Kabob Kings.

by Allison

We made a quick trip down to the boat this past weekend, and the main agenda (in my mind) was to finally get some fresh shrimp to cook for dinner!  Riley's list was a little longer, but he indulged me and my need for seafood first.  Really, I don't think he minded too much.  Eventually we are going to have to experiment with something other than kabobs, I know.  But it was entirely too hot and humid this past weekend to try out our oven.  And since Riley is pretty much the grill master, I take every opportunity I can get to hand over some of the dinner reigns.  The shrimp, scallop, pineapple, red pepper, and red onion kabobs were a winning combination.  I foresee many more kabob dinners in our sailing future.

Riley's main priority this trip was installing our table.  We had removed it from the boat months ago while we were refinishing the teak interior.  It was previously a generic, off-white colored laminate, the same as the galley countertops.  We tossed around a few ideas for it, and Riley kept coming back to the idea of finishing it with the same laminate we recovered the counter tops in.  This just didn't sit well with me; the "dining room" table is not supposed to look like a kitchen counter.  My preference was wood.  So, Riley took this idea and ran with it.  We couldn't have just a plain wood table... no, we had to fancy it up a bit.  Fine by me!  He covered the existing table with a thin sheet of mahogany, and stained it to match the rest of the wood interior.  Then, we picked out an inlay.  Now, by this point, this may not surprise you, but Riley had never done an inlay before.  So of course, we picked out the most complicated shape we could find for him to experiment with on our mahogany table.  A compass rose, with many sharp angles, in sycamore and blackwood.  And it turned out perfectly (If you ask me.  If you ask Riley, he will gladly point out all of the flaws).  Then, we covered it with a layer of epoxy.  Also a first time experiment.

My favorite part of the whole table project was when Riley actually brought it to the boat.  We arrived on Friday night, but he waited patiently until late Saturday morning to carry it down to the dock.  I think he was pretty pleased with the number of "oohhs" and "ahhhs" he received along the way.

I oohed and ahhed quite a bit myself.  Who picks up skills this quickly or creates something this nice on their first try??  He's pretty talented, that husband of mine.