Opua: rainy day
Opua: rainy day
Slow intermittent rain today. The photo was taken this morning looking east. I was able to row ashore to shower and buy a few things at the general store before it started. With the overcast, the temperature has remained in the low 50ties F. No fire needed this morning.
By contrast yesterday with a clear sky was the coolest and warmest since I returned. 40ºF when I got up and 65ºF in mid-afternoon.
I had two surprises when I decided to power off the mooring late yesterday morning. The first was that I didn’t go anywhere.
Although a day earlier I had briefly put the engine into gear and we seemed to move forward and back within the short tether of the mooring, when I dropped the pennant yesterday and put the diesel into gear, the mooring remained just off the bow. Tried reverse. Nothing. Fortunately there was no wind or current so I could still reach the mooring float with a boat hook. When I lifted it by the fiberglass pick-up stick, I got the second surprise: it’s formerly smooth surface has weathered and small particles of fiberglass imbedded themselves in my hands.
I got in the dinghy with the boat hook and felt along the shaft for the folding prop. Couldn’t see it, but pulled its blades open and closed. Tried the engine again and we moved. Powered around for a half hour.
I expected the prop to be foul after six months. Need to get lifted out for an hour to clean it and perhaps power wash the hull. That part of the bottom that I can see seems only to have slime, not hard growth
Around noon today I made a Skype call to Carol. My MacBook has a built-in camera and I bought an add-on webcam for her PC. We could see one another, but I could not hear her, so redialed to the condo telephone instead. With seven hours time difference (actually seventeen but easier to think of going the shorter distance) lunch time here was dinner time yesterday there, She was having grilled shrimp and a martini. I had a pastrami sandwich and a cup to tea to get warm.
After hanging up I activated the Slingbox and saw that she was watching tennis. I watched, too, for a little while. Quite unbelievable that we were watching the same television 9,000 miles apart.
I then fit the new water tank. In removing the old one I exposed parts of the storage area beside the starboard quarter berth for the first time in more than a decade. Sprayed with Exit Mold. Found an old very rusty wrench and something unidentifiable once made of fabric.
The two books added to the most recent read list, PAYBACK by Thomas Kelly and DECEMBER 6 by Martin Cruz Smith, were my airplane books. Finished DECEMBER 6 at San Francisco Airport and PAYBACK here on the boat. Neither are their author’s best, but good for the flight.
I’ve started a non-fiction book, THE RIVER OF DOUBT, about Theodore Roosevelt’s journey down the Brazilian River of that name, and Byron’s DON JUAN.
Rain has stopped. Going to run the engine to charge batteries. Not getting much from solar panels today.
Sunday, August 26, 2007