Official countdown begins TODAY. I assume it will be the same festivities we had last year – nada. In fact, there is not a sign of a holiday here at all except for two lonely Christmas cards sitting on the counter.  I did crank up Pandora radio a few minutes ago and put some holiday music on.  I’m still playing at being one of Santa’s elves out in the work shop every weekend and at least one more to come. The weather is still with us. We always seem to come up with more boats to haul. John just bought the one he sold in this week – an Eastbay 43 soft top, which we don’t see very often.  We have a full week of adding the oil and filters to all the empty blocks out there. We also had an interesting boat come in on a trailer this week. We see lot of different kinds of boat in here each year — every year at least one I have never heard of!

We often pull the oil out while it is hot and then go back and finish the oil changes when all the boats are winterized — although it doesn’t look like the cold is going to slap us yet.  But we will be doing oil changes all week since our 55 gallon drum of oil showed up Friday. This morning we are blocking up the last boat we pulled on Friday. I guess they got tired! This actually an old Dickerson hull and deck (and that’s where the similarities stop!)

Kevin is getting ready for the final spray on the transom. He has to tape off the paint he is keeping and any little areas that don’t get painted.

Errata Sometimes I amaze myself. The question for the contest on Friday was supposed to be Name one job we were doing on this day in 2011. Since I actually typed 2012, it was a pretty easy contest. As one entry put it, “Kevin painting the Eastbay transom which he has been doing all month!”  He’s not wrong. The first response winner guessed hauling boats and he’s not wrong either. One job we were doing on the 14th of December, 2011 was sand blasting a bottom.