good morning to all, and a warm morning it is here. Highs in the 90's for the next week, lows in mid seventies, a sprinkle last night but not much. Next rain is due in Wed, so I think Storm Bill is going to miss us.
Made some decisions while I slept. Am going to give my current 16 foot Scout to my oldest brother and his extended family, for use up at their family cottage at the top of the Upper Peninsula in Michigan. They have a forty year old boat there on it's last legs. So I have to get it out of the water and deliver it to him in Virginia this coming week, so he can trailer it for two days driving 14 hours or so to his cottage. Makes sense, my attempts to use it have just resulted in me getting sweaty, or cold, and not having much fun versus the effort. Not the whole point of boating. I need to get out of the sun too; already had two melanomas, not like I should be courting more disaster. The little Scout is the only boat I've ever bought new, and likely to remain that way. It's market value is not much more than the cost of the motor I just put on it, so I'll get more satisfaction out of it just giving it to family. Hopefully they will remember Uncle Drew when they are out having fun. I just put a new gps chartplotter/sounder and vhf radio in it too this season; well, that should help keep them safe. Always better to give than receive...
However...I'm going to make an offer on the Albin also. The boat turns out to be way overpriced based on industry sold data, which I know how to access through the broker. You can sort by every make and model and see what the final selling price was, not inflated asking price, was for the last year all across the country. Which means I'm offering more than ten grand less, and the broker thought that was a "fair offer". The seller has a brand new rubber dinghy with four stroke motor, which overwhelms the back of this small boat. I have no desire to anchor out so I'm going to make an offer without the dinghy and see what happens. I can't sit in dinghys comfortably anyway, no back support.
Speaking of back support, I wish my JD X750 suspension seat had better side bolsters on it. I slide around on it too much; and not like I'm going super fast either. The custom seat I put on my old Gravely is cloth and is firm and black like an early Recaro seat. No sliding on that. The JD is squishier more comfortable but I feel like I'm hanging on more. Maybe I need velcro on my butt. I think I'll try a towel underneath and see if that helps. sure would be nice to have the ventilated seat out of my truck on my mower...:cloud9:
Otherwise, today I get the orchard sprayer going for the first time. Going to run a load of plain water through it first, use it to water some trees and then mix up a batch of three way orchard spray with some Neem oil added. Time to spray, lot of unhappy leaves out there curling up due to some crud on them. last time it all went away after I sprayed. This will be spray number four this season. And on goes the spray mask for sure. I have no idea what captan would do to my body but I doubt it mixes well with arthritis drugs...

Interesting that the same company makes a citrus variation of orchard spray without any captan at all, using what looked like high power pepper oil. Sure wouldn't want to get that in my eyes...
Spray this morning, escape to my woodshop this afternoon. More pics of that coming, it's coming along.
have a fine day and stay cool.