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Making Sawdust

Good morning everyone. What a beautiful couple of days we have had around here. The sun was just brilliant these last few days and you can really feel the warmth despite the northerly wind. I am starting to think about putting out the maple taps. It won’t be long day before spring is here. Yahoo!

Alex and Elisa finished the large acreage varnish work in the barn this last week. On Friday afternoon we hauled in numerous small pieces, oars, spreaders, ladders, etc. that will be the focus for the next week. Jim Dugan put in a hero’s effort this last week launching our new home page for the web. I know I spent a couple days sitting with him and he spent countless hours that I did not see. It was time for a new look and Jim did a great job simplifying the look of the site and yet adding a little bit of “flash” as well. Let us know what you think. There is more to come so stay tuned.

The exciting news around here was the tuning of the sawmill this weekend that we have just purchased with shipwright friend and former crew Brad. With thirty two acres of woods filled with pine and oak we should be able to justify this mill in short order. The mill was used to saw out most all of the timbers for a small “pinkly” schooner here in Camden. Built by a real ingenious craftsman this mill is homemade but saws quite a straight line when dialed in. We actually brought it here before Christmas. My neighbor down the street dug holes for the concrete piers that keep the mill leveled up just before the frost crept too far into the ground. The Honda engine doesn’t skip a beat with a sharp blade slicing through the locust log you see here. In this picture Tom is sawing out an eight foot timber to build a “log” anchor windlass similar to the one aboard Mary Day. That locust should last just a few days shy of forever. We have plans and material on hand to extend the track to about fifty feet. That should be enough to whittle out a stick or two. Brad also just got a lead on a dozen more locust logs. Let's make some sawdust!
Have a great day. Be well. Do good.

Comments

Anonymous said…
RE new Home Page: Visited the new home web page with IE6.0. The slide show in the upper left loaded very quickly and ran through the beautiful series of photos that elicit ‘o-o-o-o’s’ , ‘ahh-h-h-h-s’, nostalgia and… yes, a tweak of jealousy. However, the headline text and the body text in the RH column stays invisible until it is ‘selected’ with a left click on the mouse or until the page elevator is pulled down to the bottom. At that point it becomes visible until the mouse rolls over it again – at which point it disappears. I don’t know HTML coding, but have a little knowledge of QuarkXpress (yes! A ver-r-y dangerous thing) type layout and with that as an analog it seems that the text frame may be hidden somehow behind the graphics boxes. The window shades (e.g. home, schedule, cruises) also drop down behind the slideshow graphic box with their lower extremities hidden. Now, it MAY very well be evidence of Billy’s latest version of the BSD (blue screen of death) well known to IE. Thought you might want to know to see if there are others with similar problems. The web page and the blog are often the only threads of contact with the real world of the Mary Day, but for many of us, that’s infinitely better than nothing and losing them would be like having a snow laden nor’easter sitting over the seas off the coast of Maine between May and September… a bummer by anyone’s definition. Here's hoping for sunny days and sap soon. Thanks. POC

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