Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Not Much Happening

Don's Photo of the Seawolf
Not a lot happening, so not much in the way of posting. It has been much hotter & more humid than usual here in Nantucket (as well as back home in Oswego). I've cut back on the lengths of my jog/walk in the mornings, and tried to get out before the sun comes over the horizon.

On Friday we made our required visit to Sconset (actually Siasconset, but no one wants to say or type all that) & Tom Nevers. They are both about as far from Nantucket city as you can get & still be on the island. In fact, getting there is on the only road on the island that has a 45MPH speed limit. As usual, we stopped at the most expensive grocery store in existence for lunch. The only place I know that you can get a Turkey & Brie sub - $8.00 for a 1/2 sub, which is better than the $6.00 for a single scoop ice cream cone.

There used to be a navy base at Tom Nevers. Now it is the home of softball fields, a demolition derby to help compact cars before shipping them off the island, and JFK's cold war bunker, built as a refuge when he as president was visiting the island. Photos at today's LakeshoreImages page. After getting back to the house, we had the brisket that I brought from Oswego that David spent the entire day smoking.  He had some friends over and with all of us we only got through about 1/3rd of it.

Don & Anne went home on Saturday,catching the 9:45 boat. They saw the Seawolf on the rocks in the harbor. It is going to sit there until they get an off island salvage company to re float it.

We have been working on projects. The first was to replace the battery in David's weather station. He is not fond of heights, and it is on a mast sticking above the 2nd story roof peak. It takes most of a 40' extension ladder to get there. Should be good for another 2-3 years.

The next project was to add a receptacle for his trash pump. Ever since they raised Paradise Road (on the North side of David's property) the garden & back corner of the lot sometimes floods, particularly with Spring rains.  If it gets bad enough, it starts to creep into the basement. He added a pit with a trash pump to lower the flood, however the nearest receptacle was 150' away, a bit long for a couple of extension cords. Adding a receptacle to the corner of the house shortens the run to 50' or so. The biggest problem with any electrical work on the house is Dad's choice of GE breaker panels when he built the place. No GE breakers available on the island. Luckily, there was a spare 20 amp breaker already in the panel.

The next project was the shop in the garage. We needed to add three 240V outlets for some new power tools. I picked up some 20 amp, 240 breakers that were suppose to fit the panels, but didn't. So, we could only wire in 2 of them with what we had on hand. I'll send David another 20 amp breaker when I get back to the world. I'm glad David did the tough run - through a crawl space that was small & hot, and required some serious cutting of plywood that didn't need to be there. Dad did have some strange building habits! David probably lost 10 pounds making the run! Anyhow, there are now receptacles for all the shop tools and after adding a breaker, the dust collection system will be up & running.

Today's project was easier - add 4 florescent lamps & a new cord for the dust collector.

Dinner will be smoked ribs.

2 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Don't drool too hard - all the new power tools (a shaper, jointer, band saw, and the dust connector) look to be older than my brother.

      Then again, looking at the quality of most of the newer power tools, that is probably a good thing. The band saw has a 3 phase motor with a motor/generator converter. He already has a 14" table saw with a 6' X 8' table...

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