Kaimusailing

It was the last Pizza Night in the boatyard, I was going up to Crisfield and bringing the pizza oven with me. It was a night of pizzas being consumed as they came onto the cutting board and got cut up. Gone, gone, gone. I made sure I got a slice from each one, as usual, and they were very good, except for the first one.
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When the timer went off and I checked the first pizza to take it out of the oven, it was kind of cooked, maybe like the local Ops pizza place, but not completely. The temperature on the oven was down to 600 degrees, the propane cylinder that had done so great for so long must be spent. I panicked and got a small cylinder with an adapter and screwed it together, tried to fire the oven, no go. More panic. The oven was hot, the pizza was still in it, but not done yet, how could I get in there and rectify the situation. I ran around, I had one of Rough Rider Lynn’s donated crocheted dish wash cloths that I use for my hot cast iron skillet, and I found a leather glove outside the door to the woodshop, dusted it off, came into the communal kitchen and lifted the top of the oven off and set it aside. Not much room there. Put the pizza stones on the edge of the oven. Got the oven to work by taking the propane line apart and cleaning out some moisture.
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I must preface this scenario with what was going on on the communal porch. Two girls, young and giggly, invaded the kitchen before I got there, maybe more than once, and were grabbing utensils, bowls, and asked about the toaster oven. We ended up organizing things around their baking needs. Yes, I said, use the toaster oven with the custom made, (by me), pizza stone. They baked cookies for the boatyard. I had to work to make dough and I thought about these youngsters. They were very polite. I ended up having to put the pizza oven on top of the defunct communal clothes washing machine. I made room where I needed to make room and made room for the girls and their giggly cookies.
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I got the oven working on a little 1 pound cylinder. The delay brought the usual group of pizza customers. The first pie, kind of half baked on one side, went right away. I couldn’t believe how fast it was consumed. We were about a half hour behind schedule. Others arrived. It was a strange pizza night. We jostled for space, the pizzas were coming out, the girls had cookies and maple flavored bars. I didn’t care, my crust was good, and the pies came out. I used some fresh tomatoes, sliced, on some of the pies. Great, they really made a difference.
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The auction for the Tartan 27 was due to end the next day at 4:30 PM. We went to a small bistro in St. Marys called Pauly’s and had late lunch and a lot of beer. When the auction ended I had been outbid by 50%. No problem. I had just wanted to be the buyer if the boat went really cheap.
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A large wooden ketch came in on a flatbed trailer truck, someone said it must be a Cheoy Lee. I searched through the old ketches made by Cheoy Lee in sailboatdata.com, but none of them looked like this one. I searched the boat name, Shalimar, and found it was not a Cheoy Lee, it was a different Asian boatyard, made in Japan, a William Garden design called a Mariner 40. I took a photo of it and may use it.
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Everyone said it was impossible to get a rental car these days and I needed a one way rental to bring my stuff up to Crisfield. What had worked before was to book a rental from airport to airport, JAX to BWI, pick up the car at the Jacksonville airport, bring it to the boatyard, load it with all my junk, drive up to Crisfield, unload the junk, then drive up to Glen Burnie, where the Baltimore airport is. Then Cornelia Marie can bring me back down to Crisfield. It would be a great plan if she went along with it and she said she had no problem with it. She stipulated that I bring the circular saw down so she could make a picnic table, part of the plan for the yard at the house.
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I went to Priceline, who I had said I would not use again, just to see what they came up with. The two cheapest car rentals at the Jacksonville airport were Thrifty and Dollar, and maybe they were buddies. They both had the option to let the rental agency choose the vehicle for the price of a compact. Now, the bigger vehicle I had, the more of my junk I could bring. The bigger vehicles cost more. When I picked up the car they asked if I would take a pickup truck, YES!
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This grand plan is a lot like when people move and they all say moving is hell. This was like a mini-hell, a pickup truck load of stuff is not like moving house. It took a couple days to find and pile up the stuff. The weather was dry, so I just piled it all up and when the truck arrived, loaded it with no tarp or tie downs. The vehicle was a quad cab GMC Canyon with a short bed, too short to take the free kayak. It was pretty well filled with tools, clothes, fiberglass and epoxy supplies, some kitchen stuff, tool boxes, adapters, navigation aids, a couple of computers, more adapters, and of course the pizza oven and its propane fittings along with a box of pizza pans, etc.
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The fridge was now empty except for a half empty can of Cento tomato puree. We had lunch at the airport when picking up the truck and dinner at the gas station restaurant. Pitchers of beer, others had some sort of Scotch whiskey. Some of us were leaving the next day, others soon after.
I will miss those guys, for now, hic.
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In the morning I brought a few last things, associated with morning coffee and supplement pills. I brought covid masks even though I was fully vaccinated, and a few other offhand items on my way off of Kaimu and into the bright red pickup truck. Later I would ask Radio Bill to trice up the swimming ladder, I had forgotten, we don’t want the imps of the yard playing up on the deck, that was described as an obstacle course.
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I started at 7:17 AM which was early for me and got into morning rush hour traffic. The truck was very powerful but was making about 25 miles to the gallon. If you mashed down the gas pedal, you had to worry about the picture frame in the back, it might fly away. I think the fuel tank is between 16 and 20 gallons, anyway, I had to stop to relieve the kidneys about when we had consumed ¼ tank. That was about 4 gallons or so, I mean the fuel. It looked like I could make the trip with just one fill up, if I wanted to stretch things out, but putting ten bucks of fuel in was quick and easy and coincided with stops for breakfast, lunch, and kidney relief.
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The worst stop was when I got hungry in the afternoon and unwisely got a Hardee’s roast beef sandwich. It looked so nice on the display, it was a dense mixture of oily bacon, salt, and oily salty roast beef. That, with an iced coffee was 8 bucks. What a waste. Fortunately it was so bad I didn’t contaminate myself with much of it.
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The lack of nutrition and the lack of proper geographical research by Google combined to have me struggling with the approach to the Cheseapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, or CBBT. I have struggle to approach it from the sea, but now I was being directed around some mighty nasty neighborhoods. I ended up going where I didn’t want to go, in a very indirect way, dangerous, twisty, turny, full of red lights, but eventually putting me on the CBBT, and out on it, distracted by a ship churning its way out to sea, the beautiful weather, and the thumping humping nature of the roadbed. It’s like a roller coaster. The best thing is now there are humans taking your toll money in cash, where the pandemic had only electronic charges that with a rental would be levied by the rental company, with a surcharge, and I will be charged for a different smaller toll, the toll will be less than a third of the rental company’s charge, but the CBBT cash toll is less than the rental company’s surcharge, so some good, some bad.
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The roll up RT 13 was familiar to me, we did it many times when I was a youngster in the Navy, going up from Norfolk to NYC. I certainly seems different now, I never knew about the Eastern Shore and the lands I was going through then. A sailor sailing on the road past lands of real sailors, fishermen, crabbers, oystermen, all along the path of RT 13. Now I was running up the mileage, the peninsula is long and there are many places to see on the Bay side and on the Atlantic side. I ran past them to Crisfield. The landscape changed to a flat one of pine and signs to historic places along DelMarVa.
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I had Google Maps directing me into Crisfield, but when I got into town I took a left at the Food Lion and then a right onto Cove Street, past the house, to the corner of the marina, protected by its huge wrought iron fence, and then to the gate, which was closed, inconvenient because I didn’t know how to get it open. I had never been able to open that gate, but was able to open the pedestrian gate to get my bicycle through. The only time I or CM could get a vehicle into the marina was when it was already open. I sat there, fortunately with a little green card of gate codes and phone numbers. None of the gate codes worked, but the phone number got a quick reply and he replied he would let me in right away. At the same time a lady was exiting on the exit side of the gate and she stopped and came over. I explained I had never been able to open the gate to get a vehicle in, and she was able to deduce a code that opened the gate. We spoke a bit about DOCKWA, which is an internet intermediary that is supposed to help manage marinas and their members, but doesn’t work for many, including me. I will have to do it in person and buy a new Somers Cove Marina hat, in green, because my green cap has green bottom paint on most of it.
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The image is a photo of the Mariner 40 at St Marys Boat Services.