Bling

There's no dispute - sailboats are beautiful things.  Well if you have a dispute with that, just hit your back space key.  Sailboats have beautiful lines because they are designed to slip through the water powered by the wind.  And part of that process involves using mechanical advantage so we have cool parts onboard.  Not everyone would get excited by such things, but sailors do like the sight of a shiny winch

Winches help you pull lines that are under load.

They even have wrench handles!

But because sailors love their boats so much they try to make all of the utilitarian pieces pretty.  Here's an example

This is a dorade vent.  It's a cowl vent that you can swivel so it will either take wind face on or if your turn it 180 degrees it will suck the wind in anyways.  

This is the face on view.

But it goes into a box that baffles the wind and just keeps the cabin aerated without blowing or letting rain in.  Our boat has stainless dorades.  There's the love.

Somebody definitely opened their wallet up for these.

And then there are the windows

Check out the shadow, Sasquatch took this pic.

Somebody also dropped a coin for these stainless portholes.  They are lovely and make me smile every time I walk up to my boat.  

Today we added a bit of bling ourselves.  They may not be shiny, but we added these new fairleads for our furling line

Looks simple, but it's elegant.

A fairlead leads a line "fairly" so it runs unencumbered.  This particular line rolls up our foresail like a window shade.  We're really happy about this addition because the prior fairleads would rake our ankles.  Thanks Heidi and Laura!  

So in other news, it's First Friday in Anacortes.  That means the downtown merchants are throwing a party whether they have art in their establishment or not.  The last time I walked up the dock I could hear live jazz wafting down from town.  John, our dock buddy, says it's St. Mary's festival weekend.  In Anacortes St. Mary's is a district, not a church or school.  Apparently there is a carnival going on up town.  

We also shopped at the other grocery store in town today (we have a beautiful Safeway here).  The Market is GREAT.  It has a sign on every aisle that discloses how many local food items can be found on that aisle.  And it has sexy grocery lighting.  You know what I mean - that lighting that makes even the figs look good.  But the display we had to photograph was the cheese counter

This is for you Leslie!

Our dear friend, Leslie, from Holiday RV Park is a cheese fiend.  This lady knows cheese like I know nautical vocabulary.  She's awesome.  So I had to take this picture for her so she would know we're not out in the hinterlands with nothing but Velveeta.

And Heidi and Laura would (will!) be thrilled with the spice department! Very impressive.

Okay, enough for tonight.  All is well on the good ship Asilo (even though that name isn't on the hull yet).  We are happy and content.  We hope all of our beloved friends are as well.