Nothing To Do?

We woke today to find that there was nothing scheduled on our calendar. This is a rarity during these days of March Madness. The northwest wind was howling so instead of kayaking we decided to take a walk on the trails over by the Hope Town Inn and Marina. I figured that while we were there we would stop and reimburse our friend Jacqueline for the Harbour Rats shirts that I sold at the previous night's party. She was home and we also asked her to join us on our walk. The trail to the Sea of Abaco has been cleared more than it used to be, until we got to an area where a couple of Haitian workers were digging up and sifting dirt for landscaping at the marina's new villas that are being built.

After that we discovered a whole new cleared road, which we are sure that even more houses will be built on. It ended up being a big circle. We like the lookout tower that has been there for a very long time

The view here at this cleared lot is spectacular up on a ridge, but very windy in the winter since it faces the west.

After walking back to the marina, I said that I wanted to stop and see what was happening at the Abaco Dinghy workshop. We were just in time, since they were closing for the season and they had just completed their final project for the year...the restoration of the Winer Malone dinghy. If you recall, I did a post back in February of 2015 about Winer himself coming to visit Dandy and our boatyard manager Craig's dinghy, which was named in honor of Winer. Click HERE for the link to that post. This dinghy was restorable but took almost two whole seasons to get to the point where it would float.

Before:

The guys do amazing work!

After:

Instead of bringing the boat back over to Craig's house by land on a trailer, they decided to launch it, and Dave, Will, and I brought it over to the pond behind the boatyard with our skiff.

Until tomorrow when it can be hauled back out of the water, so Craig can complete the detail work (like floorboards, seats, etc.), it is floating regally on the little mooring Dave put in just for reasons such as this. It really was a monumental event.

Nothing to do? Ha! That never seems to happen.