Kaimusailing

The Thanksgiving Boater's Feast is looming around the corner and I will be involved in vegetable prep again. I forgot what I made last year for the Pot Luck Dinner and went back in the blog and saw it was my ole mole chili dogs. Geoff had made 4 gallons of gumbo and enough rice to feed an army. At the end of the evening the chili dogs were gone as well as the gumbo and rice. Geoff said they even ate the rice after the gumbo was gone. He says he'll make 5 gallons this year, but he doesn't know how many are coming.
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My supply of borscht was running out and I decided to make more soup. My idea was to go to the store, see what protein looked promising, and then buy any other ingredients I might need.
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I went to the local Winn-Dixie which is rumored to be closing in about a month and then be converted to an Aldi's. When that happens we will have to go to Kingsland to grocery shop, about twice as far.
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I found chicken thighs on sale, Manager's Special, which usually means it's at its due date. Cream of Chicken Mushroom Florentine Soup, needs spinach, onion, garlic, mushrooms, and a quart of half and half.
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I started the chicken thighs and a half liter of bottled water, plus some Better than Bouillon, and a diced onion on high till it boiled. Spinach was fed into the soup pot and wilted down to a manageable size. It took 4 batches. A preprepped bunch of stir fry vegetables were added to the pot. They were also on manager's special. A small box of mushrooms was sliced and added.
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After 45 minutes the soup pot was set aside and the small skillet was used to make a roux of 1/3 cup flour and Irish butter. The cooked chicken was removed from the soup pot, placed on a platter, and allowed to cool a bit. Broth from the pot was added to the roux and whisked smooth, until I could get no more broth. Then the roux was mixed into the pot which was brought back up to temperature. The chicken was skinned, boned, and diced, and returned to the pot. The quart of half and half was added. Fresh pepper and garlic salt were used to round out the seasoning. Earlier pepper and Italian herb mixture were used.
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The soup needed to come to temperature but I had spent too long cooking and my hunger got the better of me. I had 3 bowls of soup and put away 5 servings in the fridge.
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Nutritionally dense.
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We had a double cold front come through and temperatures were down in the 40's, but more is to come. The weather seems strange with high winds, unusually high or low temperatures, a hurricane season that maybe has quit, a month late.
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I have some Rounder Records tunes playing from time to time and it's hill country music, blues, and stuff like that. One line from a song is "when you speak to my wife, don't tell her I've been with a woman who knows what to do".
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I decided to make chili dogs like I did last Thanksgiving, but now it would just be for me, not for the Feast. I had some of the negro mole paste in the fridge. It's old but probably will last forever. I went to the Winn-Dixie to get hot dogs and salsa.
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The store was shocking, bare, they are selling off inventory and closing in a couple weeks. I was able to get potato hot dog rolls, hot dogs, and a jar of Southeast Grocer's ersatz salsa, chunky, medium.
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I make my own mole concoction, but the negro paste is from Mexico and has a zillion ingredients, impossible to duplicate. The normal mixture is one part paste, two or three parts tomato puree, and a quantity of stock. The salsa is used instead of tomato puree and stock is added if necessary, the sauce thickens as it's heated. I put the cheap hot dogs in a large skillet and seared them while I poured the jar of salsa over them and then plopped about a quarter cup of mole paste and began mixing, breaking up the paste, moving things around in the skillet. This has taken maybe 5 minutes or less.
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I wanted to simmer the concoction for a bit before consuming and kept mixing. The concoction was bubbling and getting syrupy, thickening, I poured a half cup of water and continued. I was hungry and could not help myself. I love chili dogs, and this sauce is spicy and complex. I speared one of the dogs with a fork and put it on a potato roll, split it, sauced it. Oh, my god, spicy, subtle fruit, nut, and sweet flavors. Still, it has to simmer more and smooth out the raw edges.
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After a while I was still hungry and ate another dog. It will taste better tomorrow.
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I will be getting a ham bone during the week and will make bean soup with it. I needed to get a few ingredients for that, including the 15 bean bag of beans. Also I discovered a cache of carrots and potatoes, left over from a borscht attempt. I will make it again with kielbasa, so added that to my shopping list as well as sour cream and mushrooms.
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Geoff the chef, actually a phd chemist, said he would make 5 gallons of gumbo for a pot luck dinner on Tuesday of Thanksgiving week. I helped him last year and agreed to help again. Last year was 4 gallons and I made a lot of chili dogs, all was consumed. Geoff said just help me make the gumbo and forget about those chili dogs. Of course I had already made some for myself.
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Eloisa texted about any room for her and Bleu, the Black American Spaniel. I was at Geoff's cutting and peeling, chopping and dicing. Geoff had carved the meat off of 6 turkeys and roasted the carcasses, then made a big stock pot of turkey stock. He made roux on stove top, not baked, roasted 3 trays of okra, stewed some andouille and chicken. I worked on the holy trinity, onion, green pepper, and celery, plus garlic.
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Two pots of white rice were cooked. Big pots. The industrial sized propane cooker and its giant pot were accepting the ingredients for the gumbo. Geoff the Chef tasted, adjusted, added components. Taste this and I said do you have any tomatoes in it? He had some really great tomato paste from the upscale market in Fernandina and he put that in. It helped, but it didn't need any help in the first place.
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There is a lot of logistical kind of work to do to feed a large crowd, tables, chairs, tablecloths, and utensils. Crowd control becomes necessary. 70 or so bowls of gumbo with rice were served as well as other pot luck items brought by the cruisers in port. The gumbo was the hit though. I never got any of the deviled eggs, they must have been good.
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My vegetable chopping skills were employed the next day. The main thing was peeling 5 lbs of carrots and 10 lbs of potatoes. I prepped shallots for French green beans. The carrots were bias cut. Potatoes riced and whipped with a whisk with butter and cream. I think It was 1 ½ sticks of butter and a pint of whipping cream. Milk was added as needed so that the potatoes didn't resemble concrete mix.
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Food was trayed and covered and refrigerated.
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The next day was agony. I slept until almost 10am, and was informed we were starting the final prep at 10:30 or so. I microwaved a chili dog and drank some coffee, rushed along. Eloisa drove me to Geoff's house and we began slicing meat. It becomes like an industrial process. Food no longer has appeal, it is processed, sliced, into trays, two for white meat, one for dark. A tray of ham. Geoff intelligently hydrates his meat with jus from the ham or stock from the turkey carcasses. Then there is the stuffing. 6 boxes of stuffing mix. Prep more celery, a lot more. The stuffing comes out great. Just give me that stuffing and that gravy, I said.
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There are other reasons cruisers come into St Marys for Thanksgiving. It is the right time of year for those sailing South, it is not far off the ICW or off the ocean, and the yacht club ubers people around to the grocers, laundry, airport, etc.
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The week of constant food prep has me bushed, but Geoff is up at 6am and we deliver all the food around noontime. It is a zoo. I am testy and really can't help snarling at people, get out of my way, I'm getting burned by a tray of food. The food covers a bunch of tables, two rows, plus some desserts along another row.
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A line forms, a big line, and I am not eager to get in line. I sit with Bleu, take him for a walk around the building. The line starts to wind around the building. After a while I join the line, cutting in with Geoff and the bunch, no one seems upset about my butting in.
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I get lemonade for Eloisa who has been working away, she really helped. I get food, try some of the concoctions of the cruiser's as well of some of the tried and true things we recently made.
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There was one tray of disassembled stuffed cabbage, but I've made this, many years ago, and you have to get the sauce right. Literally tomato vegetable soup might be one of the best sauces. This version had too much rice in the meat mix, and an unfortunate spicing. I've made them all and this one had some kind of eastern mediterranean spicing. I don't like it. There were other foods. I could taste several glazed carrot recipes. Some not so subtle. I could not finish my plate of food.
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I lost my gas, I was pooped out. The crew cleaned up, Eloisa worked her magic clearing tables and tossing trash. I was out of commission. They gave me more wine.
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I slept like as in a coma. Pain woke me up. Sore. I could sit and watch football all day, but none of the teams interested me. Eloisa got me to ride down to Fort Clinch State Park. The day was cold and windy. We didn't hike around. I had a Poke Bowl at the Sandbar at the beach, but it wasn't the same as before. It was the way they plated it. The wine prices were way up.
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We left there and had wine at the Southern River Walk. The bill was 14 dollars. We stopped by Geoff and Karen and had more wine and I collected a bunch of pork bones and meat (fat).
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The next day I went shopping and we went to the Southern River Walk again. I had put the pork bones and stuff in a stock pot on simmer. The stove does this excellently. We drove up to Kingsland to Angelo's, which might be open. The OPEN sign was not lit, the front door was not locked, the inner door was not locked, how can you have any customers if you don't turn on your OPEN sign? They turned it on.
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We retreated to a table around the corner from the beefy entity who was outraged that Eloisa's door contacted his car somehwere. Just stay away. Order the Pesto Pizza. And order a bottle of pinot noir. They make good salads. I should have had one. I had four slices of that pizza. Don't need to put on weight right now, know what I'm sayin'?
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Back at the boatyard the pork bones were totally stewed and I put tock pot on deck where it might get to freezing overnight.
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The next morning I could see the stock had reduced by about a third the pork fat had congealed on top of the jelly-like stock. I removed the fat and brought the stock up to boil, then strained it into a somewhat smaller pot. The amount of ham from the bones was astounding. I had thought most of the meat would be roughage to be thrown away, but instead there was a ton of meat, shredded, added back into the stock with the ham beans, diced onion, and thinly sliced garlic cloves.
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The poaching process is steep for 10 minutes after bringing to a rolling boil, then repeat until the beans are done. Poaching prevents scorching on the bottom. After about an hour I tasted the broth. It was saltier than what I wanted. I had not added any salt, the salt was all from the ham. The flavor was good without adding hambeans' flavor packet, which would add even more salt.
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Eloisa and Bleu went camping at Fort Clinch State Park and I offered to bring soup down there later. Just in time for dinner. I watched a football game and after an hour and a half the smaller beans were done but the larger still needed more tide me. The complaint about the 16 bean mix is that the beans don't all cook at the same rate.
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The pot was too full to transport so I took two portions out, about 2 or 2 ½ cups apiece, and drove down to Amelia Island to Fort Clinch. I also had a butane one burner camp stove which is available at Walmart for about $20. After I bought it Eloisa said she had one given her by FEMA that she hadn't even used, I brought mine back, returned it. Now I was setting hers up on a picnic table and soon the pot of soup was boiling hot.
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The campsite was right on the Amelia River and I got a few shots of the setting sun. The soup was very good, especially now with very chilly weather. Eloisa and her campmate started a fire in the fire pit. There was no firewood nearby, but deeper in the live oak forest there were plenty of broken branches from the recent storms. Soon a significant blaze was roaring. The heat was welcome. I had to return to the boatyard however.
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I spent a long phone call to Hawaii while Sunday Night Football was on. It was a game in Buffalo, NY, with 2 feet of snow on the ground and more coming down. The visiting team, from California, didn't stand a chance, the local Buffalo team seemed happy to play football in the snow. It was a white out, wipe out, and a rout.
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The next day I had a lot of pots and pans to clean. I ran a couple errands and called Eloisa who was enjoying the natural beauty along the Amelia River. I said I wanted to take her out to dinner for her birthday, which is just a few days away. She suggested the sushi place next to the Publix market on 14th street. We went there. I have already said too much. It's a small place. Wonderful. It won't take many customers to swamp the place. Don't go there. Stay away.
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I had the Hawaiian Poke bowl. It could be made better and I know how, but it was really good. It had mango and avocado, ahi, seaweed salad, and rice with miso sauce. Other customers had their own works of art to consume.
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The image is a shot of sunset across the Amelia River.

The 11 hour drive to St. Marys was punctuated by a couple of traffic jams, the last one occurring right at the exit for Laurel Island Parkway just North of Kingsland where the big submarine base is located. I chose to exit there and avoid the jam, although I would be on local roads for the last few miles to the boatyard. As I came to the end of the exit ramp I could see traffic was free if I just rolled down the on ramp continuing South. Oh well, I was sort of committed to continuing on the Parkway.
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This route goes by the old airport and has some nasty curves and I took one wide. A St. Marys policeman stopped me and gave me a ticket for not staying in my proper lane. 700 miles without incident otherwise.
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I was rushing to get to the catamaran before it got dark. I pulled in and climbed aboard to see the interior. I was concerned about rainwater accumulation. There was some and a musty odor of dampness. Nothing drastic. I went shopping for breakfast supplies.
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We had a lot of rain over the week and I felt down, but so many other people have it bad. I hate them when they say, “Oh, that’s not so bad”, when I vent about things. Just let people vent, common courtesy. No matter how bad I feel, there is always something far worse, but I’d like things to be better anyway.
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I was invited to dinner at the phd chemists, Geoff and Karen, how do I want my tuna cooked they asked. They don’t go in for raw ahi. There are ways to prevent and eliminate parasites in your tuna. They just cook it. The cooking time was expertly varied by Geoff but the tuna was from the local Winn-Dixie. The perfectly cooked tuna steak was eagerly consumed, but I had to say to him, this is a young tuna. Earlier I had commented on the wine at the Point.
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The Point, or Pirate’s Point, is what I refer to when I say “the gas station restaurant”. As soon as I walked in the bartender asked if I wanted my Malbec. I was stunned. I hadn’t been in there for a couple of years. I was trying to remember when I had Malbec there. When she saw me she could have thought, red wine, what do we got, and as a person running a restaurant, what do we want to get rid of… Malbec.
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The wine was terrible, but not unusually so at this place, and I spoke with Geoff about it. Wait Staff, restaurant operator, came over. I said the malbec tasted rather vinegary. She astutely asked if she should open a new bottle. Yes. She poured into a large glass some of the new wine and then offered it to me. This seemed strange, I expected to take a whiff of the cork or bottle and then get a little taste. The taste from the large glass was like stepping into a garden or fruit orchard. No wonder I drank this wine before.
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The owner kinda shrugged me off when I mentioned tasting some of his older wines that have sat in the bottle. Maybe he should have drank the rest of that bad bottle.
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I hadn’t been in that place for about 2 years. They wouldn’t let Eloisa’s black American cocker spaniel, Bleu, in back then.
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I returned a week later and had another southwest burger and pinot noir. It was a change from my fare of strange canned salmon efforts. I sat at the bar with Geoff and Karen who would cook something at home, but Geoff, the cook, was wondering what to cook. I don’t think it will be salmon.
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I did make a batch of borscht using sausage. I want to do it again with kielbasa.
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I had a couple projects that were somewhat unpleasant but very necessary. The overhead in my bunk had growth of mold and when I retrieved a sponge mop to deal with it, from the port hull, I saw that the port hull had water up to the floorboards.
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I set up a portable electric bilge pump to pump out the water and started cleaning the mold off the overhead. The best treatment is Awesome cleaner from the dollar store. Spray it on, undiluted, work the surface with a soft brush, like a paint brush, then sponge it off.
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The image is of cirrus clouds, slightly photoshopped.

I had bought a package of meatloaf meat, a mixture of beef, pork, and veal, because it was on manager’s sale. That meant it had to be cooked right away. I didn’t really have a plan for this meat. I ended up making it into hamburger mix and fried 4 cheeseburgers, one of which I had for breakfast on a ciabatta roll.
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At the Food Lion I got mushrooms, broccoli head, assorted sweet mini peppers, red onion, a can of crushed tomatoes with basil, a can of diced tomatoes, mozzarella, and a bag of 15 bean soup beans. We were planning Pizza Night and also I would make an Azorean soup to use up one of the chorizos.
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The pizza extravaganza got off to a start at 3 in the afternoon. I brought my trusty cutting board and dollar store chef’s knife over to the Shanty. The pizza oven was there already, although stowed away in the back. I brought that out and a propane tank, set up the oven.
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Inside the shanty I started prepping ingredients. The broccoli head produced florets, the mozzarella was sliced enough for 4 pies, the mini peppers were halved with seeds removed, mushrooms sliced, and the onion was diced. The chorizo sausage was too mushy to slice. I ended up plopping down little sausage blobs on the pies.
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I was out of garlic salt and dashed a brand new bottle of olive oil on the pavement. Cuddily asked if she needed to bring anything, yes, please.
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I forgot to start the dough my usual way and had to improvise. Instead of my several stages of dough production I cut corners. 2 cups of water, 3 cups of flour, a tablespoon of honey, and a sprinkling of yeast went into a large bowl, and the ingredients were whisked smooth, no lumps. After a half hour rest I added 2 more cups of flour and kneaded the result. The shanty was quite warm, so I hoped the dough would catch up with the schedule.
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We were behind schedule, but no one had showed up yet, so when Cuddily arrived I started the oven. It roared to life and quickly shot the temperature up to about 800 degrees. Teri arrived with her son and a couple from my dock showed up. The lady of the couple is from Montenegro on the Adriatic, where they are planning to voyage. Cuddily had been there a few years ago and they had a talk while I prepared the first pie.
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We had a beautiful sunset, lots of wine, and pies popping out of the oven. After it got dark we had trouble finding things, putting things away.
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I ended up with lots of leftover pizza. Great for breakfast, but not so great for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I had to make the Azorean soup.
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It is a bean soup with chorizo sausage, but the Azorean sausage is spiced with pimiento, paprika?, and the stuff I had was Mexican, chili pepper spice.
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I poached the beans, this is the bag of 15 different kinds of beans normally used to make a cajun or ham flavored soup. I brought the beans to a boil and then let them sit for about 15 minutes while I prepped zucchini, small dice, garlic, minced, and fried the chorizo in a small skillet. The chorizo is a bulk sausage in a tube. As it fries it falls apart. It has a lot of fat. I spooned out cooked sausage into the beans, then sauteed onion in some of the leftover fat. Then the garlic went in, then the whole mess went into the bean pot along with the diced zucchini. The beans needed about 3 poaching sessions, so about 45 minutes, while I was prepping other things. A can of diced tomatoes went in the pot. A taste of the broth revealed this soup had some kick to it.
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This recipe is all over the internet with variations. When I spoke to my brothers, separately, in Hawaii, my older brother said he could get Portuguese sausage, my younger brother said there are as many recipes for chourizo dishes on the Big Island as there are Portuguese. The recipe I ended up making was almost identical to the one on the back of the bean package.
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The news from the flooded mountains of North Carolina was that armed hill folk were threatening FEMA workers who were there to help with the flood crisis. I am now absolutely sure that this disruption of social order is a result of foreign intervention.
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We have been experiencing fatigue and aches. Covid tests are negative.
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I say this is election anxiety. We are having trouble sleeping and then are slow to get up.
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I made the mistake of arriving at Sysco at 4 PM on Saturday, again. That was my main reason to travel to Pocomoke, to get wine at Sysco. I had a short list of some other things, not things I would have to drive all the way to Pocomoke to get. One item was smoked ham or black forest ham, but the only decent ham available was honey ham. No provolone. I ended up with colby jack.
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I arrived at the Legion right on time after wasting a long drive to get almost nothing. I had grilled chicken on salad greens with raspberry vinaigrette dressing, what bottle did that come out of?
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The next day was nautical, pull Cuddily’s runabout out. It was a nice day and we ended up taking it out for a very short spin. The engine alarmed and we cautiously went back to the dock. I was dropped off to bring the boat trailer to the launching ramp while Cuddily and Cornelia Marie took the boat.
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When I got to the ramps there was a large fishing boat on a trailer being backed into a ramp by an older gent. It barely fit in the ramp but he backed it in quickly and smoothly in one shot. They unhooked the boat from the trailer and he pulled forward, then backed with a sudden stop, the boat slid a couple feet down the trailer, he did it again and the boat was afloat. They pulled the trailer out and parked it an it was my turn to back a trailer in. Cuddily was bringing the runabout into a ramp.
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I failed at backing the trailer. I had the old gent giving me instructions and eventually Cornelia Marie asked if she could do it. Of course. She backed the trailer right in. Impressive. We got the boat on the trailer and I was enlisted to roll up my knees and wade to the hook up at the front of the bow. Grind the winch and bring the boat right in place.
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We took the boat up RT413 to get non-ethanol gasoline for it, then brought it down to the car wash where we could wash off the soft growth on the boat’s bottom, then drop it off at Marshall’s Marine. Recommended boat services.
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It was then Sunday Night Football and my NY Jets were playing. Hurray! Things started out well , then the opposition, the Pittsburgh Steelers, shut them down and went on to trounce the Jets. Boohoo. I was on the phone with my brother in Hawaii when I realized halfway through the second quarter of the game that the Jets will lose. My fears were realized.
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I returned to Sysco and bought my wine. Cuddily browsed dining tables at H&H Furniture. Teri roamed about that store while I picked up some RV antifreeze to winterize SUNSPLASH. We visited Dollar Tree for their excellent and cheap Awesome cleaner, very effective on mold and mildew. We stopped for late lunch at .
the Dockside in Pocomoke City. These cities around here are towns, villages in some instances.
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I had read mixed reviews about Dockside. It was Tuesday when a lot of restaurants are closed. If it is good, it is the nearest good restaurant to Crisfield. It is good. I had Buffalo Chicken LT sandwich and a couple of Orange Crush drinks. We all agreed that we would come back here again. We should have tried it earlier in the summer.
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The next day I was frustrated, working on the Atomic 4 again. I guess I will have to leave that project for next summer. I have the cylinder head separated from the block but still jammed on the studs.
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I made beef bourguignon and ended up overcooking the beef, hard to do, but it was a phone call that kept me away from the stew pot. I also made mashed potatoes with turnip and a carrot. The result was very flavorful. I used a fresh herb mix called “poultry mix” with the beef. The next day I put away 3 portions. Comfort food, French style.
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I ran into the second season of “Ancient Acopalypse”, a series on Netflix by Graham Hancock, who I have read and listened to on YouTube and other places. The premise is that the similarities in cultural elements of the oldest civilizations is a result of an even older civilization that expired due to the recent ice age.
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It is certainly entertaining, it is one of the most watched series on Netflix. I eat this stuff up, but I know it is speculative and mainstream archaeology has plenty of effective rebuttals.
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Graham Hancock has experience with a jungle vine drug called ayawaska, which plays an important role in his researches into Amazonia. In summary, the first expedition of Spaniards to run down the Amazon told of large cities with huge populations. Later explorers found no evidence. Mainstream archaeology ignored looking further in the Amazon. It was considered an impassable rain forest with very poor soil. Now researchers are finding huge expansive landscapes of geometric mounds, circles, rectangles, parallel long straight mounds. I can see these could be canals, instead of roads.
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By scanning the territory with Lidar, which produces landscapes with vegetation removed, researches can look at these patterns. They mimic patterns of designs by artists who have experienced the ayawaska drug. The same patterns appear on rock drawings made about 12,000 years ago. Intriguing.
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The marina is starting to winterize and it’s time to go South to the boatyard in St. Marys, GA. I will miss my dearest friends up here and return to those I left in Georgia 6 months ago.
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The image is of another sunset at the Legion, a picnic table awaits you.

I dawdled as usual in the morning on another overcast day, made a BLbfhT sandwich, it is a BLT with crispy black forest ham instead of bacon. Phone calls kept coming in, mainly due to the effects of Hurricane Helene. People called me to find out what the local conditions were in St Marys, GA, but I am not down there yet. I did find out from people who were actually down there. Conditions were like what I have experienced down there a few times, winds in the 35 to 50 mph range and rain damage.
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The most disturbing hurricane report I got was from Cedar Key, home to Tony's World Best Clam Chowder, where my daughter and I spent some time, cute little town. Not any more. We stayed in a place that was all new, had been renovated after getting trashed by a hurricane a little over a year ago. The report now was video of waves crashing into the place we stayed as well as the restaurant next door, we knew it as Steamer's. They will build back. The insurance companies have to draw the line somewhere. Hate to see it like that.
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I've been observing a YouTuber, Wildling Sailing, who is a youngster with a cheap old Wharram catamaran project. Oh no, I declare, you're not going to do that are you? And yes, he does it. His folks help out, shame on them, their kid is going out into the North Sea on a home built plywood catamaran. As much as I cringed, watching him do the boatbuilding stuff that I did, and learned from, I felt elated in his recent posts where he is actually sailing the boat.
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He has drone footage, which is very desirable, and I can see he works hard to make his videos coherent and well produced. That is why I watch everything he makes. He is effectively conveying to me those very things I remember from not that long back, in my mind, and he is doing it almost the same way.
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His mast is bending, it is a condition that is like an oscillation. Sooner or later the mast will fail. I can see it. He needs running backstays. He has a mast that is trying to go out of column. He needs a rigger to help him settle his rig down. He is going into a boatyard to do more work on the boat. He admits maybe he was pushing too hard to get out to sea.
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He has Hanneke Boon, the codesigner of the boat, helping him. I could feel that she was capturing some of her Dutch roots into the sailing rig, and maybe some other areas of the design. She is closely in touch and can probably advise him about the bendy mast.
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There were more phone calls, invites to go out, I stayed in. It was an overcast day with the weather deteriorating all day long. Brief semicloudy sunshine, then darker and darker, rain, dark. Wind, dark.
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It cleared up the next morning, slowly. I had planned to go to Pocomoke to get a big bag of frozen shrimp and some cheap wine. I wanted a set of spark plugs for the Atomic 4, I had a plan to use the old ones to help lift the flathead head off. Cuddily needed some shower door edge thingies. It turned out she ordered them from Amazon and didn't need to go shopping. We went anyway.
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I smelled the unburned gasoline smell again. The dashboard engine light didn't come on, but the Torque Pro app on the car radio said we had a "sensor 2, bank 1" anomaly. I think it has something to do with driving through the flood waters.
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We went to Verizon where Cuddily inquired about a new phone or more memory for her old phone. She has 32 gigs of memory on that one. It took a while, but now she has a Samsung S24+, a year newer than my phone, a nice phone. We shopped in Walmart for a few things, then went to Sysco for a big wine purchase. We got there at 4:00 PM. They close at 4:00 PM. Sheesh.
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We went to Cuddily's house to stow our groceries, mainly ham and potato salad and walked to the Legion, not that far away.
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There was an event with a famous country music star and parking was limited. There was a crane hoisting a huge American flag, a sound stage, lights, cars, and one with an old member of the Bad Crowd driving in, then another with another of the old Bad Crowd. Teri arrived and would have turned around and left due to the parking lot being so jammed, but I valeted her car into a narrow spot.
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Inside so many old friends, an endless stream. The country singer was sitting at a table basking in the adulation of his fans. Later I went outside and could hear some of the concert. It was better than expected.
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The day was dawdling while the NFL reports came in. The NY Jets who were 8 or 9 point favorites lost their game with the Denver Broncos. There is a lot of back story. The Jets offensive coordinator had been the Broncos head coach and was fired before the end of that season. At the Jets he was given a lot of grief about their lack of offense. The Bronco's new head coach said the Jet's OC had done the poorest job as head coach at the Bronco's. Now was the Jets chance to revenge him . Nope. They lost 10-9.
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We were at Jane's Island State Park which is a major draw to the Crisfield area. It was nice to have a cookout right by Daugherty Creek. The mosquitoes came in at dusk and we skedaddled. I called Hawaii, as usual. A football game was going on, Sunday Night Football, but in Hawaii it was afternoon.
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I had been trying to get in touch with Eloisa up in the North Carolina mountains. The devastation from flooding had erased some communities. The death toll was growing past 100. The footage on YouTube was astonishing. The interstates were washed away in places. Airports were flooded.
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Donald Trump quickly attacked the current administration about their response to the crisis. They replied with a presser showing their support. As usual it was political spin while a real problem needed attention.
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I finally got word that Eloisa was at a remote location and OK, as well as Bleu, her black American cocker.
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I went back to Sysco and bought a couple boxes of Barefoot on Tap pinot noir as well as bottles of Saddlebred to replenish Cuddily's wine rack. I also bought a 2 ½ lb bag of shrimp, this time frozen raw, peeled, deveined, and tail off. After filling the wine rack I was leaving and we started talking. Let's sample the wine. I was only subjected to one bottle.
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While sitting around prior to our scampi feast I resumed some work on the Atomic 4 engine.
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The engine was locked up. Water backed up in the exhaust has seized exhaust valve #4, a common occurrence. I should have tried starting the engine on some two stroke gas and maybe the valve would have freed itself. I procrastinated and now found the engine would not turn over. I tried pulling the plugs and putting Blaster penetrating oil in the cylinders. It looked like I would have to remove the cylinder head.
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I removed the nuts on the studs that held the head to the block, but the head was stuck on the studs or the block or both. I tried hammering at the seam between the block and head with a chisel to no effect. I tried Blaster on the studs and hitting with the chisel several times.
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Moyer Marine, who are the experts on the Atomic 4's, recommend pulling the studs out. They sell a tool to do this. $175. You can try to butt two nuts together on a stud and try to unthread it, but it probably won't work, hence the expensive specialty tool.
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Save your old spark plugs. My idea is to knock the porcelain out of the plug, resulting in a handy hollow sort of nut that threads into the head. A bolt, let's say a 1/4-20, can be thrust up through the hollow spark plug before it is screwed into the head. Put one in #1 and one in #4. Make a short beam with a hole for the 1/4-20 bolt and block it onto a couple of the studs. Tighten up a nut on the 1/4-20 bolt and draw the head up. Do this simultaneously on #1 and #4.
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You can also drill and thread the inside of these spark plug plugs, like maybe an all-thread standard size. Then you can buy a piece of all-thread that you can screw down into the cylinder and push a piston, can free up an engine that way.
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I had a conversation with Teri about scampi at Cuddily's, that she didn't need to bring salad, what?, yes, she had forgotten, no problem, just bring intelligence. Too many cooks. Everyone wanted to chip in, peel this, peel that, don't we need water for the pasta, NO PASTA? Yes, I have to carry out what I envisioned, some kind of scampi with Cornelia Marie's crispy garlic bread, and then a salad.
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We had to take turns in the kitchen. Two's company and three's a crowd. Just make it. It was like a symphony of cooking. You'd like to be the diva, but you just have to wait your turn and deliver your little bit to the whole thing. It can turn out well in the end, as it did, we enjoyed it.
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I like to think I have sharpened my skills, but the proof is in the pudding, so they say. A simple dish with shrimp, not overcooked, but absolutely delectable. The juice of the matter, the gravy, that shrimp and garlic essence that ends up in the bottom of the bowl, sopped up with various kinds of bread, garlic bread, italian tufts dipped into the garlic butter oil shrimpie essence, essence.
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You have to cook for your constituency, the problem being that maybe we are not on the same culinary page. It's hard to argue with shrimp scampi though. We had a talk about protein prices. It's like chicken and pork might be on the low end, real wild caught fish way on the high end. Shrimp is kind of in the middle. Much of it is being farmed. The farming process isn't bad, but I worry about what they might do in the field, or shrimp pond, as it were.
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In this digression I would like to remind my subscribers that sleep is just a few paragraphs away.
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I had a new technique with the tomatoes in the salad. I had never done this before, but I recall a show that Anthony Bourdain put on about essential cooking skills, and in that show an Italian chef showed how to prepare tomatoes for a sauce. He blanched them, skinned them, sliced them across the Equator, and squeezed out the liquid and seeds. Then the tomato flesh could be cooked. I kind of did not do the blanching, but that could be a good way to go, I just cut across the equator and squeezed out the seeds and liquid into the sink.
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I learned to enjoy preparing salad items. You learn to consider the human that will try to eat the salad. We would much like something else than rabbit food. The salad has to have some character, oh, come on, not just the chef, the salad has to have some character like an entree might. I try. I think about how someone might pick up some salad item in their fork. I like to size things accordingly. It's not too much trouble when you really like what you are doing. When we put grilled chicken or something else on our salad, we are dismissing our salad. You are not good enough, we have to add THIS.
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I am unable to send files to my phone to text, so here is a sought after recipe for gourmet mac and cheese, attributed to chef Terrance Brennan:
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1.Bring 2 quarts of salted water to a boil and add the elbow macaroni. Cook until it's al dente, approximately 6 to 8 minutes.
2.While the macaroni is boiling, slowly melt 5 1/2 Tbs of butter over medium high heat in a medium sauce pan.
3.Add the flour, stirring, cook together for a minute or so. Do not brown the mixture; you want a blonde roux. Add the milk, whisking to avoid lumps. Bring mixture to a boil and continue whisking. Lower heat and simmer for about five minutes until it thickens.
4.While the milk is simmering, combine 2 Tbs butter and the bread crumbs, and melt together in a separate pan.
5.Add the Parmesan cheese. This adds another layer of flavor so it's not one-dimensional. Just cook until the butter is melted. Remove from heat.
6.When the milk is ready, add the mascarpone cheese. Then add gruyere cheese and whisk it in, and as soon as until it's melted, remove from the heat. This will happen quickly because the gruyere cheese should be grated and at room temperature.
7.Season with salt and black pepper and whisk to combine. Add the macaroni to the cheese sauce, mix it well, and when it's nicely incorporated, spoon it out into a cooking dish. 8.Sprinkle the bread crumbs on the top, using your hands to pat it down to make sure it's nice and evenly dispersed all over the surface. The topping becomes very crunchy when it bakes. Cook for about 35-40 minutes in a 350 degree oven until golden brown and bubbly.
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My marina neighbor, Chef Jonathan, needed to go to Pocomoke, so I took him along in Cornelia Marie's old car, the Honda CRV. The check engine light had come on again, and it seems to coincide with driving through some of Crisfield's salty floods. I think the salt water causes malfunction of the oxygen sensors which results in the fuel/air ratio being wrong. The exhaust then starts to smell like unburned gasoline. I threw another can of Cataclean in the gas tank and after about 10 miles on the way to Pocomoke the check engine light went out. The stuff really seems to work.
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We discussed making Borscht and making Beef Stroganoff. These are both Eastern European dishes that use sour cream. Why not combine the two recipes?
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When I got back I cubed a chuck roast and browned the cubes in a soup kettle, then added mirepoix and diced potatoes, then a pint of water and let it simmer for about a half hour. I added sliced mushrooms and ten minutes later 3 cans of sliced beets and their liquid. A small sour cream was blended into the soup and it was allowed to rest. I used dill as the main spice along with some garlic salt and some balsamic vinegar. It tasted OK but seemed to need something, something was missing. I gave a large portion to my boat neighbors.
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The next day I asked about how they liked the soup and Jonathan did not say he liked it, but he said his partner did, but she is from Hungaria. I put away 5 portions of the soup in the fridge. They invited me over for a cookout later.
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I continued with the Atomic 4 cylinder head. I purchased 1/4-20 bolts from Lowe's along with a length of angle bar, 1/8" thickness. I cut off 4 five inch pieces and positioned them over the hollowed out spark plugs, each with a 1/4-20 bolt sticking up, and marked the angle bars to drill out ¼" holes. I put the angle bars together in pairs and ran the 1/4" bolts up through them and put washers and nuts on them. The bars were resting on cylinder head studs that are fastened into the block. I had been liberally spraying Blaster penetrating oil on all the studs so that maybe they would allow me to tighten the 1/4" bolts and pull the head up off the block. When I tried it, the head moved, I could insert my pry bar between the head and the block. Success.
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The news was ablaze with reports of Jets head coach Robert Saleh being fired after going 2-3 in this season's 5 games. Seems like a brutal firing, but he has been there over 3 years and the team is not doing as well as it should.
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The cookout with Chef Jonathan ended up being a dark affair in their cockpit, Magnum grill ablaze the only light. If you can cook a good meal like that you are really doing something. He made green beans with a sauce, told me how he made it, couldn't comprehend, I would have to write it down. Another sailing couple with a lot of experience, transpacific, etc., joined us. We ate steaks with green beans and what seemed like fried plantains, but they were slices of yams, yummie.
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I had a couple of cousins that had gone missing in North Carolina during the flooding. It turned out they lived not far from where Eloisa was staying and I was now in intermittent contact with her and asked her to scout around. I received a call in the morning from her and one of my cousins. They can be taken off the missing persons list.
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The image is of my improvised Atomic 4 head lifting apparatus. The bolt in the middle of the picture comes up from a hollow spark plug and it is bolted to a pair of angle bars about 5" long. They are positioned on top of each other, so it looks like metal channel. Under each end of the angle bars is a stud coming up through the head from the block. Tightening the bolt will pull up on the head.

The Nao Trinidad was back in town and I discretely went about the marina looking for any of the crew, wondering if I would find any I remembered or conversely, if I would find anyone recognize me. We cooked a huge roast for them when they were in St. Marys, GA, last fall.
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One fellow responded when I said “Hola” to him, but his response was “how are you doing?” He should know better.
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I picked up 3 pork chops at the Food Lion. I couldn’t resist. After the recent $2.99 pair of pork chops filled the bill for a couple of meals, one a grilled pork chop on salad, the other a pork chop sandwich, here was a trio of pork chops on sale, $2.49.
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It seemed selfish and sinful to cook these chops just for myself. I couldn’t however entertain on the little boat, maybe I could, it’s a little tight for just me, maybe in the cockpit, but the weather is gloomy and not suitable for dining outside.
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Although I picked up the pork chops because they were a bargain, I had other stuff in the fridge that needed use. Mozzarella, some marinara sauce, and now the chops. I had the makings of chicken parmesana but with pork chops instead. I thought about it. Yeah, I could make it, eat one, and put away the other two. I’d like to have one on top of a simple salad, just tomatoes and romaine with my vinaigrette dressing.
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Cuddily called while I was checking out the sports channels in the former Red Shell Shanty, now the Boater’s Lounge, she had a bad experience with a light bulb, a part of her microwave oven over her real oven. Yeah, I could come over and take a look at it. I told her I had 3 pork chops that needed cooking, the magic number 3, oh, do I mean cooking for her and Teri and me. Yes.
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It was early in the afternoon and I had time to prepare, get ingredients together, pump up the slowly leaky rear tire, shower, remark to the marina manager; look, it’s Cornelia Marie’s old car!, and then depart after showering in the main building.
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The bulb in Cuddily’s microwave sort of shroud that exists above her stove and real oven had failed and then broke off when she tried to unscrew it. I was apprehensive about working around electricity in a place I didn’t know that well, but it was probably built to code and I was using high quality Harbor Freight insulated tools. The bulb came out easily. The ID numbers were stamped in the bulb’s brass screw in plug. She took it to the hardware store.
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I had the run of her kitchen, plates out for flour, egg, Italian bread crumbs, and one for the pork breaded cutlets when they were breaded. They looked so perfect, I popped them in the fridge for a while and rinsed off the growing stack of preparation plates.
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Teri was coming with a salad. We had wine. I took the chops out of the fridge. Cuddily arrived with the replacement bulb, not exactly the same, but it screwed in and we had light above the stove. She got out a heavy cast iron skillet, perfect. I chose to saute the chops the way I made the chicken parmesan, all in one skillet.
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We had wine and watched a presser on one of the NBC channels, it was Kamala Harris and President Zelensky of Ukraine. I don’t know exactly why I got emotional watching part of it, maybe because I know I have some Ukrainian blood in me, certainly Polish blood, Vladimir Putin is very evil, he invaded Ukraine, they are the victims, they are asking for help. Meanwhile there is an anti-Ukraine faction in our country. Apparently they are friendly to Putin and despise Ukraine. I had to go to the other end of the kitchen.
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Her stove and skillet helped me with my tears, big flame, sizzling Irish butter and EVOO, the chops went in. I asked Alexa to set a timer for 5 minutes. The chops were searing and I was backing off the flame. I’m experienced. I had a gulp of wine or two and then Alexa sent me back to the skillet, flip the chops, spoon marinara on them, it was thick and set up a dense almost tomato pasty layer of, tomato, then mozzarella slices, and finally grated asiago. Cover it all and shut off the heat. Not sure if there is enough latent heat. A couple more sips of wine, OK, gulps. Just fire it up for about 30 seconds more, look, there is sizzling in the pan, shut it off.
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The utensils, et al., were brought out to the rear porch, deck, in Hawaii it would be a lanai, and the salad came out there with the dressings. I served up the pork chops, one on each plate, to the table. Add salad, make sure the wine is filled.
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This is not just a meal I will prepare again, it is a one pan gourmet dinner entree that I must explore with other meats, maybe even shrimp or fish. I can change what I add, doesn’t have to be parmesan, could be kiev. Got to go to Sysco in Pocomoke and see what they got there. That’s where the chefs go, that’s where the Saddlebred pinot noir is only $7.29 a bottle! For now.
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I was inspired by my artist friend, Eve, who we were in touch with and found had a bad chest inflammation, probably bronchitis. She is one of the best chefs, can do it with her hand tied behind her back, I know. The way she cooks up a gourmet sauce with her phone crooked in her neck, no big flames, patience with the process, good health to her. In the meantime we have to carry on with a nod to that person who sets the standards.
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The image is of a parmesan pork chop.

Another cheap Chinese car adapter came in, TPMS, Tire Pressure Monitoring System. Atoto has an adapter and 4 tire sensors for about $75. Others are available down to the 40 dollar range. The one I purchased does not pair with the Atoto radio, it has its own solar powered monitor that mounts with double sticky tape. I put mine on top of the cowling above the radio. It is close and visible and I can reach the buttons on top to turn it on and off and do other things with it. It cost $20 on eBay. It is extremely easy to install and operate. Even I can do it. The left rear tire on this car has a slow leak. It is down to 19 psi. The others are around 30 psi. I'll probably try something like Fix-a-Flat.
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The OBD2 bluetooth adapter enables an app called Torque Pro, running on the Atoto radio, to display the vehicle's data from the OBD2 connector. The check engine light came on about a week ago and now Torque Pro says the error code is 0139, which is the #2 oxygen sensor on the catalytic converter. Replacement of the sensor is not a big deal except that the reviews of the repair that I saw all mentioned that the sensor gets stuck due to its location under the car and getting water splashed on it from the road, also the heat of the catalytic converter helps weld the sensor in place.
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When I used the term "biker broads" I didn't mean to offend anyone. There hasn't been much of a response which means that everyone must be angry. I'm sorry, I can't use the term "bicyclist's broads" for obvious reasons. Biker bitches would be really bad. I like to see a girl on a bike exercising her power. The tan, the coif, the duds, mostly black, the nails, just go for it, don't cut me with those fingernails.
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I have a recurring dream, not a lot lately, of kayaking in the midst of huge blocks of ice. There is a flow of current and it is cold. The water is very clear and I can see below me a landscape of land that was flooded and is now far below the flooding waters.
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Back to the bikes. I rode around a bit on the Schwinn. The front derailleur was stiff and could change down but not change up. The chain protested, of course, and I had to change the rear down 2 gears or chain rings. I was pedaling much faster, of course, which is good for the heart. The bike speed wasn't impressive, but the struggle against the pedals was.
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How ironic, this blog, that has put so many to sleep in record time, isn't helping me at all. Maybe I should post videos. There is a glut of them on YouTube. We need an AI robot to sift through all that. If a dog can sniff out cancer, why can't we make a device that does the same, or even more?
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I had the idea of printing some of my recent photos using finerworks, who send me endless emails about the latest sales. I could frame them and display them. They would be smashing. They would be given away. What is the price? What are they worth? They are just images, printed out, just like the images that came with your picture frame, they are worth that.
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The artist will do all by (future dialogue).
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Okay, yes, future dialogue, I can't write the word themsel*, it always reverts to themselves.
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It's hard to continue when you are interrupted. By artist I mean anyone that thinks. You can't deny the creative ability of anyone anymore.
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The artist will do all by them self. Maybe spellcheck is right. I guess I mean the creative person will create. The artists go through a lot of trouble to create and follow a path that sometimes results in making paper, making paint, making clay. When I create a photograph it is like making something out of nothing. But of course there is no nothing, clay is clay, paint is anything that obscures with another color, the image I conjure up is like a framework that I can mess around with.
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So, working with images is a result of our focus on the visual aspects of our lives, we are affected by images more than almost any other sense. When we look at an image in any detail we are dealing with geometry, color, and at some point we find we can be fooled, the artist can play with our vision, our concept of reality, it is so visual. It is a part of AI, which isn't yet AI, but visual foolery abounds in the digital realm.
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I made chicken parmesan in the skillet:
First marinade flattened chicken breast in garlic, lemon juice, and olive oil. Then make sauce with ¼ finely chopped onion, 2 crushed garlic cloves, and one can of crushed tomatoes. Dredge chicken breast in flour, then beaten egg with garlic and onion powder, and finally in Italian bread crumbs. Let cutlet and sauce sit for a half hour.
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Saute cutlet 2 minutes, flip, spoon sauce on the cutlet, then layer thin mozzarella slices on top with grated parmesan, cover saute pan and turn off the heat. Serve as sandwich or on pasta as soon as cheese has melted.
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I spent an entire afternoon trying to get a thumbdrive prepared to use as external storage for the car radio. I was partitioning and formatting but had to find a file system that was compatible with my linux laptop. Trial and error. Then I loaded 7.5 gigs of music on it and tried it in the car.
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It took a while to navigate through the file manager and the music player on the Chinese radio. The phone rang. It was Teri asking if I wanted to join her and a friend at the Legion. Is it that late already? Yes, I will go.
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Cuddily called and asked essentially the same question. What am I doing? I'm sitting in the car in the marina parking lot playing with my radio. I drove off in the direction of the Legion.
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Cuddily was walking Nori, the wonder dog, nearby the Legion when I slowed and asked her, Little girl would you like some candy? 5 of us entered and decided to sit outside, it was a beautiful day, not too windy. I memorized the names of new friends with an acronym, GFG.
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These are creative people and we took photos and told tales. Teri is usually the first to leave, she dislikes driving in the dark. Cuddily asked if I could give her and Nori a lift to the house nearby. The car is Cornelia Marie's old Honda CRV and Nori has been in that car for the past 5 years or so. Before we could get in and drive away Wilbur and Cornelia Marie arrived and Nori, excited, left with them.
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I drove Cuddily home and continued to the marina. She had invited me in for more wine. Maybe I should have gone in.
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The tides are now very high due to the harvest moon and rainfall. I normally text Cuddily SOB, safe on board, but that didn't seem right, I called her. I was looking forward to the Thursday Night Football game, Jets vs Patriots. I am a longtime Jets fan. I was apprehensive about the game. The Jets were favored, what if they lost?
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Cuddily is from Massachusetts and she is a fan of the Patriots, not so much now, more so when Tom Brady was playing there. I remarked that no one will see the game, the only way to see it is on Amazon Prime. Oh, I have that she said, and then dialed up the game which had just begun. Yes I could drive back and watch it with her.
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I had given her 4 bottles of Saddlebred pinot noir when I had dropped her off and now returned to help stow the bottles in her wine rack. She had a white wine.
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The game was very rough and the Jets were getting revenge after more than a decade of domination by the Pats. It was the Jets home opener. The fans were going crazy. The Jets aged quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, played like he did when he was young, MVP. Now the team gets about 10 days rest after playing 3 games in 11 days.
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I texted SOB when I got back on board.
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The weekend football games included upsets by a couple of Jets future opponents. The Broncos and Vikings won convincingly although they were huge underdogs to their opponents.
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Cornelia Marie decided to cook our frozen crab meat into a Cream of Crab Soup at Cuddily's home. Unfortunately the king tides were flooding Crisfield, making it difficult to get around, especially getting around to the Legion and the Small Boat Harbor, where the crab soup would be.
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On my way there I searched for an unflooded street and ended up on Hudson Street, aptly named for a river in New York. I was doing what they say not to do, drive into a flooded street.
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When I got to Cuddily's I found out that Teri would have difficulty getting there with her Buick. She could make it to the library and I suggested she meet me there and I could ferry her, pun intended, to the soup. I drove along the Small Boat Harbor and the flood was just as deep there as the other way I had tried. I picked her up and we drove back through the water.
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The cream of crab soup was really wonderful. The cream of crab I had at the Legion was horrible, overly spiced with Old Bay Seasoning, salty, almost no crab in it. $10 a bowl. Now we had soup made by a really good chef, it had lots of crab meat and a light cream consistency. The spice was standard French mirepoix. Cornelia Marie also made garlic bread and Wilbur worked on a salad. What a nice meal.
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I called Hawaii from the dinner table and we had a conference call with Teri joining from home. She does not stay out after dark. We discussed the weather in Hawaii, football, recipes, and volcanic activity.
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The next day I now had my gas tank down to ¼ and I could try out Cataclean, a gas additive that is claimed to clean your catalytic converter and also your O2 sensors. My engine warning light had gone out, but when I searched for warning codes in the Torque Pro app, the 0139 code was still there. It wouldn't clear.
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I added the Cataclean and set out to drive the 20 minutes recommended in the instructions. Afterwards the instructions said to fill up the tank and continue to drive normally. One thing I noticed after taking a trip up 413 was the smell of unburned gas was gone. The car had been smelling like a faulty lawn mower engine. I found a gas station that had the price down to 2.98/gal, much lower than the 3.49's of last week.
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I drove back to the marina and fiddled with the Torque Pro app and the O2 sensor fault was still there. One way to clear it is to disconnect the batter for a while, which I did, and the fault cleared. Now the engine control unit had to learn all over again the fuel/air mixture ratio, so I began another drive around Crisfield.
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I decided to drive my bike loop, to the West of the marina, to Calvary Road, then to Ashbury Church, then return to town on Main Street. It was not to be, the way was blocked by flooding. Back at the marina the finger piers were being flooded. It looked like we were getting hit with another higher than normal tide, much higher than normal.
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We conversed about going to the Legion. It would be almost impossible, the flooding would be higher than ever. I had picked up manager's special pork chops, preseasoned. I grilled them and made a simple salad of romaine and roma tomatoes.
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The next day I awoke to a massive tall ship docked nearby. It is the Nao Trinidad, a replica of Magellan's flagship. It visited here last year and then arrived in St. Marys, GA, where I helped Geoff and Karen cook a meal for the crew. I wonder if they will return there again this year.
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The marina has a big electrical problem and a plumbing problem also, resulting is outages of water and electricity. The big crab event is scheduled midweek. Is it going to be flooded out, lose power, or lose water in the facilities?
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The image is a photo of the Nao Trinidad at the dock in Somers Cove.