PROGRESS SOARING

Brett has been working diligantly on the boat. He has been building the galley in and it is looking awesome. We had a good Christmas. Brett smoked a turkey for the park again. We sailed on Bill and Mary Lou's boat and then we all four jumped on our boat for a quick sail before dark. We easily soared at 6 knots with main only yet she glided through the water. I cut my finger on the main halyard as I was raising the mast. I pulled muscles in my back trying to get the main down. Taking our boat out is showing me areas I need to improve like sailing gloves and stronger arms. We also discussed a step near the mast because I am just too short to get the main sail down. We had a great time though, with Mary Lou and Bill. It was great! They are now considering buying a larger, fin keel boat after sailing on theirs compared to ours.

We've just been working away at the boat and jewelry and Christmas. I thought I'd throw some pictures on here for everyone.

Miss y'all.

Kyla (and Brett)

Sailing on My Birthday

It was fantastic! Good winds. It started out warm but got humid and chilly later in the sail. Bill (Popeye as he is known around here) went with us. Charl showed Brett an area we could sail with our deep 5'8" keel. We had always thought we needed to stay in the channel which limited our sailing during certain winds. But discovering this new area was wonderful and opened up a lot more sailing opportunities for us.

We motored out to the channel and thew up the main sail. I had brought our GPS with us so we could monitor our speed. We averaged around 3 knots so we threw up the Genoa.


The Genoa is a large forsail. Genoas are different than Jibs in that they are larger, and usually overlap the main sail. Our boat carries 4 Genoas. This particular Genoa is called a "130%". It means that it is 100% forsail with a 30% overlap on the main. We have a 120, 130, 150, 170! This one is a very light dacron material weight. We sped up to around 6.5 knots with the Genoa. She heeled more than with just the main but she was easy to walk on and very smooth! Even with the horrible main sail shape, we still did very well!

During our second tack with the genoa, I looked up and saw a huge tear near the top of the genoa. I hollered to the guys about it and we all three worked quickly to bring the sail down before the tear worsened. We are pretty sure it tore on our radar tower. We knew this might happen but we got anxious to use the foresails and paid for it. We ended up with about a 3ft tear, not on a seam either, near the top of the sail. It took a bit for us to all get her down. This particular kind of tear is difficult to patch but it can be done. There were already 2 other repairs on that thin sail from previous sails. We had another genoa with us, the thick, small one, and so Bill and I heaved the torn sail into the vee berth and Brett helped me haul out the other genoa into the cockpit. As we were handing it to Bill, we saw the rip. It had a rip too! It was small but using it would make the tear worse, so we had to bail on a forsail for the rest of the trip.

Other than the torn sail, it was a SPLENDID time! I got to drive a lot but had allergies so I didn't drive too much. I did run the lines and hoist up the mainsail though. It takes all I got to get those sails going so I have more arm strength to gain.














Before we went sailing, D'na brought me over a lemon dessert that I LOVE. That was SO sweet of her to make it just for me! I got a card and gift from Roger and Jo , friends of ours here at the park, too. It was so lovely to be treated by my friends here at Serendipity.








After sailing, we were invited to the yacht club for dinner. Mary Lou, Bill, Russell, Mary Lee, Steve and Pam brought gifts and made a fantastic dinner! It was awesome. We visited with them from 5pm to 10pm. Steve and Pam finalized the purchase of their boat on my birthday, too, so it was a double celebration at the yacht club last night! With the sailing and my friends here at the park, and Brett being so sweet and talking with my family, I felt super blessed. This was definitely one of my best birthdays that I'll never forget!

FIRST SEA TRIAL ON BENEVOLENCE

We took Benevolence out on her first sea trial on

Friday, Dec 14th. We weren't sure we would go out as the winds were blowing and it was cloudy. We offered Dennis to go with us as we felt we he would enjoy it and that we wouldnt be this far without him.

With camera in hand, I video taped. Brett steered her, I hoisted the mast and ran the main sheet. Dennis helped when he could with the main sail and steering. The boat did very well. Even with poor sail shape, she pointed high into the wind and reacted well to every one of Brett's moves. The engine did well, even with the too-large prop. She backed right out of her slip and reared into action. She plowed right through where we wanted to go. We went out past the main markers, to the first marker and tacked around. It was BLOWING. We decided that it was blowing much more than the 8-10 knots that the weather report predicted. We tacked with only the main sail and amazingly, she took very well to it. Boat's don't generally tack with just a main, they usually need a headsail to get her all the way around.

As predicted, the strong East wind was blowing us toward the shallows on the port side of the channel, so we started up the engine and motor sailed back. We were out appx 32 minutes. Brett coasted her right into her slip without a problem.

She is in excellent boat as we hoped. Brett and I were absolutely exhausted from the stress and excitement. Dennis really enjoyed himself. I was so glad that we invited him to go with us. We found out that the winds were blowing 18 knots with gusts to 26. So it was definitely blustery out there. The whole RV park and yacht club missed it!! No pictures but I did get video.. We hope to go out again on our boat today, my 30th birthday.

It was extremely exciting and she did so well...

Benevolence is almost ready for her sea trial! VIDEO ATTACHED

Brett has spent the last few days hooking and priming the engine up so it's ready to try out. We tested it yesterday with the shifting gears. So far so good! Charl and Brett went through and watched it run for awhile today. Everything looks good. We have minor leaks but can easily be fixed down the road. We did discover that the prop is too big for our engine. When you have a bigger engine, it spins faster and so you need a smaller prop that will keep up with it. Our prop was for a small, slow engine so it has a bigger prop on it. This is a setback but we can do sea trials like it is for now. We'll need to replace the prop when we can afford to haul it out.

Today, I hauled out the sails in the storage and swept off the lizards and cockroaches. Unfortunately I unrolled the sails on the gravel and got my hands slapped. Sails should ALWAYS be unrolled in the grass. While unrolling the last one, I hit my leg with a metal ring on the sail as I was shaking it out. It didn't hurt too terribly bad but as I jogged around the sail, straightening it out, I brushed my leg where I had hit. There was a huge round thing under my jeans! I sat down on the ground and pulled up my pant leg. The bump was the size of a golf ball and growing! I raised my leg in the air and the swelling went down.

Later in the afternoon, Brett and I switched main sails as the one on the boat was ripped. I took off all the lights and decorations that we had painstakingly put up the stays. Definitely a worthy sacrifice to have to take them down to take the boat out! We ran the both sails up. They don't have great shape, we're not sure why. But they'll do the job. While working with the main, it popped out of a cleat and the boom came crashing down and swept my shoulder. It didn't hurt but if I'd been under the boom, it would have cracked my head. It really reminds us that such a big boat with big gear needs careful attentiveness.

Working with the heavy sails really wore me out today and hurt my hands, including a broken nail past the skin. It feels so good to be working with the boat again but it was also an eye opener for the safety measures and slow speed I need to change gears to.

Tonight, I'll be cleaning the inside so it's ready, too. We are hoping and praying to be able to take it out tomorrow! Weather is the only thing that will hold us back. The wind can't be blowing more than 10 knots and the water has to be higher than it is and no swells. So we'll see.....But we're pretty much ready to do this! Very exciting!

Below is a VIDEO that I shot of us working on the sails...

One More Thing To Add....

I ordered our Mexican ceramic sink... I ordered the one that Brett wanted...

Shows and Christmas are Upon Us

Sorry it's taken me so long to write. We went to Galveston's Dickens On The Strand show the weekend of the 1st. It was a GREAT show. THe most wonderful costumes and really really nice vendors. We stopped in Lake Jackson on our way to Galveston to pick up last minute decorations and the dreaded 10 lb fire extinguisher needed for this show. We ended up having to buy a 15 lb at Lowes for $60. But we were set. We stopped at Walmart and spent another $80 on shoes and decorations! I still didn't feel that I had enough to meet the requirements of the show but we were on our way.

It ended up being so much easier and less strict than the paperwork led me to believe. We were one of the nicer decorated booths of the whole show. Everything was absolutely beautiful. The kerosene lamps looked beautiful and although you couldn't see my jewelry AT ALL in these lights, I continued to sell Saturday night. We had the most wonderful neighbors as vendors.

We did very well that first day and Brett and I could sigh relief finally. The fire marshall casually strolled by and we asked him about the extinguisher. The 8 1/2 lb one from the park would have been sufficient. Oh well. We got a lot of compliments on our costumes which were HAND-sewn and purchased at the thrift shop here in Palacios. I did order Brett a $28 Bowler (Derby) hat from a company that we ended up not using because he found a GREAT hat at the Galveston Surplus shop on the Strand. It fit him better and really looked awesome with his outfit. It was a dark blue Greek Fishermans Hat. for $10. I hand sewed all my costume from the skirt to the hat. It was amazing how many people liked my costume as all these beautifully expensive costumes were walking around.

Unfortunately Brett and I didn't get a picture together that I wanted so badly. On Saturday night we drove back to the Galveston State park for the night and found a couple with dogs setting up their tent in our site. At 9pm, we had to make them move. It was terrible, we felt evil.

I sat and made a new wooden/painted sign for the booth and Brett relaxed in front of the tv. It was so nice to stay in a park where we had electricity and water. Much better than the Walmart parking lot.

We settled into bed around 10pm and were about asleep around 11pm. Brett got up and rushed to the bathroom. I woke up and asked him what was wrong. He was sick. I started to feel nausiated. I wont go too far into detail but soon we were both sharing the bathroom, sicker than dogs at both ends. We were up ALL night. Both of us felt like we needed to go to the hospital or at least some medicine from Walmart but we were about a 20 minute drive from anywhere and both of us too sick to drive at 3am. In the morning we decided to go back to the show and pack everything and head home and to the doctor. It took absolutely everything we had to get going. We were very late to the show and new we'd have to dolly EVERYTHING out of the show, about 15 min each way to the truck from our booth... We had narrowed the sickness down to a lunch we ate from an oriental vendor of chicken and rice. Brett had eaten most of it, I had one or two bites. He was MUCH sicker than I was.

After dragging ourselves into the cab, we headed toward Walmart to get some medicine... Getting out of the wretched camper made me feel a tiny bit better and I decided that I could just sit at the booth for the day. I dreaded the thought of packing up the booth in the middle of everyone and hauling all of it one load at a time through the streets. Brett was much sicker than I was and stayed in the camper for awhile while I attempted to set up the jewelry in the booth. Our neighbor, Mary, wanted us to call to talk to the show coordinators but we didnt see them. I sat during the show and did manage to sell pieces even though death had rolled over me. It was unbearably hot, too, and I was wearing 3 layers of hot clothing and a hot hat.

Brett was finally able to come to the booth. I started to cry as I had horrible chills and fever. For some INSANE reason, we stayed through the show till 530pm. Even while breaking down the booth, people were still buying from us. We did manage to eat half of a baked pretzel and some water and soda. After breaking down the booth, we both started feeling really bad again.

The camper was in an unlivable state. We started the drive home, not even knowing what we had made during the show. After getting through Galveston, Brett decided we needed to stay in a hotel for the night. He couldn't make it home and the camper was not livable... So we stopped at a Super 8 (sorry Dave) and crashed for the night after taking baths and showers.

That ended up being the best decision in the world for us. In the morning, we were still sick but managed to eat a small breakfast at IHOP before heading home. We stopped at Lowes and was able to return the fire extinguisher. We were going to keep it for the boat but the one we bought, of course, had been opened and someone had busted the tie on the handle. So we just ended up returning it anyway. So it worked out.

We later found out that we probably had salmonella poisoning from the chicken we had eaten. We also found out that if you have chills and fever, you are supposed to go to the hospital. We were so insane not to go to a doctor and to finish the show. It was definitely one of the hardest things I've ever done. But we made the extra money we were needing. It took us about 5 days to start feeling normal again..We did report it to the Galveston Historical Foundation and they knew which vendor it was and was glad we had reported it. I did lose 2 lbs from it but I wouldn't recommend THAT as a diet plan. Geeesshhh!!

We were now able to order a lot of boat supplies needed to move onto the boat. I was also able to now buy Christmas presents, too. So we've been very busy this last week trying to get Christmas going and the boat. Brett has been working on the wiring for a week. He has gotten the engine panel installed and it works great- Dennis, once again, graciously donated some parts to us that Brett thought would take weeks for us to get. Our dream would definitely be delayed if Dennis wasnt so gracious to us in every way. We are forever indebted to him and our friends' and families' support.

Brett has gotten part of the galley built in and a lot of wiring done.

We finally bought another refrigerator. We had been living out of a tiny ice cooler for a month. It was awful. The thing weighed a ton, would collect water when the ice would melt, ruining a lot of food. If we forgot ice for the day,we'd have to throw everything away. Every other day, I'd have to haul the thing out of the hole- empty the WET contents and drain it outside. Then put ice in and load it back up. TERRIBLE TERRIBLE So we finally bought another bigger refrigerator. I am SO SOOOOO glad we did. It's SO nice having a place to put yogurt again...

I have been feeling down a lot lately as the Galveston show was my last show and I am now out of work and money. I also hate being away for the holidays. I am also turning 30 in a few days and did not meet any of my goals for this special birthday, the biggest one being to move aboard the boat. We still have about a month's worth of work before we can move aboard... So I decided to prod Brett and get a feel for what he thought about maybe seeing if we can get the engine running and take the boat out on Christmas as our gift to each other. At first he said we'd need a flex coupling ($200) and I had to give up the idea. But after some thought, we decided to make the coupling work we had for now just to putt around the bay. So we made a list of things to get for the engine to make it run. The biggest thing was the altenator- Charl had given us his old one. We took it into Presley's and they tested it. It didn't work. They offered to re build it for us and we accepted. But then I reminded Brett that he wanted a bigger one and why don't we just buy the one we want for a little more. So Presley's helped us come up with the best one and we ended up with a rebuilt one that had everything on it that Brett needed. It was more than we could really afford but we now have our altenator without having to jimmy rig it for one ride.

We purchased the other parts needed to get it running. We spent the rest of our money to do this but I think we both really needed SOMETHING like this to get our moral boosted. We were still able to get the plywood for the galley so he has a ton of projects lined up now. Everything has to get done, we just changed the order a little bit. Last night, I was able to get almost everything else we needed around here for the engine.

So hopefully everything will go alright and we will be able to take that boat out for a short motor ride on Christmas. I am SO excited about it. It really lifted my spirits finding out that Brett agreed to this and that it was definitely possible.

For Christmas, I put lights on the boat! I wanted to decorate so badly and I started to decorate the camper with my garland leftover from the show... Brett said "Why don't you decorate the boat instead?" So, for Christmas (before we decided to take the boat out), I got to go buy Christmas lights and we strung them up the stays and along the boom. It was SO fun and it looks so good- the pictures don't do it justice at all. It's beautiful though. A lot of people in the park like them. I put garland and copper poinsettas around the boom and a copper wreath at the bow. I bought two stockings and hung them at the bow too. Then I used my leftover copper clips and put them on the boat. It's probably silly but it was fun.

Well this one is super long and I am sure there is more to say but I am busy busy with Christmas stuff and jewelry orders. I hope everyone is having a good holiday season. I miss everyone horribly bad again. I'll try to write again, soon. I will try to get a bunch of our pictures onto my link under MY FAVORITES, MY PICTURES for you so you can see more pictures of the boat progress, show and lights.

Happy Holidays!