Six More Coats of Varnish?

This weekend was the Antique and Classic Boat Show at the museum. It was cool to see the whole place turned out into full festival mode. Literally any place where you could put a boat -- in the water or on the land -- there was a boat. I would equate the experience to going to a car show, but for boats. And boy, do some people LOVEEEEE their antique boats! (Legit conversation I overheard from two judges: "His varnish could use some work." "Another six coats." "I was going to say exactly that.")

I spent Friday and Saturday mornings working at the kids table which featured a sailboat-making activity, thanks to some friendly corporate sponsors. Kids could decorate a wooden base, and then we helped them add a mast (dowel), main (triangle of fabric), line (string through the sail), and cleat (staple from the staple gun). They could then take their boats and sail them on a small pool set up nearby. Very cool.

There weren't many kids either morning in the first few hours that I was there, so I helped with other tasks like decorating the tent. This involved inflating a life-size pirate using the boat shop's compressor twice, because the one on Friday got a hole and deflated by the end of the day. Carrying the pirate to the shop wasn't very exciting, but once he was inflated to a full six feet of tattooed, inflated goodness, I got a lot of side-long glances. A lady even stopped to take a picture of me carrying Pirate Pete -- or my prom date, as I started referring to him -- as she apparently teases her friend about blow-up dolls.