Tuesday, October 16, 2012

What DOES One Do at Anchor All Day?

We had leftovers for breakfast after watching the sunrise and spending some time trying to get the perfect dolphin pic... no luck. Jetsam spent the morning in hiding but Jezabelle came out into the cockpit and prowled around. This brings us to 9 am.  

Well, there are chores to be done.  A quick check of the weather showed a line of showers headed our way.  We prepped the deck for that, then I decided to investigate a faint odor I had detected under the Starboard side forward settee earlier in the week.  Bruce took out all of the goods stored there while I got out the cleaning gear.  I love using the home made general purpose cleaner I found with the mildew fighting properties of tea tree oil.  I wiped down the interior of the locker but found no culprit.  Maybe it was just a passing smell...  


Well, one chore usually leads to another... In removing the seat cushion, I noticed that some of the seams along the zipper were giving it up causing a bulge.  This seemed like as good a time as any to whip that back into shape.  It's amazing how the memories flooded in of helping my Granny thread a needle because her old eyes just couldn't see it... now my own old eyes are having a bit of trouble.  

Bruce entertained himself by entering some of the waypoints from his old GPS into the Raymarine Chartplotter that came with the boat.  We have been somewhat hesitant in using the chartplotter.  The screen has such rudimentary looking maps after using the iPad, it's hard to trust it.  We had some difficulty in finding one of the settings that kept throwing us off when we tried to use the "Find Ship" function.  It kept taking us off to Venezuela or somesuch place... but I found that there was an "offset" that was applied and when I turned that off, it worked fine.  So, for now, we have abandoned the plan to ditch it and buy  a new one (although the new ones are very sexy with iPad interface) and have begun to "move in" to this one.  

The rain went from sprinkle to actual rain so I went out into the cockpit to enjoy the enclosure.  Have I mentioned today that we LOVE having the full enclosure?  Even Jezabelle came out to investigate for a while but she was suspicious of the small puddle on the floor.  Before long, the rain stopped and the sun came out.  I finished my sewing project and put all the stuff away.  

Bruce floated the dinghy while I made some lunch.  Strange things are eaten on sailboats sometimes... baked potatoes with leftover meatballs and sauce.  Weird but yum and made some space in the fridge for tonight's leftovers.  Oh and I found some info in the Cruiser's Forum that will help us.  

We have a leak in the seal between the glass and aluminum frame on a couple of our Bomar hatches.  Turns out that the fix will be easy.  Use Captain Tolley's Creeping Crack Cure which evidently will fill hairline cracks before it cures.  Life is good!  (Later in the week we bought some at West Marine.... then we found an open bottle of it already on the boat.  Turns out that the previous owner had already discovered Tolley's)

Bruce wanted to see if he could catch a fish so he set to looking for a reel.  I got into the dinghy and waited.  I got tired of waiting and thought I would see if I could start the outboard.  I've driven a dinghy only a few times and never this new one.  It started right up, which got Bruce's attention.  He abandoned his search and headed for the ladder.  But... he forgot something and went back down below to get it.  I left!  I took the dink out for a bit of a personal spin.  The water was flat and I got it to plane easily.  What a KICK!  I sped around the boat a couple of times until Bruce looked ready to board.  So I picked him up and we  set out in the dinghy to explore the perimeter of Flato Cut.

On the map it looks like straight line shores, but in reality, it is lined with little curvy spots for fish to hide.  There are a couple of larger cut-out spots that we motored back up into and found lots of fish splashing around.  

One of these spots looked nice for drifting, so I cut the engine.  Bruce threw a lure and I paddled us a long with an oar.  I used it kind of like one of those paddle boards.  It was fun.  I was able to see some huge fish while standing and convinced Bruce to toss his lure over to them.  One swam right near the dink and we're pretty sure it was a redfish.  Evidently he didn't like what we had.

We left there to continue on our way and made a full exploration of the Cut.  The clouds had been dense and it was really nice.  

The wind began to fill in from the East, it had been west and nearly nil.  The sun came out and we figured that we needed head back to open up the boat to keep the cats from sweltering.  

We sped up our exploration and disturbed more than one shorebird as we continued around the cove...

We made it out to the entrance and got a good look at the flock there, then found some VERY shallow water as we turned and sped back to the boat.  We'll have to watch for that shallow spot on our way back out...

We spent the afternoon reading and straightening things up.  I made a new concoction for dinner.  It was supposed to be chicken enchiladas with canned chicken.  But when I went to put it together, the corn tortillas started to fall apart so I made it in layers instead.  I guess it was kind of a chicken enchilada lasagna.  Spanish rice finished it off nicely and we ate with a movie again.  We will have this again... no, I mean this trip... we've got lots of leftovers, which isn't usually good for living on a sailboat with limited refrigeration space.  We ended our day without the need of closing the boat against mosquitoes.  We didn't see any, maybe because we are out in the middle of the cut and away from the shore.  Thus ended a full but relaxing day at anchor with the promise of another great day to come.