Even though yesterday it looked like a finished project, more work was required to complete the anchor-roller installation. The end result from yesterday was only the "nearly-finished" installation.
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| Fooled ya - not done yet! |
The last time Clark went to West Marine, he was back almost before I knew he was gone. Today when he went, I thought he would never come back. Given my past horrific experience with Route 1 where a friend got hit by a truck as I watched, I immediately began to think the worst when he did not appear. I kept thinking I would get a phone call from the hospital. I just started to text him to see where he might be when he arrived back at the boat. It seems that while I sat here worrying over his early demise, he was having a gab session with first Ben from Jammin Jane and then Brent from Haley's Comet. Why ever do I worry about him?
He was happy to hear that while he was away, his package with the engine gasket had been hand delivered to the boat. With washers in hand, however, Clark set to working on the anchor roller yet again to get that job out of the way once and for all. Besides the washers he bought, he decided to make rubber washers to use as shock absorbers / cushioning in his final assembly. He pulled out a sheet of thin rubber from his on-board box of tricks, and I helped him cut washer shapes from the material.
As 12:30 approached I decided it was time to make (and eat) lunch. I made our sandwiches and put his in the refrigerator for whenever he decided he could eat. I finished eating shortly after one, and he was still going strong. At some point I heard large amounts of anchor chain rattling and knew that Clark was in the process of trying to deploy the anchor. That was definitely not a one-man job, so I ran out to help.
We fed the chain around until it was through the roller and resting on the deck after which Clark attached the rode to the anchor via the anchor shackle. Next, we pulled the excess chain back through the roller until only a small portion remained whereby Clark hefted the 35-pound anchor up and over the boat rail to deploy it ready for use. It is no easy job to drop an anchor that heavy over the side of the boat slowly. He couldn't just let go though and hope for the best. Who only knows what damage could result if it accidentally hit the bow of the boat on the way down.
Once deployed we played with the winch to test our ability to select one anchor over the other and still use the winch to drop and raise the anchor. Eureka! It worked! Finally, we can call the anchor project done.
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| Both anchors now reside on the bow ready to deploy as needed. |
Just as we completed our trial run of the anchor and had it secured up on deck my cell phone rang. Darlene, whom I had tried to call the day before, called me back. What perfect timing she had ... one minute earlier and I would have had my hands full of anchor chain. I left Clark to wrap up the project (literally - see the picture) and went to have a long chat with my friend I have known since college.
When Clark finally came in the boat salon, I reminded him that he needed to eat lunch. (Who needs to be reminded to eat besides Clark? Not me - that is for sure!) After lunch, he anxiously dove into the engine project and reinstalled the mixer elbow with the new gasket. Fortunately it did not take long. Two items in one day crossed off the "to do" list. Great! It feels nice to have two fully-assembled engines on the boat.
I had one dreaded project for the day - food shopping! I felt like Mother Hubbard with her bare cupboards. I had reached a state of near desperation - no milk, no fresh veggies, no ... Not only did I need food for immediate use, but I needed to replenish "Ship's Stores" for our next leg of the trip. I knew we had a large quantity of items to buy and tried to convince Clark to take a taxi to the food store two miles away instead of bicycles.
Since he wanted to stop at West Marine (big surprise) as well as the post office, he saw a taxi as a bad plan. Instead we compromised on the bicycle concern and walked. We left the marina at 3:30, wasted 20 minutes in West Marine finding out they did not have the "Barnacle Buster" product we wanted, stopped at The Home Depot with the same waste-of-time result, mailed a letter at the post office, and ate an ice cream along the way. (I needed that.) We finally got to the food store just before 5:00.
We took two shopping carts as I figured one large package of paper towels would fill one in the blink of an eye. As we shopped I put the heavy, canned-type items in my cart and the light, crush-able items in Clark's. That worked well for the checkout, so I could send all the heavy items down first then the lighter items afterwards for packing purposes. With all that we needed to buy we shopped for well over an hour. As we pulled our carts away from the checkout, Clark happily noted that we had bagged all the heavy items first then the lighter ones, and I said, "And you think that wasn't planned??"
After we checked out, Clark left me with my shopping carts at the exit of the store and ran to Kmart to buy two more plastic milk crates. He called me about 10 minutes later to say they were sold out of all of the crates except one purple one that was not stacking compatible with the ones we already had. What gives, when we bought the other three just a couple of days ago, at least three black or white ones plus the purple one remained. Ah well, I was very glad we bought the others one when we did and told him to buy the purple one anyway.
Not too long after he appeared back at Publix crate in hand and called for a taxi to take us back to the boat. The taxi driver said, "I'll be there in no time." He must have been very nearby as he appeared in record time to collect us and our groceries. When he saw how many grocery bags we had, he commented, "That's quite a haul." The van he was driving accommodated the "haul" very well. He dropped us off at the marina in the parking lot directly behind the boat. Perfect!
As per usual with boat provisioning, the boat salon became impassable due to bags everywhere. Since it was already 7:30 (four hours since we left to go shopping), Clark and I focused on getting the perishables stowed figuring the rest could wait until later. With the milk in the fridge and the newly purchased meat in the freezer, we headed up to the marina restaurant for dinner. Even at 8:30 on a Thursday night the hostess asked if we had reservations and tut-tutted when we said no.
She said the restaurant was packed and looked around as if trying to find us a seat. I saw several empty tables and wondered where the issue lay. She thought for a moment and asked, "Did you want to sit outside or inside?" When we said inside, she suddenly had plenty of openings for us to choose from. Apparently everyone else wanted to eat outside. I just wanted food I didn't have to cook.
We both ordered fish dinners from the day's specials list. I ordered Coconut-encrusted yellow-tailed snapper that was absolutely delicious. Clark chose the Mahi-Mahi dish which he also enjoyed. Stuffed to the gills, we walked out to the end of the docks to get my FitBit count up to the 10,000 steps for the day. Surprisingly, I only had 9,200 steps up to that point even with the walk to Publix.
I told Clark that I planned to work on my blog and wait until tomorrow to put away the rest of the Ship's Stores. However, I realized as soon as I got on the boat that I had no place to sit and no place to put my laptop. Every surface area had a food bag on it. Oh well, that decided it - time to put it all away. As I slaved away in the hot and humid cabin stowing all our food stuff, Clark sat and read the Wall Street Journal.
Other than opening up storage areas like the hold or under the bed, for example, and placing the filled and heavy crates back in the hold, Clark let me "do my thing" and get it all put away to my satisfaction. I always feel so accomplished when I transform a filled-to-the-max salon into a where-did-it-all-go miracle of stowing. The boat holds a lot of stuff, I just have to find places to hide it. I like to be organized and that skill helps tremendously.
As I stored things, I labeled the tops of cans so I could see from above what I had, and I repackaged boxed items to dispose of unnecessary cardboard and allow for more items per square inch of storage space. When I finally declared myself done, the clock showed that it was just past midnight. Clark asked if I wanted to walk up to the "head", and I said, "Yes. My Fitbit says I have taken zero steps today! Let's go!"
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