September 26
Computer problems have been keeping us from updating the blog easily. Our hard drive died, which involved sending off for a new one, waiting for it, installing it and trying to get our vital information off the old one. Thank goodness Chris is handy with this kind of thing but even so there are still gaps in the old data and various programs. My offline email reader also got zapped and I lost the lists of addresses and emails I had. It is taking some time to replace them all so bear with us. In order to get a reliable internet connection we need to go to the library so we only get there once a week or so. There is sometimes a low internet signal in the boatyard but we can't ever bet money that it will be there when we need it.
Time has passed and so have the seasons. The ospreys have gone,as have the summer blossoms and flowers. But the groups of bluebirds and cardinals are still here and there are now fall flowering shrubs and blossoms. The grass is still green, but the early summer fields of corn have been replaced by fields of beans, all bordered with blooming wild morning glory in all it's colourways of blue, white and pink. The temperatures are now in the mid 70s by day, with mid 50s at night. Great working weather.It is really lovely!
We have been having fun with the boat. We got a quote to have our rigging replaced and fitted and got a shock at the same time. We hadn't done our homework and the price was way beyond what we had budgeted. So we have decided to buy the rigging ourselves and have help fitting it. Seeing as how the rigging was all off, it seemed to make sense to have the mast off too. All of the wiring and running rigging going up through the mast needed inspecting, and we were pretty sure a lot needed replacing. So down came the mast.
If the mast and rigging are off it almost makes sense to give the boat the paint job we promised her "some day". We discussed it with the yard and settled on having them do the paint job while we do as much of the prep work as we can, under their supervision. Not too many yards would be as helpful as this one! They moved us under cover and we started the job of taking everything off. The windows, the hatches, the cleats, the windlass, the latches, the screws and the rivets, the chainplates, the rudders....you name it, we took it off and then some.
Then we removed all the silicone, scraped out the balsa core around the hatches, scraped the same out around the nail and bolt holes. That is where we are up to now. Next we will seal all the open edges with epoxy, fill the ones we don't want any more, and silicone the ones we do.
We had our blisters looked at. They are above the waterline, on both sides of the rear starboard hull. We had always assumed they were cosmetic - maybe the boat was built on a Friday?! But when Frank drilled one out it startd oozing within an hour or so! When water gets into fibreglass a chemical reaction starts and over a long time will separate it into layers. This usually happens underwater, but in our case it was happening above the waterline. Darn! It was hard to figure out how the water was getting in, but Chris found out when he was down below taking off the bolt for the pushpit. As he got it out water gushed into his upturned face and over the bunk top.(Remember we have been out of the water nearly two months!) Guess it had come in through a poorly sealed join! So now we have a new job of grinding out the blisters and repairing the fiberglass. The problem must have been ongoing for many years but was never picked up in the survey.
In taking our rudders off we found one of them was full of water too. Actually we expected them both to be that way, so it was a treat to only have the problem with one. We will drill holes in both of them to dry them out.
The guys in the yard are great! We have been gifted bags of figs which grow abundantly around here. I never knew! They give us tips on all sorts of things, and last night we were very kindly invited out for dinner by a cruiser and his wife who came, saw, and bought a house. We had crab cakes made with crabs she had caught herself, and never tasted better! AND were sent home with a jar of fig jam.
I have been asking around to find out who was born/grew up here. It seems as though almost everyone came from somewhere else, then settled here. I can absolutely understand why.
Computer problems have been keeping us from updating the blog easily. Our hard drive died, which involved sending off for a new one, waiting for it, installing it and trying to get our vital information off the old one. Thank goodness Chris is handy with this kind of thing but even so there are still gaps in the old data and various programs. My offline email reader also got zapped and I lost the lists of addresses and emails I had. It is taking some time to replace them all so bear with us. In order to get a reliable internet connection we need to go to the library so we only get there once a week or so. There is sometimes a low internet signal in the boatyard but we can't ever bet money that it will be there when we need it.
Time has passed and so have the seasons. The ospreys have gone,as have the summer blossoms and flowers. But the groups of bluebirds and cardinals are still here and there are now fall flowering shrubs and blossoms. The grass is still green, but the early summer fields of corn have been replaced by fields of beans, all bordered with blooming wild morning glory in all it's colourways of blue, white and pink. The temperatures are now in the mid 70s by day, with mid 50s at night. Great working weather.It is really lovely!
We have been having fun with the boat. We got a quote to have our rigging replaced and fitted and got a shock at the same time. We hadn't done our homework and the price was way beyond what we had budgeted. So we have decided to buy the rigging ourselves and have help fitting it. Seeing as how the rigging was all off, it seemed to make sense to have the mast off too. All of the wiring and running rigging going up through the mast needed inspecting, and we were pretty sure a lot needed replacing. So down came the mast.
If the mast and rigging are off it almost makes sense to give the boat the paint job we promised her "some day". We discussed it with the yard and settled on having them do the paint job while we do as much of the prep work as we can, under their supervision. Not too many yards would be as helpful as this one! They moved us under cover and we started the job of taking everything off. The windows, the hatches, the cleats, the windlass, the latches, the screws and the rivets, the chainplates, the rudders....you name it, we took it off and then some.
Then we removed all the silicone, scraped out the balsa core around the hatches, scraped the same out around the nail and bolt holes. That is where we are up to now. Next we will seal all the open edges with epoxy, fill the ones we don't want any more, and silicone the ones we do.
We had our blisters looked at. They are above the waterline, on both sides of the rear starboard hull. We had always assumed they were cosmetic - maybe the boat was built on a Friday?! But when Frank drilled one out it startd oozing within an hour or so! When water gets into fibreglass a chemical reaction starts and over a long time will separate it into layers. This usually happens underwater, but in our case it was happening above the waterline. Darn! It was hard to figure out how the water was getting in, but Chris found out when he was down below taking off the bolt for the pushpit. As he got it out water gushed into his upturned face and over the bunk top.(Remember we have been out of the water nearly two months!) Guess it had come in through a poorly sealed join! So now we have a new job of grinding out the blisters and repairing the fiberglass. The problem must have been ongoing for many years but was never picked up in the survey.
In taking our rudders off we found one of them was full of water too. Actually we expected them both to be that way, so it was a treat to only have the problem with one. We will drill holes in both of them to dry them out.
The guys in the yard are great! We have been gifted bags of figs which grow abundantly around here. I never knew! They give us tips on all sorts of things, and last night we were very kindly invited out for dinner by a cruiser and his wife who came, saw, and bought a house. We had crab cakes made with crabs she had caught herself, and never tasted better! AND were sent home with a jar of fig jam.
I have been asking around to find out who was born/grew up here. It seems as though almost everyone came from somewhere else, then settled here. I can absolutely understand why.
The Mast is coming off
We're under cover
The instruments come off
The windows didn't want to come off in one pieceAfter about 5 weeks of boat work we decided all work and no play can get sort of draining and we arranged to take a day off once a week or so and do some sightseeing. We will shortly be rid of the car, so while we have that luxury we want to take advantage of it. We don't expect to be in this part of the world again soon and there are certainly lots of interesting things.
Our first day off took us to a very small music festival in the grounds of an old plantation house on the north side of the Rappahannock River, the Northern Neck. It is currently growing organic crops and has a little store on the grounds. The owners and their friends provided the entertainment accompanied by a variety of instruments including a washtub.
Our first day off took us to a very small music festival in the grounds of an old plantation house on the north side of the Rappahannock River, the Northern Neck. It is currently growing organic crops and has a little store on the grounds. The owners and their friends provided the entertainment accompanied by a variety of instruments including a washtub.
Concert in the grounds of Locusville Plantation
Plantation HouseThe next day off we went to Colonial Williamsburg. It is a reconstruction of Virginia's second (I think) capital and has re-enactments of pivotal times leading up to the revolution. We got a multi-day pass, as we can see we will be visiting there often!
Sign by the York River, on the way to Williamsburg
Firing the cannon!
Proclamation from the house of governmentThis is a very pretty part of the world. Lots of flowering shrubs and trees that seem to bloom for months at a time. Lawns are always nicely mowed, hedges trimmed and flower beds weeded. Deer are often about. They seem way smaller than what we are used to and I wondered if they were a different breed. I was told they are the same as our Ontario deer but because there are so many of them sharing resources they grow smaller.
Realizing that we were going to be here for a while (!) we joined the local YMCA and are doing Yoga classes. They certainly let us know where our flexibility could use some work!
I also joined the library and have been having a great time reading up on the Chesapeake. I had already read James Mitchener's novel "The Chesapeake" which gives a very good introduction to the history of the region. It was quite an eye-opener to me how much piracy there has been here over the years. And the oyster wars in the Bay led to a greed similar to that seen in the gold rushes of the west with a lot of the worst of mankind's vices prevailing. A large number of people and incidents playing a part in the early years of the fledgling country that became the United States of America were from the areas surrounding the Bay. Pocahontas could easily have trod where our boat sits today! Washington was born a few miles north of us, the Revolution was partially fomented a few miles south, and the Civil War had many pivotal battles in the same part of the country.
To me as a newcomer Chesapeake Bay seems bountiful and huge, but my reading has shown that it has suffered the plight of many a first world waterway and has lost much of it's original abundance to pollution, over harvesting and mismanagement of resources. Some species have virtually died out, where others have become so weakened by environmental stresses they are barely hanging on. The States bordering the Bay have rarely agreed on solutions and this has led to many abuses in the past, and even today. A free boating magazine wrote about a Texas firm, Omega, that catches menhaden, a small fish that plays an vital part in the ecosystem. The firm has a plant north of here, in Reedsville, and uses the fish for fertilizer, pet foods, cosmetics, etc. Also Omega-3 oil, and meal for fish farms. They catch over a hundred tons a year. According to the magazine the plant had the largest fish harvest in the U.S outside of Alaska! Virginia has placed a limit on the amount they can catch in order to try and preserve stocks, so the boats simply go across to the Maryland side of the Bay, which has no such restrictions, and catch the fish there. They use spotter planes to find the schools and fleets of boats to net them - the poor fish don't have a chance!
Realizing that we were going to be here for a while (!) we joined the local YMCA and are doing Yoga classes. They certainly let us know where our flexibility could use some work!
I also joined the library and have been having a great time reading up on the Chesapeake. I had already read James Mitchener's novel "The Chesapeake" which gives a very good introduction to the history of the region. It was quite an eye-opener to me how much piracy there has been here over the years. And the oyster wars in the Bay led to a greed similar to that seen in the gold rushes of the west with a lot of the worst of mankind's vices prevailing. A large number of people and incidents playing a part in the early years of the fledgling country that became the United States of America were from the areas surrounding the Bay. Pocahontas could easily have trod where our boat sits today! Washington was born a few miles north of us, the Revolution was partially fomented a few miles south, and the Civil War had many pivotal battles in the same part of the country.
To me as a newcomer Chesapeake Bay seems bountiful and huge, but my reading has shown that it has suffered the plight of many a first world waterway and has lost much of it's original abundance to pollution, over harvesting and mismanagement of resources. Some species have virtually died out, where others have become so weakened by environmental stresses they are barely hanging on. The States bordering the Bay have rarely agreed on solutions and this has led to many abuses in the past, and even today. A free boating magazine wrote about a Texas firm, Omega, that catches menhaden, a small fish that plays an vital part in the ecosystem. The firm has a plant north of here, in Reedsville, and uses the fish for fertilizer, pet foods, cosmetics, etc. Also Omega-3 oil, and meal for fish farms. They catch over a hundred tons a year. According to the magazine the plant had the largest fish harvest in the U.S outside of Alaska! Virginia has placed a limit on the amount they can catch in order to try and preserve stocks, so the boats simply go across to the Maryland side of the Bay, which has no such restrictions, and catch the fish there. They use spotter planes to find the schools and fleets of boats to net them - the poor fish don't have a chance!
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