Kaimusailing

I finished up some work on the starboard cabin top where the departing mast had damaged the finish two years ago. I primed with epoxy, then faired with epoxy putty, then painted with rustoleum enamel. The process of getting ready to launch was going along slowly, but not with any difficulty.
.
The whole area of the yard around Kaimu was being cleaned up by the boatyard. Lynn and Dave’s boat was removed for launching, a Hunter sloop was relocated, and an abandoned project named Colonel Rebel was removed to Doc’s Chop Shop to be dismantled.
.
They leveled and graded the area so that it looked like nothing was ever there except for this mixture of stone, clay, sand, and other secret ingredients, it was like tarmac. We saw various items that had been stamped into this soil. A windshield wiper blade, a plastic pipe adapter, and a few labels of other things. I was walking with Big David and Blue after having spent a session with Dave at Pirate’s Point Bar and Grill. I went aboard Kaimu and Blue clambered up the steps of the swimming ladder. He ran around on deck, sniffing and obviously excited. I went down in the galley and Blue followed down the steep companionway ladder and began sniffing around, he went into my bunk and had a big sniffing session there. I realized that today he was getting around very well, so I didn’t help him when I went on deck. Just expected him to get up those steep steps and so he did. Up on deck, now go down the swimming ladder, and he follows. I brought him to Eloisa to keep him from getting into trouble on the boat.
.
The next day Eloisa and Blue were off, where to? She spoke of going to visit her best friend in South Florida, but she may as well have gone to the beach or Notter’s Pond. I now had a lot of time to get things done. I cleared up more detritus around the boat. I had the ingredients for a pork and rice dish, courtesy of $1.49/lb pork chops at Win-Dixie. It was an impulse purchase, I looked at the chops and the price and took them. I didn’t have a recipe in mind then, but later I put together a baked pork chop and rice recipe with peppers, onion, and tomatoes. I got the Optima oven and put it on the propane stove and began stuffing it with ingredients. Brown rice, pork chops, sliced onions, julienned orange sweet peppers, leftover from Pizza Night, and half a can of Cento san marzano tomatoes. I spiced with garlic powder and an Italian herb mix, then added a half cup of tomato juice and a half cup of merlot. The oven was set to bake for about an hour and a quarter.
.
Thunderstorms were coming through and I was stuck in the hot galley with the stove top oven adding to the heat, but also adding nice aromas as the chops baked. I watched golf on TV.
.
Radio Bill is well on his way to Europe and is in the Gulf Stream off Savannah and Charleston. Here’s his tracking url: https://cms.winlink.org:444/maps/PositionReports.aspx?callsign=N2ZLY
.
He is sailing a very well prepared Pearson Triton, 28 feet long.
.
It is now Pizza Day and I wonder how it will turn out. It looks like Helicopter Dave and Roughrider Lynn have made it to the town dock at St. Marys. I delivered their vehicle to them and Lynn dropped me back in the boatyard. I already had the balls of dough rising in their olive oiled bowls. Lynn and Dave will not make Pizza Night. Radio Bill is away. Eloisa is away. I might end up with a lot of pizza leftover.
.
Earlier, actually the day before, Denis the Canadian truckdriver gave me slices of pepperoni and salami, large slices that would go on a sub sandwich. A religious person told him that God does not allow us to eat unclean animals, such as pork. OK, glad to sin with pork. Now today he gives me the meat slices from 3 subs, maybe a pound of meat. It looks like we will be having some meaty pizza pies.
.
I changed my dough procedure slightly. I start mixing the initial 3 cups of flour and 2 cups of warm water, along with yeast and honey, with a spoon. At some point I switch to a whisk and make it smooth like pancake batter. The bowl of dough rests for about a half hour and now I check it halfway through to make sure the yeast hasn’t gone crazy and overflow. Now my adding 2 more cups of flour is changed from directly kneading the dough, to stirring with a spoon to mix the flour and dough without getting the dough all over my hands. At some point I lather up with olive oil and begin kneading directly. I add any dry flour or dough particles to the top of the ball of dough and continue jamming down on it with my fist. I flip it over, add any remaining particles from the bottom of the bowl onto the top of the dough, and so on. At some point the dough feels tougher and homogeneous. I use a knife coated with olive oil to cut the dough ball into 4 pieces and form them into balls, roll them around in the 4 bowls with olive oil, then put the bowls under cover.
.
I biked around the boatyard and mentioned Pizza Night to prospective new customers. I prepped ingredients, mozzarella, small sweet multicolored peppers, and looked at the pile of meat from Denis. There were about a dozen large rounds of salami and the same of pepperoni. The rest of the meat was ham, maybe a pound of ham. That went into the fridge. I sliced up a box of mushrooms. I put all the ingredients into zip lok bags. All afternoon I was deflating the rising dough balls about every 20 minutes. The dough was active but in control. I lit the oven and began making the first pie.
.
I could make 2 salami and 2 pepperoni pies and add other toppings, sweet peppers, mushrooms, and from an antipasta from new customer Pamela, feta cheese, sun dried tomato, and kalamata olives which I had to pit. I actually had a larger crowd than expected, me, Pamela, Rosie Jones, mother of the artist, Dr. Mike and his son Matthew, and Big Dave. My 5 liters of cheap merlot stood in danger of being drained. The pies came out great and we kept on well into dark. The mosquitoes came out and we had to disband.
.
The next day the forecast was for 90, but in the boatyard it gets about 10 degrees hotter than in town. I wanted to do pressure washing on hot days and play with the water. It took a while to get the pressure washer set up with 3 sections of hose, total about 125 feet. I was able to pressure wash the outboard side of the port hull. I had to take breaks every 10-15 minutes, the shade temperature on the communal porch was 98.
.
I took a break and got a call from Roughrider Lynn. The marine police were kicking them off the dock in St. Marys, 6 hour stay is all that’s permitted and they have been more like 36 hours. She came and got me and I dropped her off. She and Dave will be anchored off Cumberland Island before they head North. The winds are light now, but a southerly will kick in over the next couple of days and they will make great time, just like Radio Bill is doing, going North on the Gulf Stream.
.
I have to reconsider my own situation, can I adequately prepare the boat as the heat sets in. I can sail up to Crisfield, for sure, or I can drive a rental up there, for sure. If I don’t sail, when is Kaimu ever going to sail again? I have down here a boom track arch for the Catalina and a nice Universal M25 diesel engine for it. I guess I should sail up there with those things and get to work, but it’s hard to imagine the effort to do an engine swap and all the rest when last summer I enjoyed myself, mainly, and didn’t get a lot done. But if I don’t take those things up there, then I’ll have to bring the Catalina down here. Complicated. Or I could drive up there and get the Catalina ready to come back down here for those other things. But the idea of two boats is to have two sailing areas and not sail back and forth. Go there sail there, come here, sail here.
.
I have to write something, not about pizza or sailing, but about slaughter. I hope I can avoid heart attack, stroke, bad driving skills, but we can’t avoid someone with a gun who wants to shoot us. Now society has to be like a grim war movie where the person out in front is the point man, the first to get hit, by them. We become fearful of each other. We shrink back. But it isn’t enough. We will be killed, maybe now it is a black skin that gets killed in a black community, but what about retaliation? At this point, putting the boat in the water is a good idea. Being at sea is dangerous, but being in the wrong place at the wrong time is dangerous in our home towns.
.
I’m not a rabble rouser of any sort, but we have to take a position when innocent people are getting blown away by what can be called a political terror cult, a cult. These acts are at least criminal and the perpetrators are criminals. We humans tend to huddle together. Think shopping, church for some, sports events for some, and we are easy targets if someone was looking for you. It is time to figure out how our society can go forward without mass killings. Apparently strict gun control laws do not stop the criminals from getting and using guns.
.
I continued with the pressure washing and finished the job before noon. I inflated the deflatable dinghy and ran the pressure washer over it, not much change, some crud did wash off. I pressure washed the free two person kayak I gathered up last year. There was sediment in spots and clay stuck to the bottom. After pressure washing, it looked almost new. There may be a small crack in the gunwale and there are two holes in the deck for strap attachment.
.
Eloisa gave me her basil plant to care for and it’s having a difficult time of it. The wind keeps blowing it over. The high heat evaporates the soil quickly, I have to remember to give it a lot of water. I put it in a sauce pot from the communal kitchen to keep it from constantly falling over.
.
I expropriated Lynn and Dave’s car to go shopping. The tank was empty, so I had to put some fuel in it. 20 bucks got me a quarter tank. I drove with the windows open, there was a fungus kind of smell in the car, maybe left open in the rain and need to dry out.
.
I was shopping for bread and cheese kind of things, but I started making a list of other things, fuel jugs, water jugs, solar showers, things I wouldn’t buy unless I was getting underway. The temperature tomorrow is forecast at 95, but in the yard it will be about 10 more – 105. The time is coming when staying in the boatyard is going to be heat torture. Plus they tell me the Red Shell Shanty is open on weekends in Somers Cove in Crisfield, Maryland, and they sell those ice cold Orange Crush drinks.
.
The boatyard launches and retrieves catamarans using its crane and a landing area opposite Kaimu. There’s like an old small inlet that had the marine railway way back when, and Rocky likes to use the flat area on the other side of the inlet to launch catamarans. Kaimu is on the other side of the little inlet, but on higher ground. I talked to Rocky about launching Kaimu right from where she sat. He would look into it.
.
A shrimp boat ran into trouble after it was launched here and had to be hauled out in an emergency, maybe a month ago. It was left on boatstands right where catamarans are staged, so no catamaran launching until they get rid of the shrimp boat. The workers on the shrimp boat removed tons of stuff, then haven’t been back. It just sits there, blocking the way for the catamarans. If Rocky can launch me from where I am, then he can also retrieve a catamaran and put them where I was. I think he will like that idea.
.
Big Dave interrupted me while writing and said he was going to get dinner at the Point. Did I want to go, yes, I said. I put away the laptop, grabbed my wallet, put the bottle of wine and plastic glass aside. And we went. The black truck was hot and let that hot air out, open windows. Air conditioning was up against some real heat. We rolled into the gas station restaurant and went inside, in the air conditioning, not outside with Blue or Eloisa, miss them. But I’m inside and cool. I have a pinot noir and Dave has a malbec. He orders food, I had already had a pork chop, stewed, etc. So I get stewed.
.
We have an excellent conversation. He is a big guy, just a bit older than me, but looks rugged and fit, plus he can handle ideas, very smart. We talked about ourselves and other people and got to know how we each though about them. When he asked me a question I could come up with an anecdote, but I knew I had to shape it to his question, we had a dialog. I probably had 2 too many glasses of wine, but when I got back to Kaimu I poured another.
.
It is now the next day and I expect the temperature in the shade on the communal porch to hit around 105 F. The image is of a couple days ago. I have to be careful in the heat, I’ve had some heat exhaustion symptoms on the very hot days, and today will be the hottest so far. Tomorrow will be a little less hot and the following week will be mid 80’s day and 70 night.
.
The latest position report from Radio Bill has him just off Hatteras riding the Gulf Stream on the great circle course to Europe.