September 6 & 7:
A couple times a month someone breaks the red parking lot gate. This time they were nice enough to leave their cell phone on the ground, which I answered when it rang. That was fun. I left it for them to pick up, but I should have told them to pick it up at the marina office whenever they can and told the marina, “this is the person who keeps breaking your gate.” Oh well, maybe I got myself some good cell phone karma. This weekend was what I would consider as the start of my favorite time of year. After Labor Day, the crowds are gone yet the weather actually (normally) gets even better through October.
On Friday night I had some laundry to do, 6 loads in total, and Mia helped out. Fortunately the laundromat is conveniently close and empty on a Friday night so everything was done getting washed and dried in a short time - but I take about 3 hours to fold my clothes, so I was up until a out 1am.
On Saturday morning it was sunny and hot, a few errands and chores were done - such as filling the water tanks - I tried to provide photo examples of the before and after of the bows waterline. I can always tell the tanks are almost out of water because the bottom paint is visible for about 3 inches out of the water. After weighing down the boat we decided to go out for a sail to bluff cove. It was a choppy and bumpy short-interval waves kind of sea-state. It felt okay sailing in but as soon as we anchored I felt like garbage. The boat rocked and tossed so much it was almost washing water over the side rail. I tried the “rocker stoppers” but didn’t have enough weight to anchor them down. I thought a filled-up water bottle would do that trick but I was wrong. So after trying to relax in the sun, but really just holding on to things so we didn’t fall off the boat, we decided to sail away. That’s when I pulled in about 80’ of anchor line so only about 40’ was left of chain an rope. This is when the fun started.
With the boat on shorter line it seemed to bounce more in the choppy swells. Things were swaying everywhere as we geared up to sail away. That’s when I noticed the main halyard had wrapped around the radar-detector in front of the mast, about ¾ of the way up. Could not raise the sail, I tried to whip the halyard loose but when I took a break and looked around, we were drifting close to shore. Mia fired up the engine so we would not sail off the anchor after all. Now, I was pulling up the anchor and realized it had scooped up an entire seaweed plant that stretched from sea floor to surface, it was heavy. As I pulled as hard as I could to slowly get the anchor up, and the couple hundred pounds of soaked slippery seaweed along with it, we were slowly heading out into the open water.
I eventually was able to hold on through the motion and only let the anchor slide out of my grip once, back into the water with the weight of speed drag, anchor, and seaweed fighting against me. But soon it was up and tied down, and I pulled all of the plant off of it.
It was obvious that motoring back in the short period diagonal swell was going to be uncomfortable so I figured I should probably try to untangle the halyard using the bumpy and rocking motion of the boat than climb the mast at the dock. What the heck, right?
I used that worthless water bottle weight from before and tied it to the length of the halyard that looked like it could get above the spreader, yet below the radar-detector, and swing out and untangle the halyard. I tied some extra line to the halyard so I wouldn’t completely lose it. After about 1 minute of tugging and timing and pulling with the swells lifting the boat, it somehow worked.
Phew. So we sailed back, mostly down wind and we both started feeling better about it all.
Back at the dock I pulled the chain and rode out and picked off more seaweed that i had to stuff in the locker, and rinsed everything.
Also, the last time I put fuel in the tank was in February, when my mom visited. We topped it off. 7 months later, and what I consider as a decent amount of engine use, all it took was 4 gallons… If only the gas dock didn’t have a monopoly in the marina.
The picture of the wine glass (white grape mimosa actually) was taken while tied to the dock, this shows that even though it feels still and level, it’s not.
I wonder how this will effect how I’ll walk and stand in the next place I live.