Kaimusailing

Another warm day starts, it’s beautiful weather after Wednesday’s unexpected thunderstorm. I retreat to the boater’s lounge again to watch another stage of the Tour de France. Again Tadej Podocar finishes the mountain stage with a crushing win, earning double points toward the King of the Mountain polka dot jersey. He already holds the yellow jersey as the overall leader of the race and the white jersey as the best young rider. His dominance is reminiscent of Miguel Indurain and Lance Armstrong. Of course Armstrong used performance enhancing drugs and was stripped of his titles. Indurain was suspected of doping, but was never caught. If Podocar is not cheating, which is extremely difficult to do these days, he is simply the most amazing bike racer.
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Unbelievably Podocar does it again the next day. He wins the polka dot jersey with 108 points, no one else close. He holds the lead in the Tour de France of around 6 minutes. There’s a time trial tomorrow, which is right in Podocar’s wheelhouse, he may not win the time trial, but he will be in the top 3 and just confirms his dominance over this year’s tour. He won the yellow in a time trial last year. Here we go again. This is where we all start to think, dope?, how come this one rider is so dominant and everyone isle is more or less on the same level. Last year it was he and his countryman, Primoz Roglic. Both from Slovenia and both 1 and 2 in the Tour de France. They were the powerful riders last year, but Roglic dropped out of this years race due to injuries in a crash. There must be something in the Slovenian water.
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Cornelia Marie’s family was having a sort of get together. I expected her to be involved with cooking, or maybe imbibing at dinner somewhere. I resigned myself to opening up the Pink Pussycat at 4 PM, its opening time. Gimme an Orange Crush, “Pour me something strong and cold, make it a Hurricane or I’ll go insane, I know it’s only half past twelve, but that’s OK, it’s 5 o’clock somewhere .” The chef had not arrived. His name is Andy too. He showed up and I ordered the 5 chicken tenders with Old Bay Hot Sauce.
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A car rolled up, it was Eve and an artist friend. I greeted them inside. They tried to drink a very citrus lemon drink. We all ended up drinking O.C.’s. I was trying to carry on a conversation about the Tour de France when CM’s mom and Buster strolled in, OK. Then, in a bit, it was CM and Nori. Lots of OC’s.
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Back on board it was not as hot as it was before. I had repaired the homemade canopy of the previous owners and it was shielding the cabin top from the hot sun. I think they had been using it as a shade over the cockpit, I had turned it around 180. When we were having O.C.’s at the bistro there was talk about a storm coming to cool things off. It did arrive late and was violent. It was a good test of the Euro style windows, still no leaks despite a downpour. The boat was once again rocking and rolling, the wind was howling. I could hear the canopy thrashing against the cabin top. I didn’t dare go out into that weather, but it stopped suddenly and I opened the hatch to see what condition the canopy was in. It was still in place but another crosstube had gone missing. It was cool on the dock and a little windy. The crosstube was nearby in the water and I fished it up with the boathook. The deluge returned and I was soaked before I could go ten feet.
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Cornelia Marie called and mentioned a boat trip. I had thought I wouldn’t hear from her unless she needed me to do something. She wanted to haul the boat out onto its trailer and store it on land while she was away. We took the skiff out, it was humid and warm, the water was flat and the skiff planed along. We took a channel toward the West. We had to run slow in the company of a half dozen kayakers, all of us going up current to the Big Dock, the 100 boat dock that had no boats at it, last time.
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It was low tide and we hit the sand. There was still an ebb current running, and it was hard to move the boat with a paddle. Restarting the motor didn’t work, it stalled right away. She said maybe I screwed up the transmission when I jumped into gear at too much rpm. I felt bad. “Maybe you broke a pin or something”. I went aft and tilted the motor up to look at the prop and the lower unit. The prop was jammed. I was able to get it to move but it felt like grit in there somewhere. I tried flushing it splashing water on the prop hub with my hand. It would move more easily then jam again when started and put into gear.
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CM wanted to get to the dock, a struggle away, and work on the boat there, where we could shelter. I will work on it here, I said, she had a good idea, but by the time we could get to the dock maybe we could get it running. I continued splashing water on the propeller and trying to turn it. It finally turned a bit. CM started and it stalled right away. Depressing. I took her technique of using the bailing scoop to splash more water on the propeller on the lower unit. Just keep flushing it. Run again, fail. We need oarlocks on this boat and maybe a trolling electric motor.
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When I kept at flushing the prop and underneath it, I remembered the prop shaft probably had a pretty good seal, and our problem was just sand jammed up in the lower unit, keep flushing.
Finally we could run it at low rpm and I hoped the sand and grit would flush out. After a while CM said I could raise rpm’s and I did a little bit. This excited her and she came aft to take the helm. She worked the boat well. I told her mom, “It’s hard to find a girl who can handle a boat like that.”
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We ran down past the City Dock toward Mallard Point, then returned to the floating dock near her mom’s waterfront home. Nori jumped off onto the dock. We lugged a bunch of stuff to the house and attached the boat trailer to the vehicle. CM brought them to the launch ramp and I brought the boat there. She had the trailer positioned perfectly and the skiff rode up onto the trailer almost all the way. She clipped on the trailer winch and cranked the boat fully onto the trailer. Then she towed it up and out. We cinched it down at the stern and then brought it over near the house where many other boats and trailers were parked. CM parked it.
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There was a lunch of leftovers from the weekend. Apparently an abundance of ingredients for Margaritas was purchased for the weekend and not consumed. A round of the cooling drinks was expertly prepared and they tasted very good. A second round was made. A pitcher of Margaritas was made. There was enough leftover for another glass. Eve the artist texted inquiring about having something to eat at the nearby Legion. When she heard that we were having Margaritas she sped over. Another pitcher was made. I said it was about 45 minutes to sunset, I wonder what the light was like. I meandered outside and took a few shots with the cell phone. It was time to return to the marina.
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The photo is of the Small Boat Harbor, or one portion of it. The light was good.