Today finished up the first of for weekends with Susanna and Isabella away in Sweden. But, with Ben over for the week, it isn’t as quiet as I suspect the next few will be.

We started our day with a visit to a new donut shop, Dixie Donuts. My friend, Mark, recommended it; it is much better than the usual Dunkin. To be fair, this morning wasn’t the first visit. Will and I stopped by there yesterday morning while we were out running errands before Ben came over.

After our second breakfast, we headed to Stonington for a short hike at Hewitt Farm and the surrounding trails. It was a good chance to get Hoagie out for a walk and practice some off-leash training.

After lunch, Ben and I worked a bit on my summer house project, repairing the sun porch roof. I’m working on repairing the soffit and fascia on the main roof in the area directly above the sun porch. That lets me get all the work and wear and tear on the old roof before replacing it. The roof has been leaking for a while; I think the roof pitch is too shallow for the shingles. Today we scraped and washed a section of the upper exterior wall and main roof trim. It is an area that isn’t very visible, and we didn’t paint it when we repainted the house many years ago. Tomorrow I’ll prime the area we prepared and I’ll paint it later this week and move over to the next section of wall/trim to repair. I took the gutter off the upper roof, so I’ll have to figure out how to install one if one is needed for that section.

This evening I milled the back board for the chisel rack that I started on Friday night. Again, I flattened the board by hand, but milled it to thickness on the planer. I jointed the first edge by hand, but didn’t have a good way to mark that wide of a width, so ripped it to width on the table saw. I marked out and started chiseling out the grove that will hold the rack (seen in the background). I’ll try to finish the piece tomorrow night after dinner. Ben and I are watching Westworld in the evenings this week, so I won’t get too much time in the shop.

This morning, Will, Izzy and I drove to the Connecticut College Arboretum for a short photo walk. It was warm and humid early which elicited complaints about the walk early on from Izzy. However, for the most part, she was good company and a somewhat willing model for pictures. Will focused on the wildlife, and I tried to get Izzy to at least not look too grumpy for pictures. She did take some pictures of me, but I had a manual focus lens on, so they didn’t turn out great.

I had the day (mostly) to myself today. Susanna and Izzy departed early this morning to go to New York for Swedish School and Will, for most of today, was busy doing his own things. I had carved out today to be a day to get back into restoring the sailboat. I’ve been working off and on (mostly off) ripping out wiring and patching some holes. Today I got back into restoring the deck. The old non-skid is shot, so I’m slowly sanding it off and my plan is to re-gelcoat the topside. I am using brushable gelcoat. It goes on thick and doesn’t level as well as paint does, but hopefully it will last another 40 years. The trick to getting it to look good is to sand a lot and then buff out the top after it cures.

Today’s project included removing the port side handrail and sanding that section of the cabin top. It was warm enough to apply the gelcoat, so I went through a bit more than half a quart on the bow. It is slow going. The gelcoat starts curing very quickly, so I don’t get a lot of time to work it and have to do a small section at a time. Hopefully it will all look good once I’m done sanding it out. Maybe it would be more efficient to prep the entire topside before gelcoating, but that isn’t really how my brain works (got to love ADHD).

I was also able to lay the final layers of fiberglass on a hole in the cockpit/cabin that I’m repairing. That will need a layer of fairing compound and a bunch more sanding before it is ready to gelcoat.

I was able to get a little time with Will to work on his boat. We worked on gelcoating his boat (we had done it a few years ago, but he decided he wants it white and not blue (the blue is way too hot on the sun). It was fun to get some time with him in the afternoon before he had friends over for the evening. Kevin Farrar (Farrar Sails, New London) is planning on coming by on Thursday evening to measure for rigging and possibly new sails.

Memorial Day weekend is the start of the crazy rush of a summer. In the past it has always felt sort of like getting on a water slide over Memorial Day weekend and everything is a rushed blur until you get dumped out the other side at Labor Day. This summer is setting up to be the same. Ben graduates High school in a few weeks. On the same day, Izzy has her last day of school and Susanna’s preschool class has graduation. Susanna’s parents are also scheduled to arrive in Preston that morning for a week visit.

A few days after Susanna’s parents depart, Izzy and I are starting our 10-ish day road trip to Missouri. It is a long road trip, but I’m letting her have an old phone for the trip. Part of the agreement is that she journal her trip, which she will do on her blog. After Missouri she has a two weeks of summer camp and then she and Susanna head to Sweden for 4 weeks. I’ll hang out here and hopefully get some sailing and camping in with the boys.

This weekend was a good start. Will and I did some work on his loft and picked up some much needed storage for his stuff. Our big house plans was to clean up the back yard and put the pool up; just in time for the 80+ degree sunny day today. Will has been collecting more animals, and caught a marbled salamander in our basement this morning; he is working on a habitat for it. I think eventually he will need to add small critter storage in the basement, but he’s not quite there yet.

We finished off the weekend with a nice lunch at a friends house.

Of course, every finished project leads to a new one. The swimming pool is galvanized steel and is showing some rust spots. Probably due to our acidic well water. I’ll have to find some way to protect the pool later this summer. Maybe vinylester gelcoat will stick to the steel.

And of course there is the long list of unfinished projects. the next project this afternoon is to get some more work on Will’s sailboat – assuming I have the energy to get working in the later afternoon heat.

I do realize that I’m a lot better at starting projects than finishing them. I have a 26′ sailboat that I am refurbishing, and it may wind up being just a project to work on and never a boat in the water. With that in mind, and the summer coming quickly, I decided that I needed something to get on the water. So, two weeks ago, I picked up a 7′ dinghy. It was small enough to fit in the back of the mini-van.

The boat was pretty ugly, but looked like it would float. I washed it and sanded and smoothed the bottom. I had a third of a can of gelcoat left from last summer that I used to paint the bottom (or most of the bottom). The big sailboat came with a larger dinghy that I’m just waiting to throw in the trash next time we get a dumpster, but it did have two sets of oars. I sanded the wooden oars and reinforced the blades with some fiberglass and epoxy. I topped it with a few coats of marine varnish. Not the nicest oars, but functional. They might be a touch too long for the boat, but the price was right.

This weekend Will and I decided to take Izzy and his dog, Hoagie, down to the Thames river and test out the boat. Izzy decided that she preferred swimming, and Hoagie preferred the shore, though he started having fun chasing splashes from Izzy swimming. We will make a swimmer of him one of these days. The only problem is he liked to drink the water, and I’m pretty sure it is brackish where we put in (not that I was going to taste it).

The boat is really small, but it floats. Rowing was a pain, there isn’t much room to stretch your legs out when you are rowing and you have the tendency to hit your knees with the oars. Maybe shorter oars would help. Or maybe a trolling motor would make it more fun to explore (though I’d probably have to register it if I put a trolling motor on it). Maybe I’ll paint the sides later this summer if we have any gelcoat left from Will’s boat.

Next time I’ll try freshwater if we are bringing Hoagie. At least then he can drink the water. I canoe might be an even better bet for getting on the water, but enough boats (for now).

For the final weekend of spring break, Susanna and I decided to take Izzy to New York City. Izzy and Susanna had Swedish school on that Sunday in New Rochelle, so would have to make the drive no matter what. We made reservations at a Residence Inn in Secaucus, NJ. The hotel is an easy detour from I-95, though the trip down 95 (at least through Connecticut) is pretty terrible. There is free parking and it is a short bus ride into the city.

We left home right after breakfast and made it to our hotel by 11AM. It was too early to check in, but they let us park there and pointed us to the bus terminal. Susanna had picked Ellen’s Stardust Diner for lunch and we walked the few blocks from the Port Authority Bus Terminal to the restaurant and Susanna waited in line while Izzy and I explored around the block. We enjoyed lunch (the food wasn’t great, but the singing was lots of fun).

After lunch we walked to Central Park and found a playground for Izzy which was only a little fun since playgrounds are more fund with friends to play with.

After Central Park we headed back towards the bus terminal with a coffee stop in the Swedish Church on 48th Street (Svenska kyrkan i New York) and then back to the hotel. I think Izzy was more excited about swimming at the hotel than almost anything else on the trip.

Sunday morning started with breakfast than a swim until it was time to check out. I picked a few places to visit before Susanna and Izzy had to be in New Rochelle. The first stop was the Weehawken Dueling Grounds; that is the site where the Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton duel took place. We were there long enough for a few photographs with the NYC skyline as a backdrop and a little history that Izzy is a bit young to care about.

After the dueling grounds we drove to Fort Tryon Park in upper Manhattan. I dove in circles a few times, but eventually found a place to park. We wandered through the park and up the hill to a playground (another playground). There Izzy met two girls that were also carrying around dolls to play with. Susanna walked a bit past the park and found sushi to bring back for lunch. After lunch we wandered back through the park and then headed to New Rochelle where I dropped them off at Swedish School which left me three hours to kill in New Rochelle.

In New Rochelle, I found a nearby park, Five Islands Park, to walk around for a while. After the park, I headed to the New Rochelle library to upload and edit pictures until it was time to pick up Susanna and Izzy and start the drive back home. Overall a successful weekend vacation!

I had been a little unhappy for a while with Izzy’s previous riding instructor. She was nice, but tended to not pay close attention to Izzy as she was riding, and Izzy was getting frustrated with the basics. The last time she went for lessons, she was in tears for the last half of the lesson. The instructor would have her ride the horse around the arena on her own, and Izzy would do okay for a little bit, but then would get frustrated and eventually the instructor would put the horse on the lunge line and work with Izzy. But, by that time she was in tears and it was too late.

So we picked a new farm to go to and try a different teacher. These lessons are shorter (45 minutes vice an hour), and the new instructor is much more involved. She started last weekend, and has been on a lunge line the entire time. She is starting with just being comfortable in the saddle and slowly working on controlling the horse. It makes a big difference for Izzy, but will probably take a few lessons to get over the anxiety and stress from the previous lessons.

I’m sure it is a balance between letting her figure things out and holding her hand the whole way, but I think she is responding better with a more gentle approach. And this is supposed to be fun for her, not a chore.