Storm Delay

It seems just when I’ve got the time to do an outdoor project the thunderstorms roll in. We’ve had some strong storms. Saturday there was a lightning strike close enough that the house shook. I’m probably missing a tall tree somewhere on my property. I’m going to check it out later today. One night the grid power was knocked out three times. Those poor linemen had a rough night.

One of the things I’m looking to do is to pull the sailboat from the lake. The last thing I want is to be messing around with the giant aluminum lightning rod that the sails hang off of. It does not help knowing that statistically a lightning strike is more likely on a power boat -according to Boat US anyway.

All that rain, heat, and humidity started to turn my lawn into rain forest. It did dry out enough to cut it the other day, but then it started to rain an hour later. One thing about letting the grass grow long was the huge number of wild flowers that popped up. The yard was covered in bees. This year has has been good for bees in my area, which is a welcome change.

Anyway, I digress. Once the boat is back in the yard it’ll be possible to finish off the boat projects. It needs new bottom paint and some new hardware. With the mast down it’ll be easy to install the new radio cable.

There’s a whole completely self contained solar/battery box set up ready to be slotted into the boat. The old 6 gallon box that fit in the back of the cockpit was turned into batter/charge controller box. A flexible solar panel fits right on top of it. The electric motor and all the boat electronics can be quickly switched from one system to the other as needed. I’ll have to get around to taking photos one of these days.

We should be getting a break in the weather. With any luck most of those jobs will get done. Summer is going quickly.

-Sixbears