© Michael Lovett

Proud parents: Dad and I pause our Easter Egg hunt to admire our handiwork. 

For all the hard work we put in varnishing the Sled this winter, I expected to feel more relieved after we applied the final coat—which we finally did the other day. Instead, I'm feeling annoyed and overwhelmed. 

Without much snow on the local ski hill, I had no excuse not to spend some time indoors over the holidays, working on the Sled. Though my father and I have been working on the boat for the past few months, the results are only just now beginning to show.

The Rolling Stones set another bad example.

I'm not sure if it's even possible, but I think I varnished my teeth.

Yesterday afternoon, I tuned in the Cleveland Browns game on the radio, wrapped my foam block with 320-grit paper, and continued sanding away at the Sled, the wooden Thistle I'm in the process of varnishing. Last weekend, I worked through all the nooks and crannies of the bow and mast-step areas; the back of the boat is less intricate, so yesterday's sanding went relatively quickly.

--

It was "double-shot weekend" on 98.5 WNCX, Cleveland's Classic Rock—perfect music for sanding. I turned the Panasonic to loud, grabbed a few sheets of 240 grit and a foam sanding block, slipped on my Musto kneepads, and crawled into the bow of the Sled, my dad's Thistle, which I'm in the process of rehabbing in his garage.