Hey, you guys from Lake City… we had a great visit from super diesel mechanic and good friend Dale, along with his lovely wife Mary. We got to know and love Dale while he spent weeks of evenings last summer making sure our beloved Sojourn was mechanically prepared for her two thousand mile trip south last fall (mostly under power). Not only did we learn to respect Dale’s knowledge of all things mechanical, but we sincerely enjoyed his company in the bargain.

So Mary and Dale took a two day detour from their timeshare in Orlando to pay us a visit this week. Great meals, fun fishing (although Dale was the only one who caught any fish, Mary gets the prize for being the most fanatic about the sport!) and wonderful conversation…

First order of business – LUNCH on Gasparilla Island (after driving past the boat in the yard to leave an installment for Arthur and crew (i.e., money).

We had a great lunch at South Beach before a walk on the beach…

 

A nice view of the gulf from our table. Note we virtually have paradise completely to ourselves this time of year:

The Boca Grande lighthouse is always a popular place to visit, although on Mondays the museum in the lighthouse is closed

The sand and the dunes out there are spectacular

And worth a few pics

Great for sunning, OK for wading, but not really safe for swimming most of the time…

We went out on the flats boat to one of my favorite spots (“Two Pines”). Our visitors try their hand at snagging the big one:

Even the Admiral got her line wet for a couple of hours (I think she had a good time):

Next day, while enjoying conversation and lunch at our own Porto Bello Restaurant, overlooking Burnt Store Marina’s south basin, we were entertained by the skipper of Home James and two of his friends loading a scooter into the cockpit. He’s getting ready to move the boat to his northern home in Chicago, we think:

Quite an operation, but pulled off without scratching the boat’s fairly new paint job:

Dale never ceases to amaze me. He and Mary drive a stock Toyota Yaris, but he has converted it into a hybrid auto. Nope, not gas and electric like the Prius, but gas and HYDROGEN!

See that brown stuff in the plastic tubes to left and center of the reservoirs below (under the hood)? That’s some sort of toxic mixture that is part of the process of separating oxygen and hydrogen from water. See the plastic tube to the right below? That’s pure hydrogen gas that is then injected into the gasoline fuel system of the car, thereby improving their mileage from 38 to 42 MPG, and Dale believes through further refinement, he can get it in excess of 50 MPG!

The brains of this system is a device called “Fuel from H2O”, and is tucked up under the grill. Ain’t that somethin’, fans?

Remember awhile back I shared with you how badly I hacked up a costly piece of teak wood trying to carve a fancy letter “S” into it for one of Sojourn’s new running light sideboards? Well, I didn’t know how much I didn’t know. Now I know how much I don’t know, but at least its a tad less than back then.

After we bid goodbye to Dale and Mary (fun time, kids!), I decided to practice my letter carving before committing another piece of teak to unfettered butchery, so I’m going through Chris Pye’s disciplined letter carving practice exercises.

Note the chisels and gouges that I strike with the mallet (that round thing just right of center), and my dirt cheap practice wood (a scrap of an old two-by-four):

I started practicing walloping a 1-1/4″ straight wood carving chisel with the mallet, striving for even depth across the chisel’s length, and across different grain directions. This series of exercises is meant to perfect mallet and chisel usage for straight-in stab cuts:

Then I practiced 60 degree angle cuts, first striking lightly to set the edge into the fiber, and then the real blow is delivered to cut the fibers down at an angle to the bottom of the stab cut:

Putting stab cuts together with diagonal cuts yields some very cool straight vertical trenches used in many of the letters (D, E, I, J, K, etc.) that I might actually be carving some day:

And then, the trickiest part so far (obviously, much more practice is required before moving on to curved letters) are the serifs. Trickier than you might think. Lots of compound angles and depths must come together smoothly (some day!).

You’re not even supposed to notice serifs as part of a letter because they are supposed to be almost invisible. You can see here that I have a ways to go!

Can’t wait to try the tougher letters, like R, and yes, S!

Enough for now, I guess. Gotta go grill some ribeyes and munch on them and a salad before Kay and I start anew on a desparately needed weight control program. Work continues on the boat, but now by the real pros. Will provide an update soon.

Lator, ‘gators…