Livingston

This post has been a long time coming.  Back in January, Ben bought a 10-foot Livingston boat from one of our neighbors.  The boat had been damaged during one of our winter storms so he had to re-fiberglass the bottom.  While Ben had plans to fix it up and get it back into the water ASAP, the rain had other plans so it took a few days and a few headaches before it was floating again.  Once the boat was back in the water, Ben spent the next few months tinkering with a Honda 10 hp engine that had also been swamped during a storm.  Working on engines over the water can be tricky because if you drop a part, it will most likely fall into the water... and you can pretty much forget about getting it back.  After a few lost parts and a few more headaches, Ben decided to get an already-working engine instead.  So he got a sweet deal on a Suzuki 9.9 hp engine and put it in place.  The Livingston was finally mobile!  A day or two later, the starter broke and Ben was up to his limit with headaches so he dropped the starter off at the shop to be fixed on solid ground.  Luckily, the engine can be started manually while the starter is at the shop.

Last week, Ben used the Livingston to tow Joe & Julie's 51 foot concrete sloop from the mooring field to the cop docks at Shelter Island.  Unfortunately, I was at school (actually, that was pretty fortunate for me because I'm pretty sure I would have had a panic attack if I had to be present for that maneuver!) so I didn't get any pictures or videos. 

Ben took the Livingston out to the ocean today, and I got a beautiful HD video of him taking off... I'd love to share it but unfortunately my new Verizon internet card sucks just about as bad as AT&T did (no, wait... it sucks MORE) so naturally it cut out about three quarters of the way through the upload to YouTube (and of course it took a good two hours for it to upload to that point) so I won't be able to share it today.  If I'm ever near a real internet connection, maybe I can get the video loaded and share it with everyone.  For now, we'll have to settle for still life.