Hayes, VA - Summer Solstice

We celebrated the first day of summer by finishing up our haulout chores (I touched up bottom paint while Kevin waxed the gelcoat) and getting the boat back in the water and back over to the slip. After the nightmare that was our last haulout (where the boatyard wouldn't let Kevin do anything and instead charged him a king's ransom to do the simplest things, and yet they still took four times as long as necessary to get it back in the water), we are so pleased with this boatyard. Basically we accomplished the same list of maintenance chores in two days (as opposed to 8 last time) for much less money (one-fifth the cost of our previous haulout). We plan to spend an extra night here since there are some engine things that Kevin wants to take care of (fixing an oil leak and troubleshooting a heat exchanger) and for that the boat has to be in the water. Plus all the guys who work here at the boatyard have been so helpful (even though this is a do-it-yourself yard) so Kevin figures he might as well work on engine stuff here in case he comes across something that might require a mechanic.

So today was the longest day of the year and it was also unbearably hot. Not so bad when the breeze kicked up but it was over 90 degrees with about 60% humidity. Pretty sweaty. Speaking of the summer solstice, does everyone know what that is? If you don't it's okay to admit it. Because we are discovering that there are many, many people who do not recognize the word "solstice" as English. Not only do they not know what it means, but they also don't know how to pronounce it. We have heard: "sol-tiss", "so-lis", "sol-sits", and my personal favorite "so-how-do-you-pronounce-that-anyway". When we named the boat, we specifically chose the name because we assumed (wrongly) that everyone would know what it was and how to pronounce it, even if we were in other countries where English was not spoken. So we are scratching our heads that somehow we managed to pick a name that some people don't recognize even though they talked about it on Headline News all morning today. I guess I can understand why people might not be familiar with it since the word is only used twice a year. By the way, for those of you reading this who didn't want to cop to not being able to pronounce it, here you go: SOUL-stiss. (Like SOUL-train only without the funky grooves.) And if you don't know what it is: it's either the longest (summer) or the shortest (winter) day of the year, as opposed to the fall and spring equinoxes where day and night take exactly the same amount of time. If you don't comprehend it just ask your local druid to draw it out for you.