Kaimusailing

I unloaded the rental car and the next day drove it to the Jacksonville airport to return it. Geoff, the chemist, picked me up in his beater car, a Hyundai. It has 273,000 miles on it. I said don’t wash it, it might fall apart if you dissolve the rust.
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The forecast is for tropical storm conditions and the wind has been in the 20’s, very cloudy, gusts of wind coming through with a lot of force behind them. I now had to stow all the stuff unpacked from the car in dry places, we are also forecast to get about 3 inches of rain. After stowing items that would remain under the catamaran and under a tarp I took a bike ride through the boatyard to loosen up.
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Next I went up on deck and stowed a couple crates of gear including clean laundry, laptops, notebooks, ballcaps, more bottles of water, small propane tanks for the stove and heater, and the nomadic electric can opener. After researching news of the storm I had a pumpernickel ham and cheese sandwich.
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The research included looking at the weather information from Fort Pierce, the coastal town closest to the storm at this time. On weatherunderground.com there is an option to look at the 10 day forecast. Things like wind strength and direction, air pressure, and any warnings issued for that station. I was able to figure out that it was likely the storm would be out over the Okefenokee Swamp, which is the source of our St Marys River, Thursday night, at high tide. And we are into the lunar full moon tides. If Kaimu gets underway, I will be on board to navigate.
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The track for the storm was heading more West toward the Florida panhandle. That would mean we would get less storm surge here. I pondered how to judge the wind direction, increase or decrease in strength, and how things might change here. Komputer Ken, who I assumed I would never meet again, he having gone up North to live with his brother, was my new neighbor in the boatyard. We both hunkered down in our boats and the storm slowly arrived.
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The next day the wind continued from the East and Southeast. The wind and rain came in rain bands from offshore. The boatyard flooded up to the extent shown in the image. The wind continued to shift toward the South, the rain was intermittent and caught me out once. Ten minutes under shelter and it died again. Back on board I texted Ken about going along with him on his next shopping trip. He replied he needed to do some things with his storage unit lock, did I want to go now?
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We went shopping and talking. The storm was coming and I needed ham and cheese, and eventually bread, get it now. I got ingredients for cream of chicken mushroom soup florentine and a bottle of Barefoot pinot noir. I decided to make the soup right away.
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The florentine in the recipe title refers normally to spinach, but I use kale, stronger flavor, equal nutrients. This is a nutritionally dense recipe. I boiled 6 cups of water in the big stock pot, trimmed the kale from its stems and chopped the leaves, added them to the pot as well as 3 tablespoons of Better Than Buillion roasted chicken flavor. Thyme, ground black pepper, garlic powder, and a diced onion were also added. Meanwhile a sauce pan was melting a stick of butter and four chicken thighs, skinned, were cooked in the butter 10 minutes a side. This was enough to lightly brown them. The chicken thighs were set aside and flour was added to the butter to make a roux. After a few minutes stock from the kale was slowly added to the roux and whisked smooth. Finally the roux was blended into the kale and stock, the chicken thighs were deboned and diced, and added to the soup. The recipe made about 4 dinner portions of the soup.
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The next day I had soup for breakfast.
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I had left a dock cart when I left in the Spring and now it was empty. Someone had dumped all the trash in it onto the ground at my boat. At least they returned the cart. I spent the afternoon picking up trash and brought the cart to the dumpster. Along the way I stopped at the Communal Kitchen, which was once again a huge mess, just like last year when I arrived then. I loaded the kitchen’s garbage pail and a box of trash onto the cart. Someone had been making coffee and using Splenda sweetener. They left a pile of Splenda wrappers and other debris on the kitchen table. I didn’t scrub, just put the trash in the cart, took the cart to the dumpster, unloaded, returned to Kaimu.
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For dinner I sauteed a ham and cheese sandwich on pumpernickel in butter and watched Kojak on local television.