FeaturedImage-Raising a sunken dinghy, christmas with family, varnishing the salon

Family Christmas, varnishing and a sunken dinghy

Time with Family

This week we got to spend some great time together during our family Christmas. We planned on taking a full week plus off work and boat projects while we went and visited family and stayed with Deb’s Brother and Sister in Law.

Wow, We had a great time. We started by picking up Chazzy from school on the last day of school before the Christmas break. She got off early and we were waiting with the car packed and ready to go.

It was warm in Corpus and we enjoyed a few nice dips in the pool

From there we hit the road and drove about 6 hours or so to get just south of Houston. We stayed the night at a nice full suite Marriott down in Sugarland Texas. The next morning we headed off to Corpus and were at Daniel and Katherine’s by noon

The Rest of the Family Arrives

Over the next 2 days, my son and his wife and my daughter would all come to stay as well.

They were so gracious hosting all of us and had a great house and location to do so. All in all, it was Daniel and Katherine, Kim and Maci (niece and 1 year old), Spencer (son) and his wife, Whitney (daughter) and Myself, Deb and Chazzy and Swab.

Katherine, Daniel and Kimberlynne in our matching family Pajamas

We celebrated Maci’s first birthday on 12/22, and Swabs 5th birthday on Christmas Day. We all had matching Christmas Pajamas and sadly there was a virus going around the house over those few days. Spencer got hit first on Saturday night and into Sunday, for Danny and Katherine it was all day Christmas day and for Whitney and Deb it was the day after Christmas. Somehow Chazzy, Swab and I all avoided it 🙂

Cats on the Boat

Having the cameras on the boat is a great thing when traveling away from the boat. It allowed us to see 2 things, while we were gone. The first was that the water level rose over 3 feet (Very unusual for here) and sadly, as http://svdreamchaser.com/2017/11/the-hull-gets-paint-and-the-mast-work-starts.htmlyou will see in the video link on this page, we sustained some damage to the new paint from rubbing the banger board against the hull. (Fender was too low after water rose). We also saw our little escapee cat who in the photo you see boarding back onto the boat. This was after Deb and I left but before Whitney had taken them to boarding and caught her flight down to Corpus.

We celebrated Deb’s birthday on the 28th and were back home on the 29th. What a GREAT week it was.

The Dinghy is Sinking

Once home we got back on the boat and saw the sunken dinghy. Granted I knew it was filling with water and before I left I threw a battery operated pump in it and figured I would just let it run until the 3 D Cell batteries died, but sadly it didn’t pump out the dink and it was sitting low, with water over the battery and even the main battery switch and fuse box. I am going to have to do some work on our little yacht tender.

It has also been raining, a lot and sadly we were still seeing drips in the boat. This was a very dejected moment for both of us. Drips over our bunk drips around the mast and drips from under the side deck where I have the port out. I am hoping it is just because of the port being out, but don’t know. Either way, we decided to extend our stay in the camper for 1 more month to see if we can get some more stuff done.

Deb sanding and adding layers of varnish in the lower salon

Deb got to varnishing down below while I focused on raising the dinghy.

I hope you all enjoy this weeks video, it is a bit of our family Christmas for the first half and boat projects and what we came home to on the last half.


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Video equipment used is: Canon Vixia G40


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