Wednesday November 25th 2015
I have patched up the laptop. I searched the internet on my phone and amongst the billions of people pissed off at windows 10 I found someone who said try these four things. Of course it was the fourth thing that worked. I had to create a new user with a different name…now it works. My computer hates me. I have to go incognito, wear dark glasses and a hat (luckily I have the tickle trunk).
Thursday November 26th 2015
We have been here at Red Shanks so long with this wind that I have decided to run for Mayor. The wind was energetic today. All day we were in the 25 range with squalls in the 35ish range. At about 23:00hr on Thursday we had a very interesting squall. It lasted for about 30 minutes with heavy rain and extremely strong winds. Reports of 55kts just north of us in Hooper’s Bay. We did ride it out fine but FRACAS was sailing pretty well on a short oscillation. It was interesting. For you sailors; we are set at 175 feet of 3/8HT chain, 55lb Rocna anchor and a 40# kellet at 150 in 9 to 12 feet of water (tide). We use a bridle at the bow just to keep the chain noise down. The kellet helps to buffer things a bit and helps keep the oscillations down. Fracas has a lot of masts/booms, rigging and windage…
I continue to be the champion in our continuing King’s Cribbage contest…at least until ML reads this… We fill our days reading, doing small projects (projects we can accomplish while the boat moves beneath us), cooking, eating, watching tv and going to be around 20:00hrs. It sounds better when I say that instead of 8pm. I thank Dawson and Julie for introducing me/us to this game. I think I’m at a level I could actually play with you two now. We use a scoring app on the ipad an improvement over you two and your ciphering.
Friday November 27th 2015
Weather; squalls continued through the night, although not to the level of the 23:00hr R squall. This morning was beautiful with the nearly full moon setting in the west and the sun coming up in an almost clear sky to the East. The wind was light but has increased to 20 gusting higher again. We will stay here one more day.
The Laptop continues to work reasonably well. It still won’t work for Greg but does work for “NewUser” a guy about my size who wears a mask, straw hat and has an Icelandic accent. Windows sucks…
I will continue to refurbish rather refeatherbish Woody. He says he is in heat and needs to get off the boat…but he always says that. A Cessna Caravan flew low over us yesterday and he was nearly gone…wet paint and all. Poor Woody.
Stainless steel is not always stainless. At least not all stainless is stainless. I’ve said before that the sea’s goal is to reduce our boats to elements, stainless is used to help slow that process down. We have the expensive stainless cutlery to avoid rusting in the drawer…so far that is working. You try to keep up by rinsing the boat in fresh water and cleaning and polishing the stainless.
My beef, almost every ‘stainless’ screw or bolt that I bought at Rona is rusting merrily away at a much faster rate than any of the other fittings. They certainly have their stuff labelled as stainless and the price certainly suggests that everything is stainless but alas. Not only are they rusting but where and when they do the boat is stained as well. My other beef about the Rona “stainless” fasteners…one in 10 of them break off at the head as they are installed. By quality name brand fittings when you need strength and wear resistance likely 316 and the screws and fasteners will or should be 304.
I still have the aft half of the stainless to clean and polish. A certain amount of surface corrosion happened while she was by herself here with nobody to care for her. Almost all of the tarnish comes off except if there was a scratch, bump or wear on the stainless. Continuing maintenance and protection is required to keep the sea from getting FRACAS.