Kaimusailing

We had a warming trend in the weather and I went back to work on the beam covers, the deck box cover, and the floorboards for the deflatable dinghy. The floor boards had been epoxied and placed on monofilament fishing line for the epoxy to set up. The deck box had already been glassed on top and the beam cover for beam #1 also. The work was painfully slow and incomplete. I had been having trouble getting motivated to work on the boat. There were long periods of no activity. I did a lot of cooking and drinking wine.
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I had a sudden change of heart, don’t know how to explain it, but I was always waking up in the middle of the night with some aches and pains, or having to pee, but I would go back to bed, just get more sleep, get rest. Now I had spirit. Like the old days. You’ve got to get up in the morning, Reveille, Others are up and about while I am still wrestling with sleep and rest. Yeah, let’s get up today and get at it.
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The artist, Eve, who I recently congratulated on getting older, said, just get at it, get it done, like that. In the morning. I miss her, but I would rather contemplate work and figure it out. Don’t goad me into thrusting out, well, in the morning, well, when I am really awake, I suffer. Old people like me suffer, every day, but we can still have a sense of humor, some how.
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There is an old dutch woman in the boatyard, I mean old, older than me, I have not been able to communicate with her like anybody normal. It’s not just the translation, sometimes simple things don’t translate. We talked about people who got us mad, or something like that, and I said, Attitude is everything, Dammit, she didn't get it.

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I know I have rapport with a lot of the people in the boatyard, I know they have jobs and dirty work to do, and I can sit and avoid such things, I am an old man, but do they respect me? I don’t care, a joke on me is OK. The drains in the building that houses the communal kitchen and an outside worker’s wash area, were plugged up. I had been bailing out water and dumping it where it would do no harm, but I ceased doing that. C’mon, just clear these drains out.
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One of the workers came to the cleanup area, which was almost full of water, not very attractive water at that, and I said, maybe we should post lifeguards.
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It’s a great feeling when you think you’ve done a good day’s work and it’s only like 2:30 in the afternoon. Kill the rest of the day. I carted the remains of Kaimu’s old beam covers into the dumpster with some other stuff.
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I sat in a chair in the shade and called my daughter, Cyn, for the third time in 2 days, to congratulate her on getting older. She said she was busy and had a crochet class of 22 to teach. The main problem is getting that many crochet needles.
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I know we all had a big work day, I certainly did, temperature up to 84, got a lot done. I came to the Breezeway to see if Eloisa was still pressure washing Robert’s boat. It looked like not. I played games on my phone while she puttered around. Maybe she needed help getting the pressure washer, she calls it the pressure cleaner, down from the deck into the boatyard, I missed my chance, it was down and she came over. I said I thought I would help her, but as usual, I deferred until the job was almost done. No problem, she said.
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Robert arrived at his boat and climbed aboard as if not to notice us. He got out a netting and started to string it up in his cockpit. Hey, what’s that? She asked. He gave an obtuse answer. I think there is a conflict here, but maybe a loving conflict.
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After listening to a lot of old rock coming from Robert, up in his cockpit, Eloisa appeared and we made plans to make something to eat.
I would go get wine, cheese, and maybe a wine glass (plastic) for me. I went off and got those things and returned.
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Robert always seemed to be pissed off. He came down from his boat, right outside the Breezeway. Eloisa clapped, he’s coming. But he went off to the side, somewhere, and returned with a strange pillow shaped object with antennae, red knobs on it, and kicked it inside the Breezeway right at me, I parried it, and Blue attacked it. It was his toy.
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She kept bringing in ingredients to the Breezeway. She said I don’t know if I should cook here. I said maybe you don’t want to because you’ll be busted by the renters. She nodded. The renters disbanded our Pizza Nights in the Breezeway, then asked us to come back, but no, we will never come back, unless we sneak in to make a salad.
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I was asked to hold the garden hose while she washed the romaine lettuce. This is a natural position for me, I said, she laughed. She then took the lettuce and blotted it with paper towels. I remarked that I had a roll of paper towels that strangely had two plies not attached to each other, and when I rolled out about ten feet of towel, there was a big clot of paper towel. It was obviously a malfunction and an oversight of quality control.
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The evening sun was beginning to set and those red rays illuminate everything, you have to be aware of this phenomenon. I went outside of the back of the Breezeway. Strangely quiet. A strange sunset was taking place with only a few cirrus clouds in a blue blue sky and I wanted to get a shot of it.
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I found the phone’s camera was very tricky in that it had a lot of controls and also the amount of pressure you put on buttons made a big difference. When you’re trying to get the shot, control difficulty is a problem. Still, I got a good sunset shot.
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I thought she was going to cook maybe in her vamper, but she set up shop in the Breezeway. I said, you know, he’s going to bust us right when you are totally involved with your cooking.
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In came the renter’s big pickup truck. It seemed he wanted to drive right in and run us over. He was wound up. It was late in the day and I tried to get him over to our side, we swept the breezeway and dumped the trash, oh, and you have a package. He said thanks, is there only one. Well they dumped a lot more after that, right outside the communal kitchen, Thanks, he said. He left after bullying his dog out to do her business in the marsh. I said to Eloisa, I told you so.
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She had croutons sauteing on a shelf with the renter’s cordless tool battery chargers. She laid out her ingredients and had me separate a yolk from and egg, which I know how to do without anything more than an egg and a dull edged knife. Not this time, egg split unexpectedly and I retained the yolk in half of the shell, but egg white dripped down and made a mess. I said I wasn’t sleeping on that spot any more.
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The salad work continued. We talked about Caesar Salad. I remarked that a friend of mine was given a birthday gift of a trip to Italy where he said he couldn’t get a decent meal. You know they don’t even know how to make a Caesar Salad. Caesar Salad wasn’t invented in Italy. Eloisa’s eyes lit up a bit, no? No, it was invented in Tijuana, Mexico.

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The renter returned from the communal kitchen with a big box. Inside was a smaller box with a 60 volt cordless right angle drill, that when he gave it to me, felt like 40 or 50 lbs. I explained I had been grinding edges of wood with a very light Harbor Freight right angle grinder and even today was suffering in my shoulders. He looked at me. I said I am an old man and can no longer do the things I used to do. He went inside his apartment. We were interrupted from time to time by the renter who was in a snit. Eloisa had to return to her vamper to get things. I began munching the salad. Eloisa began critiquing her salad. Maybe it needed more extra virgin olive oil. I thought the salad was really good, no need to change very much, but maybe yes, a little more EVO. Our dialog was mutual with no argument. We agreed on so many topics. Of course we had a great meal and plenty of wine, that can help
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We were running out of wine and our dinner was over. We were throwing the empties into the garbage. I had two small packs of crackers and some cheese in my pockets, no shopping bags around. I was going to pedal the bike with an empty wine glass in my hand, dangerous accidents have happened this way.
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We were leaving and I said, another successful home invasion.
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I slept well and long, I was up early, I had the last of the leftover gumbo for breakfast. I went to work on the remaining beam covers, they were wider than the one just done for beam #1 and could take three swaths of glass, so I primed a path down the middle of them, rolled the glass into the wet epoxy, then went back and stippled epoxy into the weave of the cloth. Next a path was primed to one side of the central one, the glass was rolled out again, and so on for the other two beams, and again on the remaining side.
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The next day the covers were overturned and the raw edges including excess fiberglass were trimmed down with the angle grinder with a flap disc. Now all I needed to do was coat the inside of the beam covers, etc. with raw epoxy, no glass. I learned to not put the epoxy parts A and B in the sun. That heats them up, as well as the ambient 80 degree temperature, and even the small 3 oz mixes I use can start to set up in only minutes. I was not glassing, so the epoxy work went quickly and it was only 2:30 in the afternoon and I needed a break. I went to the forbidden Breezeway, sat in a chair and felt myself laying my head in the crook of my arm, almost to nap. Ahem, it was Rocky, Chief Crane Operator and owner of the boatyard. Maybe he was alarmed that I had passed out. Might be true. I cycled out the back of the Breezeway and around Doc’s Chop Shop where Eloisa was making screens for her vamper’s windows. I had been kind of rude and aloof from her and explained I was worn out, spent, but I was going to go back and put a second coat of epoxy on the insides of the beam covers, et al.
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It went quickly. It was 84 degrees and I drank a lot of water. I neutralized the epoxy that made it to my hand, even though I had nitrile gloves, and washed up at the workers wash sink. Rocky came by and did a double take when he saw me.
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I texted Robert, how about dinner later? Then I ran into him smoking a cigarette under a boat near the travel lift. He said he had to do some epoxy work starting at 4:30, so probably wouldn’t make it. Then I ran into Eloisa who said she had to give Blue a bath in the shower. Well, I needed a shower, why not do both of us? Ha ha.
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I showered and Eloisa said she wasn’t going to wash Blue after all, let’s get going. We went up to Harbor Freight and bought a flat, woven hose. Twice as expensive as the alternative, but on the package said 55% lighter. Then we went to Lowe’s where I got some while enamel for the beam covers, et al. They no longer had the marine variety on the shelves. It was ordinary Rustoleum gloss white enamel.
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We were going to eat somewhere. It had to have outdoor dining so Blue could be with us. We settled on the River Walk and I remembered we had a delightful dinner there for my birthday, but a subsequent outing was not so good. We were about to find out which one this one would be. The special was pulled pork sandwich with a side and the soup of the day was clam chowder which was great, I had had it on the delightful dinner. I ordered it again and the pulled pork sandwich. Eloisa ordered fries with sauces. My side was fries. The fries were good. The clam chowder was great. I found out that they don’t cook it here, a local cooks it for them and does a great job. The pulled pork sandwich came out with hard spots. I looked at the contents. It looked like they took pulled pork and fried it. Eloisa explained how this could happen in a bistro like this. I fed Blue some of the pulled pork. He now follows me around.
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We came back to the boatyard at sunset, not a good enough one for a photo, although I could have tried. Eloisa gave me a hug and Robert texted me his epoxy job was canceled. I said we could do dinner some other day.
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The image is of that sunset out the back of the forbidden Breezeway.