On Saturday, we checked out the haulout yard in Slidell. On Sunday, we decided to drive back and see what was around for shops and hotels, etc. We drove down the old highway, 190 which our marina is on. It merged into rd 433 which is the road the haulout yard was on so we followed it to the Bayou where we crossed a weird barge-like bridge. When we reached Hwy 11, we found it completely blocked off. They were getting ready for a parade down Hwy 11!! We wound our way through the back roads of Slidell, trying to find a way across Hwy 11. We finally followed a woman out of a McDonald's parking lot across to another side street across 11. From there, we continued to run into road blocks for the parade on all the major roads. We finally found one road and it led us to Interstate 10. We followed the interstate until hwy 190, hoping to make our way back to the marina via 190 and to stop at a flea market we'd seen on the way to Slidell.Well, after driving a couple miles, we discovered the parade was on 190 too! They had blocked three sides of the main roads for this dang parade! We zigzagged through more side roads, following people that we hoped knew the way out of this crazy place. The suburban we were following finally pulled into a Burger King's parking lot and the parade went right by the restaurant. We succumbed to the parade, bought some cokes at the BK and sat for the parade. Brett stated several times, "We're cruising". I couldn't believe I didn't have one camera with us during this cool parade....Vendors crowded the roads with shopping carts set up as rolling stands to buy toys, stuffed animals, beads, colorful feather boas, crazy fur hats and all kinds of silly stuff. I decided we had to have something for Mardi Gras so I bought a purple/yellow/green boa and made Brett get a fuzzy black and silver hat with red hot flames on top and under the brim. He wouldn't wear it at the parade though, so we stashed the souveniers into a ziplock bag for Mardi Gras. We sat under a tree and watched the floats and bands go by, throwing gobs of colorful Mardi Gras beads at the huge crowd. We were definitely a minority in this little part of town, surrounded by thousands, but we felt secure and everyone was a happy union of parade viewers. It was cool. After Brett scraped some beads up for me off the road, we made our way back out and found the Interstate 10 again and then I12 which headed back toward the marina.
We took the LaCombe exit, hoping to find the awesome looking flea market we'd seen earlier. After backtracking twice, we gave up and headed back to the marina. The next day, we resumed our projects. I completely cleaned out the vee berth. We hauled the sails out from the boat, all 12. We finally settled on 4 sails to get rid of and 8 to keep. Brett offered the 4 sails to gentleman who lived on his boat a few slips down from us. He gladly accepted them. We finally had a ton of room in the boat and I got to work filling up the spaces quickly.
We spent yesterday finishing the organizing. Brett has spent the last few days installing the autopilot. He also tried to get the transmission seal replaced but failed again- the nut on the coupler won't budge, it's completely frozen.
Yesterday, I spent the day completely reorganizing the salon and the galley- I took out all of the stores and cleaned the galley from top to bottom. I had forgotten just how much food we had and I had just purchased more Monday! I also took the afternoon to spray the old red wind generator a white color with Fusion Plastic Paint. It worked great and we now have a white bladed generator instead of that awful faded red color. We also spent time on Monday working on the cushions and getting materials from Lowes. Brett helped me with the cushion backs- We decided to staple the fabric onto the plywood that made up the doors as the sette backs. They turned out really good and it was way easier than sewing them!
We got so much done these last few days, I could write another 5 pages, I am sure.
The only thing that has been a problem is the massive amounts of garbage and no where to put it. For some reason, the marina got rid of the dumpster so now there is NO where to dump. Very frustrating. Especially because we returned the rental car yesterday.
Oh, Monday, we spent a couple hours talking to a guy who bought Brett's trimaran! He is in Florida and wanted to know all about Brett's design and building of the boat. We ended up selling him a couple of winches we had that would work perfectly for the little tri we had sold in 2006. He seems really excited to sail the boat. He sent us a picture of it. We are hoping that we'll hook up with him in Apalachicola and we can take him sailing on our boat and then we can go sailing again on the little tri! He has decided to call it a "Corbett 20". We're excited to see the boat again and can't wait to possibly even sail it.
Well I am sure there is tons more to write, but I have already written a lot for ya.
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