Visits Galore

We had a wonderful visit last week with Brett's daughter, Melody. They hadn't seen each other in 8-10 years. While waiting for her flight to come in, Brett and I stopped at the Boat Resale Shop in Kemah where we had bought our stove. We ended up finding a teak folding salon table!! We asked him to lower the price. Brett was going to build one of these days but the price was cheaper on this table than building one. It ended up being a little long but he spent a few hours and cut it down to a great fit! So we now have a table in the salon.

After we checked into the B&B, we had a few hours before Melody's flight so we walked along the Kemah Boardwalk. We had a great time and even spotted "The Wanderer" in a locked up marina. The Wanderer was the boat in the movie "Captain Ron". It was fun to see her in person.

Melody flew into Houston and we stayed the night at Clipper House Inn in Kemah. We ate at Joe's Crabshack on the boardwalk. Melody and I ended up having the bartender spike our cokes! It was weird! None of us drink so it made quite the scene. LOL I've never known diet coke to go down warm. LOL We got Melody a Crabshack tee shirt for a souvenier.

The next day, we visited NASA Johnson Space Center. We ended up driving through the security parking lot of the actual campus before being redirected to the Johnson Space Center, where the tourists are supposed to arrive at. We spent a few hours at NASA before heading back. We all had expected a little more out of NASA, but the space center had been built around touristy money making business and children for the space camp. But it was still really neat to see the campus on the tram tour. There was a shuttle that was in space, too, (STS-124) so that was really cool.

We drove back through Galveston and waded in the Gulf's 83 degree water. Melody couldn't believe how warm it was!

We spent Friday preparing our renaming ceremony for the boat at the yacht club. Brett got into a costume and played Neptune. He read a script we'd found online to do the proper ceremony of renaming a boat, including buying expensive champagne and wine. Mike, a friend of ours, donated two nice bottles of French Wine that we christened the boat with and shared with our friends.

I and Melody dressed up and we had about 30 friends gather with us at the yacht club for the celebration. We had a fantastic time, especially having Melody there.













On Saturday we drove to Matagorda Beach and played in the water and flew Brett's kite I had bought him for his Birthday in March. It was really a beautiful day.

After work on Sunday, I painted the name on the boat. Melody sat with me on the floating dock for the 2 hours it took. Both the floating dock and the boat were jumping up and down in the choppy water but the names turned out okay. I even ended up having some friends ask me to paint their name on their boat!

On Monday, we were finally able to take the boat out with Melody. We took an hour and really strapped everything down as the wind had been houling for the last week. Brett reefed the main but in the end, it wasn't windy, just choppy so we only averaged about 3 knots. But it was a beautiful sail and Melody really enjoyed it.

Her and Brett played some awesome Chess with each other. They were both very good and they loved having such a challenging opponent.

We drove her back up to Houston on Tuesday, using Ann's car that she had graciously let us borrow. Our car had a pulley come loose and we felt sure it wouldn't make another trip to Walmart let alone Houston.

She ended up being stuck on the plane in Houston for 2 hours while a nasty storm hit. She got home late but it worked out in the end as her friend was going to pick her up late in Sacramento.

Yesterday, Brett and I worked on the boat and attempted to free the windvane again. After purchasing the windvane from Bill, we discovered that the rotating part was completely frozen together, aluminum to aluminum. ack. Brett spent 4 weeks soaking it with commercial grade oil (thank you Dale at ACE!!) I suggested he work on it yesterday. We turned the boat around and mounted it. He strung up a pulley system with a winch, using the boat as leverage to free the frozen part. We had been very bummed this last month at the prospect of our expensive windvane being deemed useless... He pulled and pulled on it but it didn't budge. Then I suggested that he beat on it with a hammer while I pulled on the winch. After several tries, it finally came loose!!! We hooted and hollered in excitement. Then we spent an hour swinging it back and forth with ropes (him on one end on our dock and me across the slips with another rope). We seemed to have finally freed it up and it will be usable. WHEW. Huge relief for us...

Benny LOVES shoes.