window A/C

I installed the window air conditioner in the living room. It's not real hot but it will be soon. Had to make all new brackets and mounts because of the new windows. The A/C is in and working well. The book club will be glad next week.