hello  yall  i'm not real good at this stuff yet but lots has been going on. WE HAVE RATS!!! of course we are a marine facility.  We asked it turns out the exterminator has only been killing bugs. oops. I went and bought a lot of rat poison and some new bait stations. I refilled the one by the smoker but could only find one. i thought we had many more so help look for the black bait boxes so we can fill them up. RATS CAN SINK YOUR BOAT!!! OR CAUSE A FIRE!!!. Years ago a boat at the club "espaniolia'  had rats so bad they ate every hose and even plastic water  tubing. it almost sank at our dock but the clubs pump caught it.  they hired me and crew to fix and clean up after it. talk about hazmat and expensive. take all food off your boat if you can. close her up tight  but that might not even help. darned vermin made a nest in a sail cover on a boom. on one of the nicest boats on our dock.  I hate rats  let me know and please don't leave pets un attended a poisoned rat could hurt a dog that ate it. traps need to be tended , a cat might bring home a few but would be it's own problem. I have rats in my barn at home I've looked into this.  short of having some sharpshooting members with bb guns nailing rats during the night  i think poison is the least work. but shooting rats in the barn with the old daisy is quicker.  On to the next we had a pretty good work party  crew cleaned up some real messes. many people did huge jobs by them selves. pat Angus on the back he's quite the member and loves us all. Dave richardson and a crew blocked up the dock by haul out with cement blocks so it doesn't fall. the hole that washed out was repaired too.  the ice machine is not working it looks like the salt air rusted out the weld on the compressor. the beeps and light code said low pressure. we reset it and let it run  but after a short time it went to shut down mode.  I'll be calling in a real pro on this cause we are now very spoiled by having a "crystal gold" machine of our own. in old days a regatta would budget a few hundred just for ice. 
Every one keeps asking how is the barge doing? Mathew Alfred Joe's son  helped me pick up the main timbers for the structure. the lumber weighs about 2100 lbs and cost   about 1,200. I planed on more. we will be making four 4x8 x 2 ft deep boxes for the floats. flat bottoms allow a 6 inch draft loaded with a 15,000 lb piling upright. Don St Amore and I will be picking up  the fiber glass to make the cladding for the boxes 
[ basicly 4x8 boats ] as armor plated as we can. inside the boxes will be three 15 gallon drums donated by David and Sue Richardson. that's over 300 lbs of never sink plus  the foam we are buying through nick lavale.  the timbers are in my yard. every one asks how do we get it down to the club? a 4 x 8 box fits on my little trailer. four trips and the pods are there. all the timbers are already sitting on the d heil trailer. once drilled and cut and bolted and glued etc the whole thing get taken apart and  loaded back up to be final assy at club. the pods will need lots of bottom paint  we have a supply of real barge paint and need some people to "smear" all of the paint on pods. 18" up from the bottom will be good to keep growth from going in between pods and timbers. all the timbers are rough cut full size 2x10 or 6x6 etc. pressure treated to dock builder spec. it's not your home depot splinter.  as per the head engineer and me cause i agree all the bolts will be stainless steel. woo whee a bolt set for a corner cost about 12 bucks and we need 64. can't use cheap stuff it belongs to three hundred people. that's over a grand for screws etc but that was in budget too. 
7/29 17. it's been a long week. on monday my computer drive finally crashed. the nice folks at C R T computers across from the club cleaned it up and fixed it a a price even i could afford. nice folks we should invite to come sailing. the hard drive was trashed.I lost everything I'm glad i didn't keep the barge pictures on it lol. last thursday Dave Maisy and Bob Meyer sure killed it we have drilled and lagged all the long assemblies. they did most of the work  my backs been bad lately. just after they left Carlo Fermi came to work and together we got all but two of the notches cut and knocked out in the four main cross beams. Two more to go.  Ace hardware on big bend gave us a real good discount on the bolts and I picked them up last week. Dave and Bob installed over fifty lag bolts in an afternoon. Now its all smaller stuff.
 Nick from alpha will be taking me to the supply house to order the ice machine. we would have gone last week but he had emergency stuff to do.  
The last work party we cleaned up the whole east side of the gate. there were things in there that haven't moved in five years.  it's cleaned and mowed now Carl and Andy tucker sure worked like a team cleaning and mowing while  Bob Meyer and the crew trailered the mess out. Now we can sort out trash  and make that "front door" look like a squadron, maybe.  The diagonal parking system has been started and will make it easier for the users once they get used to it. 
AGAIN I CANT SAY IT ENOUGH  GET ALL FOOD OFF YOUR BOATS. THE RATS CAN SMELL THROUGH PLASTIC  AND EAT HOLES IN WOOD. IF YOU SEE DROPPINGS ON YOUR BOAT LET ME KNOW AND I'LL SET YOU UP WITH RAT POISON. FREE OF CHARGE FROM THE CLUB.   KEEP YOUR DOGS LEASHED OR IN CLOSE CONTROL. IF THEY EAT A DEAD RAT IT COULD KILL THEM.  BE A GOOD PARENT DON'T LET THE KIDS EAT RATS. 

 HAVE FUN OUT THERE OR COME DOWN AND WATCH  THE KIDS SAILING AND SMILE, YOU ARE PART OF THIS,BE PROUD.