heights and depths

April Fools and Happy Easter, (4/1/18) Titusville, FL


The view from the top was stunning! Top of the mast. I was well perched in the bosun chair and with David in control of the "elevator" line, in our case the topping lift which we'd just replaced. David wasn't confident the old worn out one was not safe to hold my (extreme) weight. So there I was, perched, beautiful day, bright sun, slight wind, lovely islands in the distance. Kennedy Space Center just over the bridge. Haul Over canal in the other direction. Sail boats bobbing below in the mooring field around our boat. A few speed boats cruising along the ICW. And....I'd didn't bring my camera up with me. For dumb!

Now why was I up the mast, you might ask. Because that slapping halyard I'd tried to tie off for a couple nights last week finally disappeared up the inside of the mast. Apparently the knot at the bottom of the line had come out and up it went. When I was first at the top I tried to feed the line back down the inside of the mast but it must have gotten in a snarl on the inside and never made it to the deck.

So I pulled that one out. We'd tied a fish sinker to nylon line. I fed the sinker from top to bottom of the mast (inside). David took the sinker off and taped the new halyard to the fish line and I very gently pulled the new halyard up to the top. Ta Da!

So as to not loose my new halyard on the way down I tied it to my safety line/life jacket. David was managing two lines to get me down now, the one attached to my safety line and the one attached to the bosun chair. He remembered perfectly to slowly release the bosun chair line but would forget to release the safety line. So the bosun chair would start crawling down my legs while was dangling from my safety line attached at about my sternum. "David. David. Release the blue/new halyard. I'm stuck." And he did. And I came down and the new halyard is exactly where it should be in order to raise the mizzen sail. And life is good.

Now for the depths. The bilge! Due to a very small leak in the fuel line, a small cut from being clamped too tight on a too large hose. An unfortunate, overlooked ( i.e. not made) correction by the mechanics who did the November/December work on our engine. Diesel fuel in the bilge. We're pretty cautious and careful about NOT dumping toxic stuff (oil, fuel, etc) in the water or discharging it overboard. David fixed the leak...new hose of correct size, new clamp. Then we went about sopping up the diesel with absorbent pads that we call bilge diapers. What messy, stinky work. I finished the clean up in the forward bilge (under the engine), hovering over it, siting on the engine with my knees up around my ears, bending way forward to reach the bottom of the bilge. Meanwhile David lay on his belly in the aft cabin doing the same messy, stinky sopping up job in the lowest level of the bilge.

After the messy, stinky, disgusting bilge work we cleaned up a bit and met our friends for a walk to the local pub for early dinner of beer and sandwiches and planning for tomorrow and the space launch. Walking along the dock we saw a really LARGE manatee Mama, and a calf just swimming along. The width of Mama's back must have been 3'. Really big. We saw her head and neck and that portion of her back. The portion of the baby we could see was only about 18" long. We watched for maybe 5 minutes. I could have watched longer but my friends were anxious to eat/drink.

All this above AFTER we were up and out before sunrise to catch the sunrise service at Marina Park, a point of land that faces our boat looking out across the ICW. It was dense, wet fog. No chance to see any sunrise this morning. A nice enough service, longer than the Maine sunrise services but, of course, its warmer here. We were given an Easter egg with our service bulletin. The plastic eggs had jokes inside them that we shared with our neighbors during the "greet your neighbors" part of the service. The minister was able to work the idea of jokes into the meaning of Easter...God had the last laugh on the devil when Jesus was resurrected.  God and goodness and love won.

And lo' and behold, we sat next to a couple from....Danforth, Maine. They've lived near here in the winter for the past several, arriving in October and returning to ME in May.

Lots of other folks are making this snowbird lifestyle work for themselves, on land or on boat.