Winthrop Harbor: double time
Winthrop Harbor: double time
Calm. Still. Quiet.
No other people are around, and up here I am far from the omnipresent hum of the city. The only sounds are Bach Inventions via iTouch and the FoxL bluetooth speaker resting on the mainsheet traveler, and an occasional bird call.
Carol has a business meeting this evening, so I rode the 1:00 p.m. train up and will spend the night.
5 p.m., my usual time for an evening drink on deck, finds me sitting on a Sportaseat, facing east, away from the sun, which won’t set for another three hours; but my drink is an atypical can of Heineken, two of which we left last weekend and the only alcohol aboard. GANNET is a dry boat who needs her own bottle of Laphroaig.
I spent the afternoon charging batteries from shore power: first the ship’s; now Torqeedo’s number 1, which was down to 41% and will take most of the night to revive; and sorting through and sort of organizing the interior. I found a number of things I have been looking for, but no hammer. Maybe I never had one aboard.
I’m writing on my iPad with a Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover, which looks like the missing half of an iPad, and works reasonably well, though I will have to transfer this to my MacBook Pro in order to post it with iWeb.
Not as good a view as from THE HAWKE OF TUONELA, but the temperature is in the high 60s F today and should be near 80ºF tomorrow.
Very pleasant being on water, however still.
May 23
I’m writing now on the 3 p.m. train heading home.
For my three hour round trip commute, counting walking to and from the trains, I got 25 hours aboard. Much more enjoyable and efficient, even if I was cold last night.
After reacquainting myself with my Jetboil stove, I heated two cups of water and feasted on Mountain House Noodles and Chicken for dinner, accompanied by the second can of beer. Well, maybe not quiet ‘feasted’, but I enjoyed it. Then I crawled forward and read for a while before falling asleep.
The two sleeping bags on GANNET claim to have a comfort zone down to 40º F, but they don’t. Not even with one piled on top of the other, as I did around midnight, when the temperature fell to near 40ºF. I wasn’t shivering; but I wasn’t comfortable either. Whenever I rolled over so that my back was against the hull, I could feel through the sleeping bags the penetrating coldness of the water.
It was still cold when I got up at 5:30 a.m., so I put on my foul weather gear for the first hour to keep warm.
GANNET is no longer in sailing condition.
Four projects started. None finished.
I bought a Ryobi jib saw last weekend--the cheapest I could find--and brought it up with me. I don’t have much need for a jig saw; but in making the cutout in the bulkhead for the Solar Boost solar panel regulator and cutting circular backing plates from a sheet of Phenolic G-10 plastic for the new Harken winches, it has already been worth its nominal cost.
Solar Boost in place, I have yet to decide on solar panels, buy, and install them. Making the decision of what to buy is the only difficult part in this. I’m going to make cardboard cutouts the size of different panel sizes and move them around the deck before placing an order.
Removing the old Barient 10s was more difficult than I expected.
Even after the four bolts securing each winch were removed, they remained obstinately in place, perhaps being held by something like 5200. I needed that elusive hammer, but had to improvise with a big wrench to drive a putty knife beneath the winch bases to free them.
Until I removed the old bolts I did not know how thick GANNET’s deck is and so could not buy bolts for the Harkens. Now that I know the deck is ¾”, I can.
I loosened the port lower shroud, tied it off to the toe rail, and returned to the cabin to remove the nuts from the u-bolt. They came off easily, but I could not budge the u-bolt, either from below deck or above. I need that hammer.
So I moved on to removing GANNET’s vestigial Minnesota registration sticker and numbers from both sides of the bow. Unlike her former name, GROWLER, and home port, Duluth, these were a pain. I spent a tedious hour lying on the dock with a putty knife and acetone, while several small fish gathered below me in the forlorn hope that the tiny falling slivers were eatable.
One of the consequences of my failed vision is that I cannot see straight. Literally. This presents problems in tuning a mast and in applying numbers and letters in a straight line, so I will ask Carol to put GANNET’s Illinois registration in place.
Twenty-five hours more than doubles the time I’ve spent on GANNET since my right eye began to implode last September 3. Even with one eye, I see so much more just being aboard, details I might have missed, things that need to be changed or fixed or improved.
Hopefully next time I return, I’ll actually complete a task.
The above photo was taken late Tuesday afternoon. I am standing in GANNET’s companionway. Perhaps you can tell from the camera angle that the deck is below my waist. I wear this boat like a low slung pair of shorts.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012