A little too cold for boat work

We did get to the boat on Saturday but inside that metal shed it was about 29 degrees by the thermometer in our galley. We stayed for about 90 minutes while the batteries charged but with the heavy coat we had on, we couldn't even get our arms inside the galley cabinets to see if we could disconnect the old water lines. We finally gave up. It would have been warmer if we had gone skiing.

During the past week, we did find a replacement faucet that had the same general design as the old leaky one. The "marine" faucets were ridiculously expensive and the ones we saw at Home Depot and Lowes were just too ugly. Frances remembered seeing one very much like our old one at Wal Mart last summer. We stopped at our nearest Wally World and found five of the faucets in their tiny plumbing department. One of the five was still sealed in the original box so we grabbed that one and paid $46.00 for it. Turns it, it looks pretty good and fits as it's supposed to so that item gets checked off the list.

Once home, we decided to test a new video camera by making a video. It's just Bill working on our boarding ladder steps so it will be of marginal interest, and that's being kind.

We shoot video as part of our business and recently had to upgrade our equipment to High Definition to satisfy the TV and cable stations. We sold our Sony ENG camera to a church in Berlin, Conn. and invested in a new and, it turns out, much more capable Sony HD camera. We just needed to test it and get some experience using it since it is very different from the last generation of Sony broadcast cams. Here it is set up in Whirlpool Studios or more accurately, in front of our washing machine.

Turned out that the color was very nice even under fluorescent light (that this camera adjusts for automatically) and Bill got to wear a wireless microphone just like the TV people do. Aside from his remarkably bad posture, everything worked just as it should. We'll edit it and insert it here just for the hell of it.



On Sunday, we had business deadlines to deal with so we worked most of the day.

Frances loves birds and as we've posted before, we found the perfect bird feeder. We set up a cam and photographed some of our local birds feeding on a cold, snowy afternoon. Turn up the sound so you can hear our background music.

We know. It isn't about boats, but we still like to watch the birds and have Frances identify each one.