Yep, that’s me. We’re nearly 32 weeks along in the pregnancy and I found out yesterday that the little girl is already 4 lb 13 oz, and the boy is 4 lb 6 oz. That’s 9 lbs 3 oz, people! I had hoped they might be almost 4 lbs each, but certainly didn’t expect an additional pound and a half on top of that!!

At this point, I’m starting to seriously wonder what the final totals will be…it’s getting a little scary, as I don’t think I really WANT 15 lbs of baby on board! Their parents are still in Hawaii right now, so I’ll hang in there. But I’m thinking that 36 weeks might be plenty…

The Beagle Project

I was wandering around online and came across this interesting group. As KJ was built to replicate Darwin’s Galapagos trip, it’s an adventure rather close to my heart. Granted, KJ is certainly not a replica of HMS Beagle itself, but her original name was Beagle and I’ve often thought that it would be wonderful to actually make that trip (she never got to do it, as her owner at the time became ill).

I have no explanation.

Came home yesterday to find the dinghy at the top of the boom. Short in the cables controlling the winch? Don’t think so – everything seemed to be working fine. Both controllers were still tucked under the canvas of the dinghy where I keep them safe from the rain. It would have been tough for someone to mess with the boat and then replace the controls as they were. No harm seemed to have been done. I pulled the cables out, returned the boat to its position, disabled the fuse which controls the winch/boom system to prevent further recurrence of this event, secured the dinghy with a new ratchet (the old one had corroded badly, thus the reason it wasn’t secured in the first place ~ which I think was good, as being restrained might have burned out the winch motor) and pondered.

I have no explanation at all. Just weird.

Well, 250 gallons of it, anyway. The ex-hub converted his furnace recently to propane and had a bunch of diesel to get rid of. We worked out an arrangement and spent an afternoon pumping it into 55 gallon drums. Thank God for Floyd! His barrel pump was the coolest device for moving the fuel ~ just hook up an air compressor and go. It was a bit cold standing around outside for a couple of hours, but I’m glad I’ll be replacing some of the fuel I use to heat the boat anyway.

We’ll move it onto the boat in the next few days, weather-depending. That should be slightly more interesting, but I think we’ve got the system figured out.

And no, the hat doesn’t leave my head for most of the winter. Looking at the past several photos, it does seem to be a permanent fixture, doesn’t it? And yes, I do smell like diesel now, thank you. Eau de Boat Lady. Surely that’s a turn-on for some guy?

I don’t feel like writing much (getting a bit tired these days), but want to share a few photos from the trip down to Lake Union. We had multiple talented photographers aboard and managed to exchange photos between everybody at the end of the trip.We completely lucked out on weather too. Both before and after, we’ve had nothing but rain and storms.

And despite the computer crashing at the Space Needle and a fireworks show which was essentially run manually, the party on board was a blast anyway. We had more friends of mine rafted up with us in a 34′ Defever and our view of the city was spectacular.

There was air traffic on the lake nearly continuously. My understanding is that they dodge boats fairly well, but I certainly gave them a wide berth anyway.

Tug Margaret Ann was hauling a crane barge through the Montlake Cut.

“KJ on steroids” was how the captain put it. There is a bit of resemblance, don’t you think?