Kaimusailing

I wanted to do something constructive, so I made breakfast. It was going to be a hot day in early April, not unusual these days. I went shopping for ingredients for further breakfasts and for a soup, cream of chicken, florentine style. When I got back and stowed the perishables I spent some time relaxing and then decided to do something. I’ll pump out the rain water that has percolated in the hulls for some time.
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I planned on using my battery booster pack to power the portable bilge pump, but nothing happened. I thought maybe the pump had sat too long and was bound up. It was not. The power pack might be dead, I plugged its charger in and nothing happened. I got my meter, the charger was putting out nothing. The power pack was nearly down to 0. I gave up.
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After lunch I got the brilliant idea to attach one of my battery chargers to the output cables of the power pack and charge it that way. Meanwhile I attached clamps to the leads of the portable bilge pump and took it into the starboard hull bilge. I ran its hose outside and turned the pump on. It ran and pumped a lot of water. What remained was sponged into a bucket.
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I ordered a 12v brick battery to power the pump and the electric bos’un’s chair.
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The Masters golf tournament was on TV and I watched a bit. A tornado warning came across the screen, St. Marys was one of the towns under warning. I went to wunderground.com and saw that there was a small craft warning, severe thunderstorm warning, rip current warning, as well. The afternoon breeze was increasing and the golf tournament was suspended due to lightning. Up on deck I saw a roll cloud coming and took a photo of it. The wind kept increasing and it started to rain. I closed hatches, tarpaulined the work table under the boat and the electric tools there. Thunder crashed and we had a genuine lightning storm with horizontal downpour on top of everthing. More rainwater for the bilge.
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The storm continued all night and it was overcast and drizzling in the morning. My plan was to make the Florentine soup today, but the electric hot plate I use was in Rough Rider Lynn’s hands, and the hot plate they normally use was in the communal kitchen for my attempt at repair. No go. The internal screws that hold the heating element were too corroded to get at what I thought would be an open circuit. Later the working hot plate appeared and I began to make the soup.
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First a bag of spinach was added to the colander inside the stock pot. A bunch of kale was trimmed from its ribs and added. An onion was diced and added. 6 cups of water with 3 scoops of chicken bouillon were added as well as a tablespoon of montreal chicken spice. The stock pot was full to the brim, but after a while the greens cooked down and boneless skinless chicken thighs were added and steamed on top the veggies for about 45 minutes.
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The chicken thighs were tonged out of the pot onto a cutting board and the colander was removed from the pot and set draining on a plate. The broth was cycled through a fat separator after first transferring to a large bowl. The pot was rinsed out and the separated fat was added along with some butter. Flour was added and the roux was cooked for a few minutes. The broth was slowly added while the roux was allowed to boil and thicken. The veggies were added and the soup continued to thicken. The chicken thighs were sliced and diced small and added. I tasted the soup and added a little liquid smoke to it. Finally a quart of half and half were added and the soup was finished.
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The photo is of the roll cloud when the front came through. The yacht in the photo is a beautiful Hinckley 59 ketch.