Winter in Charleston
Feb 8 thru Feb 12
—Blogpost written by Bob
Friday, February 8
I’m running out of breakfast cereal—so, I had to make a trip to Harris Teeter this morning using the courtesy van. I also have to pick up some fresh fruits and veggies to ward off scurvy. (Scurvy is “often caused by malnutrition, mental illness relating to food, restrictive diets lacking fruits and vegetables, addiction to alcohol or other substances, and old age.”) Scurvy is rare nowadays but so are eyelid infections—I’m not taking any chances.
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| Charleston City Marina's courtesy van runs to the West Marine in Avondale (across the Ashley River) at 11 AM every day. |
Whoops, I forgot to mention the weather! It was 67 degrees at 9 AM and the afternoon high temperature was expected to reach 80 degrees. Another beautiful day in the Low Country! (Tomorrow and the next day, the high temperature is predicted to be only in the high 50's!)
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I picked up a light lunch while at Harris Teeter’s and when I returned to the boat and put the groceries away (which is a chore in and of itself), I got to work on refinishing the interior teak around the companionway.
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I usually keep my iPad on the navigation station desk when I'm not using it, many times it is still turned on but it goes into sleep mode after a short period of nonuse. Lola likes to play with things on the navigation station desk, even knocking things onto the floor and batting them around. She left some of her artwork on my iPad this morning.
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Lola's artwork left on my iPad this morning. |
Saturday, February 9
It was noticeably cooler (20 degrees, at least) this morning as a cold front came through early this morning.
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Yesterday at the grocery store I picked up the ingredients I need to make Hot and Sour Soup--one of my favorite Chinese dishes. I got the idea and recipe from Galley Pirates, a culinary blog based on a sailing lifestyle. As usual, I made some modifications--I made the soup in a crock pot as opposed to in a pot on the stove. This is the first time I have every used tofu in a meal--so, that was new to me. I forgot to get sesame oil yesterday so I used some hot oil and olive oil mixed together. I couldn't find our rice wine vinegar--so, I had to substitute for that too. The last questionable ingredient was thickened corn starch but the recipe didn't say how much--this was a wild ass guess on my part. (As it turned out later, my wild ass guess was too little.) We'll see how it turns out tonight for dinner.
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| Hot and Sour Soup starting to cook in the crock pot. The chopped shiitake mushrooms are floating on the surface of the liquid. |
I decided to take it easy today, with my only project being to work on the varnishing of the interior companionway teak. I waited until the cats were sufficiently sleepy so that they weren't coming through the companionway every five minutes like they do in the early morning and late evening. It feels good to do something productive for a change.
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As I have mentioned before on this blog, I am intrigued by the tiny house movement. Two YouTube videos which I recently watched are particularly interesting: Storybook Cottage by the Sea and Boat Builder's Incredible 20ft Shipping Container Home. Just click on the links and I think you will be intrigued too. They are much more that square boxes built on heavy-duty trailers.
Actually, our sailboat is a tiny home, having about 200+ square feet of indoor living space and I can attest to the fact that large homes are a complete waste of resources that require more costly electric bills, mortgages, and time-consuming cleaning and landscaping. It is actually liberating to live "tiny" and to be able to move your home according to your whims.
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Near the end of the day, the first coat of varnish still wan't fully dried. I had the companionway blocked so the cats couldn't run through the fresh varnish during the day.
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| The unevenness in the varnish is a good indication that many more coats are needed. Sanding between coats is very important to get a smooth finish, |
It was very uncomfortable being inside today because of the rough water caused by an easterly wind direction.
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My dinner (hot and sour soup) was pretty good. In the future I would rather use beef broth (rather than chicken broth) and I would chop up the bamboo shoots. But it was very tasty--maybe it will be even better as a leftover...we'll see.
Sunday, February 10
It was rough sleeping last night because of the high wind (25 to 35 knots) and resulting rough sea pattern here in this slip. The nylon spring lines were making creaking sounds all night long but it all calmed down by about 5 in the morning.
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| When I inspected the spring lines in the morning I found this worn point where the line came through the hawser in the toe rail. I changed out one spring line and retied them so that I could relieve some of the wear. |
When I woke up at 7:30 AM to start my day, the sky was overcast and it was a cool 42 degrees outside—I could tell it was cool by the more frequent cycling of our onboard heating system. Weather Underground predicted a high afternoon temperature of 58 degrees for today. Based on the forecast, I should probably wait until after 1 PM (when it is in the mid-50’s) to add another coat of varnish to the interior companionway teak. Even though the teak is inside the boat, the companionway door has to be open subjecting the varnishing to outdoor temperatures.
I decided to make another trip to Harris Teeter this morning and pick up a couple grocery items I missed yesterday and I’ll have lunch while I’m out.
By the time I got back to the boat and unloaded the groceries items I didn't feel like varnishing since I was so tired from not sleeping well last night. Instead, I took a nice afternoon nap. The cats woke me up when it was time for their dinner (about 4 PM). I never got that second coat of varnish applied.
Monday, February 11
When I walked to the shower there was a sliver of sun shining among the mostly overcast sky. I stopped and watched a dolphin swimming against the incoming tide. I am sure he/she was gathering his/her breakfast coming in with the tide. We see them quite often here in Charleston. Shortly after I returned to the boat a rain shower developed and the sun completely disappeared behind the clouds. It is expected to rain both today and tomorrow, maybe not continuously, but lightly and frequent.
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| The rearrangement of the spring lines involved making much longer runs to the cleats on the dock. |
Which reminds me--I have to cut out that section of badly worn rope used for the one spring lines. That sounds like a good little project to start my day.
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| Upon closer examination the worn area was worse than I thought at first. Another day of high wind would probably have caused a complete failure. |
The line was still wet from being outside in the rain. When I tried to cut it with my soldering iron (melting through the line with a hot rope cutting blade) all the energy was absorbed in changing the water into steam--it didn't work. So, I cut the lines with my serrated knife and applied the whipping to the cut ends. I will had to wait for the rope to dry out before melting the ends.
While I was doing rope work, I added chafe protection to the spring line that runs aft--the one that suffered the wear. (I changed the forward spring line to a larger diameter rope.)
Later in the day the old spring line had dried out enough that I could melt the ends beyond the whipping. My rope maintenance was finished for the day by about 2 PM.
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| The whipping applied to one of the cut ends. At this point the ends were not completely finished since I had to wait until the rope was dry. |
While I was doing rope work, I added chafe protection to the spring line that runs aft--the one that suffered the wear. (I changed the forward spring line to a larger diameter rope.)
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| I added chafe protection on the aft (black) spring line. (I have one of the fenders tied off to the hawser--I found this is better than tying it off to a lifeline.) |
Later in the day the old spring line had dried out enough that I could melt the ends beyond the whipping. My rope maintenance was finished for the day by about 2 PM.
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| Lola is my constant helper throughout the day. Here she rests her chin on a new box of cat litter that I purchased yesterday. |
Even though Maggie is not here in Charleston with me right now, I still adhere to "happy hour." Tonight I'm having a Bloody Mary made with Tito's Vodka and a small can of Hot-n-Spicy V8 juice. (It was sooo good that I had to have another one!)
Tuesday, February 12
In the middle of last night I woke up to use the head like I usually do. Suddenly I realized that it had been quite a while since I emptied the liquids container of our composting toilet. When Maggie is away, I usually mark it in my electronic calendar (with an alarm) for every second or third day. But Maggie left in such a rush on Wednesday that I didn't set this up as I normally do. So, in the middle of the last night, I emptied it. It turns out that it was perfect timing because it was almost full. It had been 6 days since it was last emptied!
Looking outside, it was foggy and a light mist was falling from the overcast sky. It was relatively warm. The high temperature for the day was expected to be 68 degrees but not much of a chance of rain until late in the day.
In the afternoon I did more varnishing of the interior companionway teak frame, as the sun came out and warmed everything up. More next time...
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Looking outside, it was foggy and a light mist was falling from the overcast sky. It was relatively warm. The high temperature for the day was expected to be 68 degrees but not much of a chance of rain until late in the day.
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| A view from the main pier looking out over a foggy Ashley River. |
In the afternoon I did more varnishing of the interior companionway teak frame, as the sun came out and warmed everything up. More next time...
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