Pretty, pretty.

We got the last coat of epoxy resin on the canoe, and except for a few runs, it looks pretty good!  Almost like a new canoe!  $650 plus $100 for the resin vs $3000 for the same new canoe, a pretty good deal I would say.  And every time we pick it up, the light weight puts a big smile on our faces.

Looking good!

You can also see the new Thule rack we put on the truck to carry the canoe.  Still have to mount the canoe carrier, but we wanted the canoe to be completely done and dry before we started fitting that.  

Yesterday, Jan and I pulled out all the rest of the tile to get ready for our new tile floor.  It was a pain; man, it does not want to come out, but it's all done now.  We will replace a portion of the floor with new plywood, and if it all comes together, the new tile will be installed this coming weekend!  Yeehaww.

Paddles, reresining, and tacos

We needed some paddles for our "new" canoe, and have found out that canoes, at least here in SW Florida are passé.  So it's hard to find a store that has canoe paddles. Everything here is kayaks and paddle boards.  I understand the kayak thing, but paddle boards just escape me.  Do I want to paddle down an alligator river in a kayak, a canoe, or do I want to be standing up balancing on a paddle board?  You decide.  So anyway we find a canoe shop up in St. Petersburg and head on up to check out bent paddles.  No we weren't sure what they were either, but were told they make paddling a bit more efficient, read easier:-)  St Pete is about 60 miles away and the shop didn't open until noon, so, of course, we had to stop for lunch on the way, and where better than the Taco Bus!

Yummy!

Now this is not the same one we showed you before, that other one was the original.  This one is in a nice section of downtown St Pete with outdoor seating and yes, it was delicious!!

We headed over to the canoe store and ended up getting a couple bent shaft paddles.  Although they are wood, they are amazingly light.  And beautiful, but I'm sure I can mark them up with my inept technique.

FoxWorx paddle

It was funny, when we went to Alaska in 2005, we bought that heavy, heavy canoe I was telling you about here in Florida before we left.  Of course neither Jan nor I could remember where we had gotten it.  Well, after wandering around this store, Canoe Country, it dawned on us we had bought it right here!  Oh the CRS is alive and well.

Looking at our new canoe we felt it needed a little tender loving care as it had obviously spent quite a bit of time in the sun over its 12 year life.  I did some research on refinishing a kevlar canoe, specifically a Souris River Canoe, and found that we could apply a thin coating of epoxy resin to the outside.  So off to West Marine to get our resin and Lowes for a million foam brushes.  We tentatively applied a thin coat of resin, and wow, it really popped!  Darkened the hull color and really made it look better, have to believe it will help the integrity of the canoe as well.  We also found out resin is not necessarily the easiest thing to work with.  You expect it to act like paint, but it doesn't, the tiniest amount will run and run, and then, of course, set up hard as nails.  We are 1 1/2 coats in and are planning 3 coats, and it is looking quite good, if I do say myself.  I'll get some pictures posted when we finish up.

We also celebrated a couple milestone birthdays this past week with friends, Happy Birthday Ann and Jean!

We contacted the tile guy and told him we had increased the size of our job and he said no problem.  The tile hasn't come in yet, but we think it may be getting installed next weekend, so that means back down on our hands and knees and get the demo done.  Yippeee 

Progress in a curved line

We've been busy again, and that's always something unusual and sometimes not completely planned.  We have been going round and round about our cloth couch. It sits on the driver's side opposite our big leather couch that turns into a queen bed.  We wanted something different, thought maybe another couch, maybe a loveseat with a table, or.......what we ended up with.  A Stressless chair with a cherry filing cabinet that we had in storage.  And we are very happy with the arrangement!

Out with the couch.

In with the chair

It matches our very beautiful plywood floor, don't you think?

We've also been going back and forth on a boat as you know.  We've run the gauntlet from inflatables, Kaboats, kayaks, etc., with and without an outboard motor.  As our Alaska trip nears we have been thinking about a boat even more.  We took a 16' plastic canoe to Alaska the last time we went, and used it quite a bit, way more in the beginning of the trip than towards the end as it weighed 84#!  And I'll tell you that 84# got heavier and heavier as time went on.  It got to the point when we saw a beautiful lake, we'd look at each other and just shake our heads, no way are we struggling to get that off the roof and back on.  So one of the things that we've been looking at is a kevlar canoe.  Very tough, very light, but very expensive.  I've been scouring Craig's list and a used canoe popped up over in Melbourne.  For those of you that don't know that is all the way across the state, 200 miles away.  But it sounded promising and the price sounded pretty good.  I conversed with the seller a few times, he and his wife are in their mid 80's and have decided to downsize a bit and get rid of one of their two canoes:-)  He bought this canoe new and has had it for 12 years.  It is a Souris River, a very well respected kevlar canoe, so over we went to take a look, liked it, negotiated a great price, and the best part of all, it's a 17' canoe that weighs just 40#!  Absolutely amazing!  So now we have a new to us boat.  A little beat up, but in great shape, and will be perfect for our trip.

Our new yacht

Pretty nice shape!

We are looking for some paddles right now and hope to launch it in a few days.  

New Link

I am proud to say my brother-in-law Tom Lee is a published author!  Please check out his link Tom Lee in my Favorite Links spot.  He has written a very funny book about his adventures in aviation.  Give it a go, you'll enjoy it!

Are we fickle or what?

I just told you we were all set on our floor until December, but no....  We were sitting here looking at our wonderful plywood floor, very chic you know, when we started thinking maybe tiling the galley, the hall with our shower in it, and the toilet compartment might be a good idea after all.  Besides just being fickle there were a few compelling reasons.  One, there are 3 slide rollers on our passenger side front slide out.  These are the rollers that the whole slide moves over when the slide goes in or out.  The front roller is mounted to the motorhome so the slide just rolls over it, but the middle and the rear rollers are mounted to the slide itself, so when it comes in or out it actually rolls over the existing floor which used to be tile, is now plywood, and was going to be engineered wood flooring.  Well no matter how careful and clean you are there are invariably going to be times when a small stone, some errant gravel, some aggressive dirt comes off a shoe or whatever, gets caught under the roller as it comes in, and boom, a big scratch!  No such problem with the tile.  Two, we were a little leery of wood floors dealing with water directly in front of the galley sink, just outside the shower, and right below the sink in the toilet compartment.  So yes, after we had made up our minds definitely, we decided to change them once again, and tile the galley, down the hall, and into the toilet compartment, and to make sure we don't change them again, we went and ordered and paid for the tile :-)

We haven't mentioned this to our prospective tile installer yet, but we are confident he will welcome the increase in the size of the project, we hope!  So, Jan and I will have to start demolition very soon.

This week has flown by without us doing too much other than enjoying the warm pleasant weather, having lunch with Dick and Ann, always a good time, visiting with Karen, and also with Tom who is down for the weekend.  Later today, the four of us are going to meet Steve and Bobbie for lunch in Sarasota.  It sure makes us appreciate our weather looking at the rest of the country, keep warm everyone!

All done plus some!

I left you mid week at Alliance Coach with our awning job.  Mother nature threw us a curve ball, although much more mild than the rest of the country, a high of 41 and rain is not pleasant especially for painting new awning slide toppers.  John, our tech, finished installing the slide toppers and even got all the new fabric installed on all our other awnings including the two main patio awnings by Wednesday evening.  So it was planned to have the coach head for paint on Thursday and be out of there.  But as I said with the weather plans needed to be changed.  The first bad indication was when our service writer, Robbie, accompanied by the head of paint, Victor, found us in the waiting room Thursday mid morning.  Not a good sign to be approached by your writer, worse when they come in pairs :-)  We were asked if we could spend the night in a hotel so the coach could stay inside in a drying room heated with blowing air to be sure it would be dry for paint, otherwise we would have to bring it back out in the weather for us to stay in it and they would have to start all over again.  We said of course.

I will digress for a moment and tell you about another little issue that came up on our visit that I think is important enough to share and maybe raise some interest to check your own power cord.  We arrived Sunday night to the Alliance campground and plugged into their 50 amp service as we did each night.  We had no problem Sunday and Monday, but on Tuesday, the power popped off and on for no reason, so we switched over to their 30 amp plug and had no more problems.  We reported the issue to them and they checked it out and reported back they could find nothing wrong with their power.  Hmmmm?  Who knows, maybe a fluke.  Well, Wednesday night we go out, find good power on the 50 amp receptacle, plug in and all is good for several hours, then when it's raining really hard, of course, the power quits.  So out into the rain I go, switch over to the 30 amp receptacle and all is good for the rest of the night.  I tell them about our experience, and they very nicely say even though they can't find anything wrong, they will install a new receptacle.  Super!  Now back to the drying booth.

We go out to the coach to get stuff to spend the night in a hotel, and to make sure Bert is all set for his night alone, and notice our coach is not plugged into power.  I mention it to the guy sanding and prepping it and he goes to grab an extension cord, and plugs us in.  Great, so we get our stuff together and on the way out I check to be sure we have power and ........ we do not.  Our meter is showing too low voltage only 102 volts on each leg and the coach's protection system will not allow it to connect.  So out I go, tell the guy I still don't have power so he goes and grabs another extension cord, plugs us in and.......still no good.  So they call for Kevin, the electrician that worked on our problem in the campground.  He checks the power at the extension cord and he gets 120 volts on each leg.  He says you've got a problem with your coach.  I'm thinking how could that be?  I've never had an issue until just now at Alliance.  He notices I had installed a replacement end to my power cord and suggests they have seen problems with aftermarket ends.  I think no way, I've had this on for several years with no problem, how could that be?  So I say we will look into it, the lunch bell rings and everyone in the shop goes to lunch.  Well, Jan and I tear our plug apart and Oh My God!  Most of the wires are loose, there is much molten plastic, and it smells as if it has been burning.  Looking at it, it is astounding we had any power at all!  So I run out to parts, grab another male end, install it, and can you believe it, full power! So I go and apologize to Kevin, tell him it is all my problem not theirs, and vow to take care of this permanently in the very near future.  He says they have had many problems arise with the after market plugs.  Good to know, we are lucky we didn't have a fire!

Now back to our awnings. First the overview.

The "before"

The "after"

As you can see the new Girard slide topper is much more sleek, the awning has a real slope to shed water, the awning rolls into the top box, brushing off any debris unlike the Carefree on the top which holds water, and all the debris gets rolled up in the awning.
Now this was a bit of a challenge changing them out, Alliance had never done this exchange before, so as I said, there was a learning curve.  But our tech, John, did a superb job.

John taking the original extrusion off

A close up view of the metal piece that needs to be removed
and modified for the new awnings

The mounting brackets in place

The first new Girard awning going on

The next project was replacing all the awning fabric over our windows, the door, and the two main patio awnings.  Just to give you an idea, our patio awnings are approximately 20' by 11', pretty large pieces of fabric that take a lot of hands and coordination to get them off and the new put on.

The old fabric off and just the framework showing

Getting set with the new fabric

Starting it on with 3 guys

Not enough!  It took 4 guys working together to get them on.

Almost there

On, just waiting for adjustment.

Victor completed the painting by lunchtime on Friday as promised.  It looks very good and we are very pleased.  We elected to install a soft flexible gasket ourselves that goes on the top of each awning to repel water as it is necessary for the paint to be completely dry before installation and that would have required us staying through the weekend.  So they gave us some pointers, and Jan and I will put those on this coming week.

Another view of our new toppers

All new, looking pretty sleek

Also, good news, Jason came down this weekend to visit, and enjoy some warmth I think. But while here he replaced our small air compressor under the coach that augments our automatic air leveling system, and helped us install the 3rd new AC unit on the roof.  He was an enormous help.  Getting the almost 150 pound unit on the roof is a challenge.  But we are all set now, new thermostats with programming, and best of all they work great!  The rest of our projects pale after these, especially since the floor is done until December!!  Good deal.