I’m building a funicular with which to haul our boat up from the water to the first deck.  Like a marine ways.  I brought eight 20-22 foot lengths of steel angle from BC Hydro five years ago to use as rails for the modified boat trailer that I am using as the haul-out cart.   

This summer I installed the horizontal beams (steel) on which the rails will be fastened.  They are married by bolts and concrete to the great slabs of granite that make up our beach. But there was a lot to do this summer and I only got as far as that.  The rails have not – until now– been attached.

My neighbour Hugh has resolved my problem of learning to weld and buying a welder.  He will do it instead.  He knows how and he has the welder.  I hired him to make the assembly for the winch and electric motor combined which will be mounted at the top of the tracks.  It will bolt onto the tracks – which, as you know from the paragraph above, are not quite there yet.

Hugh works faster than me and the assembly is almost done.  Within a week or so, he’ll come by with it and he’ll expect to be able to help me bolt it in place.  I kind of expect him to help me do that as well.  We both have similar expectations of easy success and a working funicular without much hassle.  You have to wonder about that kind of optimism at our age.    

Anyway, all of this means I had to fasten the two top rails in place so as to be ready.  Therein lay the challenge.  Enter: Katy and Ben.

With both of them chock full o’ turkey from the day before and a big Sally breakfast from this morning, we set out in the rain and began to position the rails.  Each rail weighs between 225  and 250 pounds (depending on the length).  They are angle steel, heavy hot-dipped galvanized 5 inches by 5 inches.  The steel is about 1/3 of an inch thick.  They were used in the construction of transmission line towers.  They are heavy, unwieldy and we are working on a 30 degree angle, rocky, irregular slope.  In the rain.  Not easy.

The first step was to get the beams to the lower deck where holes were then drilled in them to accept the fastening flanges.  We used our friend’s, Bob Buxton, marvellous invention, the Badger, (a mini, in-situ drill press that fastens a drill to a piece of steel and provides the force needed to get through), to make that happen.  Then we slid the beams off the deck and placed them onto the horizontal beams.  Then we fastened them with the flanges.  It was a bit of a challenge but both of the kids were equal to the task.  I lagged a smidge behind but was useful as a humourist, supervisor, life-coach (on various topics which were surprisingly not of much interest at the time) and, of course, I was the one who had the vision.  Don’t underestimate us visionaries. It all worked.  I think we were all pleasantly surprised. 

Katy is beautiful and very sweet.  She is funny and intelligent and both Sally and I are already hugely fond of her.  But she is also as strong as a bull.  I like this trait in a woman a lot more than I thought I ever would.  Katy has pipes.  Sal used to have ‘great pipes,’ (she still has ‘damn good pipes’) but Katy has a really ‘great set o’ pipes for a chick’, as they say around here.  She and Ben provided the bulk of the brute power and the job went easily as a result.  I am now ready for Hugh. 

I thought I’d provide a little reward for K&B in the afternoon by way of more life coaching but, oddly, they both chose to go out with Sally in the rain to visit our neighbours instead.   Katy mentioned something about ‘drinking heavily’.  I guess that means we will be having a little talk about that, too.  Over scotch, of course.