Time for some boat work & the county fair

We had talked to Toledo Beach Marina before we left Put-in-Bay they told us no problem getting slip when we returned.  I called on our way in and guess what.. No slips available.  Luckily we thought of North Cape Yacht Club and called them to see if we might get a couple of nights on their wall.  After chatting with a few folks they were happy to have us and we had a dock for at least 3 days and we could have one for rest the season if needed.  At this point we still had our hopes up for getting a slip at Monroe Boat Club where a member had recently sold his boat making a big slip available.  They have a process to award the slip and while we had signed up for it two weeks prior because our seniority was so low we were concerned someone else might get it.  I guess everyone was happy with their slip for the moment and we were lucky enough to get it.  Best yet because we only needed it for about a month they let us rent it by the day at the astounding rate of $6 a day!  The boat club is about 10 miles from our house and would be a great place to get a few things fixed and updated while being close to home.

We got back from Put-in-Bay just in time for our local 4H activities to start at the county fair.  In our area 4H is really big with the kids and there are a lot of older adults that invest a lot of time an effort supporting all the various aspects of it.  A few years ago our kids got involved in showing goats then started entering some of the contests like photography, baking, and sewing.  It's all pretty neat and there is a category for any interest you might have from lego's to canning or any other kind of craft one can imagine.  This year they were both doing goats.  Max entered the photography category getting first place with the picture he took at the top of the mast in my last post. Annabelle entered cookie decorating and received honors.  Both did as well as can be expected with their goats seeing has they had not spent very much time practicing with the this year so both proved to be a bit stubborn during the jumping part of the course.  This kids love fair but it takes a lot of work as they both have to check on their animals multiple times a day then help setup and take down/clean up all the pens in the barn.  Of course parent have to volunteer some time to supervise all this and then the kids have daily chores they need to stay on top of as well to keep the barn clean for visitors to walk though all week.  The kids have a blast running around the fair grounds with their friends for the two weeks but all the early mornings and late nights make for some cranky kids/parents by the end of the actual week of fair.

As fair runs for about two weeks and our kids were no where to be seen having their time fully sucked up by fair Amy & I went on a bit of a showing spree for the boat.  I bought a new chart plotter & AIS system.  We bought a deep freezer, a washer dryer combo, new facuet, and a lot of spare consumable bits for the boat like impellers, belts, filters, stuff for oil changes and what not.  It seemed like UPS, USPS, or FeEx was at our house every day dropping off big boxes of stuff as we begin to finally move onto the boat in about 3 weeks time.

The boat sitting at its new home dock for the next four weeks.