Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Knot Talking

Let's start with early this morning and go back to yesterday.

I was up early -- before sunrise since I just love to watch the dawn beak at Lookout. I relaxed and took a few pictures. Sitting still is not my strong suit so after I poured the first cup of coffee I thought it would be grand to sit in the swinging chair on the fore deck. I set my coffee cup down near where I was working and felt it was good out of the way spot. I started to hook the chair up and I had to tie a bowline to the rolled up Genoa. AS I was cinching it up that knot said "pull a little more slack into me" I did and dumped my full cup of coffee on the deck. It flowed under the garbage bag and split into several riverlets maximizing the spread. Damn!! I grabbed my bucket and the closest line and tied a bowline on the handle. Hmmm those knots sometimes come out \when wet -- not for just a couple of throes I though. First throw -- full bucket of water thanks from learning how in the movie "Knife in the water". Second and third throw pretty good. Fourth throw not so god then -- the knot came out.. Ohh great my new bucket -- my only bucket!! I grabbed the boat hook and retrieved it with difficulty. Whewww - back to the chair install.

I got the chair up and was relaxing in it when one of the bowlines holding the chair up said "look at me -- no tail I'm coming undone!". I immediately got out and checked the knot -- yep no tail and just about ready to upset. I fixed that and thanked that knot.

Yesterday was a great ride to lookout. We left Cedar Creek at 7:30am and motored down the ICW. We had the current so were doing between 6.4 and 6.8 knots till we hit the Newport River then our speed went to 4.9 to 5.1. This held till the inlet and then picked up to 6.3. The inlet was fairly calm with occasional boat traffic. About 1 mile from Red 10 my turn -- come two derelict barges in side tow with big tugs. One down the red side and one down the green side. Neither is moving to center or the same side. I had to run between them --not cool but preferable to going out of the channel.

The ride over to Lookout was very nice. Just a slight swell running and no real waves. One of the calmest trips across and as usual -- wind on the nose so motored all the way. WE were in and hook down by 12 noon.

A nice afternoon relaxing and puttering around. Karen took a well deserved nap. Ohhh she worked all the way from the New Port river to Lookout on the computer uploading documents for a huge press release from FHI. Good Girl and compliments to the Verizon MiFi -- slow but got it done.

We had a nice chicken dinner and the air temp was comfortable. Slept well in the fine breeze that kept up all night.

The only thing of real note here at Lookout this trip is the multitude of Jelly Fish. They are the "cabbage" variety with no streamers -- still scary looking..

I checked the prop with snorkel and the Maxi Zinc is gone -- I'll install a new one with Scuba -- water is very clear here this time.

Time to check into the waterway net this morning.

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