The first expression we've seen of rain in a long time just arrived in April sprinkles, not wet enough to turn the dust to mud, just enough to keep me from sanding Robin's hull. When the sanding's done, it will be time to give her a whole new coat of paint.
I've all but concluded that she needs a new roller furling system. That's the device that, like a window shade, rolls the jib or genoa up around the forestay when you're not using it.
Our roller furling was installed in May, 1990, according the the owner's manual for it that came with the boat. That is a long life for anything that spends much of its time on salty water.
A small part of the system was bent when the mast was taken down in October. To replace that part, I'd have to disassemble the entire system. That's proven difficult due to the system's quirky design and to the fact that stainless steel screws have been seated in aluminum parts for 22 years, more than enough time for corrosion to form.
So I'm pricing new systems. It's a disheartening endeavor. But we're left to answer this question: Are we going to continue to sail Robin?
If we are, we have to find a way to afford her needs.
If not, we have to face a big loss in a market where buyers are boss.
The good news is we can put Bluebird out on her mooring some time in the next couple of weeks with very little cost, and then we can sail whenever the wind blows.

Robin's bottom now is completely scraped of all the thick, old bottom paint. Next step is filling the voids where there were blisters, then sanding it smooth.

Below is Robin's bottom before it was scraped. The small white pebbles are actually barnacles. If you look closely at the lighter patches of red, you may be able to see the thick edges of the darker red bottom paint. I have said there was a quarter inch of paint on the bottom. It only looked that thick.

Here lie Alice and Paul. Now I know that Alice was born in 1840, fourteen years after Paul, and that makes her 28 when they were married and he 42. So he didn't exactly rob the cradle. This may explain why her father, a lawyer and politician from Kentucky, had a house built for her in Edgewater Park, NJ. Perhaps he worried she'd never move out on her own? Or maybe he thought she needed a dowery in order to find a husband. Her age, and the fact that she'd moved to New Jersey before she was married, suggest that the house may have been built in the mid-1860s rather than later in the decade, as I'd been thinking.

Tomorrow, I'm visiting the archives in the Philadelphia Inquirer library to see if I can find anything there about the Shipmans -- perhaps a couple of obituraries, if nothing else.

I found Alice and Paul today, which proves the universe has a soft spot for bumblers like I. Stumble around long enough and y0u'll find what you want.
I wanted to find Alice and Paul Shipman to help complete their story. Around the time of their marriage in the late 1860s, Alice's father, Col. Davidson, had a house built for her not two blocks away from our home near the Delaware River. Their house was a country manor. The architecture was Second Empire, influenced by French designs a couple of decades earlier.
The manor is now the home of the Red Dragon Canoe Club, to which Monica and I belong. Club members have believed for at least the 18 years we've been around that the house was built for a wealthy couple who never actually lived in it. Indeed, when a researcher completed an application to have the property listed on the state and federal registers of historic places, she wrote that the Shipmans had been on a world tour when the house was built but lost their wealth before they were ever able to live in their home.
The club members are trying to make the mansion a museum, and so I've been digging around to learn more. What I've found is that the Shipmans probably lived in the manor until their deaths two weeks apart in 1917. A reporter for the New York Times visited them in 1879 and wrote about their "beautiful villa overlooking the Delaware River."
I'd contacted Eastern Kentucky University because I'd been told they had some documents in their archives about Paul Shipman. Those documents arrived yesterday, and among them was a reference to the Shipmans' burial in Laurel Hill Cemetery.
I'd guess Laurel Hill covers two to three acres. I went there at noon on my way to work on Robin. I parked the car and began wandering aimlessly between the rows of headstones, trying to see if there was some pattern; if, for example, the graves that were filled between say 1890 and 1920 were in one quadrant. There was no pattern that I could discern, and I was about to return to the car but decided to make one more loop.
The names were Italian and Irish and Polish and other eastern European origins. There were very few names that I would categorize as being from the same ancestry as Shipman. Nor was there any noticeable segregation of the graves of one ethnic group from those of another.
I moved beyond the car and chose one lane of graves for my final pass.
Half way along the lane, I looked down. There were Alice and Paul.
Their stone is flush to the ground. Unlike some other such stones, theirs has been tended by someone to keep the grass from growing over its smooth granite face.
Now I'm wondering if there is some descendant who lives nearby, someone who could fill in the missing details of their lives.

I went today to visit two people -- Paul and Alice Shipman -- at their last known address. In truth, I went to the wrong address. I should have gone to the Laurel Hill Cemetery but I went instead to the older St. Paul's. I learned something by my effort.
If yor intent is perpetual remembrance, better not get a marble head stone.
On about half of the marble stones, all the engraving was illegible, so thoroughly had the stone wasted away, even if it had been only fifty or sixty year.
The Shipmans, who were married in about 1868, died within two weeks of each other in 1917. What a love story, hey?
The information I've found suggests they were buried in Laurel Hill, but when talking with the cemetery superintendent, I learned that I would probably have more luck at St. Paul's. I think he was mistaken, so I have another visit planned to prowl for the Shipmans' final resting places.
I'll try to get back later to explain why the Shipmans are significant to me at this time.

The Canada goose lay on the pavement, its carcass flattened by some vehicle, feathers splayed crazily, its head facing east at the end of its long, twisted neck, and as I drove by, I wondered:
Don't these birds mate for life?
They do, and after I'd passed, I looked in the rear view mirror to search for the mate.
There it was, on the far side of the highway, it's head down, low to the pavement, at the end of its own, awkwardly-bent neck, as it walked away from the body of its other.
And then I heard it: The awful, sad honking, the pleading voice of that being, him or her, (and I do not personify frivolously, for certainly within the flesh of such a being dwells as much a spirit as my own,) that mournful cry, that: Why?
And now in my eyes there are tears for him or her, for us.

I just finished the first draft of the next youth novel yesterday and today I begin the first rewrite before offering the manuscript to my agent, Jennifer.
But I had to take notice of two events that unfolded yesterday and that, I think, have something in common.
One is the suspension of a football coach. The other is a political "gaffe" by one of Mitt Romney's top aides.
Sean Peyton was suspended from the NFL for a year because his team paid its defensive players a bounty for injuring members of opposing teams.
Eric Fehrnstrom, in a television interview, compared retooling the Romney campaign for the November election to changing the picture on an Etch-A-Sketch.
What do these two things have in common?
They are the truth about two very public endeavors but a truth that is seldom admitted.
What I find particularly humorous is the fact that so many people -- other political candidates on the one hand and football fans on the other -- behave like these are shocking revelations.
Gee whiz, the fans seem to say, we thought all those football players spent so much time in the weight room so they could harmlessly shove opponents this way or that. You mean they need the muscles so they can crush bones and tear cartilage?
Or,
My goodness, our campaign brings the same message from January through December. Shame on those guys for thinking that after the primary, they need to appeal to a broader audience.
If you have had one of these responses to the two news items, perhaps it is time to remove your head from that dark, damp, odiferous place where you've had it shoved.