Wow, November already…
Rainy, drizzly day out today. My bread dough rose fairly well, so my bread making is still good to go! After I punched the dough down and transferred it to bread pans to let rise again, I headed to the marina lounge. I worked on getting Outlook Express operating on Wayne’s computer while Wayne tried to figure out the plumbing on the boat. He didn’t have much luck other than figuring out the plumbing looks like a god-awful mess (his quote). After I got back onboard I finished making the bread. I don't think there's anything better than the smell of freshly baking bread & we ended up just having bread for dinner. Not a well-balanced meal day, but tasty – especially on a chilly day. While polishing off Janet Evanovich’s book 9 in the Stephanie Plum series I was wishing I remembered where I stashed the peanut butter while unpacking. Bet that would go good on the warm, homemade bread I was munching on.
Monday, November 02, 2009
Mack showed up this morning with Joe and John boat lift driver extraordinare (pic at right), and the boatlift to take the rudder off. Mack is not having a good 24 hours. A large dog attacked him while his wife and he were out riding on his motorcycle last night, and he has no heat at home. He broke a tool on our rudder shaft this morning and hurt his hand. But he got it all taken apart. He told me that I had been a big hit on Halloween. Oh? I guess I came up in their meeting this morning. Wayne said, “Yep, I told you she was quite the witch”. Um, yah… It was good to know that I was a hit though because I really did have fun.We still don’t have all the parts in and later in the day got some more bad news. The propeller shaft is worn down where it hits the cutlass bearing so even with a new cutlass bearing there would still be wobble. So we now are waiting for a new propeller shaft too. Mo money… but at least its only 3 ft. long - so not as costly as some others. It looks like we’re going to be here another week. I sure hope we get south farther before the snow starts flying. It’s been cold again at nights and our heater is now… not working… Wonder if they’d notice a witch sleeping on the couch in the lounge.
We ran to the hardware store to find parts for the foot pump for Wayne’s plumbing job but after searching around awhile, decided he didn’t have the diameter of the tubing on the boat so we nixed that and went and got another load of water at fire station and came back to the boat.
Made chicken & stuffing with some green beans for dinner now for some more reading – “Ten Big Ones” and Wayne’s on Number Nine of the Plum series. It’s funny to hear him chuckle so much.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Cool day out today. I ended up staying in my sweats. Mack came by for a bit this morning to clean up the bottom of the rudder foot (where the rudder attaches to the keel) and to let us know what the latest was on our parts. Theoretically they should be here today sometime (mhmm). I took some pictures of the guys then got some more coffee. Went to the Marina lounge to check out my settings on the new blog and to see if I could pull it up on Wayne’s computer – success, then added a few weather sites to his favorites menu on Internet Explorer. Freddy was there at the table doing his school work with his mom (from the English boat Shiver) and wasn’t real happy this morning. Somebody made away with his chili pepper plant last night. The mystery of the missing chili peppers.
Wayne was still trying to figure out which way to go with installing a foot pump at the sink when I got back and was not happy with the way the plumbing is set up in the boat. While Wayne went to the showers, I went and chatted with Jim on Frosty’s Fantasy then came back and worked on the blog settings, and downloaded my camera pictures. Patrick from Foxglove was going into town to the hardware so we waited from him to come back then went into town for water, fuel and groceries. 
When we got back, Wayne decided that we needed to do something about bowsprit so went to the office to see if someone could look at it for us. The backing plate is angling up into the wood and it looks a bit splintered. It’s not looking in very good shape when we looked at it from below and we’re trying to figure out a way of keeping it viable until we pull the boat in the spring again. Wayne would like to have some sort of backing plate made for this winter and then dismantle it and redo it during the summer. The guy from the boatyard showed up to look at our bowsprit. After climbing up a ladder and looking at it, the gentleman from the boatyard said “you have one of them there hollow bowsprits and from a liability standpoint, I couldn’t make a backing plate for it”. From the liability standpoint that made sense, but the bowsprit being hollow didn’t make a lot of sense. Wayne and I looked at each other, then Wayne went up the ladder and couldn’t figure out what he was talking about – the bowsprit is solid wood except where it’s splitting and crushed by the old backing plate. After fingering around the damaged area and feeling wood all around, I don’t either of us would be comfortable with him making a plate for us or doing work on the sprit if he really thinks that this is a hollow bowsprit. I’ll have to check online with the Bayfield group and see if any of them have any ideas. After the yard guy left we stood around chatting with Jim and Christine from Baroness and Patrick from Foxglove of Meon. Patrick came up with the idea of perhaps epoxying it for now – Wayne seems to like that idea.Christine and Jim are going into the water bright and early tomorrow. Time for them to get rid of extra stuff they don’t need. We took a boat hook they were pitching and it was a shame we couldn’t have used one of the 3 anchors they were getting rid of – they looked in pretty good shape.
I heated up last night’s spaghetti and sautéed some mushrooms in butter and wine to go with it along with some broccoli spears. It’s getting dark earlier and with the time change, that makes it worse. Time to polish off book eleven in the Stephanie Plum series.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Happy Birthday Penelope! We’re still at the boat yard.
There are gales expected for tonight and tomorrow but they’re hanging out until Saturday on the docks.
I tried working on linking the blog to my site again, after watching Baroness go into the water, then ended up undoing all my work because it was still giving me errors. Then Wayne and I took a couple bikes to the hardware store to look for parts for the foot pump. After an hour of browsing there, I left Wayne and went next store to the second hand shop to browse a bit and then back to Hurds Hardware. Wayne still wasn’t having any luck and someone directed us to go to Walden’s Marina over near Cocomo’s Restaurant. That turned out to be a very good lead and Wayne ended up getting his fittings and tubing there.Back at the boat, I tried unsuccessfully to work on the DNS settings again while Wayne napped. I think Wayne is starting to feel poorly – hope it’s not the flu. It seems to have hit Virginia pretty hard.
The internet/broadband connection wasn’t very good and I finally got frustrated and packed up my computer to the marina lounge to work. Thought I was making good progress – it was nice and quiet until a family of kids came in and turned up the T.V. and then I lost track of where I was with the CNAME/ANAME and other settings. Somehow I ended up directing everyone from my website to some Spam page that said “YOU WON…Pick your prize”… needless to say I deleted all the work once again and reset all my settings back to the original ones (I hope).
I was going to do some laundry, but Christine came in and after a discussion I found out the laundry machine was broken. She was going to head into Gloucester for laundry since she wouldn’t be able to do it in Norfolk.
Heading back to the boat I ran into the guy that handles the boat yard stuff and he told me that our parts wouldn’t be in until Monday. He also said I should check out the oyster festival in Urbana this Friday and Saturday since we were still going to be here. He said it’s a big to do here and they get 30-40,000 people that show up for it. They have fritters, patties, stews, and every other way imaginable to serve oysters. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’m not overly fond of oysters. He was talking about going there after work tomorrow. I’m just exasperated that the parts still aren’t in. He said the guy that works on this stuff is usually pretty good at getting things to the boatyard and didn’t understand what the holdup is. After listening to the guy at Walden’s Marina talking about all his guys being in Urbana today and tomorrow, I think I know what the problem is – oysters.
Came back to the boat and gave Wayne the bad news. He was laying on the floor in the dark looking under the sink trying to connect the foot pump to a hole he drilled under the cabinet.
Gin and tonic for him and I swept up the wood shavings and made dinner – chicken, stuffing, broccoli and carrots. Hey maybe we can rent a car and explore some of Virginia since we’re going to be stuck here… Wayne agreed that we should get a car if they had weekend specials and Enterprise does so we reserved one for the weekend. They’ll pick us up around 11 tomorrow and we return it on Monday by noon o’clock. $23.85/day will let us do a tour of the surrounding area in Virginia.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Enterprise said they’d be here around 10:00 but when they got here, there was no room for us and we had to wait until 11:00 am. When we got into Gloucester, Enterprise printed out a map for us to get to Williamsburg, Yorktown, etc… Then we went to Walmart for odds and ends. I got a small heater and toaster for when we’re in port. The little heater seems to be working okay. It doesn’t put out much, but maybe it will keep the dampness and cold to a minimum in the boat. These 35-45 degree nights get a bit nippy without heat. I can’t believe that our heater decided to kick the bucket. We can’t figure out what’s wrong with it – the wires we trace seem okay. Can’t find the bloody fuses for it but with the smell of burning plastic and exhaust fumes the last time we ran it – I’m not sure what the problem is. Wayne will like his snuggies that the girls got him when he’s standing in the cold at the helm this year. There’ll be no running below for warmth. I think he’s starting to catch a cold – oh no… He’s coughing a lot and starting to get stuffy.
Saturday, November 07, 2009
Pretty looking day out. We decided to take a run into Norfolk today. We visited to Nauticus, the Battleship Wisconsin, took a tour of the Naval Yard and then went to Sam’s Club over at Newport News.
The tour of the Battleship Wisconsin was amazing. We took a self guided tour around her decks. The anchor chains are huge – each link weighs 120 lbs. I couldn’t imagine trying to stop those chains from being let out. The armament is impressive – tomahawk missiles, harpoon missles, nine 16” 50 caliber guns in 3 turrets each weighing 3000 tons with a range of 23 nautical miles (each gun going off is like hurling a small car 23 miles), twelve smaller 5” 38 caliber guns and a close in weapons system. I don’t think I’d want to tackle her in our little 36’ sailboat with flare guns… actually I don’t think I’d want to tackle a battle ship in any vehicle. It’s like a city within a city – you could get lost (I did) on this ship! Built in 1939 and launched in Dec. of 1943, she saw her first combat at Iwo Jima in 1945. In 1948 she was placed out of commission an in reserve in the Atlantic Reserve Fleet in Norfolk and then was later recommissioned. She served in Okinawa, the Korean War, and in 1990 made the 8500 nautical mile trip to the Persian Gulf in 16 days. 25 knots is a whole lot faster than we move (6 knots for us). She was decommissioned for the 3rd time in 1991 after leading the “Parade of Ships” for Fleet Week in N.Y. Harbor and in 1995 was removed from the list of active ships. In 96 she came back home to the Norfolk Naval Shipyard then moved to the Naval Base in Norfolk. In 2000 she was finally berthed next to Nauticus and from what I understand can be brought back to life if needed, but for now she sits proudly here for visitors to get a glimpse of her history of service.
The yeoman that signed us in saw Michigan on our licenses and groaned “oh no – Michigan!” She was a buckeye and we went back and forth about MI vs OH State. She was fun and said don’t worry – I’m not the one running your tour. LOL
It was a nice tour of the base even if all the ships had departed on the previous Monday. He wasn’t sure why or where they all went, but it was interesting to note that they had carriers, cruisers, destroyers in port that all disappeared so we didn’t get to see many ships at dock. The remaining ships were destroyers, frigates and cargo ships. He did take us by 2 attack submarines when he found out I was into subs. He’d done duty on subs and I think was pleased to see someone that was into subs. Wayne was bummed that all the big ships were gone and is speculating that they headed to Iran since there is no hurricane in the area to move the fleet out to see. The Ships Crest
· Seven rays of sunlight signify the crown atop the Statue of Liberty and the seven seas.
· Central focus placed on the Twin Towers and the bow of the ship, forged from Twin Towers steel.
· Breastplate of the phoenix bears the colors of first responders from the New York Police Department, New York Fire Department, and Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
· Blood drops represent the fallen.
· Three stars for those earned by the battleship USS NEW YORK (BB34) in World War II at Iwo Jima, Okinawa and North Africa.
Wayne was disappointed because he didn’t get to see any carriers up close and personal. It was an interesting tour to see the base from the land viewpoint. Last time we came by it was via water so we got a new perspective on it.
After the tour we went to Sam’s Club for batteries, chips, munchies, etc… then back to Deltaville. Brought home a rotisserie chicken from Sams for dinner. It was quite tasty with salad but Wayne just ate the chicken. I think he’s feeling worse today. Oh no – my glands are starting to feel swollen. Tomorrow’s a new day.
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