Rain, rain, and more rain
01 May 2011 | P'burg
Soggy Bill
Here we sit in the rain, a Petersburg-style rain I do love P'burg, but HOLY SMOKES it rains a lot and it's COLD rain! Started last night and has continued a hard drizzle all day long. The rain is too hard to work outside, it's cold inside without the heater, and we're just sitting.
I did whatever I could do this morning, but most of our day's work was outside on deck: erecting the dodger, bending on sails, and general deck work. No dice.
Now and again, we hear a plane fly over, heading, we think, to the P'burg airport, but it's been to socked in for a lot of air traffic.
The yard owner, John Murgas, was going to put us on his trailer today, haul us across the road and ready us for launch, but it's almost five and he hasn't shown. For that matter, it's so icky out that no one has been in the yard today!
When we erected the bimini, I had to re-locate the Wifi antenna, so we lost our internet. Blast and damnation! Today, of all days, would have been dandy for doing some work online, but that was denied to us.
At any rate, tonight or tomorrow early afternoon, we'll be in the water, and that's pretty exciting. Conni has selected the route to Ketchikan, so we're ready to go. After launching, we'll motor up to the city harbors for the day since we want to see something as we go through the Wrangell Narrows. That means that we must stay until the tide cycle the next day. We'll buy groceries, fill tanks with good water, take our last bath for a few days, and wash some clothing.
Personally, I'm both excited and anxious about leaving tomorrow: if I did something wrong in the fuel system work, engine work, or propeller rebuild, we'll be floating down the damn Wrangell Narrows without propulsion. That's something to fear.
It's 7 PM now. We've been watching the old Spaghetti Western, "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" all afternoon. John Murgas came by earlier, he called and said, to put the boat on the launch trailer. It was raining, of course, as it's done all day. He sat in his car to wait for a break and took a nap. He slept for two hours, at which time he drove home! He called to say that he'd be here early tomorrow morning (Monday, 5/2) to get us on the trailer for launch tomorrow. We both went to the outhouse/toilet just now, and I got soaked running to the house and then filling the two water jugs. It's a hard, wet, soaking drizzle: t'aint a fit night out for man or beast, as my father used to say.
We'll have dinner. finish the movie, and get to bed early, not that we're tired from this day of relative inactivity. We both hope that it improves for our trip down the Wrangell Narrows.
7:45, a break allowed us to get the dodger on!