Kaimusailing

I needed to do Pizza Night to make sure the apparatus was in working order, also to finally use the ingredients I had purchased prior to Christmas, mozzarella and pepperoni. I hadn’t made pizza in over 6 months and I would be on call to make it for Helicopter Dave’s memorial coming up next weekend.
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Although it was chilly, I began making the dough. The pilothouse seemed somewhat warm, so I did it there. All through the day when I checked the dough it was not rising as it should have. The pizza oven was residing in a dock cart, so I trundled it over to the woodshop and put it inside along with a full propane tank. The pizza pans had been sitting for a long time and took a long time to clean up.
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I prepped the mozzarella, onion, and mushrooms into new bowls. The dough meanwhile was in one large bowl. I was not happy with that dough.
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I didn’t have my usual pizza customers, but mentioned to several boatyarders that I would be making pizza around 5 pm. Big Dave and Steve were out doing something and I expected them to show up for pizza. Geoff the phd chemist stopped by and I offered pizza for him and his wife later, but he expected they would be out for dinner in town.
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Steve and Big Dave returned and announced they had eaten already. What was I going to do with all that pizza. I did have a customer, but he reneged. I lit the oven and after about 20 minutes put the first pizza in, however, the temperature gauge was only at around 400 degrees. Then Geoff and his wife Karen stopped by. I was frantic. The oven is malfunctioning. It’s only going up to 400 degrees. Geoff is a real genius with fixing almost any problem. We worked together, changed propane tanks, disconnected and reconnected, but the problem persisted. Then as if by magic he got the burner to put out full blast.
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It was growing dark and I was trying to put together pizza pies in the dark. Big Dave showed up and my new computer client, Ken H., the first pie was cut up and disappeared. The second pie came out to rest and seemed to be stuck to the pizza pan. Had to be chiseled off the pan with my dollar store stainless knife. The third pie was hopelessly stuck to its pan and we had a general struggle to get it loose. Those pans are not usable, the nonstick isn’t working anymore. The last pie went it and Geoff baked it. I was spent. What a disaster. The guests were happy, though, sitting in the dark chilly evening.
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There ended up just one half slice left over. Geoff and Karen took off to watch Georgia football. When I retreated aboard Kaimu I found the game wasn’t on broadcast TV. Oh, well, the game was a lopsided blow out, over before halftime.
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The next day I tested the oven and it lit properly.
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My quest for another outrigger canoe design continued. I found a way to get delftship, a ship design piece of software, to work on a linux machine. It can compute waterlines from a design and displacement and generate two dimensional panels for a design of compounded shapes. Think plates of steel for a welded boat, generated from a hull shape, then laid out in two dimensional shapes. I’ve used this program to make plywood hull panels. Unfortunately my hull design files have gone missing, I think on thumb drives from long ago that have been damaged. It’s just a matter of redoing the design. I have some changes to make on the design anyway.
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I made chicken soup but forgot to buy canned tomatoes. It came out OK, chicken and rice soup with onion and green peppers as the vegetables. The leftovers were left in the pot outside on deck. The forecast is cold enough to preclude refrigeration.
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The next morning was preparing for Helicopter Dave’s memorial pizza night which was scheduled for around 5 in the afternoon. It was freezing outside at daybreak and my worry was that the pizza dough would have a difficult time rising unless I could make a warm place for it. I ended up running the little propane heater inside Kaimu’s galley all day long.
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As I was preparing the dough I realized I was being especially careful. I thought about ceremonial rites and how they are carefully orchestrated. We are conscious of luck both good and bad, and having an error in a ceremony is sure to bring bad luck. The dough rose well and I fired up the pizza oven in the woodshop, kept it closed to retain the heat, and soon made the first pizza.
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About a dozen people came at various times and we drank Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, the only thing that David drank. The stories came out of times past and Dave’s history was related. There were some tears but not a sense of loss. We could feel that David was observing us, I’m sure he would approve.
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The image is of a steel yacht, the model is called Tahitiana, derived from the Tahiti Ketch designed by Hanna in I think 1938. The sailors working on it are mounting a boomkin made out of stainless steel on the stern. It will hold the self steering vane and the mizzen sail sheet.