Kaimusailing

Recently the NY Jets traded away their quarterback, Sam Darnold, to the Carolina Panthers. They then selected Zach Wilson at the #2 pick in the NFL draft. The Panthers meanwhile didn’t select a quarterback in the draft and traded away their previous starting quarterback, Teddy Bridgewater. As a Jets fan, I wanted to evaluate these moves, but there are a lot of YouTube videos with a lot of fanfare, but not much real information. Mostly they are regurgitating information from other internet sites. I was really trying to get more detailed information and I found it at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGfxHp2yuimtLsFaq1r7aIQ. This site has very detailed analysis of the quarterback position, especially college athletes. If you want to know more about details of quarterback play and defensive schemes, this is your go-to place.
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Chagrined that I had left my electrical tool box back in Georgia, I ordered a kit from Amazon which includes crimper and stripper/cutter. We’ll see how it stacks up when it gets here. I also ordered another wifi adapter as a spare. I keep having my adapter crash on deck and even left it out in the rain. It won’t last long under my care. It’s amazing it still works. Also the internet in the marina is spotty. I remembered to also order a pair of 7X50 binoculars, Celestron, cheap and good.
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The electric bos’un’s chair was now working so I decided to go up the mast, with some trepidation. This is a dangerous contraption which is OK when all is working fine, but bad things can happen. I use a separate harness and safety line, but if I fall backwards I could fall out of that too. It’s somewhat of a job to bring the chair, battery, bucket of tools, cordless drill, harness, sort out the halyards, and then bravely go up. What happened was it got increasingly difficult to go up as I got near the spreaders and higher. The hoist line was twisting so it was rubbing on itself and making it hard to keep the chair level. Other problems might be chaffing the line and overloading the winch and the little brick battery I was using. I ended up back on deck, none the worse for wear, but toady’s session was over. I put the battery back on charge.
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I was headed for the showers when I saw the owner of the skipjack I had watched sail into the marina a few days ago. He goes out regularly and as good as the boat looks from a distance, up close it is as pristine as a fine piano. Beautiful. He built the boat himself, he’s Danish. Glad to speak with him. His boat was designed by J. R. Benford.
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I didn’t arrive here last season until into September and then left on Election Day. Got a lot of work done then and felt that I wasn’t doing enough, now I feel the same way, but I have so much more time.
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Flushing the fuel out of the tank and the lines leading to the Atomic 4 have been kept at the back burner, just like fixing the fouled head, or other awful marine tasks. They are at the head of the list, but they implore us to do other things first, everything else will be done before clearing a clogged head.
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Finer Works, the art printer in San Antonio, had mistakenly printed two copies of a test print on the same canvas, I wanted it on two different kinds of canvas to compare. I had no use for the test print itself, I just chose a photo that would show what I wanted. When I told them they had printed on only one kind of canvas the said they would reprint and send me the other kind of canvas. They did so, but unbelievably it came in still printed on the same canvas type as the two previous test prints. I told them about it and they insisted on reprinting the reprint with emphasis on using the correct canvas. At this point I have 3 identical prints of a test photo.
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Cornelia Marie arrived for the weekend and thought we might replace the seat rails in the skiff. Sure, why not, the old ones had rotten spots and were screwed to the inside of the boat with screws from the outside, they would probably fall right off when we removed the screws. Then just drill pilot holes in the new rails, screw them in, then screw down the seats, done, should take about an hour.
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After removing the seats and the screws that held the rails to the boat, the rails just stayed put where they were. Aha, 5200 marine adhesive, hate that stuff. Impervious to most tools, solvents, and even heat won’t affect it much. The technique that evolved was to start at one end of the rail and try to get a pry bar or screwdriver to put some tension on the adhesive, then pass the multitool with either halfmoon blade or scraper blade for an inch or two away from the pry bar, cutting the top seam as well as from the bottom. The pry bar was moved down the line inch by inch. Another useful method is to drive a putty knife with a hammer from above. This took a lot of hammering.
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After removing one rail, 2 hours, we repaired to the Red Shell Shanty for Orange Crushes and split a 12” cheese steak with fried onions and peppers. Back to the porch to rest a bit. I said you know we could take out the other rail right now and be done with it. Do I really wanna? OK, we got the tools out. This is where I thought that heat might help, but it didn’t. The rail came out, just needed more scraping and hammering. The gelcoat had come off with the 5200 in places. CM wondered if we had made a mistake.
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The next day I used the angle grinder with flap disk to clean up the remaining 5200 and any discolored debris. I had the Wet Dry 700 epoxy that someone gave me and it proved perfect for this job. First the new rails, which were not wood but PVC, were put into position by screwing at each end, first drilling a pilot hole, then screwing. Then the rest of the pilot holes were drilled for each screw. A couple of additional screws were added for strength. A mix of the epoxy, which comes out like a stiff paste, was spread onto the areas of bare fiberglass and also on the mating surface of the rails. The rails were smooth on one side and had fake wood grain on the other. I figured the wood grain would help the adhesive. The rails were screwed in place and any epoxy that oozed out was smoothed.
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We cleaned up, I showered and returned to the Red Shell Shanty for O.C.’s. Eve was there and soon CM showed up with Nori the Wonder Dog. Other mainstays of the dining cadre arrived and it was decided to to to CM’s mom’s house on the water near the Small Boat Harbor and have a dinner party. The ladies had prepared summer salads, excellent.
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The next morning I didn’t feel as bad as expected. I was out of water and biked to the city dock and then up to the grocers. I had a tailwind and floated along on the bike, effortless. On the way back it was difficult though. I had to stop to drink water and decided to rest at the Red Shell Shanty’s tent. Nice breeze when you’re not fighting it. The bistro was closed. My older daughter skyped me from England with good news.
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Her construction plans for her house in Oxford were approved after two years of struggle due to the pandemic and a disallowed dormer to be added to her upper story. She had sent a photo of her garden and there in the distance is a nearby house with a similar dormer. This time the argument was retorted by, “Of course those who object to this dormer would be looking at it from their own dormer.”
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The Celestron binoculars came in, 7X50’s, brand new, $40, and the view was bright and clear. Designed for stargazing. The electrical kit came in and it is very nice, new ratcheting crimper for compression terminals, additional crimping dies that I probably will never use, and a wire stripper/cutter. These tools are in a zippered flat pack. Price was about $35 from Amazon.
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It was that time of year for my annual physical, but my doctor is 3 hours away. I called and asked if we could do it remotely, the reply was yes, but it wouldn’t be a full physical, they called it telemed. They emailed me a blood work order and I looked on Google maps for a blood lab. I preferred one that I could bike to and it seemed unlikely that Crisfield would have a blood lab, I would probably have to go to Salisbury or maybe even farther. There was a medical building nearby and I called them. It is called something like Tidal Health. Yes, they could do blood lab work.
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The next day I biked there and it was like a small hospital. The nurse said something about me getting in early before the rain comes. When I returned to Sunsplash and made breakfast I looked at wunderground.com to see if rain was coming. Of course it was, the remnants of tropical depression Claudette, complete with small craft warning and forecast of winds up to 50 knots. I was unable to go to the grocers, the rain arrived so quickly. The wind began pummeling the marina. Sunsplash was rolling and bouncing around like at sea.
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Radio Bill had turned around on his voyage to Europe halfway to Bermuda and headed East, then South, and now was sailing Southwest into strong winds. Perhaps he is merely sidestepping this tropical disturbance. He is a radio expert and uses his High Frequency rig to download weather maps, he has good information and knows what is coming down the pike. He may however be returning to Georgia to repair something or may have decided the hurricane season is happening already, unsafe to transatlantic.
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A redundant wifi adapter came in, identical to the one I have been using. I wanted to find out if the intermittent internet was because of the adapter or because of the marina. It was the marina and when the internet is out it is much more difficult to post on the blog, so I hold off and keep writing until the blog post gets too big. Posting from the smart phone is a pain, but I guess it must be done.
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The image is of the storm clouds arriving with wind and rain.