Our Favorite 2008 Pictures

Marathon, FL

No LL

We have been to a lot of places and seen a lot of things this year. Libby and I sat down with our thousands of pictures from 2008 and picked 36 as our favorites. Here they are in random order. Captions describe left-to-right, top-to-bottom. Happy New Year.

1. Son John attempts the illusion
2. Super hero Libby on a Bahamian beach
3. Rose Buddies monument in Elizabeth City
4. Dick caught napping in the Smithsonian
5. One of Mel Fisher's treasure artifact in Sebastian Florida
6. At the fish market in Washington DC
7. The King of Bhutan
8. Libby and daughter Jenny in the American Art Museum
9. Rub a dub dub three men in a tub; John, father in law Dick, and Dick -- Rockland Harbor Maine.

1. The year's best picture -- Libby and Dick take lunch in Key West
2. The year's best sunset -- Block Island, RI
3. The Butterfly Conservatory -- Key West.
4. Dick's nightly ritual blowing the conch horn at sunset
5. Lovingly quaint house and garden in Hopetown Bahamas
6. A beach on Ocracoke Island North Carolina.
7. Albert Einstein paternal figure Washington DC
8. Dick's encounter with Hillary Clinton -- National Building Museum, Washington DC
9. The shell warehouse, Key West

1. 

1. Jenny tries the illusion.
2. Libby and sister Nancy thrill with speed -- Buzzards Bay, MA
3. A classical family pose, The National Mall, DC
4. Tarwathie under sail, Narraganset Bay, RI
5. Four Osprey occupy a buoy, LaTrappe Creek, Maryland
6. A wonderful garden, Hopetown Bahamas
7. Fog rolls in, Isle La Haut, Maine
8. Libby gets the guided tour, Cambridge, Maryland
9. A dolphin loafs, Abacos Bahamas

1. Dick writes a blog, Belfast Maine
2. Bayside Maine
3. The yacht club we belong to, Bayside Maine
4. A apropos sign, Beaufort, South Carolina
5. Grandson Nick, Jewel Island Maine
6. At the fish market, Washington DC
   
7. Pure beauty, location unknown
8. Nick surveys the heights, Acadia National Park, Maine
9. New Providence Cemetary, Bahamas, graves are sunken to prevent flowers from blowing away.
   

Pineapple Pineapple

Marathon, FL
No LL

We made some new friends, Jim and Renate on Emerald Sea. They told us about a standard practice that is so sensible, that Libby and I vow to adopt it for Tarwathie. Here it is:

Whenever Libby and I find ourselves in disagreement over exactly where we are, because of navigation confusion; we say pineapple-pineapple. That is the signal to stop the boat dead until the doubt is resolved and we agree once again. That is an outstandingly good policy.

By the way, Jim and Renate explain that the origin of the phrase pineapple-pineapple was a Steve Irwin movie that we did not see. No matter, pineapple-pineapple serves just as well as any other phrase to trigger this standard practice.

p.s. I just looked up the Steve Irwin clip on you tube. It is hilarious. I embedded it below. Have a look, you'll love it.

Living In Limited Space

Marathon, FL
No LL

Many people wonder how we manage to live in so little space. After all, we do almost all our living in a space 10x18 feet (180 square feet, 17 square meters). Actually, the living is the easy part and we don't feel cramped at all. The really hard part is maintaining and repairing within the same space.

For example, our dinghy sprung a leak. Water leaked in through a crack in the fiberglass. I've tried again and again to fix it with various temporary repair methods, but the leak continued to grow worse. For months, we have had to bail the dinghy every time we get in to it and while en route. Repairing it is difficult because either (a) we are in port and we use the dinghy every day to go to shore or (b) we are en route and the dinghy is in its chocks upside down under the mast. Therefore, the inside of the dinghy is always either wet or inaccessible.

The only previous time we got to do work in the interior of the dinghy was when we spent three days at Blackbeard Sailing Club in New Bern. There, we were able to put the dinghy on the dock to do repairs.

Yesterday I ran out of patience. We did something that we never attempted before. Libby and I managed to lift the dinghy up to the forward deck and set it down right-side-up. That gave me the access I needed. Yesterday afternoon I applied fiberglass cloth and epoxy resin to the places where there were cracks. This morning, I repainted the interior of the dinghy. (See the picture) By tomorrow, it should be ready to splash once again.



Inconvenience in lifting is not the whole problem. We also have to find space in our limited room to stow tools, repair materials and never used emergency gear. In my starboard lazarette compartment, for example, I store an emergency starting battery, storm sails, bulky type 1 life vests that we never wear, and my paint locker storing assorted paints, chemicals, cleaners, and brushes. That, combined with the tool boxes and compartments inside the cabin that we dedicate to tools and parts, amounts to about 1/3 of our total storage capacity. We use more volume to store tools and maintenance supplies than we have for food.

The most difficult of all jobs is to do interior spring cleaning and or interior painting. To do that, we have to remove everything from inside the boat. Where do we put it while cleaning? Up on deck of course. While doing that, our boat looks like a floating junkyard. Heaven help us if a thunderstorm came along while we were in the middle of that process.

Try to imagine vacuum cleaning your car from the inside while you have yourself and one passenger in the car with the vacuum cleaner.

By the way, lest you think that I am bragging about my superior skills in doing difficult jobs; let me reveal my screw up. When the painting job was all done, I took off my disposable gloves, picked up the materials, disposed of the trash and went back in to the cabin for a cup of coffee. When I sat down for the coffee, I saw gray paint on the floor of the cabin. How did that happen? I discovered one of the disposable gloves stuck to the bottom of my shoe. Sigh. I had to scramble to back track and clean up all the paint spot footprints where I walked before the paint dried.

Steering 2

Marathon
No LL

Once again, this post is for the benefit of our non-boating friends.

I presume that all of us are completely familiar with the task of steering a car or a bicycle using the front wheels. It seems completely natural.



When making a sharp turn around a corner, the rear wheels track closer to the corner than the front wheels (see above). Trucks and busses must avoid running over the curb with the rear wheels.

A boat uses a rudder to steer from the rear. Since rear-wheel-steering cars are very rare, we have little or no experience with that. When you turn a sharp corner with a rear wheeled car, the back of the corner swings out away from the curb and makes a wider turn than the front. This can be a problem for novice boaters.




One day in Titusville, Florida I witnessed an incident similar to that shown in the picture below. A boat came in to the marina and he wanted to pull in to an empty slip on his right. To allow himself plenty of room to make the turn, he came in close to the boats on the left. He was thinking like a car driver. He wound up crashing in to a number of the boats on his left.
An experienced skipper would have know that a boat in the position of the green boat shown above is doomed. There is no way to steer to avoid crashing from that position, except perhaps to back out. If he stops or slows down, the wind and waves will push him in. The only way to avoid crashing in this situation would be to enter the corridor more to the right.

Christmas Dinner

Marathon, FL
No LL

We just returned from Christmas Dinner at Dockside Bar and Grill. Dockside hosted the party for cruisers in the harbor and they provided the turkey and ham, but the cruisers all brought a dish to make it a pot luck dinner.

The setting was perfect. We sat on the deck cantilevered out over the water. The temperature was 79F (26C). What's not to like?

I said it before, but it's worth saying again. The hospitality and friendliness of Marathon is just wonderful. We're grateful to be here. On the other hand, being away from kids and grandchildren on Christmas sucks. It is the one day of the year that we wish we weren't cruising.