Ok, so.. Maybe it didn't go exactly like that. Actually it all started because Dan was just dyin' to try sanding. His thinking seemed to be; "If dad does this so much, it must be great fun. I need to do this.."

My feeling was; "Whatever, have at it kid. Knock yourself out!". I set him up with the block sander, showed him where to sand and what to look for while sanding..

That would be; Sand 'till everything is flat or you break through to the shiny base metal. I showed him how to go up and down, right and left then 45 degrees each way. This is to average out as much area as possible to get the best job of flattening down all the bumps. -And not make more bumps doing it.

He watched my demonstration and, in his typical bizarre mental linking, said. "Oh, just like the British flag."

"Huh? What are you talking about? Oh. Well, yeah I guess so. Sand like the British flag." And he was off.

British flag, who would have thought? Now that I think about it, he's right.

Allie just couldn't bare to see Dan having all the fun. (And attention.) She's a complete sucker for Tom Sawyer type tricks. She had to get into the action and tried to steal the sanding block from Dan. Witch started a fight. So I gave her the smaller one and told her to smooth out the leading edge. Smaller ones are better for them tighter curves you see.

Everyone happy now? Right. Well.. No. Within about five minutes, they were fighting over who got the bigger one 'cause, I guess, its the better one.

Sigh...

But of course, as we all know, kiddies have no staying power whatsoever. It ended up just poor Julie all alone sanding away...

That girl will do anything to get me to watch the kids!

Oh! Notice the shiny prop? Lets see a close up for 1HOTGMC.

Ta-Da! See? Something finally got finished! During the last week I spent nearly a entire day taking care of all the details on reinstalling the feathering prop.

First was a trip to Alameda Prop to see if they had any records of how it was set when they reinstalled it last time. The shop had changed hands since but we were actually able to locate my original work order. It was located in a box, on a top shelf, in the back room, dated 1995. There was all sorts of scribblings and writings on the work order that we couldn't decipher. Looked like different pitches and whatever. I noticed on the paper a "16x11" . The prop measured out to 16 inch diameter, so we wrote this down.

Another item on the work order was a line about the prop shaft being cut. That was something we were wondering about at the boat yard. The shaft had been cut right at the locking pin. It should still work, but its kinda' odd.

Back at the boatyard Art, the boat yard manager, and I went through his papers on "Best settings for different engine, tranny, prop combos." After putting in all the variables out popped "16x11". "Cool! It matches!"

So that's how it ended up.