The copper sailboat weathervane is spinning now atop the red sheet metal roof of the cupola and 1.5 of the 4 sides are clad in cedar shingles. One more project nearing completion while others simmer.
I've added one to the front burner. My working title is Battleaxe. Here's the pitch letter I'm sending to the agent, Mike Hamilburg.

The members of the Washington, D.C., church probably were unaware of the peculiar skills possessed by one of their members – Dr. Elaine Foster – when they agreed that she should investigate the congregation’s history. If they had known, perhaps they would not, in the end, have shunned her.
Parishioners did know this: Their church was founded by the very same Scottish stonemasons who built the White House. They took great pride in this and always had.
They must have been impressed with Foster’s credentials as a researcher, because they commissioned her to track down the details of that story for a book they were publishing.
But there was a problem. As always seems to happen when Foster delves into history, the story she unearthed took an unexpected turn or two.
The first side road led to the discovery that the dates were all wrong – that the White House and the church could not have been the products of the same stonemasons.
And that detour led Foster to a preacher who had run the church in the 1890s – a diminutive fellow who appears to have had a need to inflate certain facts in order to enhance his reputation.
Foster was only doing what she always does – laying out the facts as they are revealed by documents found in places such as the National Archives and the Library of Congress – when she wrote her chapter on the preacher. She told the story of a man in the grip of a Napoleonic complex; a minister for whom truth was an inconvenient concept. A man who made up the whole Scottish stonemason story.
And so, she was shunned. But she was proud, too, and to understand why, you have to know a bit about Elaine Foster’s life, starting when she was a child.
Foster is 86 years old. Her work has gone largely unnoticed, in great part due to the limits placed on her during that childhood. But she has taken on historical figures as famous as Benjamin Franklin and Tom Paine and as obscure as a Civil-War-era West Virginia folk hero, and her powerful and entertaining writing in each case tells a far different story than other historians offer.
Foster wades into the same apparently clear stream of history in which more famous historians have created whole careers by reinterpreting the stones that pave the stream bed. Foster is not content to walk on those stones but must overturn each one. The results are “The Truth about Tom Paine” and several other tracts that reveal her electrifying intellect and the ruthless honesty of her investigations.
My working title for the book is Battleaxe, a term from Foster’s earlier life that cuts two ways, reflecting the prejudices that for many years kept her brilliance hidden as well as the take-no-prisoners approach with which she wades into the past.

John Morrison described Bluebird's voyage yesterday in the Burlington Island race this way: Doug sailed and I bailed.
There were five boats in the race. Bluebird finished third. It was a great day for sailing and a good learning experience. Now Bluebird is on land for the rest of the year.
The forecast was for 20 to 25 knots with gusts to 45. At noon, the wind was a steady 14 with gusts over 30. The same was true when the race started at about 1:30 p.m.
No one was familiar with the unorthodox starting regimen: A blast on the horn at three minutes, three blasts at one minute, two blasts at thirty seconds and one blast at the start -- I think.
John and I got aboard Bluebird on its mooring and struggled with the rig, trying to get the boat ready to race. The jib sheets snapped back and forth and tied themselves into a knot. We spent time tying a reef in the mainsail, never before having done that. But we managed to be on the correct side of the starting line when the final horn sounded.
But we were about 200 yards from the line, whereas the smallest boat in the race, being launched from the beach, was right at the line at the start. The other three boats were behind us, including another O'Day Mariner, a McGregor Venture and a Sea Sprite, the only keel boat in the race, painted a dazzling shade of red.
The wind was from the north-northwest, so we were on a broad reach heading upstream against the current. The river heads east northeast for a mile, passing under the Burlington-Bristol drawbridge and then veering north northeast to round Burlington Island. We had a choice to sail around the island or to round a red buoy upstream of the island.
Before we reached the bridge, Bluebird was planing, skimming across the water with the centerboard raised not quite all the way. We were pulling away from the Sea Sprite, which at first had only its genoa raised. The other Mariner and the Venture were at the rear, but within sight all the way.
After passing under the bridge, we were abeam of the lead boat. But now, turning to port to round the island, we were beating into the wind, and the air was coming at us in blasts.
It was now that I made my first mistake as helmsman.
One blast heeled Bluebird sharply. I did not react swiftly to spill the air from the mainsail. The result was that we heeled all the way over and the river came in over the starboard rail.
When you do this on Robin or another big boat, the water may fill the cockpit, but it will drain back overboard. Not so aboard Bluebird, which has no self bailing cockpit.
I handled the succeeding blasts properly, and we rounded the red buoy in second place, about the same distance behind the lead boat, sailed by Paul Zeigler and his big son, as we had been at the start.
But Rich, Mary and Sarah Vishton in the Sea Sprite were closing on us as we tacked back along the side of the island. They finally passed us when we closed in on the bridge.
Now twice in succession I forgot to spill the mainsail when we were hit by blasts and river water was sloshing around in the cockpit and the cabin. John began bailing with a cut-off plastic gallon jug and I tried to keep from having to tack.
John turned 80 last month. Some 60 year olds make John look decidedly younger than they appear. He's in good shape, to say the least.
But what I did to him was obscene. There he was, bent over the centerboard or the port rail, his ass and elbows pointed toward the bright blue sky, his arm working furiously, emptying Bluebid. His was a gallant performance.
We managed to cross the finish line in third place, not more than four or five minutes after the Sea Sprite. I don't think the Zeigler boat was too far ahead of them. And the Frenches and the Rife's in the other two boats were close behind us.
As for poor Bluebird, she is on land. I need to figure out why she is taking on water -- and not the water she shipped during the race. Back on the mooring, I saw a thin stream of water entering at the centerboard bolt.
We had an exhausting but great sail, and we're waiting for next year to do it more often -- in a dryer boat.

The wind has arrived and the grandchildren are here -- Richard and Justin. Bluebird is buffeted and her boom tent ripples in waves of blue. But the rain has gone and it is bright and sunny, with a few lingering clouds.
Richard just assembled a jigsaw puzzle (missing three pieces) twice and now is pushing a folding trike around the house. Justin, no Chauvanist, is pushing a baby stroller. Oops! He's now on the trike and Richard is playing with a truck.
We have a great time on Fridays when they visit. Their big sister, Lindsey, is in the third grade. We pick her up at 2:30 in the afternoon.
By Friday night, my back is in need of orthopedic attention.
Tomorrow I test Bluebird in the Burlington Island Race. (That makes the assumption that she still remains afloat.) The race starts at the boat club on the Delaware River and travels upstream about four miles. Then you have an option either of circumnavigating the island or of going a bit farther upstream and rounding a channel marker. (The leeward side of the island can leave you stalled.)
Any type of non-motorized vessel can compete. There is no handicapping and there are few rules. For years, the most successful racers have been in kayaks or canoes. But a good stiff wind could make a sailboat the favorite.
I won the race two years ago -- the last time it was held -- in Monica's kayak. Once again, there was little wind.
I had entered twice before in consecutive years in our 420 sailboat, a light, round-bottomed dinghy prone to capsizing. Both times I was sailing single-handed. Both times, in good air, I turtled the boat.
My guess is that with John Morrison as crew, I will be able to keep Bluebird upright. But I'm prepared to turn over the trophy to a new winner.

I'm experiencing the nautical equivalent of having a teenager out on a date with the family car.
Bluebird is back on her mooring on the Delaware River, with a storm with 45-knot winds bearing down on New Jersey.
I've sailed Bluebird once -- as reported earlier. Then the centerboard cable broke and it has taken this long for me to install a new cable and a new winch. Part of the problem was the leaking that commenced when the 160-pound steel board fell from the raised position, pivoting on the centerboard bolt and wrenching the bolt sufficienty to undo the caulking we had smeared around the ends.
I launched on Monday, and the new caulking swelled as water seeped under it and stretched it like a balloon. John Morrison, who had come to the river for a sail in Bluebird, was recruited to fix the leak. He removed the caulk and used another type, which seemed to stop the leaking around the bolt.
But more water entered the boat from unknown perforations.
Oddly, when the water reached a certain level, still well below the cockpit floorboards, it stopped flowing in. I kept Bluebird moored to the boat club dock for two days and it did not sink.
So this morning, I started the outboard and towed the old, aluminum dinghy, steering against the current and wind to tie up to the mooring, less than 100 feet from the shipping channel.
And that's where Bluebird is tonight. It began raining around noon, but the wind won't arrive until tomorrow, I think. There is a blue Sunbrella boom tent over the cockpit, so I don't expect her to sink as a result of rain.
But I do worry about the integrity of the mooring line and Bluebird's ability to withstand tomorrow's blast. And I am concerned by the repeated seeping of water, despite the fact that it stops before sinking her.
Meanwhile, I've paid no attention at all to Robin. I stayed aboard her one night last week in the hopes of getting a jump start on traffic in nearby Washington D.C. the next morning. I had an interview for the next book I hope to write. I arrived at 11 p.m. and left at 6 a.m. and didn't even attempt to adjust dock lines, I was in such a rush.
By the way, in two weeks, I'll do my first book signing for Eight Survived. So far, I've seen no reviews. But my old employer, the Philadelphia Inquirer, has scheduled a review. I'm crossing my fingers.
The first signing will be at the boat club -- the Red Dragon Canoe Club -- where some of my friends and fellow sailors have asked for copies. That should be fun. I like to tell the story and hope there are a lot of questions from the audience so I can appear smarter than I am.

Ten copies of Eight Survived arrived last week and I've given away nine to family and to people who helped with the book. So far, I've managed to hold on to one copy, and I'm generally happy with it.
Now I'm looking for audiences for book readings/signings. I think that submarine veterans organizations would be a natural and I'm trying to contact some of those to offer speaking programs.
Meanwhile, Soundings Magazine has run my piece on the writing of the book in the November issue, which just arrived in our mailbox yesterday. They devoted three pages to the story. That was very nice of them. I'm hoping that will generate some interest in the book.
On Thursday, I'm driving to a suburb of Washington, D.C., to interview Elaine Foster, my friend who did so much of the research that resulted in Eight Survived. I'm hoping to write a book about her -- a biography that would reveal what a national treasure in hiding she is. Elaine's mind sparkles like the fuse on a firecracker. I just have to figure out what book marketers would think would sell.
Meanwhile, I'm making (very) slow progress rewriting the youth novel, have made no efforts at completing the cupola and am heading north with Monica this weekend for my 50th high school reunion -- the first reunion I've ever attended.
I think I'll take a nap.