Kaimusailing

Samsung has a history of maintaining cell phone updates for only a few years. I found out that other phone manufacturers do the same, so Samsung isn’t to blame so much. The updates come along every quarter, 3 months, and I have noticed significant changes since the last update. It looks like the phone is now recognized as a Galaxy S9. The apps are also updated. The tedious blog upload from the phone is now relatively painless. I used to have to cut and paste portions of the blog copy one or two paragraphs at a time, jumping back and forth from the text editor to the online blogsite. Now I could not get the text editor to cut and paste, but using Chrome to copy the text in one big complete copy made it possible to paste the whole thing in just one step.
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The reprinted test print came in from Finer Works, printed on Archival Artisan Canvas. It is slightly brighter than the previous test prints on Matte Canvas. The canvases use different printers and inks. I ordered a 12X18 print on the Archival canvas and it will go into the frame I picked up at the boatyard’s “Free Pile”. The image to be printed is the one used on the “GIMP Vomit” blog post on June 3.
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I did some work on Sunsplash replacing the bulkhead panel I removed in the quarterberth. The nav station which was piled with odds and ends was cleared off, scrubbed with Awesome cleaner, lightly sanded and coated with Minwax Tung Oil Finish. The stuff cleared off was all in a plastic bin and now had to be sorted through and either thrown out or organized into the little boat. Surprising how large a pile I could accumulate in just a few weeks.
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Eve invited a few of us to her house for grilled chicken. Cornelia Marie stayed in Baltimore this weekend and we all missed her and Nori the wonder dog. Amazingly Eve had a guest, German and Dutch researcher who had come to Crisfield to escape the city. She also wanted to see the horses on Assateague Island. The amazing thing is her name, Cornelia. She attended the grilled chicken dinner, outside with incense punks to drive away the bugs. The conversation got into quantum effects and zero point energy. Wine was consumed.
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There was an art exhibit including several of CM’s and Eve’s paintings at the Arts Council gallery. This area has a lot of art talent and an active art community.
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I kept trying to organize and clean up the boat. The galley counter is in three parts, the part to the right of the sinks, the sinks, and the small area to the left of the sinks. Once again a ton of stuff was gathered and set aside. The right part was scrubbed and now looked a lot better. I was going to continue with it and prepare it for tung oil.
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A heat wave hit. It was hotter here even than in the Georgia boatyard. Down there Radio Bill, my good friend, sailed back in from the Atlantic. He had sailed around avoiding tropical depressions and finally had a suggestion from his Italian paramour, don’t sail here and sell the boat, sell the boat there and fly here. He acceded.
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His boat will be coming up for sale and James Baldwin of Atom Voyages fame will be helping to sell it. Bill spent 2 years of refit, much more effort than I have done, and it is a special boat. I don’t expect it to sit around on the market for too long. It is a Pearson Triton, set up to sail as Atom did, around the world, or anywhere. If you are interested in a serious blue water boat that has been meticulously prepared, almost obsessively, here it is. When I find where it is listed, I will post it. You can contact James at Atom Voyages also.
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Eve, the artist, needed a couple of GFI outlets replaced. I bicycled up to her house right up the street from CM’s. I expected replacement of an electrical outlet to take maybe a half hour. We had a communication system set up, using cell phones, which in this house need to be connected to wifi, because the signal was so low. We found in a short time that the outlet and switch were not on the same breaker. The correct breaker was shut off and I unscrewed the faceplate and the outlet. Eve, the artist, and CM are similar. Cap’n Andy is not the boss, but the interpreter. There were pauses, to be expected, and clicking sounds as breakers were turned on and off. I unscrewed the outlet from the wall and found there was not much wire available when I pulled it out.
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The wires were jammed into the outlet and wouldn’t come out so I cut them off flush and stripped the wires for insertion into the new outlet. After assembly I found the outlet wasn’t working. Maybe I hadn’t stripped the wires enough. Trying to remove the outlet found me realizing that I couldn’t get these wires out of this new outlet. I didn’t want to cut them again. I called in Eve to try to remove them, and she removed a couple. Hands like a dentist. Still had to cut one.
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I wanted a second opinion at this point, maybe I was missing something. I called my friend Tom in NYC who knows a lot about electricity. I found that these outlets had come from China, of course, and the instructions showed installation that was upside down, with the grounding pins at the top instead of the bottom. We flipped the wires around and it tested OK. I felt like I had been through a war, but more was yet to come.
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She wanted to get her second GFI installed, she had an air B&B guest coming in. We had to shop at the grocers, install the GFI, and go to CM’s mom’s to set crab traps. At the grocers the steaks were half price and we bought 3 steaks, went to her house and I went upstairs to the bathroom where the GFI was to be installed.
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Once again we found the correct circuit breaker by phone and which pair of wires were the ones coming up from the panel in the basement. There were two outlets daisy chained together If outlets are daisy chained together, the first one should be a GFI unit, then the rest will be protected, that’s the way to do it.
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It was a hot day and not much air circulation in the small bathroom where I was sweating and making a puddle of sweat around me. The work was efficient but interrupted by a break to run downstairs and get in front of a huge floor fan and have a cold fizzy drink. Back upstairs to the bathroom and the sweat puddle. Her sister arrived and for a while she was unavailable. I continued to work. I was almost done. She flipped the breaker on and it all worked great. I was spent. I had another fizzy drink. We went to CM’s mom’s house on the water about a mile away. Mom was at the store saying just go in the front door, it’s unlocked. We did so with the young black lab and 8 crab pots to bait and sink at the waterfront.
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CM’s mom returned and we made preparations for cooking steaks for dinner as well as having more fizzy drinks. Belinda arrived, a local entrepreneur, and we decided to have a drink or two at the American Legion, not far away. We did so, and Terry, another artist, a very good one, arrived and we imbibed Orange Crushes. Time to go and cook. We left and made it back to the waterfront house.
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I only had to fry 3 steaks, which I had done many times. The ladies went out to fool around with the crab traps. I took the steaks out of the fridge, which I should have done a few hours before. I added 30 seconds to the cooking time. Eve came in and started a saute of vegetables that soon were sizzling. The cast iron skillet for the steaks was soon smoking and the steaks, which had been marinating in cabernet, garlic, and ground pepper, were thrown into the pan, sizzling. I moved them around to establish a seared crust. We had an old cabernet for the wine reduction for the steaks. They had been partly marinated in it. Flip them. Take them out. Throw 3 oz of old wine into the pan and let it sizzle and scrape up anything from the bottom of the pan. It reduces. I asked CM’s mom if she thought the concoction was ready, “Yes, it’s ready” she said. Scrape it out of the pan onto the steaks on their platter. Let them sit. Looks good so far.
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Out on the screened porch, more wine, more conversation. Political, social, will Crisfield ever change, I guess no. Why change what doesn’t work.
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Veggies ready, go in and get food. Wonderful conversation. Wine. Waterfront. Eat, eat, eat. At some point there were indications that some of us had to go do something else. It was a weekday and not all of us are retirees. Eve had to receive air B&B guests, but she was bombed. We stopped her from driving and maybe having a traffic accident or maybe a traffic stop. Either could be tragic or expensive. She took her dog on the leash and walked off for home. OK, just don’t drive tonight. We waited, discussing, then she returned. I said, let her drive now, she’s walked it off. All went well, she drove home, followed by Belinda and me, she let off at the marina’s pedestrian gate to walk in and get my bicycle and cycle back to Sunsplash, somewhat unsteady.
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The image is a photo of the art print from Finer Works, it is not for sale.