last couple of days

man o man, the days are flying by, just like the wind all the things air-born in it! i think i just saw lila fly by... wait a minute... that was one of the many, many osprey living around these parts. hope they don't see lila as a tasty treat. she eats enough tuna to smell like the seafood they live off of!

yesterday was rainy, rain, rain, so i spent most of the day in the cabin. i was tidying this and that, and that and this. it's amazing all the stuff we have in here we hadn't even explored yet! well... i think i found all of it now. i think. trying to put things where they'll be as accessible as is directly proportional to the frequency of there use. cricket's cabin is not a huge house to live in, but she can really "suck stuff in!" which is good, as long as you know where everything is... i suppose it's the same with any household, accept there are times when you need something you rarely use (hopefully never use!), but if you need an emergency tiller, or a flare, or a first aid kit, you need it now. don't want to be rummaging for those things, so i'm going to do what kell (our esteemed, previous owner) did and make a map of every locker on board.

also yesterday i sat down for hours (won't admit how many, but let's just say) and made a new movie! hope you enjoy it...

hey!!! visitors! becca and jason vanderwettering!!! fun! more later (plus the movie)...

scrape, scrape, scrape...

that pretty much describes the day today...

the bottom half of cricket, when she's truly, happily at home, exists entirely under the water. oh the things her bottom must see! (as if bottoms can see) schools of fishes, skaters (a type of sea ray) flying by, an occasional dolphin, seaweed growing fathoms high, and of course, jellyfish. all this abundance of life under the sea, and under our boat, is an amazing thing to think about, but what's even more amazing is that all this life is dependent on all kinds of other life you can't even really see! and there is a lot of it! i mean aaaaa lot! i just read something that said that there is 300 billion tons of phytoplankton, basically microscopic, underwater plants, in our sea! that's twice as much as all the plants above the water! also there is zooplankton. teeny-tiny little critters that swim around eating phytoplankton, and dead stuff, and some of it growing into bigger critters we can see... and that brings me to the point...

these little critters, of which there are very many, love to attach themselves to all kinds of stuff that are under the water... remember what i said about cricket's bottom half? yup! under the water! now, i'm all for supporting all that life under the sea {one more quick fact... i can't resist, it's so interesting... in the ocean's food chain it takes 10 tons of phytoplankton to produce about 2 pounds of fish we can eat! wow! see why i couldn't resist that one?}... i'm all for supporting that life, but not on my boat! not only can all that life growing on the bottom of cricket slow her down considerably, but it can eventually sink her by eating away at the hull, making those upon cricket part of the seas food chain! now by all this talk you might be thinking that i'm scrape, scrape, scraping that living stuff off of her, and while we did have to power wash and scrape much of it off (namely barnacles. more on them on another blog), the stuff i'm scraping is this awful stuff called "bottom paint." bottom paint is not your regular, run of the mill coating you put on the side of your outhouse. nope. it's special stuff that's supposed to keep the sea-life from growing down under. basically it does this by having pesticide and herbicide built right into it. yuck! it's supposed to be ok in the water, cause all that icky stuff mostly stays in the paint, but take the boat out of the water, and start scraping the paint that's getting loose (just like a flakey barn) and... let me just say you've got to wear a face mask and goggles and such. and catch as much of the chip n flakes as you can. the work itself is not that fun, 'specially if you don't really feel like you know what you're doin', but if you take it one little scrape at a time, keep looking around at all the beauty in deltaville when you can, feeling the sun and the breeze, keep dreaming about when this is all going in the water, and try not to think too much about how much you miss your best pal and wife, it's tolerable. : )

and one more thing. it's about feeling my lack of confidence in how i'm going about this task i've never done before... i found out that if you just get brave enough to go talk to the folks who do know something about the subject, a guy named jim will personally come out to your boat and comfort you that you are doing it right (or close enough), give you more options and advice, and will tell you he'll come by and check on you tomorrow! thanks jim!

getting to deltaville video

today i had an early visit from shawn, one of deltaville boatyard's "comeandtalkideasoverandseehowmuchmoneyit'sallgoingtotake" guys. he brought coffee, so i kind of trust him : )

estimate to follow...

aye-yuy-yuy.

today was a drizzly one. cricket kept lila and i warm and dry in her beautiful, wood-rich cabin while i read "how to" books, and made...

the first movie i've ever put together!

it's on youtube. and here 'tis

enjoy!

oh... p.s. the song is called "alleghany" and is by one of america's folk-music jewels, bill stains. we drove thru these lovely mountains on the pennsylvania turnpike (my first time in the daylight!) wow! beauty abounds! the words of this song spoke to us as we drove all starry eyed.

lila and i are on cricket, on the hard, in deltaville!

this

last week went flying by, like a vee of geese in the sky, heading south, honking by! last wednesday evening my good friend mike thorud and lila (the cat) and i stuffed a pile of stuff into the little honda fit, tied a kayak on the top and left the city of lakes in the rear view mirror, heading for virginia! after the long, lovely journey eastward we finally arrived at cricket's winter hibernation spot on the hard, and began the process of gently waking her up! there are many, many things to report. and so i shall as this week goes by, but for now i will let a few pictures speak a thousand words each:

20090810: 100 degrees, humidity 85 percent, motivation factor to pull cricket out of the water 0.01

hot day! lots of meetings with the folks at deltaville boatyard for workorders and "winterizing." a weird combination, this weather and talk of antifreeze good to 50 degrees below zero!
too hot for details!...
a car ride to:
- the hardware store
- west marine store
- the coffee shop
pulling anchor to go 1/2 block to:
- the pump out dock
- the fuel dock
- to meet with boat experts
back to anchor
a ride to an amazing restaurant (toby's) from an interesting iraq war vet.
hot and windless on cricket
too hot to blog much
a 9:30 dip on the water (forthcoming.... bye ; )

20090809: "decommissioning" is a sad word. making the best of it!

decommissioning is what the deltaville marina calls a haul-out on their work order. sounds so permanent, doesn't it? it seems so early in the season to pull cricket out of the water, but pull her out we must! tomorrow. but it is not permanent. only until next june... that's only... ummm, 9-10 months away... wait a minute! that IS forever! it will seem like forever, anyways.

pam woke me gently this morning, and then it was time to plan the day. but who can properly plan without a nice cup of coffee first? so it was dinghy to the marina's dock, borrow a couple of bikes, and head to the town coffee shop... oh yeah, did i mention with owen? yup! owen rode on the bike with me! many of the marina's bikes have baskets, so we stuffed a couple of towels into my bike's basket, stuffed owen on top of them, and pedaled on down the country road. owen exactly didn't love it, but he was a good sport. whenever a car came whizzing by he'd bury his head into the basket. so cute! and a far better reaction than trying to hop out! he did seem to begin to get used to it by the end of the ride. after some coffee and some breakfast (mine was apple pie and ice cream : ), it was time to bike back and get to work.

cricket needs to have all sails off her before the marina will haul her out, so it was decided that that needed to be done first. it was a very hot day (hottest yet), so it went something like: swim. take down a sail. swim. take down a sail. swim. take down another sail. swim. dinghy the sails to shore. swim. fold the sails on shore. swim (this time in the marina pool). bring the folded, bagged sails back to cricket. swim. eat supper. lay around with the fans blowing on us...

this evening we took jiminny on a little ride up and down jackson creek. there was no breeze at all on cricket's decks, so we decided to make our own breeze tooling around on jiminny. we explored a sandy spit that stuck way out from the shore. jiminny's outboard grounded on the sandy bottom, so i hauled up the motor and waded in with pam in the dinghy. fun! the seagulls were not very happy about us disturbing their evening peace on the sand, but we told them they could have it right back in a short while. they were all right back as we left their watery, sand bar so it was all cool. we headed up the creek, slowly motoring past beautiful houses, and docks, and trees, and little marinas. we went until the shores got quite close together, and the houses stopped, and it was quite dark, then turned around and went down the creek, back to cricket. it was very fun to just "lounge" on jiminny, slowly circle him around when there was something of interest to look at, and enjoy the sweet companionship of my best friend, pam!

20090808: back to deltaville

when i finished my night shift at 3am, the winds had picked up considerably, and cricket was doing a good 4 knots on a near run. we had made it all the way to the green marker that signals a port turn towards deltaville, va. from here deltaville marina was only 6 nautical miles away, and on a beam reach we'de be making 5-7 knots, which would blow us there in less than an hour! i kind of knew that pam would not want to try to navigate into the harbour at night, since it is very shallow, and very tricky on the way in. i know i wouldn't've wanted to try. so when she took over her shift it was no surprise that she headed her bow to starboard (east), and on out to sea (or bay). cricket kicked up her heels and danced up and down the waves at a very spritely pace! fun! while i was falling asleep in the bunk, pam and cricket were having a grand time sailing back and forth for four hours in a very fine wind! the wind and cricket had saved some of the best sailing on the bay for our last morning on the big water!
when morning light arrived pam woke me from my dreams of bouncing up and down on the trampoline to a very beautiful, cool, windy morning. it was time to go to our last anchorage : ( right out from the deltaville marina. pam did an excellent job of piloting us through to our stopping spot, and kept cricket from dragging her feet to her haul out spot. we were tired when we anchored, and tried to nap, but somehow couldn't. so we got into jiminny, dinghied over to the marina (a very short ride), paid the $35 a week to use their facilities, and showered to our heart's, and dirty hair's content! we then took the cute little deltaville marina's bicycles into town to the cocomo restaurant for tuna bites, a crab cake sandwich, a caesar salad with a tuna steak, a corona and a pina colada. all very good. all went down very easily!
biked back. dinghied back, and had "movie night' aboard cricket. while a windy and rainy storm was a-stormin' out side, we watched "the hunt for red october" on the laptop with great pleasure, nice and dry inside. we went out on deck afterwards to enjoy the cool night air and the moon coming out from the shreds of clouds for a wee bit, and then turned in. big day tomorrow... time to begin getting cricket ready for the haulout.