Opua: work boat
Opua: work boat
Above is the promised photo of THE HAWKE OF TUONELA back on her mooring after anti-fouling to enable you to judge if she passes the ‘view at a boat’s length’ test.
The photo is as it came from the camera.
----------
I worked out this afternoon for only the third time this year.
I had some good excuses: a minor cold; doctors giving me preventative shots for pneumonia, tetanus and shingles; flying across the Pacific; being in the boat yard. But I still should have worked out more than twice in January. That is why I print out a calendar at the beginning of each year and circle the days I actually do work out: so I don’t kid myself.
To print a calendar on an Apple computer, you open terminal and type ‘cal’, leave a space, then type the four digits of the year’s calendar you want, such as 2012, then hit ‘enter’.
I wondered how far into the future this works and so typed 2020, 3030, 4040, 5050. Each time a calendar, which I assume to be correct, appeared instantly.
I found myself wondering at that last year: one and a half times farther beyond us than we are beyond the world of Augustus Caesar and Jesus Christ. The world of 5050 is beyond imagining.
That’s one of the things about death I regret. I’d like to come back for a day or two every hundred years to see what happened.
----------
The start of last evening’s Opua Cruising Club race gave credence to the cliché that watching yacht racing is like watching paint dry. I don’t belive we had more than five knots of wind all day, and at the start it was three to zero.
I was on deck. I sipped some wine. I went below and boiled a cup of water for freeze dried lamb fettucini. I came back up on deck. No body had moved.
I sipped some more wine. Went below ten minutes later for the lamb fettucini. Took it on deck. Poured a small amount of white wine from my glass into the fettucini--along with boiling water, the extent of my culinary skills. Ate same.
The leaders had maybe moved fifty yards.
The course was up the inlet toward the mountain to the east.
Speaking of drying paint, while sitting in my SportaSeat, I noticed more sea green on the back of my legs.
I went below, washed and dried the plastic measuring cup I use as a dish. Got some turpentine and removed the green leg paint. This time when I went back on deck, the twenty boat fleet had finally moved off.
An hour later one small boat, about 20’ overall, which had somehow caught its own private puff, returned with a half mile lead.
While I do not race and Moore 24s are known to excel in strong wind and waves, I know that GANNET moves in a sneeze. I think she might have acquitted herself well last night.
----------
I’ve been doing small, but necessary tasks: tightening the alternator belt on the Yanmar; touching up white cabin paint; trying to figure out why one solar panel is not functioning properly; freeing a rusty wrench; removing all the books from the port side of the boat, throwing those too moldy out, putting the rest in the cockpit to sun, and cleaning the shelf with Exit Mold; lightly sanding some of the interior wood prior to oiling.
Thursday, February 2, 2012