Kaimusailing

Coming soon to your favorite channel, “Boatyard”, a new reality show. It’s got everything, redneck bleepholes who get in each others faces, yelling, Russian spies trying to get at the nearby US Navy Submarine Base, hard up local businesses trying to drum up some cockamamie schemes, proud locals who resent those rich yachties who don’t know a thing or two about how to run a boat, Yankee tradesmen who have found a place to work, but are resented also by the proud locals, and the best part: the setting in a Georgia swamp, far from any civilized relief, breeding pond for mosquitosis ferocis, and there is comic relief from the trio of small yapping dogs who seem to be everywhere at once.
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Of course the yapping dogs could wear on you, they wouldn’t be featured every week, but in real life they are the center of activity. They are some kind of dachshund mix, low to the ground, sniffing their way around the yard, yapping in a doggie chorus that draws attention. One of them is known as a doggie thief and when my crossword book disappeared, and I thought my senior moments had finally caught up to me (now, let’s see, where did I leave it...), he had taken it when I turned my back and was chewing on it near an OutIsland 41. He chewed mainly the puzzles I had already done, and later I found out he had chewed the end off my favorite pen. Maybe it was his favorite too. Maybe it was the ink that he was after. Now the pen has run dry.
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I perfected a variation of the egg/bread breakfast dish called “egg in the hole”, “one eyed Conelly”, or “Egg toastie”. My version is called “Super Egg Toastie”. You start by making a standard egg in the hole in the bread, and when you flip it you start another. When you flip the second one, the first one is done, put a slice of cheese on the flipped piece of bread and then put the done one on top, cut the flame, cover the pan, let the cheese melt. Good with a little garlic salt.
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The Doggie Three Amigos gobble up any edible remains that exist, however, when I accidentally dropped one of the Super Egg Toasties into the boatyard dirt, the brown Amigo called “Duke” looked at it and didn’t jump on it or even take a bite. I pushed it at him. He went away, sniffing for something else. Can’t please everyone.
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My efforts to move the galley back on board keep being thwarted by one detail or another. The galley lights have stopped working, maybe because I’ve been ripping things apart to get at repairs, also the galley sink drains onto the makeshift workbench out there right inboard of the starboard hull. Have to move that.
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It was getting too cold and sometimes windy in the morning to make breakfast on the workbench. Maybe it will warm up in a few weeks. I moved the Harbor Freight two burner propane cooktop back into the galley after cleaning the built up crust of sawdust glued together with melted cheese and peanut butter. There were other things on the cooktop, but I’ve only listed the top three ingredients. It was impossible to move the two burner stove and the propane tank on board in one trip, so I climbed up on board twice with them.
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The stove didn’t work right, it sputtered. Maybe the tank was empty or maybe I got water into it somehow when I cleaned it. I waited and tried each burner. They made amazing swirls of blue flame, pulsated, and then went out. I thought as they warmed up, any water would dissipate, but they kept on acting up. If I lit both and turned one up, the other would die down and go out. The propane tank must be empty. I unhooked it and schlepped down the ladder with it and got the other, newly filled, tank.
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It was the same with the new tank. Ugh. I tried everything, twisting the gas hose, shaking the guilty parties, taking it all apart and putting it all back together, nothing seemed to work. Then suddenly all was working well again. But it had grown dark and the galley only had the dim light of the gas stove to see anything. I had prepared chopped onions and sliced mushrooms, and opened cans of diced tomatoes, so I began cooking like a blind man, feeling around and moving things down into the light of the stove to see. There is an app on the cell phone, a virtual flashlight that is very handy, but when you need both hands to do something, like scrape a pile of sliced onions into a cook pan, the light isn’t so helpful.
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I had two pots cooking, one with some kind of chopped meat, onions, mushrooms, some italian spice from the dollar store, and the other with “garden tri-color rotini”, promising a full serving of vegetables in each serving of pasta. When the pasta was almost done I had already uncovered the sauce and let it reduce. The stove was cooking along now the way it was supposed to.
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Add sauce to pasta, dust with parmesan. The remaining sauce will be better tomorrow, if the dogs don’t get it.