Sabbatical, fresh paint and Moby Dick

Final touches on the painting
Originally uploaded by Brite light photos.

18 February 2005

PARADISE VILLAGE MARINA, Nuevo Vallarta, Nayarit, Mexico - The painters are cleaning up the debris and doing some touch up, but the 34,000 pesos, ten-day-job that grew to 19 days is almost done.

And son Dustin, who took the photo posted here, says the barge looks beautiful up close. It looks pretty good from this angle, too.

The best part of this project, for me, is that I saw it in pictures from 1500 miles away, not having to breathe fiberglass dust, inhale paint fumes or live aboard the boat with all the ports covered up with paper. It must have been like living inside a subway (the train, not the sandwich).

Like any such fix-up project, now that the cabin top is done, the rust on the anchor needs to be dealt with. And then there's the anchor chain, and then there's a spot on the hull that needs some sanding and painting and, and, and...

But from 1500 miles, those projects seem, well, distant and will either be done by my amigo Don (who supervised the entire project) or Dustin, who is getting another boat ready for a sojourn to Zihuatenejo next week. Or maybe some of them will be done by me when I make my return to the land of boogie boarding Feb. 27.

Here in Sacramento, where the rain comes down in sheets, the fog off the river is rising and the overall look of the city makes San Diego "June Gloom" look balmy, the writing continues endlessly and, sometime this weekend, dammit, we will unlock the movie studio and get to work on one of the three rockumentaries in progress.

'Whales of Banderas Bay' is first in line, as soon as I figure out how to incorporate the footage I found from the 1956 classic starring Gregory Peck - Moby Dick.

"If God ever wanted to be a fish, he'd be a whale."

mjf