Some adminstrative details

The last several posts were all originally sent as text messages from my phone. I have gone back and added some details. The original posts I left in normal text. I put the additions in italics following the original message.

Last Day Here

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go.
I'm standing here, Outside your door.
I hate to wake you up to say goodbye.
The dawn in breakin' It's early morn.
The taxi's waitin', he's blowin' his horn.
Already I'm so lonesome I could cry.
Peter, Paul & Mary

In the morning we take a bus to Portland where we'll get a motel room and stay the night. Then EARLY Wednesday we'll take another bus the rest of the way to Boston South Station and catch the AMTRAK train west. We've found that cab fares in Boston are outrageous and the motels are through the roof. In Portland, they're reasonable. What can I say? We're cheap.

We should pull into Denver on Friday and Kathy will be going back to work on Monday next, a cause for celebration on the part of the folks who have been filling in for her I understand.

Kathy promises to spend part of the time on the train writing about our experiences on the American Eagle which will get posted as soon as we get back and the cat lets us do anything but hold him. Our cat sitters report that he threatens them if they try to leave without letting him sit on them for a while. We hope he'll forgive us eventually.

So for all of you who have been following our misadventures, we hope you have enjoyed it. and we'll try to find time to expand/improve our account of things in the weeks to come.

Bye for now.
Dave

Boat Fire

While we were waiting to be hauled out for the season, wewatched a sickening sight. A fellow pulled up to the fuel dock and topped up with fuel (gasoline). He then started off for his home on North Haven Island, about 13 miles east across Pennobscot Bay.

About 300 yards out, he suddenly swerved over to an approaching sailboat and jumped aboard leaving his boat adrift. The sailboat returned him to the dock where he announced that his boat had an electrical fire aboard.

We watched helplessly as the twenty five foot speedboat drifted into a neighboring cove trailing smoke, first white and then black. As it neared the shore the black smoke got thicker and orange flames appeared. There was nothing anyone could do as she burned to the waterline, fed by fifty gallons of gas.

The owner watched sadly saying "I've had that boat for twenty nine years." It wasn't insured and as he later said, I guess my boating days are over. It was a very disturbing sight.

Later, the burned-out hulk was towed in for the Fire Inspector and the Coast Guard to examine.

It's sad to watch a man's dreams die.

After Cruising on the American Eagle

Rockland Harbor
August 8, 2007

Well, it’s been more than a week since I sat down and wrote anything. We’ve been out on the American Eagle for a week letting Captain John Foss do the navigating and Rick Loaleo cook our meals. Then after being pampered silly until last Saturday morning, we were set loose in Rockland for the last two days of LobsterFest, Rockland’s big celebration of/for tourism.

It being impossible to find a motel room within 100 miles during this shindig, Dennis Stockwell kindly gave us shelter on his boat, Sky Breaker, which is confined to dry land until he can re-do the planking or else figure out a way to seal it up. Every two years or so, a wooden boat needs to have its planks examined and a few of them replaced. This is one of the reasons why fiberglass hulls have become popular. Anyway, Dennis has taken pity on us and kept us from having to find a bridge to sleep under until we could get back to Fiddler.

As you may recall, we left Fiddler in Stonington at Billings Diesel and Marine having her fule sustem cleaned out and improved. To get back to Stonington, we contacted Pennobscot Island Air Service, who, for a very reasonable fee, picked us up at the boatyard and took us out to the airport where they put us and our junk aboard a Cessna 206 (a beefed-up version of a Cassna 172) and flew us over in about twenty minutes.

It was an amazing experience flying over to Deer Isle at 2500 feet. We could see from Castine in the North to about Portland in the south and this whole area we’ve been sailing about in looks so compact and small. Of course, tripping along at 120 knots instead of 5 knots may have had something to do with it. Having flown Cessna 172s in the Air Force back in my salad days, I had the feeling that the poor thing was being held aloft by the bigger engine alone as a result of being burdened by our three lard-butts and our gear.

Upon descending, the pilot stuck the plane in what looked like a section of abandoned secondary road about 1500 feet long. We were unloaded at the terminal (a one-room building which was unlocked) while Billings Diesel sent a nice lady out in her car to collect us.

We got back to Fiddler about 1:00 and settled in. The work was done, bt the bill was not yet compiled, so we spent the evening trying to figure out what to eat for dinner, since we’d emptied the ice box before we left.

Along about 4:00, the sky got dark and then a squall hit us. The wind was howling straight down the dock we were on and Fiddler was bucking like a colt so I calmly(?) got off and put on a second set of dock lines and in a couple of hours, the cold front had passed and the fog settled in. We later found out that back in Rockland, the wind gusts had been about 55 knots and the catamaran of some people we know had been dismasted. She was still sitting on her mooring when we got back to town on Tuesday afternoon looking forlorn and unhappy.

On Tuesday, we went up to Billings’ office to face the music and pay the piper. To our amazement, the bill was only two thirds of the estimate, a nice surprise.
When we listened to the weather forecast, the rather thick fog was predicted to burn off about noon and was supposed to be moderate all of Tuesday and Tuesday evening, but to be foggy, rainy and windy Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. If we wanted to leave, Tuesday was the day. We fueled up and got the hell out of Dodge.

We motored across, wanting to test out the new fuel system. It worked flawlessly and we got across Isle Au Haut Bay in about 1 ½ hours, drove down the Fox Island Thoroughfare without incident, only to hit a cold wall of thick fog as we came out into Pennobscot Bay. Oh well, we’ve been in fog before. The GPS gave us our headings and we chugged across, blowing out foghorn all the way to the mid-bay bell buoy where the fog abated and we made into Rockland and picked up a mooring about 6:00 PM.

We all went ashore and ran off to the grocery store for ice and food (and booze) and ate dinner aboard about 10:00 PM. The New York Yacht Club is in town for their biannual do and we watched them showing up in everything from small (like ours) thirty foot boats to huge chartered and professionally crewed ships. They ignored us and we talked to the professional crew who were more to our liking anyway.

Today (Wednesday) we awoke to thick fog and rain and we all of us said "screw it!", slept in and spent the afternoon reading novels. A good time was had my all.

Horseshoe Cove

Wednesday we set out from Buck’s Harbor down Eggemoggin Reach to get to Stoneington for the night. We changed the fuel filter before we left the harbor and motored back west a couple of inlets to a lovely place called Horseshoe Cove. This long, narrow inlet is full of ledges. When we called the boat yard about the spare filters, the gentleman on the phone said to not follow the chart as it was not particularly accurate in this case, the ledges having been put on the chart more or less at random. Our instructions were to follow the markers, favoring the green one as we came up the channel, go up the middle of the mooring field and pickup the first available mooring. We were NOT to try and reach their dock. They would send a boat out to meet us with the filters.

After passing by the inlet the first time, we turned around the small island at the mouth and worked our way up the channel. The first ledge by the day marker at the entrance looked very odd to me before I realized that what I was seeing was a small group of seals laying about splashing around on the rocks in the shallow water. The tide was falling and when we came out the seals had moved on to another rock awash and were laying about splashing about with their flippers the in the shallow water. They reminded me a lot of small children playing in the wading pool.

This all seems a little odd because we often see seals pulled clear out of the water sunning themselves on rocks, or for that matter what ever they can find, but they usually just lay there and look at you as you go by. It is not unusual to see a seal lounging around on some of the navigation buoys.

The channel was plenty wide enough and we never touched anything but water, but with all the rocks visible it was a bit nerve racking for me. As we approached the final set of markers in, a boat heading out told us the channel was to our left, which was where we were heading. As we pulled past the final set of markers, a fellow in a dinghy with an outboard called out "You here for some filters?" We said we were. "I’ll send someone out to you." Just a few minutes after we got onto the mooring, another small boat comes motoring up with our three fuel filters and change. We dropped the mooring and made our way back out to the big water, back past Thrumcap Island and its attendant ledges and headed down south east through Eggemoggin Reach.

Row, Row, Row Your Boat

We have a new dinghy. If you read about my misadventures last year, you know that I view dinghies in much the same way that Mark Twain viewed horses; they are an invention of the devil bent on the destruction of man one at a time. If the water weren’t so cold, I think I’d rather swim ashore, but it’s hard to swim back with a load of groceries.

Now being on the water, I frequently see Mainers in their boats. They hop about on them like they’re moving about in the bed of a parked pickup truck. I’m convinced that every one of them has sold his soul to Satan in exchange for the ability to do this. It’s just not natural.

Once, in Burnt Coat Harbor, I saw six adults in a tiny skiff with an outboard motor going along. The poor thing was so heavily laden that it didn’t have two inches of freeboard, AND THE BLOODY DRIVER WAS STANDING UP AS THEY WENT. I should point out that almost all Maine boatmen stand up to steer. They claim they can see better this way. I still think that when their seven years of being able to do this is up, Old Nick will show up and take each and every one of them away.

Meanwhile, back to our dinghy.

We’re trying to get comfortable with it, but it isn’t easy. It keeps moving about in unexpected ways like and unbroken horse. I know it’s plotting some outrage.

Today, Kathy climbed in and went rowing about. She didn’t feel very comfortable doing this. Of course, it’s partly due to the oars. Every small inflatable boat comes with two oars. It’s also true that every new Chevy comes with a functional jack with which to change the tire. Sure it does. Like that jack, these oars are not intended to be really used. They’re just for show. Zodiac expects the owner to have an outboard motor. Chevy expects you to join AAA.

After she’d had a bit of fun, she had me climb on too so she could see if it was better off with two people in it. Well, it wasn’t. It just made our mistakes happen more slowly.

Part of the problem is me. I know that everyone who has one of these things has the passengers sit on the sides, but I just KNOW that if I do, sure as hell, my ass in going to be in the water. We have to work on this - preferably in quiet harbors where nobody we know can see us.

Meantime, we take it along with us and I keep finding notes taped to it offering to fix it so that I too can be graceful in my dinghy for the next seven years in exchange for only a very minor consideration.

Instrument Landings

We left Camden Harbor at 12:00 in cloudy weather bound for Buck’s Harbor at the head of Eggmoggin Reach, which leads from Penobscot Bay to Jericho Bay, a trip of about twenty nautical miles. When we started out, it was flat calm and so we motored.

We dodged between Mark Island and Saddle Island into the East side of Pen Bay and began the run toward Bucks when we saw The American Eagle working her way North as well, looking for a quiet spot to land her passengers and have their traditional lobster cook-out on some secluded islet.

Pausing briefly to replace the fuel filter (the fuel system hates me), we kept pace with Captain Foss in his quest for a place to feed his people. We last saw him tucked close in to some island with his anchor down and his mainsail up, but sheeted in tight to keep her from swing in the place he put her. It was getting cold and beginning to rain. Great day for a picnic lunch. Who brought the ants?

A couple of miles farther and the fog closed in. We could see maybe 500 feet and no more. My mother-in-law bravely decided that if she was going to die, she’d rather it came as a surprise and went below to nap while Kathy stayed on deck to keep me company and to make sure I didn’t screw up.

Creeping along from buoy to buoy in fog and rain, we turned towards what we sure hoped was the narrow entrance to Buck’s Harbor. It was. We tied up about twenty minutes later and woke Star to tell her she was going to live.

On the radio, Captain Foss said he planned to travel on North to Castine for the night, but when we got up the next morning, he and the Angelique were swinging at anchor on the Southeast end of the harbor.

John let his passengers row ashore to stretch their legs for an hour or so while waiting for the fog to lift and as they rowed up to the dock, we serenaded them a few bars from "The Volga Boatmen". They had four oars on each side of the seine boat and it looked like a drunk spider, but it’s early in the week. When we went out with John, we looked like that too. Everybody does. Takes practice to row a seine boat.

Molly O’Brien

Molly O’Brien is the nickname of one of the most important skills a sailor can have. It is the ability to recover someone who has fallen overboard in a timely manner. Every reputable sailing school teaches the techniques to be used and requires the students to practice frequently. It is analogous to the emergency landing drills taught to student pilots by flight schools. In both cases, you only get one chance to get it right and failure can be lethal.

On our Offshore Passage Making course, the exercise was a doozy.

I had the 8:00 PM to midnight watch. We were three days out of Bermuda and heading for Fort Lauderdale, Florida. At 11:40, the Captain came on deck and we watched as he rigged a survival strobe light to a life ring, turned it on and tossed it over the stern. He then said "Shhhhh!" and went back to his cabin.
Thinking that this would be interesting, we woke the midnight to 400 AM watch but said nothing to them. Then, rather than going to our bunks, we lingered in the cockpit for a quiet smoke.

At 12:30 AM, the Captain popped up on deck and asked, "Has anybody seen Molly O’Brien lately?" A look of horror flashed across the still-sleepy mid-watch’s faces.

I piped up, "I saw her about an hour ago. She was on deck having a smoke when I went below to use the john. When I came back, she wasn’t here and I assumed she’d gone below to sleep." This played into the Captain’s plan. A missing crew member at night just before watch change might not be noticed for a looooong time. The Captain had one of the two men on night watch go below and check on "Molly’s" bunk, knowing she wouldn’t be there. He returned a moment later to report her missing.

The Captain turned to the two men on night watch and asked "Now what are you going to do?"

They immediately started the engine, brought the sails in to center, and reversed our course. My watchmate and I took up positions as forward lookouts as we pounded headlong into the following seas. Thirty minutes later while were on the top of a wave, the port lookout reported a strobe a few degrees off the port bow. In another ten minutes we were along side the life ring and working hard to maneuver in fifteen foot seas to retrieve "Molly". It took us another ten minutes.

Ridiculous? Hardly. It was one of the most realistic MOB drills I’d ever seen. It showed that in WARM waters, it was possible to find someone in the middle of the ocean and recover them alive.

This is the reason the sailing school required each of us to have a sea harness to keep us from falling overboard with a self-contained, life preserver which automatically inflates when the wearer is immersed in water and also with a small but powerful battery-powered strobe light visible for upwards of three miles in the dark. Together, these things cost about $300, but they can be well worth the investment.

A lot of thought goes into preventing someone from falling overboard at sea. On a sailing vessel with a self-steering system, a lost sailor might go over and not be noticed until the next watch came on deck and found him gone. For this reason, the helmsman is tethered to the boat in such a way that he CANNOT go overboard. On a voyage, there are lines run along both side decks from bow to stern to which the crew are tethered when out of the cockpit. If a sail change is required, another crew member is awakened and called on deck before the watch leaves the cockpit to go forward. Calls of nature are handled in the cockpit using a bucket. Ninety percent of the sailors lost over the side are found with their zipper down.

Our last MOB drill was a bit less dramatic. We’d been out sailing and returned to our mooring in Camden Harbor about 5:00 PM and had just settled down for our evening "sundowners" (a drink before dinner when the work is done and the boat is tied). I’d bent over to retrieve a dropped potato chip when I heard a splash. One of our throwable seat cushions had fallen in and was drifting astern rather quickly.

The crew responded with alacrity!

I started the engine and Kathy went forward to cast off the mooring pendant. We quickly came about and rescued our fallen comrade with the help of a boat hook and returned to our mooring (and our drinks). All’s well that ends well and the fearless crew congratulated themselves for a prompt rescue of "Molly O’Brien".

"Two-Toots"

July 18, 2007

In Rockland Harbor, one of the best ways to get around is by calling "Two-Toots".

"Two-Toots is the moniker of George Marks, one of

[Two-Toots bringing Kathy and Star (not shown) back to the boat ]

Rockland’s bona fide curmudgeons. George is a licensed Master Mariner. (that’s "Captain" to you non-sailors)

Like many Maine residents, he has his fingers in a great many enterprises. In addition to his water taxi which runs 7 days a week in the tourist season, he also owns and rents a number of moorings about the harbor and, I believe, he also services other people’s moorings as well. It says on the side of his boat that he gives harbor tours and he’s an avid photographer who offers to take pictures of you as you sail by on your boat so you can have a picture to send back to show the kids how you’re spending their inheritance.

George is a crusty fellow who will not hesitate to tell you all about yourself if he thinks you’re putting on airs or if you’re being an idiot. Another long-time resident tells me that George goes to every City Council meeting and never hesitates to give the local politicians a piece of his mind when they come up with some ill-considered idea. The first year we met "Two-Toots", there was a small pilot whale who decided he liked people in general and George Marks in particular. Folks named the whale Poco. He’d follow the water taxi around like a dog and just for fun, sometimes he’d come up under it and lift him up a few inches.

He’d also go and visit other boats moored in the harbor. Most of the boaters got a kick out of the friendly beast, but one jerk asked George to "make it go away." George pointed out that the whale was a wild animal and there was no way he was going to try to chase it anywhere. Besides, in spite of having a rep as one of the crustiest old salts in Rockland Harbor, George and Poco kind of liked each other.

We rely on "Two-Toots" whenever we’re in Rockland. His water taxi is no more expensive and much more fun than a conventional cab. He carries a cellphone and monitors the marine radio. He’s out there seven days a week during tourist season, even in the thickest fog or the heaviest rain. I once saw him get up from his dinner long after he’d shut down for the night to run a stranded family out to their boat when their dinghy’ motor failed. We’d say that we like George, but we don’t want to endanger his rep as the crustiest old salt in Rockland Harbor.

On A Mooring

July 17, 2007
We are on a mooring.

Wazzatmean?

Well first, and most important, it means that (A) WE ARE IN THE WATER AND (B) WE ARE NO LONGER TIED TO THE DOCK!

When I announced this to my son, it became apparent that he had no idea what a mooring is. We sometimes forget that many of our friends have little or no nautical background and we throw terms about without explaining them, they find it confusing. So, for those of you who have no idea what the hell we’re talking about, let me explain what a mooring is.

If you take a boat out into a body of water and just set it there, it will quickly be blown ashore. This is not good; it clutters up the shore and the owners of said shore want you to move your boat off their property.

The least expensive cure for this problem is to drop an anchor over the side and snag the bottom. This is a very viable solution in the short term, but is of limited utility in the long run. The main reason is that you cannot carry a very heavy anchor and in a high wind, an anchor can drag loose and you’re back to shore with the property owner yelling at you again.

A better solution is to find a large heavy object (in Rockland, having been a shipping center for the granite quarries out on the islands for many years, the favorite object is about a three ton granite block.) To this, you attach a heavy length of chain. At the other end of the chain, you attach a buoyant object such as an inflatable mooring buoy about 2-3 feet in diameter. Then you affix about twenty feet of stout rope and another smaller buoy about 8 inches in diameter and take the whole rig out into said body of water and throw it in. (This is usually done with a small barge run by someone who does this for a living.)

Now, when you come up to this thing, you see a large mooring ball and the smaller one nearby. You pick up the smaller one and tie the attached rope to your boat and voila! You ain’t gonna drag that three ton block anywhere. Your boat is secured and the property owner stops complaining. That’s a mooring. In a large harbor there may be several hundred of them. The town collects a small fee to let you put this mooring there and everyone is happy. Our boatyard has about twenty of them out here as near as I can figure and we’re tied to one of them. It’s part of the deal.



From here, we have a nice view in several directions.

To the North, there’s North End Shipyard, where the American Eagle, the Heritage and the Wendameen are docked. In the picture, you can see the back end of the American Eagle, who happened to be in port today. We’re going out on the American Eagle later this month. In the foreground, there’s a white lobster boat with the letter "K" on the bow. That’s Sy Knight’s lobster boat. Currently he’s helping run the boatyard, but he says he’d rather be out fishing for lobsters.

In the next photo, here’s the back side of the carrageenan plant. It doesn’t look like much from this side, but the stuff is used in everything from food to cosmetics. It is extracted from seaweed and this is where they do it. Could be worse. It could have been a cannery. This one doesn’t smell like undescribable fish parts.




In the last photo, you can see the Knight Marine boatyard and dock. You can also see the ferry terminal, which the State of Maine is rebuilding and expanding. That’s why everything looks like a mess right now.







So that’s our world. If we want to go ashore, we can motor back to the dock and tie up or we can get in our dinghy and putt over there, or we can call "Two Toots". I’ll tell you more about him in another article.

Laying In Supplies

July 15, 2007

We have had a couple of incidents involving food on the boat. Star managed to drag her shirt through the mayonnaise while making a sandwich. We have been teasing her a bit about taking the term "laying in supplies" a little too literally.
The other food event was the attack of the wild paprikash. I was enjoying a bowl of the lovely chicken parikash my husband cooked for us, and I managed to spill a good bit of the bowl all over me. I hope paprika sauce is good for the skin, because I managed to wear quite a bit of it. After we cleaned up the mess, we all had a bit of a chuckle about the "wild parikash".

David suggested I call this the food fight afloat.

About cooking and eating on a small boat

When tied up to a dock, the town restaurants are handy, but over time they get expensive. Our solution is to cook our own meals. We have a two burner alcohol stove, and a selection of cookware to do this.

After last year's adventure with the soup, our senior captain declared 'no more soup' for meals. We manage without resorting to soup. (Just a side note - I happen to like soup, with a particular fondness for one brand of ready-to-eat minestrone.)

For breakfast and lunch we mostly have sandwiches, fruit, something with peanut butter or maybe kippered herring from a can. Easy food that a person can put together when they are hungry, without having to wait for everyone to be present. Particularly during this first part of the process, we all have our own task list, and we end up going different directions during the day. When we are out sailing, I like to be sure we have our dinner eaten while there is still enough sunlight to clean up by. Here on the dock, we sometimes eat quite late, at least by my reckoning.

The menu has been quite varied. We take turns cooking, and with three experienced cooks we get quite a range of food. So far we have had beef stew, chili, chicken paprikash, pork chops, steak, pot roast and tonight's menu features curry. One night we had a seafood chowder as guests on someone else's boat. He sent us home with the leftovers, so we had chowder two nights in a row. I had a vague idea that I might lose a little weight on this trip. If I keep eating like this, I may not.

Many of the meals we cook are possible, or at least easier, with the lovely thermos pot we bought previously. Heating things up in the inner pot, then set it in the outpot for a while. We ran a test in Colorado to see how long it held the heat. After 5 hours the water inside was still 135 degrees. This works really well for slow cooking food.

One of the fun things about being on a boat is all the other people with boats who share our situation. The trials of fixing things, the fun of meeting new people and getting reaquainted with folks from previous years, the things that work and the things that don't. What works for one boat and crew may not work for another, but it is interesting to see what people come up with as solutions.

Playing Tourists

We have had so much rain lately that the locals are starting to refer to this region as the Pacific Northeast. It rained Monday. We put the sticks (masts) up in the rain. High Monday was about 55º F. with fog most of the day.

Tuesday the yard crew wanted to work on our boat and get it ready for launch so we rented a car and took of playing tourists. We got as far North as Bucksport where we visited Fork Knox (NOT the one in Kentucky where Uncle Sam keeps the gold reserve). It was begun in the first half of the nineteenth century to keep the British from seizing the area again (they did it in 1779 and again in 1813). I’m a history nut and I used to be a cave explorer so I took along a flashlight and went crawling through the rifle galleries and magazines. Kathy and Star waited up on top and looked at the barracks and bakeries. The place was defended by several fifteen inch Rodman guns, rifled muzzle loaders with a range of about 5500 yards. The fort commands both branches of the Penobscot river.

Fort Knox is a pentagonal fort with two sides facing the water and three sides facing the land. Their main batteries face the water and nobody would try a frontal assault from that direction. To the landward, it looks like a big hill with stone retaining walls twenty feet high in places, but the real defense to landward is a "ditch" behind these walls about forty feet deep and about fifty feet across. with vertical walls facing into the ditch and every ten feet in either of these walls is a rifle slit three inches wide. The ides is that infantry that manage to get on this berm will find themselves without cover facing howitzers on swivels every few feet. If they jump or fall into the ditch, the men in these rifle galleries will shoot them. That ditch is intended to be a slaughter pen from which there is no escape.

The place is of granite and brick construction and must have been bloody uncomfortable in winter. The officers quarters were fairly primitive; the enlisted swine were rather less sophisticated and must have been very crowded and dark.

After spending enough time there we crossed over the new bridge over the Penobscot River. It opened last year and has an observation tower in the Western support tower with a veir of the area for about sixty miles. The old bridge is still standing, but I understand they plan to take it down soon.
From there, we drove on to Castine where we spent last July Forth and which we wrote about last year in this blog. (Kathy still moans "five and a half hours of history!" every time we mention it.) Dennett’s Wharf still has some fine scallops broiled in bread crumbs with a great view of the harbor.

We got home about 1030 and crashed.

This morning, we got up, bought groceries and took the car back to Enterprise before the deadline and resumed getting the boat ready to go in the water tomorrow. While Tuesday was fair and warm all day, Wednesday was back to fog and rain. I haven’t gotten a tan, but I do have a fine coat of rust. We are supposed to go in the water about high tide Wednesday which should be about 11:00 AM.

I don’t know if we’re having any fun yet or not.

Dave

A Writer's Kvetch

Last year when we returned from Maine, we were told by many people "Hey! We really liked your blog. Read it every day. It made our day."

From this end, it feels a bit like trying to perform in a huge, dark, silent theater. I can't see a thing beyond the footlights.

IS ANYBODY THERE?

DOES ANYBODY CARE?

So far, we've had only two comments. (Thanks fellas, your input is MUCH appreciated.) C'mon folks. We're sitting here at the keyboard until drops of blood form on our foreheads trying to make this interesting. How about a little feedback? Is there anything you'd like to ask? Help us out a little here.

I just downloaded a photo editor program so we can resize our photos and add them in. In a day or so we'll try to backfill the shots we've taken.

Meantime, COMMENT, dammit!

Dave

Locker-bee

Work Notes: Dave has most of the sanding done. Now we wait for a break in the weather to add coats of varnish. Pardon me, to apply more ‘dusting compound’.

I went through the v-berth and all the forward lockers to see what we had, what we need, and what we can discard. A boat is full of odd little spaces that can be used to store things. The trick is to keep track of what is where. And to find the things that have moved down or sideways due to the variable action of gravity. As a boat moves through the water, up is generally the same direction as the mast. However, with all the rocking and such, things move and fishing something out of some odd corner it has wedged itself into is one of my tasks. A bit like a treasure hunt. The previous owner left all sorts of odds and ends aboard, some odder than others. It may be that he simply held on to anything that might be useful. One never knows.

As of this evening, I have gone through the v-berth lockers (safety harnesses, manuals, spares, through-hull, lubricants, lines), all of the below deck starboard side lockers (galley, cookware, supplies, hanging locker and tools), which leaves me with the anchor locker, port side below deck lockers, the head and the cockpit lockers. The engine compartment is a job all in itself.

I hardly left the boat all day, except to go across the boat yard to collect the laundry Dave started, so nothing else to mention.

More leaky skies, which is pretty common for this time of year here.

"Dusting"

by Dave

Like the proverbial washed car, attempting to apply varnish is a guaranteed way to call in rain. There’s just something about fresh varnish that is irresistible to a rain cloud. The same applies to a new car; every seagull for MILES just HAS to come and crap on it.

In our case, we’re sanding and varnishing the woodwork on our boat. So long as we’re just sanding, everything is fine, BUT let the sky see a brush and a can and here comes the rain. So, yesterday I finished all the sanding I could do and the sun was still shining. No clouds. (Okay, ease over and stand near the varnish can. Still okay?)

Now crack the can open and see how it looks. (Nothing too serious yet. Let’s try it.)

"Star, I think it’s too likely to rain so I won’t be varnishing today." (Move over to the ladder.)

"I think I’ll just climb up here and use this brush to wipe away the dust from the sanding." (Still quiet.)

"Maybe if I use this ‘Dusting Compound’ it’ll help get rid of the sanding dust." (This might actually work.)

"Hey Star, how’s the sanding coming?" (Got about eight feet of varnish on.)

Star: "Not too bad. How’s your ‘dusting' going?" (Good. Star’s helping.)

"Fine, fine. Not doing anything but dusting." (Got in about fifteen feet of rub rail so far.)

"That ‘dusting compound’ sure gets the dust, doesn’t it Dave." (Twenty feet now.)

"Yes sir, nothing like dusting the rub rail to make it look good." (Twenty-five feet now.)

"When Kathy gets back with the groceries won’t she be surprised at how much teak we’ve gotten ready for varnishing. Too bad about the weather." (THERE! I’ve connected up the new varnish with the old varnish.)

Two hours later, the varnish was dry and the weather finally caught on. For revenge, it rained on us steadily all night.

Sleeping on a Small Boat

Notes on Sleeping Arrangements on a small boat.

A truly small boat does not have standing headroom, and all the movement below decks is done either by crouching or by sitting and sliding along the bunks. The J-22s we learned to sail on fit this category. Fiddler has standing headroom, if you are under 5' 11" - for you tall folks, this would be a crouching situation.

Technically, that is according to the specifications, we can sleep 5 people. Now I think they may not mean 5 full size adults. The port side berth pulls out into a ‘double’ berth, but it is not quite wide enough for Dave and me. The starboard side berth (my bunk) is 5'2" long and only 22 inches wide on the wide end, narrowing to 20 inches forward. I am 5'4" tall. You can see where this becomes an interesting puzzle in fitting into a small space. Also the boat has a slight port side list as the other two crew-members sleep on the port side, so I am always rolled towards the center of the boat, which is the edge of the bunk. With the motion of waves, the passage of other crew members with gear, and having one arm hanging off into the passageway if I sleep on my back, I am grateful for the lea cloth. I have brief moments when I wonder why I do this. Because it is such fun!

by Kathy

July 3, 2007

July 3, 2007

Today’s notes: major progress on the sanding and some painting on the port side toe-rail. More groceries today. DJ to cook 4th of July dinner. We have not made a lot of progress on other organizing issues. All in all, life is good anyway. Chicken spaghetti tonight.

We expect to get more done on the boat during the 4th, but it occurs to me that there may be more folks around due to the holiday. More people means more opportunities to talk and visit. Lots of new friends. Now we just have to keep working while we talk. (Hee hee.)

With the weather forecast to rain, I think I need to find either more books, or dig out my foul weather gear and go for a walk despite the rain.

Happy Fourth!

Kathy

A bit more progress

Progress Notes

Fourth of July, and to celebrate Independence Day we mostly just hung around the boat.

Dave and Star made progress on cleaning up the bright work (woodwork for the rest of us) and I walked off to the grocery store to get a couple of items we forgot. I found a bit of a shortcut, so the grocery store is only 15 minutes or so walk from the boat yard. Not too bad with a small load of goods. For the large items (60 pounds of ice for the ice box) I still think the taxi is the plan, at least on the way back. Unless I can find a ride from someone.

A BIG BUG

Sitting in the lobby of the hotel last night, as I waited for Dave to write up his adventures, I felt what I first took to be the breeze flapping my pants leg. With doors open and a bit of weather this was not an unreasonable guess. When I felt something sharp on my knee, I looked down to find a large, dark bug crawling up my leg. I squawked, jumped up from my seat and attempted to dislodge said animal from my person. I ended up holding the fabric away from my leg, and someone else swatted the bug off of me. The environmentalists who are staying at the hotel all ran over to look at the creature. One young lady looked up at me and said "It is aggressive!" No Kidding!

I did not take any physical injury, but I have not seen an insect that large in the wild (or on the loose) since we lived in the Philippines. Bugs! Bleech!

Sights around Rockland.

The Atlantic Challenge is a school and workshop teaching traditional boat-building and seamanship. They are just up the hill from the marina where our boat is. They have a totem pole made up of plastic barrels and other found items. I took a picture.

It being June much of Rockland is in bloom. Privet hedges, the last of the lupine, and a few other scented plants. Lovely walking. We have not made it up to the library yet. With the availability of wireless at the boat, we may not need to, except to check out books, and for a research project I am working on.

Soda Blasting and Bottom Paint

By Dave

Each year we and every other boat owner in the world put a copper-based paint on the part of our hulls which are under water to retard marine growth, like barnacles. After a while, the paint builds up to the point where it has to be removed. One of the methods of removal we use is soda blasting. An air-filled barrier is placed around the hull and a man wearing an environment suit and a full-face air mask goes inside and cleans off the old paint. It works like sand blasting but the soda won’t abrade the hull, just the old paint.

After they finish, the boat owner is left with a fine residue of sodium bicarbonate on the hull and in any fissures in the hull material which he usually removes by spraying it with vinegar and then washing it with water.

One of our neighbors in the yard had this done recently and so he got a garden sprayer and filled it with vinegar and began to work. The result was fragrant (and foamy).

A passerby smelled it and inquired, "Watcha spraying on your boat?"

"Vinegar."

"Why?"

"Makes it go faster."

The inquisitive man walked off mumbling to himself.

Shortly thereafter, another curious soul noticed the smell and stopped by.

"Whatcha doin’?"

"Spraying vinegar on the hull."

"Why?"

"My dad used to do this every year. Said it was cheaper than bottom paint." This is important. Bottom paint is EXPENSIVE. Some brands sell for more than $200 a gallon. Naturally the man was interested in this money-saving idea.

"No kiddin’? Does it work?"

Nope, but it’s cheaper than bottom paint."

Maine people have a weird sense of humor.

Progress Tuesday

Today’s notes: major progress on the sanding and some painting on the port side toe-rail. More groceries today. DJ to cook 4th of July dinner. We have not made a lot of progress on other organizing issues. All in all, life is good anyway. Chicken spaghetti tonight.

We expect to get more done on the boat during the 4th, but it occurs to me that there may be more folks around due to the holiday. More people means more opportunities to talk and visit. Lots of new friends. Now we just have to keep working while we talk. (Hee hee.)

With the weather forecast to rain, I think I need to find either more books, or dig out my foul weather gear and go for a walk despite the rain.

Happy Fourth!