Kaimusailing

The wood outboard motor support was rebuilt with the help of Geoff, the chemist. I needed it so that I could mount the old Yamaha outboard on it and put the engine cover on to keep the elements out. I mounted the outboard and put its cover on.
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Busy days. Clean up the pizza crap. Get the very heavy batteries up on deck. Dispose of packaging. Run to Yulee to Home Depot for plywood and pine. The thing that holds up most projects is sitting around trying to plan them. Eliminate the worry of planning and just do it. Get ‘er done, that’s what they say around here. The window of good weather to get ‘er done might be only a couple of weeks.
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I arranged with Robert to borrow his vehicle for a major shopping trip. Once again his tank was empty, put in $20 which doesn’t buy much gasoline these days. Down I-95 and get off on Florida 17 South to Yulee. At Yulee we go East on A1A 200, heavy traffic and slow. First I have to go to Bank of America to donate some Christmas gifts, it goes smoothly. The next stop is Home Depot and it is awful. I’m looking for 3/8” sanded BC plywood. I can’t find it. No one in the lumber area. Is it already lunch time? The employees in their orange garb seem indifferent and occupied with – - nothing. After a while I get someone in the Pro department to tell me to look for plywood with two green paint stripes on the edge. I find a pile with such marks that I had bypassed earlier. The sheet on top of the pile looked like an ultimate plywood reject, full of knots. I looked at the next sheet under it and it looked great. Meanwhile the cart I had found to lug the plywood around had been usurped by some guy with a greater need.
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I had to go outside the store to search for another cart, then brought that in to get the plywood and continue shopping. More wood, 1X4, ten of them. I had trouble putting the plywood on top of the vehicle but an old gent, and if I say old I mean old, helped me. Thank you.
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I was getting hungry, but the W burger place was jammed as were the other fast food places here. I left, tummy grumbling. The plywood was making noises on top of the vehicle and I pulled over in a derelict looking gas station, no customers, maybe not even open. The rig was loose, go around tightening everything, tummy grumbling more and more.
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I get the rig out on A1A 200 West and I’m almost at the intersection to take 17 North to I-95. There is a food establishment there with no big long line, plastered with stickers about all the great food they have there. If it’s so good, why isn’t there a long line like all the other places? I end up driving through the drive thru without realizing it was a drive through. I went around again and had to get in line behind another sucker. I ordered a fish sandwich and a small coke, no ice. I ended up parked behind the sucker who was behind a heavy duty work style pickup truck, the kind with pipe racks and gear piled up. They sat there for about 10 minutes. Someone came out to me with a styrofoam doggie bag with my fish sandwich, fries, other stuff I found out later, and took my card inside to process. Out again, and I asked what was the problem with THEM, guess they just don’t know how to order was the reply.
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I had a small offering of some kind of fish condiment, could have been a ranch dressing or something. I had to drive and it fell, face down, spilling its creamy contents down between the seat and the console. I had to drive for a while like that until I could pull off and try to clean things up. The fries were great. I found the ketchup later under all the other stuff. The dressing between the seat and the console was scraped up with a plastic knife inside of a napkin from a fast food joint. It took several tries and I ended up with a fast food bag filled with maybe one extra fry, many soiled napkins, and in my hand was half of a fish sandwich with a slice of tomato sticking out, the rest of the wrappings were jammed into the bulging fast food bag.
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The rest of the sandwich was good, the fries were good. I had to get onto I-95 North to finish my shopping trip. I was afraid the additional speed on the highway would cause havoc with the plywood on the roof. I was cleaning up some little bits of white food, not mayo, from my pants, and checking the space between the seat and console for anything else. I was able to follow a slow truck, but he was slow because of a weight scale station, he turned off, I was alone in the slow lane. Other trucks were coming back on the highway and slowly getting up to speed. Too slowly, I signaled and pulled into the center lane, passing a slow truck. Other trucks followed my suit and came into the center lane. I signaled back to the slow lane. Exit 1 for St Marys was coming up.
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I took the exit and then turned left at the light to take a back road into Kingsland where I pulled into Tractor Supply to fill my propane tank. The propane price had dropped to $4 a gallon. Then off to Walmart to buy ingredients for Ole Mole Pork Soup.
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In the boatyard I offloaded the plywood and one piece of pine to use as a straight edge. Back at Kaimu I offloaded groceries. It seemed like I had done a lot yet it was only midafternoon.
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The next day I planned to cut the plywood and measured for the third time. I was looking for my missing C clamps and looked into the pile of stuff that the boatyard had dumped under Kaimu, on a table, under a tarp. I saw a huge cockroach in a cardboard box and threw it and its contents out into the yard. The bugs began running and I began stomping. I repeated this process with a couple other cardboard boxes.
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I found some small C clamps in the port hull stowed in a 5 gallon bucket. They were seized up. I brought them, 3-in-1 oil, and a pair of pliers into the wood shop and lubricated them and tried to turn the screw clamp. Only one broke free. I ran the screw threads through the electric wire brush to clean them out. A little 3-in-1 oil and the clamp worked like new. The other clamps also were freed up and I brought them to the Breezeway, near Robert’s boat, where I would do the plywood cutting. Clamps, tape measure, pen and notes, circular saw, and of course the wood, all on hand. I cut the wood using a long piece of pine as a fence to guide the saw. All went well and then a big pickup truck with a trailer full of stuff came by and the driver, who seemed irate, yelled, This trailer is going in there, pointing to me and my saw. I finished cutting and moved stuff around to make more room.
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Caleb, that’s his name, backed the trailer into the Breezeway. He and his partner had rented the space. They had been away for months. It was my luck to have him return the same day I started to do woodwork there. He turned out to not be a bad sort and when I mentioned making pizza on Monday nights he seemed to brighten up. Just don’t make a mess.
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I began making my soup. There were enough hungry souls in the boatyard to feed. I did my usual preparation but followed Eve’s expertise and destemmed the spinach. Tedious.
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I was waiting for a package from the post office but they didn’t deliver it, held at the post office was the tracking report. I called. They don’t deliver individual’s mail to the boatyard anymore. We have to pick it up at the post office. I could have someone pick it up for me, the postwoman said.
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Computer Ken, also known as Ken Sparrow, was right nearby Kaimu driving a Toyota Prius. He volunteered to pick up my package as he had to visit the post office himself. He said to text him a message saying I authorize him to pick up a parcel for me. I did so.
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Robert was very exhausted, working on an insane boat project, for money. He was removing screws from a teak deck on a large motor yacht. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of screws. I told him about the soup and he said, if you don’t get a reply from me, it means I’m out.
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The no-see-ums were out and biting, clouds of them. Fortunately I was inside the communal kitchen attending to my soup. What a large batch, maybe 8 quarts. I had a bowl of it. Geoff, who had cycled by, wanted to see the soup while it was cooking and I thought he would stay and taste some, no, he replied, see you later. Off he went. Another friend walked by and said she had just eaten and didn’t want any. Computer Ken came by with my parcel and said he couldn’t eat right now. It would make him sick.
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It was getting dark. These days it is cool enough at night to refrigerate items left outside. The big stock pot of soup was left outside.
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The image is of a painting by Chris Stevens, Last Supper at the Cafe Ole, available at saatchiart.com.