August moves along...

Well, that was an unproductive weekend as far as the garage clean-out was concerned.  I almost got through.......one box.  :-(

Now, it is true I didn't get down to the boxes filled with old course materials or old textbooks.  Also, I did take advantage of the three days of no rain and I cut the lawn (before the rain reached us again!).  I am not giving up though.  I know that I can get it dealt with.  I haven't spent the time to "wade in", so I can't expect it to magically dissolve away in front of me!

I've signed up for the full website on Affordable Adventure Cruising and now can read the full books and articles.  It appears to be knowledgeable material written by knowledgeable people who seem very self aware of their biases and limitations.  I hope to have time (at some point) to actually read through the works in depth.

I've also got a response from the fellow who runs the classes at Ghost Lake.  There may be a Sept. class in the works!  That would be great....IF we can get the $$$ together.  Other than that, the course books and log book cost is $50 per student.  So if even only one of us could go in Sept. and the rest follow in the spring we could study the materials for a modest price.  He seemed very much against the idea, citing others who tried to study on their own and suffered poor outcomes.  I understand his misgivings.  It has been my experience that very few people can actually learn through correspondence-type training.  That, effectively, is what he is seeing with us studying at home.  He must have missed the part where I said we would all be taking the course either this fall or in the spring.

 I guess I'm just following what we did years ago with flight training in cadets.  By the time we sat down in actual ground school we knew almost all the material inside-out and backwards!  I see no reason why the same study practices wouldn't work for sailing and seamanship.  I'll have to write the sailing course instructor back to clear up any misunderstanding.

So, I have another week to try and get out into the garage and tip things away.  At least I managed to get the one old beast on Kijiji today.  If not gone in a week, I'm ready to drive it to P-n-P and wave goodbye.  It would have been nice to get something for it, but it is old and, honestly, used up.  It certainly doesn't owe us anything!