Kaimusailing

The 700C inner tube from Walmart was holding its air well and no blowouts yet. The day after Pizza Night had most of us not venturing out. Weather was still hot. The next day I was asked if I was going to the Legion. I took the bike to the Legion and while still in the marina had my Honda car key dangling, it hit the spokes of the bike and exploded. I looked around for the pieces but they must have ricocheted into the water. I was riding on the sidewalk above the bulkhead near the Red Shell Shanty. I continued to the Legion.
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I had a cheeseburger with chips for $7 and numerous glasses of Saddlebred pinot noir. I took a pre-sunset photo. Teri was the first to leave, Cuddily and I played songs on the jukebox. I playedd a beautiful hawaiian song but the few left at the bar were drunk and disorderly, the song was lost in all the noise. We played a few more and then I biked to the marina.
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The next day I resolved to go out and get a new key cut. I was shocked that my spare key was damaged and the metal prong part of the key was missing. Maybe it was on the floor in the car. I searched. I searched the washing machine and dryer in the laundry. I had the plastic fob part of the key, the metal part must have fallen somewhere.
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I searched around where the original key had exploded and found the metal prong of that key hiding in a crack in the sidewalk. I took it to the car and tried to start it with just the metal prong. It turned over but did not fire. My boat neighbors who also drive a CRV pulled up in the parking spot next to me. I was advised that the key had to be reset, it was a complicated key, and I needed the plastic part of the fob. I went back to the boat and got it, then did the reset, put the key in the lock, lock it, unlock it, the key has now been reset. The car started, but the key was really a bunch of damaged parts. The only thing holding it together was the pig ring.
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I planned to go to Pocomoke to maybe AutoZone to get a new key cut. On a whim I visited the local hardware store where the lady said go to Tawes Bros or TnT Auto. Tawes was right nearby and they also suggested TnT. TnT were further up 413 on Holland Crossing Rd. They said your key needs to be programmed and laser cut. Geesh.
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I returned to the Red Shell Shanty and used the internet, called the local Honda dealer, 40 miles away, who had a blank key on hand and would program it and laser cut it for me, for about $300. What? I called a locksmith recommended by TnT and he quoted me $150, well that’s better. I had to meet him after hours and the one way drive there would be almost an hour and a half.
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There was another locksmith only about 20 miles away and his phone number indicated Virginia. There’s a Virginia Eastern Shore and the other Virginia. 20 miles could be across the Bay. It turned out to be near Olney, just South of Pocomoke, only about an hour away. The locksmith was very busy. If I had a working key he said he could clone a new key and everything for $80. But not today.
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I spent more time in the Shanty and a couple of marina workers were using the air conditioning and wifi to do some work. It was getting hot out. Feels like 100. I posted the blog. I searched for more information about these high tech car keys. I should probably get two new keys made.
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I had to do something with the leftover sausage from Pizza Night and I decided to make a sausage pasta sauce. I had red onion and a can of Food Lion’s crushed tomatoes with basil. Throw the sausages into a medium sized pot with diced onion, some Carapelli EVOO and later some water to steam it a bit. I prepped some garlic and added that. Dusted with Italian spice mix, store brand. I dashed it with balsamic vinegar, garlic salt, and after a while add the can of crushed tomatoes rinsed with a little of the pinot noir. Let it simmer.
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After simmering for a while I uncovered it an let it reduce a bit. The aroma was very enticing. I ended up making a sourbread open faced sandwich with a generous scoop of the sauce, dusted the sauce with a hard Italian cheese (from Wisconsin). Very tasty. Just a snack. I’ve got to watch my diet or I will put on weight.
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On pizza night I planned to play some old music using my laptop and bluetooth speaker, but I was lazy and that didn’t happen. I did listen to a lot of Hawaiian music, and a lot of that was Amy Hanailaila’i Gilliom and Willie K, a duo who were dominant in Hawaiian music just a few years ago. Unfortunately when I looked up Willie K, he had passed away from cancer a few years ago. What a musician. I was listening to the very best.
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The sail racing news includes a run up to the Louis Vuitton cup which will determine the challenger for the cup. These are foiling sloops, the racing is similar to the foiling catamarans of SailGP. I’m not to excited to be watching this sort of thing, but I will. When I think of how outlandish a 40 knot sailboat seemed to me way back when, now I see it in high definition.
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I had more inclination to watch a documentary about the Baltic trade routes in remote antiquity. By portaging between the head waters of rivers they could go from the Baltic to the Caspian or Black Sea. They traded furs and amber for silver and silk. The boats were small enough that the party of men could carry the boat on the portage, which could be a distance. By men I don’t mean to denigrate the Viking women. They also traded in swords made of Scandinavian metal.
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It was to be a big weekend for Crisfield and the marina, Hard Crab Derby, marina full of boats from all over, and invitation for Irish Beef Stew at Cuddily’s waterfront home. I was coping with an electrical outage at the marina, only affecting about half of the boats. Oddly, the slips with the big visiting power yachts were not affected. I took a shower with lukewarm water in the Men’s Room at L dock, the only illumination was from two skylights with shafts that disguised, they looked like florescent fixtures, but if you looked up in them you could see, they were skylights. The water was once hot but now lukewarm, tomorrow it will be about the same. It is not cold here, 75 is chilly at night.
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The fellow next to me said he would invite me over for steaks, his fridge had gone off, he had no power. How could he have no power, I had power and we were using the same stanchion. I helped him find out that on his side of the stanchion the two outlets are dead, but on my side he could have the second, power there. Steaks are saved.
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At the lukewarm shower I spoke with a marina employee about the mechanical noises I heard from the big electrical box at Pier K. Like mechanical noises. He said yeah, it’s underground, they don’t know why the lost one leg of the electric. This is a big problem. Why does it have to happen this weekend with the Crab Derby and the crowds. I didn’t say to him what about losing a third leg of a delta electrical distribution. The neutral is supposed to carry very little current, that’s what we would try to do, many years ago, if it carries a lot of current that transponds back to the origin. Now you have unbalanced current at the head end of the marina’s electrical distribution. With crowds and all the carnival rides, bright lights, you know, lots of electrical consumption. Something could happen.
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I didn’t ride my bike over to Cuddily’s for her Irish beef stew, I had to bring a box of wine. When I got there there was an identical box of wine, but not very much wine in it. Barefoot on Tap pinot noir. Seems to evaporate quickly around here. I drew a glass from the old box.
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Cuddily was preparing potatoes for the stew and I said just starting to cook the stew. I ended up paring garlic cloves, I’m good at showing up when most of the work is done. We researched how to make the Guiness Irish Beef Stew, but she found garlic mashed potatoes are boiled with the garlic cloves and then mashed. I was done. Or so I thought.
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I was doing something with the phone at the dinner table and hit the glass of wine with my pointer finger and the result was a flood of wine. It’s OK, it’s the old box. We mopped it up and I got more from the new box which was about the ambient temperature of the back of the car. Warm, but not excessively warm.
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Cornelia Marie and Wilbur came in with Nori, the Wonder Dog, We got a call from Teri who was at the Legion, don’t come over here, it’s too crowded, OK, we won’t. I went outside to look at my amazing pulley arrangement on Cuddily’s boat’s mooring lines. Hey look at that, Cornelia Marie, look at that. She is an amazing water woman and soon she got the pulley fouled from both sides, that’s not the way you do it, I said, and I sprang into action.
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I needed help releasing the stern of the boat from the dock so I could drift over to the piling and unfoul the pulley, it is like a clothesline pulley, but heavily constructed. It took a while to get the line unjammed and then I had to show how well it worked. It didn’t work very well. I kept jamming it myself and having to back the line out, try again, back the line out, the others went inside to rehydrate and get away from the bugs. The bugs only really go at you when they know you are tied up, like with mooring lines and a clothesline pulley.
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It didn’t matter if it worked well, it had to work enough so that I could center the boat in the slip and tie it off and go in for another wine. I eventually got it all together and was able to get inside. It was time for the stew.
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There was no salad, but I didn’t have to chop veggies for one either. I helped with the potatoes, whipping them after mashing them. Garlic, black pepper, butter, and a little half and half. She said to lay a bed of mashed potatoes and lay a scoop of stew on them, and so I did. The stew is very good and you can probably get the recipe at Guinness. I had seconds and worried, the pot was getting low.
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Let’s not talk about Ireland, it’s your daughter’s birthday, tomorrow. We talked and I started to realize that I had an appeal to people who study psychology. Now they had a real subject to study. It goes both ways.
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In spite of my calamities with Cornelia Maries’ old car, I wanted to upgrade it. That’s what people do when they get an old relic. I misspelled wreck. No, it is a good car. I spent a lot of time to get to order an aftermarket “stereo head unit”. When I did, the payment account used the address at the boatyard in Georgia. I had to cancel the order.
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On my way back to the marina I had to avoid kids dashing across the road, this at 9 or 10 PM, music throbbing from the marina, like the annoying super base player cars. If they knew what a jerk I was behind the wheel they wouldn’t run in front of me.
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The next day was a trip to a bistro for Cornelia Marie’s birthday. We could take a small ferry, 3 car ferry. I had installed a gps app calle Here We Go that enabled alternate routes that Google Maps would not. However, CM and the intelligentsia decided they knew better and we went out for a ride through the countryside. Very twisty wind-ey. We ended up back on the main road after traveling in a large circular loop. OK, don’t listen to me. We went to Princess Anne and took Mount Vernon Road on the way to the little ferry. We never got there.
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It was a time of very high tides and the ferry was not operating, plus we would get CM’s new car doused in the salt water flooding the road. Our trip was now for naught. We decided to go to the tried and true place East of Salisbury called Tall Tales. We had Nori, the Wonder Dog, with us and Tall Tales had a pleasant outdoor dining area that allowed dogs.
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The dining experience was excellent. They make very good Orange Crush drinks. I had the Pork Asada Bowl. We returned to Cudily’s home on the water to have birthday cake. I returned to the marina just in time to enjoy the fireworks display, then called Hawaii right on time. The fireworks ended and soon after a thunderstorm came through.
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The image is very late afternoon sun above the Brick Kiln Channel that goes into the Small Boat Harbor in Crisfield.