10-31-2014
Well the end of the sailing season has arrived and with sadness we went over to the lake Monday evening and prepped the boat for the long journey home. We had till Nov 1st to move our boat or pay winter storage fees. We were going to do it the day before when we had all afternoon to work but the weather was so nice that someone, not me, did not want to waste it going to get the boat so we went to our favorite winery then to Grouse Ridge lake, AKA Bikini Bottom, for a relaxing float with friends.
I got off a lil early Monday so I could get all the tools I would need loaded up in the Four Runner. I double checked everything I had to make sure I could handle almost any problem we might run into.
With Cindy still in her immobilization boot from breaking for ankle on a walnut running we had to come up with a different approach for dropping the mast down but I thought I had come up with a workable solution. AS luck would have it the wind was blowing nicely when we arrived at the lake and for just a moment we had a fleeting thought of just one more sail. But knowing anything and everything can go wrong bringing the boat home we elected not to and started preparing her for the ride home.
I loosened up the standing rigging then positioned Cindy in the cockpit with one of our dock likes ran forward to the forestay hoop. I ran the line through the forestay anchor hoop and then attached it to the forestay cable. Plan was for Cindy to help control the descent of the mast by slowly letting the line out. Cindy, my lady of lil faith in my ideas, was quite concerned about the rope burning through her hands and the mast crashing down onto the rear pulpit. With the forestay cable attaching to the mast close to the top the amount of force she could put on the mast was going to far greater than what I could hold down low so I was confident it would work fine. So after re assuring my lil lady one more time I undid the mast base's front pin and we slowly let the mast down onto the crutch easier that we have ever been able to before. Now guess who the hero was???
With the mast down and all the lines tied off I jacked up the trailer and checked the bearing both hubs had a li water in them that I purged out with grease from the grease zerks I installed in the hubs back in the spring. After about 45 mins of work it was time to say good bye to the sailing site one last time for this season and take our Memory Maker home.
All was going well getting to 446 so we decided to stop at the Scenic View for fish tacos on the way home. We had a yummy dinner with Cindy and her sister each enjoying a few adult beverages as we sat outside enjoying what is probably going to be our last 80 degree day of the season. With tummies full and thirst quenched it was time to finish our journey. All went well and we had a uneventful trip home. Have to love the uneventful trips home pulling a boat.
We parked our girl in the driveway till we could get time to take the mast and pulpits off and back her into the garage so we can start her winter make over. The plan is to redo the exterior from the keel up. Being 32 years old our old boat is starting to show her age with a dull gel coat and a house exterior latex painted bottom starting to peel off. With a few leaks here and there she just needs some TLC to bring her back in line with how she sails. It is going to be a long winter with a lot of long hours to be put in prepping her for paint, removing the keel and blasting it before repainting it, and then painting the boat. But we both really enjoy our lil boat and we just want her to look as good as she really is.
We had put in for the buoy drawing again this year in hopes of getting a coveted buoy at Paynetown state dnr site. Not only was it a bit cheaper than at the sailing site, it was much closer which meant we could sail longer. Well the drawing was last weekend and we elected not to go, someone wanted to sleep in. After calling and finding out we were drawn 7th we felt pretty good about our chances till we found out that they had decided to go with the names drawn last year as they did not award any buoys last year due to a condemned dock. Once we found out we were now 17th on the list instead of 7th Cindy was just sure we would not get one again this year even after the DNR rep told me we were in a better position with last year's number than this years. He said we should hear something by the first of the year. So the waiting game begins.
Yesterday morning I got a call from the Paynetown office asking if we were still interested in keeping our boat there. I said yes and she asked if we wanted a buoy or a slip. I was like what? A buoy or a slip? She said yes, they had both open. While I was pretty sure I knew the answer I told her I would call her right back as soon as I verified with my partner which they preferred. A quick text and email to Cindy and in a few short minutes I was calling them back saying we wanted a slip!!! Guess the guy was right. We were better off with last year's number!
Taking the boat apart last night to put her in the garage while bitter sweet, was still done with a lil more enthusiasm with the knowledge that next sailing season would be spent sailing out of a slip 20 mins closer to home than what we had to travel this year to launch her each time! It is our hope to make it over to sail much more often now since we just have to jump on her and go!
The good news just kept coming yesterday as while I laid in bed before drifting off to sleep I checked the weather in the UP and they were forecasted to get snow!!!!! Can it get any better? Well yes, we could get a early snowfall here at home but right now I just want to make sure we have snow on the ground for our ski trip to the Porkies!
So while our summer sailing adventures are over for now, our winter skiing adventures are just getting cranked up! I see a very busy winter in store for us with the boat repairs, ski trips, and what ever other adventures we can squeeze in. Now we just need to get Cindy's foot healed up and get the all clear from the doc so we can start packing for the UP!!!!
Friday, October 31, 2014
Monday, September 29, 2014
A "Thank you" sail
9-20-2014
Sail #12
We finally got to get back on the water in our Memory Maker after almost a month's lapse. Wow, where does the time go? Between work and no wind or bad weather the days turned into weeks and the weeks almost turned into a month. Cindy and I were both so ready to get back on the water!!!
We had been hopeful all summer long that our "sailing mentors" Scott and Mary, would be able to make it down to Monroe to sail with us and after several emails back and forth we were finally able to set a date. All week long we all watched the weather forecast in hopes the wind would blow and rain would hold off. Our luck held out and although it was overcast the rain was still well off to our northwest. Since it had been a while since we had rigged the boat I thought it best that we head over a bit early and get her all ready and launched and then pick Mary and Scott up at the dock. That way if there were any issues we could hopefully get them resolved before they arrived. Since they were driving two hours to come sail with us I really wanted things to go smoothly.
We arrived at the sailing site to see our girl sitting patiently for our return. You can't help but feel sorry for some of the boats that just sit and sit at the site longing to get on the water but no one ever comes and takes them out. Heck we feel bad each time we have to go off and leave our girl at the end of the day. Luckily all was well and after a quick shot of air in her trailer tires we were headed for the launch ramp. The launch went smoothly as Cindy continues to hone her skills on backing the trailer down the ramp. That is just something that is so hard to teach and seeing how she only gets a few seconds each launch to actually back the trailer I think she is doing great. We thought we had a little extra time before they would arrive so after picking Cindy up we went for a quick sail to dust off the cobwebs. We had no sooner reached the south shore of the lake and tacked back to the Northwest when Capt Scott called to let us know that they had arrived. They had made great time and were a bit earlier than we thought they would be.
After high tailing back across the lake, which under sail is a oxymoron, we tossed lines to Scott so we could tie up at the dock. Quick potty break, as Cindy never passes up a chance LOL, and we were all loaded up and headed off. The clouds had broken up a bit and the wind was blowing steady out of the southwest at maybe 10-12. It was a perfect day to sail! We were all relieved when the raising of the sails went much smoother than the last time Scott, myself, and Cindy were all on board a sailboat together. Many laughs have been shared about our "first" sailing lesson with Scott and I am sure we will continue to relive that fateful moment for years to come. Who knew release the cleat meant release it and then let go of the rope?? Well now I do LOL! Scott was just so glad we did not give up sailing forever after that little incident. Instead it taught us many lessons like you can really screw up and still not sink a boat and how to respect the power of the wind. Most importantly it taught me that if it can go wrong it will go wrong, and usually OUT THERE!
It was not long into our first leg that Capt Scott had assumed control of the tiller to see "how she sailed". It was really nice to get to return the favor to Scott and Mary by having them down to sail with us. Cindy and I have fallen in love with sailing and have so much to thank them for. Scott really seemed to enjoy sailing her and said several times how nicely she sailed. While Scott manned the tiller I went below to get beverages for everyone. After reaching the south shore we tacked back to the Northeast heading towards the causeway, wing on wing, so we could sail past John Mellencamp's house. Since we are all from the same "Small town" we thought we show Scott and Mary his house on the lake. It was just such a perfect day and we all agreed that we got very lucky to get such nice weather to finally get to sail in. It was just a very relaxing sail. There is just something so special about a sailboat, especially when you have friends aboard. You are able to move along with the wind for free, carry on a conversation with out yelling at the top of your lungs so you can be heard over a screaming motor, plus you can have snacks and beverages the whole time!
After sailing past Mellencamp's house we decided to work our way back to our favorite cove so we could anchor and get the paddleboard out for the girls to play with. While that sounded simple enough with the way the wind was blowing it was going to take several tacks back and forth to get back down the lake. For some reason once you get to the causeway the wind gets confused and it takes a lil effort to get far enough away from it to get back into good wind. We finally broke away from the swirling wind area and were clipping right along. Cindy was on the tiller and Scott was very impressed by how much she had learned. He even noticed her feathering the tiller as she fell off the wind to fill the sails back up as the wind shifted a bit. He just looked back at me smiling as he said "Nice".
I felt bad for Scott a time or two as Mary kept saying how nice our boat was and if his was that nice she would go sailing with him. Our boat really isn't that nice as she has a long way to go till she is where we want her but we do have the inside set up the way we want and it is isn't too shabby for an cheap old sailboat. Mary really liked our cushions and wood work. Scott almost always sails by himself as Mary just isn't into sailing. I can't imagine sailing with out Cindy. We are a team and work well together. While I have no doubt I could sail the boat solo I think to myself what fun would that be. We got this boat because we wanted to be together and sail. Scott loves to sail, you can just see it in him. The smile he would get when he would take over the tiller. His eagerness to help with the jib sheets when we would tack. It just shows. Plus he sails at home on lake Freeman, which from what he says is an awful lake to sail on, just because he wants to sail. While Mary told him several times to not hog the tiller Cindy and I actually enjoyed getting to just enjoy the ride for a while. I found a comfy way to lean back against the rear pulpit support and Cindy was enjoying her beverage in the sun so all was good.
Once we finally had worked our way far enough down the lake to make it into our cove I had Cindy on the tiller as we sailed in to drop anchor. As we reached the point I wanted to be at I had Cindy spin us into the wind and dropped anchor. The water was pretty calm so no need to let out a bunch of anchor rode as I did not want it to get wrapped around the keel which would result in me taking a swim in chilly water. I got out P2 and aired her up so Cindy could paddle to shore for a quick potty break. Mary was reluctant to give paddle boarding a try as she did not bring a change of clothes and was fearful she might wind up wet. So we stayed on the boat eating more chips and dip and had some good laughs watching Cindy try to get to shore without getting wet.
Once safely back onboard and P2 put away I suggested we sail off anchor instead of starting the motor as we had good wind. Scott was excited to try it as I don't think he gets to do that sailing solo. As the boat drifted abeam to the wind I raised the main sail and then the anchor. We were moving forward before the anchor was even back on board. I raised the jib them scampered back down into the cockpit as we were trying to decided if we needed to tack or if we had enough draft to clear the top of the peninsula we anchored behind. It was going to be close and Scott asked if I thought we were good. I suggested a heading a bit more to port and just as he made the turn we heard the keel moving gravel ever so slightly below us. Just about then a nice breeze picked up and we healed over to starboard which tilted the keel to port helping it clear the bottom. It just a few seconds we were safely clear the tip and in open water. Scott was smiling as I think we impressed the Captain!
It had been a great day of sailing and we really enjoyed having the chance to express our gratitude to Scott and Mary for introducing us to sailing. Although we could have sailed a bit longer they had to get back to take care of their dog so we headed back across to the dock so we could load up and head off to get something to eat before they headed back north. Cindy dropped everyone off at the dock and then I ran over to pick her and Memory Maker up. Retrieval went well and it was not long before we were all headed down Swartz Ridge road to the Scenic View for fish tacos. Well it seems that everyone else in the area had the same idea as they had a 40 minute wait. Unable to wait that long we ran back up the road to Trails Head pizza. We had never eaten there before but they had beer and pizza, what more could you ask for. Fortunately the pizza turned out to be pretty tasty and the prices were vey reasonable so it was a win win. I still wish we could have had the fish tacos at the Scenic View as they are really tasty but every one seemed happy with our back up plan.
It was really nice of Scott and Mary to drive all the way to Bloomington just to sail with us. We hope we can all get together again and do it again. They have opened up a whole new world to us and expanded our horizons and play options in the summer. Like we need more play options LOL!
Cindy and I went motoring aboard Memory Maker yesterday as there was no wind. We motored around the corner and anchored in a new cove just for a change of scenery. Cindy paddled about as I fished and cleaned the boat up a bit. After she returned we cuddled up in the v birth and took a nice afternoon nap just because we could. After coming to, I grilled us some dinner as Cindy struggled to wake up. After dinner I gave fly fishing on a paddle board a try. Talk about a multitasking workout! Even though I had several strikes but no catches it was still a lot of fun to do. We motored back to dock as night feel down upon us. Even though we could not sail we still enjoyed just being on the water together. Had it not been for Capt Scott and Mary having us up to go sail with them in Michigan back in 2013 we might never have gotten to experience all the fun times we have had aboard our Memory Maker this summer! Thanks again Scott and Mary for infecting us with this disease that we hope the only cure for is more sailing!!!!
Sail #12
We finally got to get back on the water in our Memory Maker after almost a month's lapse. Wow, where does the time go? Between work and no wind or bad weather the days turned into weeks and the weeks almost turned into a month. Cindy and I were both so ready to get back on the water!!!
We had been hopeful all summer long that our "sailing mentors" Scott and Mary, would be able to make it down to Monroe to sail with us and after several emails back and forth we were finally able to set a date. All week long we all watched the weather forecast in hopes the wind would blow and rain would hold off. Our luck held out and although it was overcast the rain was still well off to our northwest. Since it had been a while since we had rigged the boat I thought it best that we head over a bit early and get her all ready and launched and then pick Mary and Scott up at the dock. That way if there were any issues we could hopefully get them resolved before they arrived. Since they were driving two hours to come sail with us I really wanted things to go smoothly.
We arrived at the sailing site to see our girl sitting patiently for our return. You can't help but feel sorry for some of the boats that just sit and sit at the site longing to get on the water but no one ever comes and takes them out. Heck we feel bad each time we have to go off and leave our girl at the end of the day. Luckily all was well and after a quick shot of air in her trailer tires we were headed for the launch ramp. The launch went smoothly as Cindy continues to hone her skills on backing the trailer down the ramp. That is just something that is so hard to teach and seeing how she only gets a few seconds each launch to actually back the trailer I think she is doing great. We thought we had a little extra time before they would arrive so after picking Cindy up we went for a quick sail to dust off the cobwebs. We had no sooner reached the south shore of the lake and tacked back to the Northwest when Capt Scott called to let us know that they had arrived. They had made great time and were a bit earlier than we thought they would be.
After high tailing back across the lake, which under sail is a oxymoron, we tossed lines to Scott so we could tie up at the dock. Quick potty break, as Cindy never passes up a chance LOL, and we were all loaded up and headed off. The clouds had broken up a bit and the wind was blowing steady out of the southwest at maybe 10-12. It was a perfect day to sail! We were all relieved when the raising of the sails went much smoother than the last time Scott, myself, and Cindy were all on board a sailboat together. Many laughs have been shared about our "first" sailing lesson with Scott and I am sure we will continue to relive that fateful moment for years to come. Who knew release the cleat meant release it and then let go of the rope?? Well now I do LOL! Scott was just so glad we did not give up sailing forever after that little incident. Instead it taught us many lessons like you can really screw up and still not sink a boat and how to respect the power of the wind. Most importantly it taught me that if it can go wrong it will go wrong, and usually OUT THERE!
It was not long into our first leg that Capt Scott had assumed control of the tiller to see "how she sailed". It was really nice to get to return the favor to Scott and Mary by having them down to sail with us. Cindy and I have fallen in love with sailing and have so much to thank them for. Scott really seemed to enjoy sailing her and said several times how nicely she sailed. While Scott manned the tiller I went below to get beverages for everyone. After reaching the south shore we tacked back to the Northeast heading towards the causeway, wing on wing, so we could sail past John Mellencamp's house. Since we are all from the same "Small town" we thought we show Scott and Mary his house on the lake. It was just such a perfect day and we all agreed that we got very lucky to get such nice weather to finally get to sail in. It was just a very relaxing sail. There is just something so special about a sailboat, especially when you have friends aboard. You are able to move along with the wind for free, carry on a conversation with out yelling at the top of your lungs so you can be heard over a screaming motor, plus you can have snacks and beverages the whole time!
After sailing past Mellencamp's house we decided to work our way back to our favorite cove so we could anchor and get the paddleboard out for the girls to play with. While that sounded simple enough with the way the wind was blowing it was going to take several tacks back and forth to get back down the lake. For some reason once you get to the causeway the wind gets confused and it takes a lil effort to get far enough away from it to get back into good wind. We finally broke away from the swirling wind area and were clipping right along. Cindy was on the tiller and Scott was very impressed by how much she had learned. He even noticed her feathering the tiller as she fell off the wind to fill the sails back up as the wind shifted a bit. He just looked back at me smiling as he said "Nice".
I felt bad for Scott a time or two as Mary kept saying how nice our boat was and if his was that nice she would go sailing with him. Our boat really isn't that nice as she has a long way to go till she is where we want her but we do have the inside set up the way we want and it is isn't too shabby for an cheap old sailboat. Mary really liked our cushions and wood work. Scott almost always sails by himself as Mary just isn't into sailing. I can't imagine sailing with out Cindy. We are a team and work well together. While I have no doubt I could sail the boat solo I think to myself what fun would that be. We got this boat because we wanted to be together and sail. Scott loves to sail, you can just see it in him. The smile he would get when he would take over the tiller. His eagerness to help with the jib sheets when we would tack. It just shows. Plus he sails at home on lake Freeman, which from what he says is an awful lake to sail on, just because he wants to sail. While Mary told him several times to not hog the tiller Cindy and I actually enjoyed getting to just enjoy the ride for a while. I found a comfy way to lean back against the rear pulpit support and Cindy was enjoying her beverage in the sun so all was good.
Once we finally had worked our way far enough down the lake to make it into our cove I had Cindy on the tiller as we sailed in to drop anchor. As we reached the point I wanted to be at I had Cindy spin us into the wind and dropped anchor. The water was pretty calm so no need to let out a bunch of anchor rode as I did not want it to get wrapped around the keel which would result in me taking a swim in chilly water. I got out P2 and aired her up so Cindy could paddle to shore for a quick potty break. Mary was reluctant to give paddle boarding a try as she did not bring a change of clothes and was fearful she might wind up wet. So we stayed on the boat eating more chips and dip and had some good laughs watching Cindy try to get to shore without getting wet.
Once safely back onboard and P2 put away I suggested we sail off anchor instead of starting the motor as we had good wind. Scott was excited to try it as I don't think he gets to do that sailing solo. As the boat drifted abeam to the wind I raised the main sail and then the anchor. We were moving forward before the anchor was even back on board. I raised the jib them scampered back down into the cockpit as we were trying to decided if we needed to tack or if we had enough draft to clear the top of the peninsula we anchored behind. It was going to be close and Scott asked if I thought we were good. I suggested a heading a bit more to port and just as he made the turn we heard the keel moving gravel ever so slightly below us. Just about then a nice breeze picked up and we healed over to starboard which tilted the keel to port helping it clear the bottom. It just a few seconds we were safely clear the tip and in open water. Scott was smiling as I think we impressed the Captain!
It had been a great day of sailing and we really enjoyed having the chance to express our gratitude to Scott and Mary for introducing us to sailing. Although we could have sailed a bit longer they had to get back to take care of their dog so we headed back across to the dock so we could load up and head off to get something to eat before they headed back north. Cindy dropped everyone off at the dock and then I ran over to pick her and Memory Maker up. Retrieval went well and it was not long before we were all headed down Swartz Ridge road to the Scenic View for fish tacos. Well it seems that everyone else in the area had the same idea as they had a 40 minute wait. Unable to wait that long we ran back up the road to Trails Head pizza. We had never eaten there before but they had beer and pizza, what more could you ask for. Fortunately the pizza turned out to be pretty tasty and the prices were vey reasonable so it was a win win. I still wish we could have had the fish tacos at the Scenic View as they are really tasty but every one seemed happy with our back up plan.
It was really nice of Scott and Mary to drive all the way to Bloomington just to sail with us. We hope we can all get together again and do it again. They have opened up a whole new world to us and expanded our horizons and play options in the summer. Like we need more play options LOL!
Cindy and I went motoring aboard Memory Maker yesterday as there was no wind. We motored around the corner and anchored in a new cove just for a change of scenery. Cindy paddled about as I fished and cleaned the boat up a bit. After she returned we cuddled up in the v birth and took a nice afternoon nap just because we could. After coming to, I grilled us some dinner as Cindy struggled to wake up. After dinner I gave fly fishing on a paddle board a try. Talk about a multitasking workout! Even though I had several strikes but no catches it was still a lot of fun to do. We motored back to dock as night feel down upon us. Even though we could not sail we still enjoyed just being on the water together. Had it not been for Capt Scott and Mary having us up to go sail with them in Michigan back in 2013 we might never have gotten to experience all the fun times we have had aboard our Memory Maker this summer! Thanks again Scott and Mary for infecting us with this disease that we hope the only cure for is more sailing!!!!
Saturday, August 23, 2014
Taking a moment to reflect.
While this has been a super fun year for us it has been an especially ruff year for me when it comes to loosing friends. So far this year I have lost 4 good friends to various different causes from cancer to accidents.
Yesterday I just had to say good by to a co worker and friend who this coming October fourth would have been our twentieth year working together. Day in and day out we worked in the same office, shared stories, laughs, worked through issues, and became good friends through it all. I would usually hear him pull up outside the hanger walk through door on days that were suitable for riding his motorcycle to work and I would open the door so he could wheel it inside. This past Monday the weather was nice and I kept listening for him, but he just never showed up. About the time he would usually arrive I noticed a police Suburban racing around the corner. It was not till a couple of hours later we received a call to the office and I heard a distressed voice say "Oh my God!". Our friend and co worker never made it to work that morning because he had been in an accident with a semi tractor trailer just down the street about 3 blocks away, less than a mile from his house. He was pronounced dead on the scene.
It was just a few weeks ago that Cindy wrote in her blog entry how you never know how a phone call is going to change your life. Sometimes I wonder if she has the ability to predict the future as she was never more correct than Monday morning. It has been a crazy week at work trying to pick up the pieces and move on while trying to deal with the loss we are feeling. Yesterday at the funeral it was especially hard. I guess with the passing of each person I know I do a internal assessment of my own life and what if that was me.
Cindy and I truly do try and make the most out of every minute we have together. Till Cindy and I got together I was not in a situation that made me want to make the most of each minute. I just spent most of my time running and hiding from the problems I faced at home. That meant I spent a lot of time working. I was always doing something. Today work seems to be something that is harder and harder for me to get excited about. I enjoy my time with Cindy so much and we have so much fun together how can I be blamed for that. I still work hard and there are still many late nights at home that are spent working on projects but when the weekends come and I do not have to fly there is no where I would rather be than with the Cindy. She has opened my eyes to the importance of having fun and making memories, the good kind that you want to remember instead of the kind you hope you can eventually forget.
I can honestly say I never saw myself sailing on our own sailboat or having a jeep. I always wanted a boat and thought I would like a jeep, just never saw myself in a position of being with someone I could enjoy them with. Today we have one whole bay in our garage we call the toy box as it holds our jeep, kayaks, Patsy the paddleboard, fishing gear and such. We have skies stashed in the basement, pulks ready to haul our gear into a remote cabin in Michigan. While some people dread the end of summer and the coming winter we will be sad to see the sailing season come to an end but yet we are looking forward to evenings in front of our fireplace while we await the snow to start falling so we can go outside and play! Cindy says quite often how lucky we are to have fun things to do in all four seasons and that is so true.
Do you know what the what the significance of the number 86400 is to you? That is how many seconds you have to work with in each 24 hour day. I know people who are just miserable in their life and I feel so badly for them as I have been there myself. Each day that you continue down the same path of unhappiness and misery is another 86400 seconds of your life you just wasted and will never get back. While 86400 seems like a lot, just pause for a second and think how fast they pass you by. As I continue to age I feel as if the clock is speeding up and each second is passing me by faster than the previous one. Once they are gone they are gone forever and you have no idea of how many more you are going to get before your number is called.
I sincerely hope that as you read this you are finding yourself in a similar place in life as I am in today and you have a special someone to enjoy your life with you. That you are truly enjoying every second of it that you possibly can. If you are not, I hope the words I have shared with you make you stop, if just for a few seconds, and do a personal life assessment. Cindy and I sometimes wonder what the world would be like if everyone had something as special as what we share between us.
As I write this I am wishing I was somewhere else. Yes, with Cindy, doing anything but this. But instead I just landed and I am taking a few minutes before I go into the lab to develop film to finish this. I really hope my unlucky string of loosing friends is over for a long time. It is very saddening to scroll through my contact list and see the names of those who I have lost. I won't have to loose many more before the ones gone out number the ones who are not. I have always believed that in the end all we have left are our memories. Fortunately I still have a good memory and each time I scroll through my contact list in search of someone and I see the name of one of friends who has passed I always have a thought of them. I guess that might be why I have not removed there names. I miss them all and wish they were still with us but know that cannot be.
So instead of living in the past I chose to live for the future. Today I find myself doing something I thought I would never do. I am making plans for things to do not just today, and not just tomorrow, but I am making plans as far out as the summer of 2016 already! While that may not sound like something that far out there to some of you I just never thought I would do that. that I would ever be in a situation where I would even want to. But today I can't want for the next adventure and opportunity to make new memories.
I am going to go develop the film now then get out of here and go make the most of the rest of the 86400 seconds I have left in this day. Then tomorrow I am going to do the same! I hope everyone reading this can go do the same!!!
Yesterday I just had to say good by to a co worker and friend who this coming October fourth would have been our twentieth year working together. Day in and day out we worked in the same office, shared stories, laughs, worked through issues, and became good friends through it all. I would usually hear him pull up outside the hanger walk through door on days that were suitable for riding his motorcycle to work and I would open the door so he could wheel it inside. This past Monday the weather was nice and I kept listening for him, but he just never showed up. About the time he would usually arrive I noticed a police Suburban racing around the corner. It was not till a couple of hours later we received a call to the office and I heard a distressed voice say "Oh my God!". Our friend and co worker never made it to work that morning because he had been in an accident with a semi tractor trailer just down the street about 3 blocks away, less than a mile from his house. He was pronounced dead on the scene.
It was just a few weeks ago that Cindy wrote in her blog entry how you never know how a phone call is going to change your life. Sometimes I wonder if she has the ability to predict the future as she was never more correct than Monday morning. It has been a crazy week at work trying to pick up the pieces and move on while trying to deal with the loss we are feeling. Yesterday at the funeral it was especially hard. I guess with the passing of each person I know I do a internal assessment of my own life and what if that was me.
Cindy and I truly do try and make the most out of every minute we have together. Till Cindy and I got together I was not in a situation that made me want to make the most of each minute. I just spent most of my time running and hiding from the problems I faced at home. That meant I spent a lot of time working. I was always doing something. Today work seems to be something that is harder and harder for me to get excited about. I enjoy my time with Cindy so much and we have so much fun together how can I be blamed for that. I still work hard and there are still many late nights at home that are spent working on projects but when the weekends come and I do not have to fly there is no where I would rather be than with the Cindy. She has opened my eyes to the importance of having fun and making memories, the good kind that you want to remember instead of the kind you hope you can eventually forget.
I can honestly say I never saw myself sailing on our own sailboat or having a jeep. I always wanted a boat and thought I would like a jeep, just never saw myself in a position of being with someone I could enjoy them with. Today we have one whole bay in our garage we call the toy box as it holds our jeep, kayaks, Patsy the paddleboard, fishing gear and such. We have skies stashed in the basement, pulks ready to haul our gear into a remote cabin in Michigan. While some people dread the end of summer and the coming winter we will be sad to see the sailing season come to an end but yet we are looking forward to evenings in front of our fireplace while we await the snow to start falling so we can go outside and play! Cindy says quite often how lucky we are to have fun things to do in all four seasons and that is so true.
Do you know what the what the significance of the number 86400 is to you? That is how many seconds you have to work with in each 24 hour day. I know people who are just miserable in their life and I feel so badly for them as I have been there myself. Each day that you continue down the same path of unhappiness and misery is another 86400 seconds of your life you just wasted and will never get back. While 86400 seems like a lot, just pause for a second and think how fast they pass you by. As I continue to age I feel as if the clock is speeding up and each second is passing me by faster than the previous one. Once they are gone they are gone forever and you have no idea of how many more you are going to get before your number is called.
I sincerely hope that as you read this you are finding yourself in a similar place in life as I am in today and you have a special someone to enjoy your life with you. That you are truly enjoying every second of it that you possibly can. If you are not, I hope the words I have shared with you make you stop, if just for a few seconds, and do a personal life assessment. Cindy and I sometimes wonder what the world would be like if everyone had something as special as what we share between us.
As I write this I am wishing I was somewhere else. Yes, with Cindy, doing anything but this. But instead I just landed and I am taking a few minutes before I go into the lab to develop film to finish this. I really hope my unlucky string of loosing friends is over for a long time. It is very saddening to scroll through my contact list and see the names of those who I have lost. I won't have to loose many more before the ones gone out number the ones who are not. I have always believed that in the end all we have left are our memories. Fortunately I still have a good memory and each time I scroll through my contact list in search of someone and I see the name of one of friends who has passed I always have a thought of them. I guess that might be why I have not removed there names. I miss them all and wish they were still with us but know that cannot be.
So instead of living in the past I chose to live for the future. Today I find myself doing something I thought I would never do. I am making plans for things to do not just today, and not just tomorrow, but I am making plans as far out as the summer of 2016 already! While that may not sound like something that far out there to some of you I just never thought I would do that. that I would ever be in a situation where I would even want to. But today I can't want for the next adventure and opportunity to make new memories.
I am going to go develop the film now then get out of here and go make the most of the rest of the 86400 seconds I have left in this day. Then tomorrow I am going to do the same! I hope everyone reading this can go do the same!!!
Rainy night aboard.
8-16-2014
Sail #11
Even though the weather was not forecasted to be the best for Saturday my daughter wanted to go sail with us before she headed off to her freshman year at college. So we headed over to the boat mid afternoon to give it a try as she left the upcoming Thrusday. The weather was overcast but there was a breeze, not much, but enough to move the boat across the water.
We arrived and found our girl eager to get on the water again. Cindy and I got busy rigging the sails and getting everything loaded while Bre and her friend Olivia waited patiently. They decided to hop on board and check things out but I needed them to hop out so I could hook the trailer to the hitch. All I heard was a roar of laughter from my daughter as it seems Olivia slipped and busted her butt on her landing when she jumped down out of the boat. Gotta hate it when you miss a good wipeout!
After a quick potty break we headed to the ramp and had Cindy back her down into the water. After a few attempts I could sense Cindy's frustration building so we swapped places and I backed our girl down into the water. After a quick launch I motored over to the ramp to pick up the girls. Once everyone was on board it was time to go sailing!
I raised the sails once clear of the buoy field and in no time the motor was off and raised and we were sailing closed hauled in a nice lil breeze. After tacking at the opposite shore of the lake I got out my hand held GPS and checked our speed. We managed to hit 5 mph at one point which really surprised me as we did not have but maybe 5-7 mph of wind. After sailing for maybe 45 mins the weather was starting to look more like rain so we headed to a cove that was closer to the sailing association just in case we had to make a quick run for it. Once in the cove we got P2 out and inflated her. Bre hopped on her and away she went. Bre and I had paddled boarded in Lake Michigan on a business trip I took to Cheboygan WI back in 2011. I had never heard of SUP's till then and while we originally went in to shop to rent a kayak for the afternoon once we saw the SUP's we had to try it. I think we failed to hear the guy mention the lake water was chilly, like 54 degrees chilly. But we paddled around and had a ball with the board. So Bre had some experience with a SUP and she did fine. We tried our best to get Olivia to give it a go but it seems she has this aversion to swimming in lakes. Go figure.
While Bre was out paddling as I got dinner started. We had brought along a couple of nice rib eye steaks so once they were done we all dove in and made pigs of ourselves. For some reason food just taste better on a boat. Maybe it is the surroundings or just the thought that you cooked it on board your boat. Either way they were very tasty. As we ate dinner the skies began to darken so once we finished cleaning up dishes we headed back to the dock so Bre and Olivia could head home. They wanted to leave before dark anyway as it was Bre's first time there and she wanted to make sure she did not get lost in the dark. As we rounded the corner from the cove we were in it was apparent that the wind had started blowing. Go figure, time for the girls to head home and the wind picks up. We dropped the girls off at the dark and after a quick bathroom break Cindy and headed back out to sail some more.
The wind had picked up nicely and was blowing maybe 10-12 out of the west. We sailed back and forth across the lake several times as darkness encroached upon us. We were the only sailboat on the lake and with the exception of few bass boats heading back in for the day we had the lake to ourselves. It was great sailing and we were clipping right along. Too bad I did not think to get the GPS out then and see what our speed was. Cindy had me man the tiller while she assumed her happy place leaning back into me as we sailed along.
It was almost 9:30 and right on the edge of darkness when we made it into our favorite cove. I went forward and dropped the jib and we sailed in under main only. Cindy spun us around into the wind and I dropped anchor. I wanted back off the anchor and get some slope on the anchor rode in case we had to ride out some wind so we traded places so I could run the motor. I asked Cindy to hold tension on the anchor line till I started backing up then release the line so it could go out off the holder. Somewhere in those instructions something got crossed as when I start backing the boat up Cindy was trying to hold tension on the line instead of just letting it out. Next thing I know Cindy is laying on the bow with arms stretched out into the water trying to get the anchor line holder back! I stopped the boat and went forward to help and that was when I discovered she was trying to hold the line tight. I think there may have been a break down in communication. No harm done and she was able to recover the holder so all was good. We finished putting the boat to bed before getting our bed ready in the v birth. Note to self, next tie the halyards off to the pulpits as they started banging on the mast later in the night, which I found annoying. Cindy could barely hear it LOL.
Once we finished our chores we cuddled up in the v birth and watched a movie on our laptop. It rained off and on during the movie and we really enjoyed listening to the rain on the cabin top. It was very soothing and relaxing. Fortunately it was a nice temperature and there was a breeze blowing so we were cool and there were no bugs. Cindy has officially declared this the summer of the sweatshirt! Just this week we are having more seasonable temps but there has just been a few days this summer that I would call muggy. Normally we have more than you can count!
After the movie was over we popped our heads out to see what was going on. Now it was almost midnight and it was a steady drizzle so we were quite surprised to see two men on a bass boat fishing in the dark about a 150 feet north of our stern!!! Talk about diehards! Cindy had a very comical incident trying to do a prop check in the dark by using her paddle board that we had tied up to the stern. Needless to say she got a bit wetter than what she was hoping for and I got a great laugh. Not sure how far the guys on the bass boat could see into the darkness but they might have gotten a free show if they could see her.
We slept well with the rain pattering on the roof top that night. I woke up a time or two to adjust the hatch opening. Seems there is a crack in it that I will need to repair when paint her this winter. With the hatch up the water runs in the crack and then dripped on us. That was a bit annoying. Then about 6 am the next morning we had a good down pour and I discovered how we kept getting water in the cabin floor when it would rain. The fasteners for the pop top struts go through the top of the pop top from below which puts the nuts for them on the cabin top. I think they all leaked so that was added to the list of repairs. I was surprised how much water they let in. I got up and strategically place our dish washing totes to collect most of the water that was dripping down from the strut fasteners. I popped my head out to discover another fishing boat was within 75' of us, in the dark, in the rain! OMG, talk about nothing better to do! I crawled back into the v birth and cuddled up with my lil nuddling partner (nuddling is naked cuddling, it's the best!). It was almost ten before we finally emerged from the cabin to get our day started!
The rain had finally let up and the boat was starting to dry off a bit. I dropped the lifeline and just jumped in to get woke up. Wow! That will wake you up! Probably a good thing I did as the wind had died down during the night and the anchor line had gotten wrapped around the keel again. I got it freed and then gathered the access line and put it on the bow. I am starting to think that maybe we should use the white rope instead of the nylon woven rope. It seems to float where as the other line did not. I really like the convince of the nylon rope as it has it's own holder and you can shake it dry. The other line has to be rolled up and then hung out to dry before storing it away.
After I made us a couple of omelets for breakfast Cindy took off exploring on P2 while I fished off the boat with my spinning rod. Fish were jumping all around the boat so I was hopeful I might catch one or two. I did catch on lil stripper off the bow before I got a bit aggressive with my casting and forgot about the shroud lines. As I went forward on my cast I hooked the shroud! I managed to break the line and my lure hit the deck and bounced off into the water. Argh. Back to the cockpit to tie on another lure. I caught another stripper off the stern and shortly after releasing him I got to witness something really cool.
There is a eagle's nest along the south shore of where we anchor. I saw a large eagle launch from the nest tree and fly straight out to a point about 100 feet off of our stern. He made a tight right hand turn right towards our boat then just folded his wings back, dropped his head, and dove for the water. I am just standing there on the stern watching with my mouth hanging open as I love watching big birds! He dove down till he was about 2 feet above the water and all at once his wings popped out, his feet went down, and his head went up. There was a large splash followed by a lot of wing flapping and hitting the water but in no time he was back up in the air with what looked like a 8-10" bass flipping around in his talons!!! He struggled to fly a bit till his wings shed all the water off them then he made a right hand 270 degree turn and came right over the mast about 10 feet above it almost as if he was showing off his catch to me. He flew back to the south shore and landed in a dead tree to have his breakfast. I watched him eat his catch with our binoculars. Talk about something to see in real life. I had only seen an eagle fishing on tv before so I was really excited to get to see in real life and so close to me at the same time was awesome!
Not long after that it started raining again. I looked out across the water and Cindy was headed back paddling fast trying to get back before she got drenched. I raised the anchor to go get her but by the time I got everything put away and headed over to her she was almost to the boat. I helped her aboard then loaded P2 onto the deck on the port side between the shrouds and the cabin top. We headed back across the lake to the dock as radar showed more showers heading our way. As we crossed the lake Cindy told me all about the big fish she saw rooting around in the mud right along the shoreline. She was paddling her board a few feet off the shoreline when she saw mud swirling around up ahead of her. She carefully approached and saw a fish that started out as 2 feet long but has since grown to 3 feet long. Seems it is not just men who exaggerate the size of their fish! It was digging around in the mud till it saw Cindy on her board then took off like a rocket! Once back to dock we tied off in a slip and I suggested to Cindy that since there was hardly anyone around she should take Pearl and trailer over to the boat ramp and practice backing the trailer without the boat on it while I put P2 up and got the boat ready to put away. So she headed off and practiced backing for about 20 mins while I did my chores. I headed over with the boat to meet her which was a role reversal of sorts as Cindy had never been on the trailer with me bringing the boat in. I carried a little more speed to the trailer than Cindy typically does and was off just a bit with the keel from lining up with slot in the bunk boards. The keel hit the right inside bunk board and knocked it in a bit. I had been meaning to modify the trailer but with me usually being the one on trailer I had just dealt with the issues but now is the time to fix it. I had to get off the boat and onto the trailer so I could muscle her keel into the slot between the boards. As soon as time allows we will launch the boat then tie her in a slip and make the modifications to the bunk boards so that there is a better mechanism to guide the keel into the slot.
Since we had already taken the sails off the night before it did not take us long to get her all put up and get her ready to await out next sailing adventure. The cover I had made for the cockpit and the cabin top finally tore to the point it is time to make one out of real material instead of the Harbor Freight silver tarp. It worked well and we really liked having the top covered. We might have to make a whole top cover once we paint her but for now what we have will be fine. I am just waiting on the material to arrive so I can sew up the new cover.
On our way home Cindy told me how much better she felt about her ability to back the trailer now after getting to practice that morning. We really enjoyed our first rainy night aboard and the idea of bringing the laptop so we could watch movies was a hit! Too bad we were out of Jiffy pop as popcorn would have been nice. It was another wonderful adventure to add to long list of adventures we have already shared together and gave us many new ideas for future adventures yet to come!!!
Sail #11
Even though the weather was not forecasted to be the best for Saturday my daughter wanted to go sail with us before she headed off to her freshman year at college. So we headed over to the boat mid afternoon to give it a try as she left the upcoming Thrusday. The weather was overcast but there was a breeze, not much, but enough to move the boat across the water.
We arrived and found our girl eager to get on the water again. Cindy and I got busy rigging the sails and getting everything loaded while Bre and her friend Olivia waited patiently. They decided to hop on board and check things out but I needed them to hop out so I could hook the trailer to the hitch. All I heard was a roar of laughter from my daughter as it seems Olivia slipped and busted her butt on her landing when she jumped down out of the boat. Gotta hate it when you miss a good wipeout!
After a quick potty break we headed to the ramp and had Cindy back her down into the water. After a few attempts I could sense Cindy's frustration building so we swapped places and I backed our girl down into the water. After a quick launch I motored over to the ramp to pick up the girls. Once everyone was on board it was time to go sailing!
I raised the sails once clear of the buoy field and in no time the motor was off and raised and we were sailing closed hauled in a nice lil breeze. After tacking at the opposite shore of the lake I got out my hand held GPS and checked our speed. We managed to hit 5 mph at one point which really surprised me as we did not have but maybe 5-7 mph of wind. After sailing for maybe 45 mins the weather was starting to look more like rain so we headed to a cove that was closer to the sailing association just in case we had to make a quick run for it. Once in the cove we got P2 out and inflated her. Bre hopped on her and away she went. Bre and I had paddled boarded in Lake Michigan on a business trip I took to Cheboygan WI back in 2011. I had never heard of SUP's till then and while we originally went in to shop to rent a kayak for the afternoon once we saw the SUP's we had to try it. I think we failed to hear the guy mention the lake water was chilly, like 54 degrees chilly. But we paddled around and had a ball with the board. So Bre had some experience with a SUP and she did fine. We tried our best to get Olivia to give it a go but it seems she has this aversion to swimming in lakes. Go figure.
While Bre was out paddling as I got dinner started. We had brought along a couple of nice rib eye steaks so once they were done we all dove in and made pigs of ourselves. For some reason food just taste better on a boat. Maybe it is the surroundings or just the thought that you cooked it on board your boat. Either way they were very tasty. As we ate dinner the skies began to darken so once we finished cleaning up dishes we headed back to the dock so Bre and Olivia could head home. They wanted to leave before dark anyway as it was Bre's first time there and she wanted to make sure she did not get lost in the dark. As we rounded the corner from the cove we were in it was apparent that the wind had started blowing. Go figure, time for the girls to head home and the wind picks up. We dropped the girls off at the dark and after a quick bathroom break Cindy and headed back out to sail some more.
The wind had picked up nicely and was blowing maybe 10-12 out of the west. We sailed back and forth across the lake several times as darkness encroached upon us. We were the only sailboat on the lake and with the exception of few bass boats heading back in for the day we had the lake to ourselves. It was great sailing and we were clipping right along. Too bad I did not think to get the GPS out then and see what our speed was. Cindy had me man the tiller while she assumed her happy place leaning back into me as we sailed along.
It was almost 9:30 and right on the edge of darkness when we made it into our favorite cove. I went forward and dropped the jib and we sailed in under main only. Cindy spun us around into the wind and I dropped anchor. I wanted back off the anchor and get some slope on the anchor rode in case we had to ride out some wind so we traded places so I could run the motor. I asked Cindy to hold tension on the anchor line till I started backing up then release the line so it could go out off the holder. Somewhere in those instructions something got crossed as when I start backing the boat up Cindy was trying to hold tension on the line instead of just letting it out. Next thing I know Cindy is laying on the bow with arms stretched out into the water trying to get the anchor line holder back! I stopped the boat and went forward to help and that was when I discovered she was trying to hold the line tight. I think there may have been a break down in communication. No harm done and she was able to recover the holder so all was good. We finished putting the boat to bed before getting our bed ready in the v birth. Note to self, next tie the halyards off to the pulpits as they started banging on the mast later in the night, which I found annoying. Cindy could barely hear it LOL.
Once we finished our chores we cuddled up in the v birth and watched a movie on our laptop. It rained off and on during the movie and we really enjoyed listening to the rain on the cabin top. It was very soothing and relaxing. Fortunately it was a nice temperature and there was a breeze blowing so we were cool and there were no bugs. Cindy has officially declared this the summer of the sweatshirt! Just this week we are having more seasonable temps but there has just been a few days this summer that I would call muggy. Normally we have more than you can count!
After the movie was over we popped our heads out to see what was going on. Now it was almost midnight and it was a steady drizzle so we were quite surprised to see two men on a bass boat fishing in the dark about a 150 feet north of our stern!!! Talk about diehards! Cindy had a very comical incident trying to do a prop check in the dark by using her paddle board that we had tied up to the stern. Needless to say she got a bit wetter than what she was hoping for and I got a great laugh. Not sure how far the guys on the bass boat could see into the darkness but they might have gotten a free show if they could see her.
We slept well with the rain pattering on the roof top that night. I woke up a time or two to adjust the hatch opening. Seems there is a crack in it that I will need to repair when paint her this winter. With the hatch up the water runs in the crack and then dripped on us. That was a bit annoying. Then about 6 am the next morning we had a good down pour and I discovered how we kept getting water in the cabin floor when it would rain. The fasteners for the pop top struts go through the top of the pop top from below which puts the nuts for them on the cabin top. I think they all leaked so that was added to the list of repairs. I was surprised how much water they let in. I got up and strategically place our dish washing totes to collect most of the water that was dripping down from the strut fasteners. I popped my head out to discover another fishing boat was within 75' of us, in the dark, in the rain! OMG, talk about nothing better to do! I crawled back into the v birth and cuddled up with my lil nuddling partner (nuddling is naked cuddling, it's the best!). It was almost ten before we finally emerged from the cabin to get our day started!
The rain had finally let up and the boat was starting to dry off a bit. I dropped the lifeline and just jumped in to get woke up. Wow! That will wake you up! Probably a good thing I did as the wind had died down during the night and the anchor line had gotten wrapped around the keel again. I got it freed and then gathered the access line and put it on the bow. I am starting to think that maybe we should use the white rope instead of the nylon woven rope. It seems to float where as the other line did not. I really like the convince of the nylon rope as it has it's own holder and you can shake it dry. The other line has to be rolled up and then hung out to dry before storing it away.
After I made us a couple of omelets for breakfast Cindy took off exploring on P2 while I fished off the boat with my spinning rod. Fish were jumping all around the boat so I was hopeful I might catch one or two. I did catch on lil stripper off the bow before I got a bit aggressive with my casting and forgot about the shroud lines. As I went forward on my cast I hooked the shroud! I managed to break the line and my lure hit the deck and bounced off into the water. Argh. Back to the cockpit to tie on another lure. I caught another stripper off the stern and shortly after releasing him I got to witness something really cool.
There is a eagle's nest along the south shore of where we anchor. I saw a large eagle launch from the nest tree and fly straight out to a point about 100 feet off of our stern. He made a tight right hand turn right towards our boat then just folded his wings back, dropped his head, and dove for the water. I am just standing there on the stern watching with my mouth hanging open as I love watching big birds! He dove down till he was about 2 feet above the water and all at once his wings popped out, his feet went down, and his head went up. There was a large splash followed by a lot of wing flapping and hitting the water but in no time he was back up in the air with what looked like a 8-10" bass flipping around in his talons!!! He struggled to fly a bit till his wings shed all the water off them then he made a right hand 270 degree turn and came right over the mast about 10 feet above it almost as if he was showing off his catch to me. He flew back to the south shore and landed in a dead tree to have his breakfast. I watched him eat his catch with our binoculars. Talk about something to see in real life. I had only seen an eagle fishing on tv before so I was really excited to get to see in real life and so close to me at the same time was awesome!
Not long after that it started raining again. I looked out across the water and Cindy was headed back paddling fast trying to get back before she got drenched. I raised the anchor to go get her but by the time I got everything put away and headed over to her she was almost to the boat. I helped her aboard then loaded P2 onto the deck on the port side between the shrouds and the cabin top. We headed back across the lake to the dock as radar showed more showers heading our way. As we crossed the lake Cindy told me all about the big fish she saw rooting around in the mud right along the shoreline. She was paddling her board a few feet off the shoreline when she saw mud swirling around up ahead of her. She carefully approached and saw a fish that started out as 2 feet long but has since grown to 3 feet long. Seems it is not just men who exaggerate the size of their fish! It was digging around in the mud till it saw Cindy on her board then took off like a rocket! Once back to dock we tied off in a slip and I suggested to Cindy that since there was hardly anyone around she should take Pearl and trailer over to the boat ramp and practice backing the trailer without the boat on it while I put P2 up and got the boat ready to put away. So she headed off and practiced backing for about 20 mins while I did my chores. I headed over with the boat to meet her which was a role reversal of sorts as Cindy had never been on the trailer with me bringing the boat in. I carried a little more speed to the trailer than Cindy typically does and was off just a bit with the keel from lining up with slot in the bunk boards. The keel hit the right inside bunk board and knocked it in a bit. I had been meaning to modify the trailer but with me usually being the one on trailer I had just dealt with the issues but now is the time to fix it. I had to get off the boat and onto the trailer so I could muscle her keel into the slot between the boards. As soon as time allows we will launch the boat then tie her in a slip and make the modifications to the bunk boards so that there is a better mechanism to guide the keel into the slot.
Since we had already taken the sails off the night before it did not take us long to get her all put up and get her ready to await out next sailing adventure. The cover I had made for the cockpit and the cabin top finally tore to the point it is time to make one out of real material instead of the Harbor Freight silver tarp. It worked well and we really liked having the top covered. We might have to make a whole top cover once we paint her but for now what we have will be fine. I am just waiting on the material to arrive so I can sew up the new cover.
On our way home Cindy told me how much better she felt about her ability to back the trailer now after getting to practice that morning. We really enjoyed our first rainy night aboard and the idea of bringing the laptop so we could watch movies was a hit! Too bad we were out of Jiffy pop as popcorn would have been nice. It was another wonderful adventure to add to long list of adventures we have already shared together and gave us many new ideas for future adventures yet to come!!!
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Sailing again at last!!!
Finally!!! The wind blew and we got to sail again!!! Like I said in my post yesterday, I flipped a coin and it was heads so I texted Cindy to see if she was up for trying to sail after she got home from work last night? She was all for it so I had everything ready to go when she got home. It was not looking very promising as the wind had really calmed down at the house and it looked like rain but we rolled the dice and took a chance and we are so glad we did as it turned out to be a beautiful evening with wind!
We drove through a couple of small showers on the way to the lake but then the sun came out by the time we were half way there so our optimism picked up a bit. The whole way over I kept one eye on the tree tops to make sure they were still swaying in the breeze as I had fears that the wind might elude us again but not this time. I think we rigged the sails in record time and it was not long before Cindy was pulling the Memory Maker over to the boat ramp so we could launch.
There was absolutely no one at the public boat ramp that we use so I told her I was going to close my eyes and sit on my hands and she could take as many tries as it took to get the boat in the water as she had the place to herself. I am so very proud to say that she only needed one try!!! I felt her come to a stop so I asked her how it went and she replied by telling me to turn around and look. I opened my eyes to see the Memory Maker sitting at the water's edge ready for me to climb up into. I climbed up in her and prepared to fire up the motor as Cindy backed us down some more. Somehow we wound up getting a bit crooked at that point and I don't know why it is but she just doesn't like launching off her trailer if she is crooked. Doesn't make much sense as she floats right up off the bunk boards but it has been a issue each time we have tried it crooked. I finally got her backed off the trailer and Cindy took off heading over to the dock for pickup.
It was about now that I nearly did a very big goof. Now please understand that we literally had the place to ourselves. The trimaran sailboat that we see each time we have sailed was out but other than that there were no other boats in sight. The water was calm and I was sheltered from the wind at this point because of the trees so this is all on me. I went to drop the rudder blade down and tie it off and in the process saw that the bungee cord inside the rudder had appeared to have stretched. It is a odd setup that uses a rope tied to a bungee cord to hold the blade vertical. If you hit something the bungee cord will stretch and let the blade come up without damaging it. Well while I was jacking around with the rudder I had failed to keep one eye on where I was heading! I nearly ran her a ground on the rocks not more than a 100 feet off the boat ramp!!!! I about dropped a fudge bomb right there and then when I looked up. I cringed as I turned the motor to get us away as fast as I could. Glad to say the bungee cord in the rudder works as the blade popped up as it drug across the bottom! YIKES! That was close!
I picked Cindy up and off we went in search of the wind. It had been almost a month since we had enough wind to actually sail and almost 2 weeks since we had rigged the sails. I did not check Cindy's rigging of the jib as I she had been doing a great job. Maybe I should have since it had been a few days. As the sails came up and we started sailing I got back down in the cockpit and looked up at the jib sheets. I could see it was wrapped around a lifeline stanchion as Cindy had it ran through the wrong spot. So back up on the cabin top to fix that. No big deal and we were soon sailing right along.
It was not long on the heading we were on before it was time to make our first turn under sail. Looking back I really should have done a better job of communicating with Cindy what the new heading was going to be before we started our turn. Live and learn right? Cindy started the gybe as I was on the jib sheets. We actually had a nice breeze at that point and the boat spun right around to starboard. Where things went bad was that Cindy wasn't sure where to stop the turn so the boat just kept turning. Well once we got broadside to the wind she was really healing over. Like a total idiot, I focused on all our stuff sliding off the table onto the floor of the cabin instead of keeping my eye on more important things, like the BOOM! I am glad to say the boom missed my head but the mainsheet upper turn buckle collected my glasses which somehow managed to cut my nose across the bridge and next to my left eye. Not bad, just enough to let the sweet and oil on my face really irritate me for the next 30 minutes or so. After we did a very tight 360 degree turn to starboard followed by a 90 degree turn back to port we were back on our way heading southwest down the lake a good clip. Lesson learned? Communication is the key to success and main sheet turnbuckles hitting you in the face at high speed hurt!!!!
Off our bow In the distance we could see the trimaran. He was about to enter the narrows so we set course to follow him as it looked like we could have a nice long run down the lake thanks to the northeast wind. Like most sails on lake Monroe it turned into an exercise in patience as the wind lulled about half way across the lake but we kept moving, just a lil on the slow side for a while. As he passed off our port side we waved at the trimaran, who had tacked back to the northeast and was on his way back to dock. We continued on our way west trying to get in as much sailing as we could. Captain Cindy turned over the helm to her first mate, that would be me, and kicked back to relax a bit in the setting sun's warm light. We tacked back to the southeast and picked up a heading for our cove so we could cook dinner.
On our way back across the lake Cindy, after seeing we had the whole lake too ourselves, decided to test her first mate and see how just how good his focus and multi tasking abilities really are. Let's just say I passed all her test with flying colors and no matter what she threw at me I never lost focus, well at least not for very long! In the process of "focus testing" we heaved to for the first time (that is a sailing maneuver ;-) ). Can't really say that was what I was trying to do but it just kinda worked out and was no big deal. We will have to practice it when we are both "focused" on the task at hand LOL!
We finally made it to our cove and dropped anchor as it was starting to get late and we were both hungry. It was after 8 and the wind was still blowing good enough that we could have sailed longer but we both had to work today and sadly we knew we could stay all night. I offered to blow up P squared so Cindy could paddle her around for a bit while I cooked dinner but she was tired an asked if I would be upset if she did not paddle her board. I might have my issues but I don't et upset over things like that. So instead we tried to share a glass of wine while dinner cooked but wound up tossing it over board as it was blackberry wine that had gone bad. Seems you need to drink blackberry wine within 6 months of it being bottled or it gets very nasty!
As I checked the corn on the cob cooking on the grill I turned and notice the beautiful sunset over the water.
No matter how many time we are on the water at sunset I never get tired of taking a picture of it. We really lucked out as the weather had cleared, the wind continued to blow, and we had the lake to ourselves! We got to thinking that Monday evenings might be the time to come play!
After sharing a yummy dinner together it was time to raise anchor and head home. We can tell that the days are really starting to get shorter as darkness was closing in on us fast as we prepared the boat to motor across the lake. We needed more light so I asked Cindy to turn on the spreader bar lights. I was really excited when I put the led lights on the underside of the spreader bars thinking we would use them a lot. But as it turned out we were usually so wore out from all the fun we had during the day that we have not been awake very much at night so they have hardly been used. But now that the days are getting shorter I think we will use them more.
Sadly it was time to raise the anchor and head back in. So I started up the motor for the Captain, that is one of the duties of the First Mate, to get the Captain's motor running ;-) , then headed up on the bow to raise the anchor up. I started pulling in the line but it was really stuck. So like the idiot I am so often am, I really start pulling up on the line holder that the extra line is wrapped around. I am really pulling with all my might when all of a sudden it comes free for about 3 feet. Just enough to let my hands, and the line holder, come up and smack me right in the nose!!! Son of a B#$%^&!!!! That hurt!!! Two good hits to my nose in the same night, what did I do to deserve that??? Now I am bleeding as the line holder skinned the top of my nose, and I felt like Mike Tyson just landed a upper cut right on the tip of my nose. Plus the anchor line is still stuck! After a few minutes to let my eyes clear I realized it was wrapped around the keel. Argh! this is the second time that has happened. Seems when there is hardly any wind and the boat just drifts around the anchor line fouls around the keel. I had my beautiful lil captain move us around with the motor but it was hung up pretty good. By now it is good and dark and my nose is throbbing so I just stripped down to nothing and jumped in. It just took a quick pull of the line to free it from the keel. Luckily the water was somewhat warm, i.e. minimal shrinkage LOL. Cindy got the swim ladder out so I climbed back aboard. Finally I got the anchor on board and put away. As I was drying off I looked up towards the tree line to our east and could just barely see the glow of the moon rising up over the trees. As we motored further west more of the moon came into view. Then I remembered that this is the super moon! It sure looked huge as it rose up over the hills!
I know, the pic sucks, but all we had with us were our phones. We really needed our SLR camera with adjustable shutter speed and a tripod to get a really good pic but take our word, it was beautiful!
We gently motored across the lake in the dark, still the only boat on the water. I used the time to install the main sail cover and to raise the keel. I could tell Cindy was a bit concerned about making her way through the buoy field and the boats on their buoys in the dark. I reassured her several times that we would be fine and that we would be able to see them once we got there. I went below and found our led headlight I had left on board for occasions just like this one and helped the Captain put it on her head. As we got closer to the buoy field there was a beam of light shining out onto the lake from one of the security lights at the sailing association. It was leading us right to the dock. All Cindy had to do was just stay right on that beam and we were good to go as you could plainly see there was nothing in the light's path between us and the retaining wall by the dock. It was about then that I asked Cindy if she remembered me saying we needed to get a spot light to keep on board. She replied yes. I then said this is why I said we needed one. So we added it to the shopping list. Cindy did great and sure enough as we got closer to the boats we could see them in the darkness. It really wasn't total darkness as we had the security lights on shore and huge security light rising up in the sky off our stern!
Cindy dropped me off at the dock and I hurried over to the boat ramp to retrieve my lady and the Memory Maker. I backed down and had the trailer all ready as I awaited their arrival, and waited, and waited. It sure seemed like it was taking a long time for them to get into the trailer. Plus it was really quite. I shouted out if the motor had died? Cindy replied back she had shut it off! Cindy is always afraid she is going to come in too fast and shoot up over the trailer and pin me between the boat and the car. I have to laugh at that thought as we have a 3 1/2 horse power motor. I am pretty sure we won't be jumping any trailers with it!!!! They finally drifted close enough that I was able to reach out and grab them but the boat had slowed so much Cindy lost steerage and I had to man handle them around to get it lined up with the trailer. The Memory Make is not a large boat nor that heavy, but she is far from easy to get back on the trailer. There is a narrow 4" wide slot between the two center bunk boards that the keel has to go between and then the keel slides up onto a flat board. So once you get the keel lined up you can only pull her on so far before you have to use the winch. I am thinking there might be further modifications to the trailer, like installing keel rollers in place of the keel board so the keel rolls up onto the trailer instead of having to be drug up onto it. Soon we were headed back to put our girl back to bed before we too headed home to bed.
As we tucked our girl in I talked with Cindy about the importance of not shutting the motor off that far out. Always before she had relied on the wind and the waves to get her to the trailer and it had worked fine. In fact I had not even noticed she had been shutting the motor off that far out. But tonight there was no wind or waves and it was very apparent what had happened. When she shuts the motor off that far out she becomes a boat adrift and without control. If for any reason she would have to turn away, stop, or back up, she would not be able to without restarting the motor. Instead of killing the motor I asked her to please just leave it run in neutral till she is on the trailer just incase she would ever need to maneuver around other boats or turn away from the dock and clear the area in the event someone had a major issue or accident loading. Anything can happen, especially at the boat ramp and we don't want some man in a bass boat calling her names for drifting into him!!!!
It is still our goal to get Cindy to where she can bring friends over and sail during the day while I am working. We are hopeful to get a buoy next season and that will remove the whole launching and retrieving aspect from the sail and that will really help get her closer to that goal. But like tonight with the fouled anchor line, there will always be things that come up that she will have to be able to deal with that cannot be planned for. Hopefully between now and then everything that can happen will happen, very unlikely, but at the rate we are going she will have had experience in dealing with all sorts of emergencies LOL!
Even with all our goofs and blunders and two good hits to the nose we had a great time! Cindy had some good laughs, at her first mates expense, and I too had a few chuckles(after the pain went away). We continue to learn. Cindy made the comment on the way home that all the BS about putting your hand at the 6 o'clock position on the steering wheel and moving your hand in the direction you want the boat to go is just that, BS! She is starting to figure out the whole trailer backing thing and like I told her in the beginning you just have to get to were you can see where the trailer needs to go and respond to it instead of trying to think about which way to move your hand at the bottom of the steering wheel. I reminded her that she only gets to back the trailer a very short distance each time so all tolled she has only spent maybe 3-5 minutes all summer actually backing a trailer. Like teaching someone to land a plane, it is hard to learn because you get such a short time to actually back the trailer each time. I promised her she would get it and by golly she is! I told her how I use the lines in the concrete on the boat ramp to help keep the boat lined up and straight to the ramp so maybe next time she will be able to not only watch the trailer in her mirrors but also watch the lines on the ramp so she can stay lined up better. I really need to take a few minutes at home and rig up two mirrors on my tractor and let her spend a afternoon backing up our kayak trailer in the driveway. I know Cindy would master backing a trailer it if I could just find time to do that.
Looking back on our progress we have made over the summer I still think we are doing really good. We have gone from knowing nothing to the point that we can actually sail our boat. Yes we took a step or two back thanks to a month of no wind, but what we had learned came back to us pretty quickly. While we make mistakes, we at least know what the mistakes are and how to correct them. Plus, like with Cindy figuring out how to back the trailer, we continue to learn! The best thing is that while we learn, we are MAKING MEMORIES TOGETHER!!!!!
We drove through a couple of small showers on the way to the lake but then the sun came out by the time we were half way there so our optimism picked up a bit. The whole way over I kept one eye on the tree tops to make sure they were still swaying in the breeze as I had fears that the wind might elude us again but not this time. I think we rigged the sails in record time and it was not long before Cindy was pulling the Memory Maker over to the boat ramp so we could launch.
There was absolutely no one at the public boat ramp that we use so I told her I was going to close my eyes and sit on my hands and she could take as many tries as it took to get the boat in the water as she had the place to herself. I am so very proud to say that she only needed one try!!! I felt her come to a stop so I asked her how it went and she replied by telling me to turn around and look. I opened my eyes to see the Memory Maker sitting at the water's edge ready for me to climb up into. I climbed up in her and prepared to fire up the motor as Cindy backed us down some more. Somehow we wound up getting a bit crooked at that point and I don't know why it is but she just doesn't like launching off her trailer if she is crooked. Doesn't make much sense as she floats right up off the bunk boards but it has been a issue each time we have tried it crooked. I finally got her backed off the trailer and Cindy took off heading over to the dock for pickup.
It was about now that I nearly did a very big goof. Now please understand that we literally had the place to ourselves. The trimaran sailboat that we see each time we have sailed was out but other than that there were no other boats in sight. The water was calm and I was sheltered from the wind at this point because of the trees so this is all on me. I went to drop the rudder blade down and tie it off and in the process saw that the bungee cord inside the rudder had appeared to have stretched. It is a odd setup that uses a rope tied to a bungee cord to hold the blade vertical. If you hit something the bungee cord will stretch and let the blade come up without damaging it. Well while I was jacking around with the rudder I had failed to keep one eye on where I was heading! I nearly ran her a ground on the rocks not more than a 100 feet off the boat ramp!!!! I about dropped a fudge bomb right there and then when I looked up. I cringed as I turned the motor to get us away as fast as I could. Glad to say the bungee cord in the rudder works as the blade popped up as it drug across the bottom! YIKES! That was close!
I picked Cindy up and off we went in search of the wind. It had been almost a month since we had enough wind to actually sail and almost 2 weeks since we had rigged the sails. I did not check Cindy's rigging of the jib as I she had been doing a great job. Maybe I should have since it had been a few days. As the sails came up and we started sailing I got back down in the cockpit and looked up at the jib sheets. I could see it was wrapped around a lifeline stanchion as Cindy had it ran through the wrong spot. So back up on the cabin top to fix that. No big deal and we were soon sailing right along.
It was not long on the heading we were on before it was time to make our first turn under sail. Looking back I really should have done a better job of communicating with Cindy what the new heading was going to be before we started our turn. Live and learn right? Cindy started the gybe as I was on the jib sheets. We actually had a nice breeze at that point and the boat spun right around to starboard. Where things went bad was that Cindy wasn't sure where to stop the turn so the boat just kept turning. Well once we got broadside to the wind she was really healing over. Like a total idiot, I focused on all our stuff sliding off the table onto the floor of the cabin instead of keeping my eye on more important things, like the BOOM! I am glad to say the boom missed my head but the mainsheet upper turn buckle collected my glasses which somehow managed to cut my nose across the bridge and next to my left eye. Not bad, just enough to let the sweet and oil on my face really irritate me for the next 30 minutes or so. After we did a very tight 360 degree turn to starboard followed by a 90 degree turn back to port we were back on our way heading southwest down the lake a good clip. Lesson learned? Communication is the key to success and main sheet turnbuckles hitting you in the face at high speed hurt!!!!
Off our bow In the distance we could see the trimaran. He was about to enter the narrows so we set course to follow him as it looked like we could have a nice long run down the lake thanks to the northeast wind. Like most sails on lake Monroe it turned into an exercise in patience as the wind lulled about half way across the lake but we kept moving, just a lil on the slow side for a while. As he passed off our port side we waved at the trimaran, who had tacked back to the northeast and was on his way back to dock. We continued on our way west trying to get in as much sailing as we could. Captain Cindy turned over the helm to her first mate, that would be me, and kicked back to relax a bit in the setting sun's warm light. We tacked back to the southeast and picked up a heading for our cove so we could cook dinner.
On our way back across the lake Cindy, after seeing we had the whole lake too ourselves, decided to test her first mate and see how just how good his focus and multi tasking abilities really are. Let's just say I passed all her test with flying colors and no matter what she threw at me I never lost focus, well at least not for very long! In the process of "focus testing" we heaved to for the first time (that is a sailing maneuver ;-) ). Can't really say that was what I was trying to do but it just kinda worked out and was no big deal. We will have to practice it when we are both "focused" on the task at hand LOL!
We finally made it to our cove and dropped anchor as it was starting to get late and we were both hungry. It was after 8 and the wind was still blowing good enough that we could have sailed longer but we both had to work today and sadly we knew we could stay all night. I offered to blow up P squared so Cindy could paddle her around for a bit while I cooked dinner but she was tired an asked if I would be upset if she did not paddle her board. I might have my issues but I don't et upset over things like that. So instead we tried to share a glass of wine while dinner cooked but wound up tossing it over board as it was blackberry wine that had gone bad. Seems you need to drink blackberry wine within 6 months of it being bottled or it gets very nasty!
As I checked the corn on the cob cooking on the grill I turned and notice the beautiful sunset over the water.
No matter how many time we are on the water at sunset I never get tired of taking a picture of it. We really lucked out as the weather had cleared, the wind continued to blow, and we had the lake to ourselves! We got to thinking that Monday evenings might be the time to come play!
After sharing a yummy dinner together it was time to raise anchor and head home. We can tell that the days are really starting to get shorter as darkness was closing in on us fast as we prepared the boat to motor across the lake. We needed more light so I asked Cindy to turn on the spreader bar lights. I was really excited when I put the led lights on the underside of the spreader bars thinking we would use them a lot. But as it turned out we were usually so wore out from all the fun we had during the day that we have not been awake very much at night so they have hardly been used. But now that the days are getting shorter I think we will use them more.
Sadly it was time to raise the anchor and head back in. So I started up the motor for the Captain, that is one of the duties of the First Mate, to get the Captain's motor running ;-) , then headed up on the bow to raise the anchor up. I started pulling in the line but it was really stuck. So like the idiot I am so often am, I really start pulling up on the line holder that the extra line is wrapped around. I am really pulling with all my might when all of a sudden it comes free for about 3 feet. Just enough to let my hands, and the line holder, come up and smack me right in the nose!!! Son of a B#$%^&!!!! That hurt!!! Two good hits to my nose in the same night, what did I do to deserve that??? Now I am bleeding as the line holder skinned the top of my nose, and I felt like Mike Tyson just landed a upper cut right on the tip of my nose. Plus the anchor line is still stuck! After a few minutes to let my eyes clear I realized it was wrapped around the keel. Argh! this is the second time that has happened. Seems when there is hardly any wind and the boat just drifts around the anchor line fouls around the keel. I had my beautiful lil captain move us around with the motor but it was hung up pretty good. By now it is good and dark and my nose is throbbing so I just stripped down to nothing and jumped in. It just took a quick pull of the line to free it from the keel. Luckily the water was somewhat warm, i.e. minimal shrinkage LOL. Cindy got the swim ladder out so I climbed back aboard. Finally I got the anchor on board and put away. As I was drying off I looked up towards the tree line to our east and could just barely see the glow of the moon rising up over the trees. As we motored further west more of the moon came into view. Then I remembered that this is the super moon! It sure looked huge as it rose up over the hills!
I know, the pic sucks, but all we had with us were our phones. We really needed our SLR camera with adjustable shutter speed and a tripod to get a really good pic but take our word, it was beautiful!
We gently motored across the lake in the dark, still the only boat on the water. I used the time to install the main sail cover and to raise the keel. I could tell Cindy was a bit concerned about making her way through the buoy field and the boats on their buoys in the dark. I reassured her several times that we would be fine and that we would be able to see them once we got there. I went below and found our led headlight I had left on board for occasions just like this one and helped the Captain put it on her head. As we got closer to the buoy field there was a beam of light shining out onto the lake from one of the security lights at the sailing association. It was leading us right to the dock. All Cindy had to do was just stay right on that beam and we were good to go as you could plainly see there was nothing in the light's path between us and the retaining wall by the dock. It was about then that I asked Cindy if she remembered me saying we needed to get a spot light to keep on board. She replied yes. I then said this is why I said we needed one. So we added it to the shopping list. Cindy did great and sure enough as we got closer to the boats we could see them in the darkness. It really wasn't total darkness as we had the security lights on shore and huge security light rising up in the sky off our stern!
Cindy dropped me off at the dock and I hurried over to the boat ramp to retrieve my lady and the Memory Maker. I backed down and had the trailer all ready as I awaited their arrival, and waited, and waited. It sure seemed like it was taking a long time for them to get into the trailer. Plus it was really quite. I shouted out if the motor had died? Cindy replied back she had shut it off! Cindy is always afraid she is going to come in too fast and shoot up over the trailer and pin me between the boat and the car. I have to laugh at that thought as we have a 3 1/2 horse power motor. I am pretty sure we won't be jumping any trailers with it!!!! They finally drifted close enough that I was able to reach out and grab them but the boat had slowed so much Cindy lost steerage and I had to man handle them around to get it lined up with the trailer. The Memory Make is not a large boat nor that heavy, but she is far from easy to get back on the trailer. There is a narrow 4" wide slot between the two center bunk boards that the keel has to go between and then the keel slides up onto a flat board. So once you get the keel lined up you can only pull her on so far before you have to use the winch. I am thinking there might be further modifications to the trailer, like installing keel rollers in place of the keel board so the keel rolls up onto the trailer instead of having to be drug up onto it. Soon we were headed back to put our girl back to bed before we too headed home to bed.
As we tucked our girl in I talked with Cindy about the importance of not shutting the motor off that far out. Always before she had relied on the wind and the waves to get her to the trailer and it had worked fine. In fact I had not even noticed she had been shutting the motor off that far out. But tonight there was no wind or waves and it was very apparent what had happened. When she shuts the motor off that far out she becomes a boat adrift and without control. If for any reason she would have to turn away, stop, or back up, she would not be able to without restarting the motor. Instead of killing the motor I asked her to please just leave it run in neutral till she is on the trailer just incase she would ever need to maneuver around other boats or turn away from the dock and clear the area in the event someone had a major issue or accident loading. Anything can happen, especially at the boat ramp and we don't want some man in a bass boat calling her names for drifting into him!!!!
It is still our goal to get Cindy to where she can bring friends over and sail during the day while I am working. We are hopeful to get a buoy next season and that will remove the whole launching and retrieving aspect from the sail and that will really help get her closer to that goal. But like tonight with the fouled anchor line, there will always be things that come up that she will have to be able to deal with that cannot be planned for. Hopefully between now and then everything that can happen will happen, very unlikely, but at the rate we are going she will have had experience in dealing with all sorts of emergencies LOL!
Even with all our goofs and blunders and two good hits to the nose we had a great time! Cindy had some good laughs, at her first mates expense, and I too had a few chuckles(after the pain went away). We continue to learn. Cindy made the comment on the way home that all the BS about putting your hand at the 6 o'clock position on the steering wheel and moving your hand in the direction you want the boat to go is just that, BS! She is starting to figure out the whole trailer backing thing and like I told her in the beginning you just have to get to were you can see where the trailer needs to go and respond to it instead of trying to think about which way to move your hand at the bottom of the steering wheel. I reminded her that she only gets to back the trailer a very short distance each time so all tolled she has only spent maybe 3-5 minutes all summer actually backing a trailer. Like teaching someone to land a plane, it is hard to learn because you get such a short time to actually back the trailer each time. I promised her she would get it and by golly she is! I told her how I use the lines in the concrete on the boat ramp to help keep the boat lined up and straight to the ramp so maybe next time she will be able to not only watch the trailer in her mirrors but also watch the lines on the ramp so she can stay lined up better. I really need to take a few minutes at home and rig up two mirrors on my tractor and let her spend a afternoon backing up our kayak trailer in the driveway. I know Cindy would master backing a trailer it if I could just find time to do that.
Looking back on our progress we have made over the summer I still think we are doing really good. We have gone from knowing nothing to the point that we can actually sail our boat. Yes we took a step or two back thanks to a month of no wind, but what we had learned came back to us pretty quickly. While we make mistakes, we at least know what the mistakes are and how to correct them. Plus, like with Cindy figuring out how to back the trailer, we continue to learn! The best thing is that while we learn, we are MAKING MEMORIES TOGETHER!!!!!
Monday, August 11, 2014
Where is the wind and why do we blog???
Well we are now into August and I guess the summer doldrums are in full swing in southern IN. We have not had good wind to sail with since the middle of July. We have gone over and motored twice and really hoped to get over to the boat this weekend but it rained pretty much all weekend and the wind was no where to be found.
We thought that surely at some point the wind would blow but even during the downpours we had off and on it was non existent. I checked the weather report at the airport in Bloomington several times yesterday and the best it got was winds from the southeast at 3 knots. Oh boy, we might have had to reef the main sail with winds like that!!!
Wouldn't you know it, we go back to work on Monday and the wind finally starts to blow!!! There is a nice 10-12 knot breeze blowing out of the southwest today. ARGH!!!!! Talk about torture! Nothing worse than being stuck inside a office when you wish you were outside playing. Especially after enduring a rain soaked weekend with no outside fun. We made the best of it and went antiquing and wine tasting and had a really fun time but I think we both really wished we could have gotten back on the boat and actually sailed before we forget what little we have learned. Enough whining about the wind, or the lack there of. We are not the only ones wishing it would blow again someday. Preferably some day that we have off!!!
So why do we blog? For those of you that are reading this that keep a blog yourself then you know that it takes quite a bit of time to type a blog entry, especially if your typing skills are along the same level as mine. The blog was actually Cindy's idea. It went something along the lines of "You know what we should do? We should start a blog about our sailing adventures!". Well I knew that meant that I should figure out how to blog and do one for us LOL! The blog really started out as a way for us to keep track of our new sailing adventure, the progress we made on the boat, and us learning to sail. But it has kinda morphed into more of a running autobiography of us as a couple and the experiences we share. Well at least the ones clean enough to share on a public forum LOL!
Cindy and I are always busy doing something fun when we are together. Sometimes I am amazed that we get anything done at home as it seems we are always out playing somewhere. That might explain why we are going on year number 3 at our new home and it still is not done. I can build a house is pretty quick. I tore down the old house and built a new one in 3 months. But to actually finish a house you built yourself and moved into before it was totally complete, well, that takes years to finish!!! I am so lucky that Cindy understands I can't be working on it if we are out playing and she rates playing above house projects. (Just so you don't think we are living in a half finished house, it is probably more along the lines of 95% complete. Just need to finish some trim, the basement needs finished, and landscaping.) Anyway, back to why we blog. I think one big reason is that with the fact that we are always do something fun I fear over time we might run the risk of forgetting parts of the fun we have. So I try to be very detailed in my writings so as to try and capture all the fun aspects of our adventures. Have you ever seen the movie The Notebook? In a way this blog is our notebook. I have always felt that in the end all you really have are your memories and depending on what winds up taking your life that is not a guarantee. So in the event one of us would ever find ourselves in a position where we loose our memory the other one will have this blog to fall back on to use as a tool to refresh the other's memory. We love to sit in front of our fireplace on cold winter's nights with our feet up on the hearth while we share a yummy winter beverage. I can see us in the years to come going back and reading entries we made and sharing laughs about funny things we remember from those adventuress.
Another reason we take the time to write what we do is I think we both hope if by sharing our adventures we can be of some inspiration to others who think doing the things we do might be fun but they just aren't sure they could do it or not. Hopefully by reading about all our trials, goofs, and errors we encounter and all the fun we have experiencing new things others might realize almost anyone can do what we do and have fun doing it. I have learned a lot by reading others people's blogs. I like to think we have had a "fairly" problem free time at learning to sail. Granted, we have had our fair share of goofs, but I shudder to think what it might have been like had I not read about all the goofs others have made. I have always read aviation accident reports and have tried to approach my flying career by trying not to make the same mistakes others have made. I have made a few of my own that I should not have but fortunately have not made all the ones I have read about. I took the same approach to sailing and so far I think we have benefited from that. Just wish I would have read about making sure your keel was locked up before you tried to launch your boat. That would have made launching our boat so much easier the first two times we tried!!! Hopefully someone just starting out reads that entry and makes sure their keel is up and locked before they try launching their boat. Nothing worse than having your boat that drafts 18" backed down into 4 feet of water and yet you are still unable to get it off the trailer!!! Someone really should have said if our exhaust is blowing bubbles in the water and the boat still won't float off the trailer you have a problem!
I just got back from running to lunch. Yes, the darn wind is still blowing, Argh! I am tempted to text my beautiful lil lady and see what time she might get home this evening. Since it is the first Monday of the school year she will probably be swamped and running late, sigh. But if not and the wind continues to blow I would love to run over and sail this evening. The summer is quickly coming to an end and I would love to sail and make as many memories as we can before we have to bring the Memory Maker home. Granted after we bring her home we will just transition into our winter activities and make memories doing those but we have gotten bit hard by the sailing bug and really want to enjoy it as much as possible. Speaking of winter activities, just to give you a heads up of what you can expect out of us this winter, we will be busy preparing the Memory Maker for new paint, while we hopefully xc ski every time the snow flies(and I hope that is often!) We are also going to drive 13 hours north to the UP of Michigan to ski a mile into a rustic/primitive cabin, i.e. no running water or inside bathroom, for two nights, pulling our gear on pulk sleds I made for us last winter. We are going to snow shoe and xc ski during the day and listen to the wolves howl and the waves of lake Superior lap at the shore line 130 feet north of cabin at night! That should be an adventure we never forget!!!
Decisions, decisions, I just checked weather the wind is still blowing but there are some thunderstorms popping up to our northwest but I think they might move through by the time we could get to the lake if Cindy gets off at her normal time. I hate to text her and ask her what time she will get home as I don't want her to feel stressed but I hate for us to miss a chance to sail. I will flip a coin. Ok, I just picked heads and it was heads. I am texting her. Wish us luck and pray for wind!!!
We thought that surely at some point the wind would blow but even during the downpours we had off and on it was non existent. I checked the weather report at the airport in Bloomington several times yesterday and the best it got was winds from the southeast at 3 knots. Oh boy, we might have had to reef the main sail with winds like that!!!
Wouldn't you know it, we go back to work on Monday and the wind finally starts to blow!!! There is a nice 10-12 knot breeze blowing out of the southwest today. ARGH!!!!! Talk about torture! Nothing worse than being stuck inside a office when you wish you were outside playing. Especially after enduring a rain soaked weekend with no outside fun. We made the best of it and went antiquing and wine tasting and had a really fun time but I think we both really wished we could have gotten back on the boat and actually sailed before we forget what little we have learned. Enough whining about the wind, or the lack there of. We are not the only ones wishing it would blow again someday. Preferably some day that we have off!!!
So why do we blog? For those of you that are reading this that keep a blog yourself then you know that it takes quite a bit of time to type a blog entry, especially if your typing skills are along the same level as mine. The blog was actually Cindy's idea. It went something along the lines of "You know what we should do? We should start a blog about our sailing adventures!". Well I knew that meant that I should figure out how to blog and do one for us LOL! The blog really started out as a way for us to keep track of our new sailing adventure, the progress we made on the boat, and us learning to sail. But it has kinda morphed into more of a running autobiography of us as a couple and the experiences we share. Well at least the ones clean enough to share on a public forum LOL!
Cindy and I are always busy doing something fun when we are together. Sometimes I am amazed that we get anything done at home as it seems we are always out playing somewhere. That might explain why we are going on year number 3 at our new home and it still is not done. I can build a house is pretty quick. I tore down the old house and built a new one in 3 months. But to actually finish a house you built yourself and moved into before it was totally complete, well, that takes years to finish!!! I am so lucky that Cindy understands I can't be working on it if we are out playing and she rates playing above house projects. (Just so you don't think we are living in a half finished house, it is probably more along the lines of 95% complete. Just need to finish some trim, the basement needs finished, and landscaping.) Anyway, back to why we blog. I think one big reason is that with the fact that we are always do something fun I fear over time we might run the risk of forgetting parts of the fun we have. So I try to be very detailed in my writings so as to try and capture all the fun aspects of our adventures. Have you ever seen the movie The Notebook? In a way this blog is our notebook. I have always felt that in the end all you really have are your memories and depending on what winds up taking your life that is not a guarantee. So in the event one of us would ever find ourselves in a position where we loose our memory the other one will have this blog to fall back on to use as a tool to refresh the other's memory. We love to sit in front of our fireplace on cold winter's nights with our feet up on the hearth while we share a yummy winter beverage. I can see us in the years to come going back and reading entries we made and sharing laughs about funny things we remember from those adventuress.
Another reason we take the time to write what we do is I think we both hope if by sharing our adventures we can be of some inspiration to others who think doing the things we do might be fun but they just aren't sure they could do it or not. Hopefully by reading about all our trials, goofs, and errors we encounter and all the fun we have experiencing new things others might realize almost anyone can do what we do and have fun doing it. I have learned a lot by reading others people's blogs. I like to think we have had a "fairly" problem free time at learning to sail. Granted, we have had our fair share of goofs, but I shudder to think what it might have been like had I not read about all the goofs others have made. I have always read aviation accident reports and have tried to approach my flying career by trying not to make the same mistakes others have made. I have made a few of my own that I should not have but fortunately have not made all the ones I have read about. I took the same approach to sailing and so far I think we have benefited from that. Just wish I would have read about making sure your keel was locked up before you tried to launch your boat. That would have made launching our boat so much easier the first two times we tried!!! Hopefully someone just starting out reads that entry and makes sure their keel is up and locked before they try launching their boat. Nothing worse than having your boat that drafts 18" backed down into 4 feet of water and yet you are still unable to get it off the trailer!!! Someone really should have said if our exhaust is blowing bubbles in the water and the boat still won't float off the trailer you have a problem!
I just got back from running to lunch. Yes, the darn wind is still blowing, Argh! I am tempted to text my beautiful lil lady and see what time she might get home this evening. Since it is the first Monday of the school year she will probably be swamped and running late, sigh. But if not and the wind continues to blow I would love to run over and sail this evening. The summer is quickly coming to an end and I would love to sail and make as many memories as we can before we have to bring the Memory Maker home. Granted after we bring her home we will just transition into our winter activities and make memories doing those but we have gotten bit hard by the sailing bug and really want to enjoy it as much as possible. Speaking of winter activities, just to give you a heads up of what you can expect out of us this winter, we will be busy preparing the Memory Maker for new paint, while we hopefully xc ski every time the snow flies(and I hope that is often!) We are also going to drive 13 hours north to the UP of Michigan to ski a mile into a rustic/primitive cabin, i.e. no running water or inside bathroom, for two nights, pulling our gear on pulk sleds I made for us last winter. We are going to snow shoe and xc ski during the day and listen to the wolves howl and the waves of lake Superior lap at the shore line 130 feet north of cabin at night! That should be an adventure we never forget!!!
Decisions, decisions, I just checked weather the wind is still blowing but there are some thunderstorms popping up to our northwest but I think they might move through by the time we could get to the lake if Cindy gets off at her normal time. I hate to text her and ask her what time she will get home as I don't want her to feel stressed but I hate for us to miss a chance to sail. I will flip a coin. Ok, I just picked heads and it was heads. I am texting her. Wish us luck and pray for wind!!!
Thursday, August 7, 2014
Cindy's Perspective (Again) August 7, 2014
I have a few things to say and I'll try very hard not to bore you. I really only have two messages:
The first would be to all women out there. I'm not sure how many women are readers of this blog. My hope is that if a male is reading this and he sees something that might interest a woman in his life, he will advise her to read the blog. Having said that, my message is pretty simple:
Ladies, if you have a dream, please pursue it.
Pursue it for yourself.
Men, bear with me for just a little bit. My message comes from my heart. I know it sounds mushy and so many men avoid mushiness for a lot of reasons and that's fine. But women are different. We do a lot of introspecting. We may not share what we feel unless we feel safe doing so. But it is still there. Smoldering. Mine and Sam's story is a bit different than most. And without sharing too much private stuff in a public forum, I can just tell you that we both had silent dreams. After we got together and discovered that we had very similar dreams. We decided to go after them together. I'm not a fool to think that I could have done this sailing thing solo. I'd like to think that I'm independent. I have a good job and can support myself financially but buying a boat is only a very small part of sailing. For me, the best part of sailing is sharing it with the man of my dreams. But to say that I have conquered learning to sail by myself would be incorrect. Sam was able to do a lot Youtubing and reading on how to sail. My best friend from high school's husband (Capt. Scott) was a sailor and we went on his boat once. My niece's husband took me on a sailboat ride in the Pacific once and I can tell you that since that day, I knew I'd really like to learn. Again the smoldering dream that resurfaced in a safe environment. I didn't grow up around boats and boat engines or sailing and all the vocab that goes with sailing. So, I had a LOT to learn and I still have a lot to learn. Sam has been very patient with me and that has helped a ton. We all can relate to trying to recall something under pressure and how hard that is. Our minds freeze and we can't remember s!@* when that happens. So having a patient partner really helps. But ladies, if I can learn to steer a tiller, park a trailer, rig sails, and launch a boat, (ok, I still haven't mastered that yet, but by golly, so help me, I WILL learn to do that even when a bunch of men in bass boats are watching) you can too. I promise you can do it. Sam made a video of our summer journey with sailing and showed me last night. Of course I cried when we watched it because I'm such a sap. This sailing thing isn't really just about sailing. It's really about our journey together. And that is my second message:
Please, whatever you do with your life......... stretch yourself. I know it sounds cliche but its true. The big perk for Sam and I is that we can stretch together. And that makes it even more special. I always watch interviews with older people and they talk about their "secret" to a happy life or their secret to longevity. I find it kind of interesting. There seems to be a theme and that is to have a sense of humor, forgive others, and keep moving and keep learning. Sailing gives us the opportunity to laugh at ourselves, forgive our mistakes, move around the boat and learn how to handle new situations. Perfect! I'm going to live to be 110.
There are women out there who sail by themselves and I admire them so much. I bet they grew up around sailing and boats or maybe they have a mechanical mind. I just didn't grow up around it so I'm learning it at age 55. And what might be something simple, like dropping someone off at a dock, is a new skill that has to be learned by a novice like me. Kind of sounds like I'm making excuses. And maybe I am. But, instead of focusing on what I don't know, I'm trying to just focus on what I've learned. And I want to encourage anyone who is interested in sailing to try it because it is AWESOME!!!! And to share it with someone you love makes it even more awesome.
I've added another thing to my bucket list and that is to sail on all 5 Great Lakes. And I think I know myself well enough to know that once we've done that, I'm going to want to sail on the Carribean. I mean who wouldn't want to be sailing on the Carribean and not have Jimmy Buffett playing on the boat? Another smoldering dream.......
My surprise early birthday present is going to add another fun feature to sailing days and evenings. I love paddle boarding because of the accessibility it gives me. I can explore coves and shorelines. I also can work on keeping my balance strong. I was so surprised when I unwrapped it. I didn't think I'd ever get an inflatable and I envision that P2 will go with us no matter what body of water we decide to play on.
I know that I am VERY lucky gal. I am healthy and I finally have someone that loves me for me. I have a family that loves me and a good job. Sam and I try to get as much out of every day that we possibly can. We've lived enough life to know that no one is promised a tomorrow. And a phone call can change a life forever. That knowledge makes our sailing adventures even sweeter because no one is promised a future. However, the future is a fun thing to think about when you have a happy life. And speaking of the future, don't tell Sam........ but someday, I hope we get a bigger boat. Shhhhhhh..........
I have a few things to say and I'll try very hard not to bore you. I really only have two messages:
The first would be to all women out there. I'm not sure how many women are readers of this blog. My hope is that if a male is reading this and he sees something that might interest a woman in his life, he will advise her to read the blog. Having said that, my message is pretty simple:
Ladies, if you have a dream, please pursue it.
Pursue it for yourself.
Men, bear with me for just a little bit. My message comes from my heart. I know it sounds mushy and so many men avoid mushiness for a lot of reasons and that's fine. But women are different. We do a lot of introspecting. We may not share what we feel unless we feel safe doing so. But it is still there. Smoldering. Mine and Sam's story is a bit different than most. And without sharing too much private stuff in a public forum, I can just tell you that we both had silent dreams. After we got together and discovered that we had very similar dreams. We decided to go after them together. I'm not a fool to think that I could have done this sailing thing solo. I'd like to think that I'm independent. I have a good job and can support myself financially but buying a boat is only a very small part of sailing. For me, the best part of sailing is sharing it with the man of my dreams. But to say that I have conquered learning to sail by myself would be incorrect. Sam was able to do a lot Youtubing and reading on how to sail. My best friend from high school's husband (Capt. Scott) was a sailor and we went on his boat once. My niece's husband took me on a sailboat ride in the Pacific once and I can tell you that since that day, I knew I'd really like to learn. Again the smoldering dream that resurfaced in a safe environment. I didn't grow up around boats and boat engines or sailing and all the vocab that goes with sailing. So, I had a LOT to learn and I still have a lot to learn. Sam has been very patient with me and that has helped a ton. We all can relate to trying to recall something under pressure and how hard that is. Our minds freeze and we can't remember s!@* when that happens. So having a patient partner really helps. But ladies, if I can learn to steer a tiller, park a trailer, rig sails, and launch a boat, (ok, I still haven't mastered that yet, but by golly, so help me, I WILL learn to do that even when a bunch of men in bass boats are watching) you can too. I promise you can do it. Sam made a video of our summer journey with sailing and showed me last night. Of course I cried when we watched it because I'm such a sap. This sailing thing isn't really just about sailing. It's really about our journey together. And that is my second message:
Please, whatever you do with your life......... stretch yourself. I know it sounds cliche but its true. The big perk for Sam and I is that we can stretch together. And that makes it even more special. I always watch interviews with older people and they talk about their "secret" to a happy life or their secret to longevity. I find it kind of interesting. There seems to be a theme and that is to have a sense of humor, forgive others, and keep moving and keep learning. Sailing gives us the opportunity to laugh at ourselves, forgive our mistakes, move around the boat and learn how to handle new situations. Perfect! I'm going to live to be 110.
There are women out there who sail by themselves and I admire them so much. I bet they grew up around sailing and boats or maybe they have a mechanical mind. I just didn't grow up around it so I'm learning it at age 55. And what might be something simple, like dropping someone off at a dock, is a new skill that has to be learned by a novice like me. Kind of sounds like I'm making excuses. And maybe I am. But, instead of focusing on what I don't know, I'm trying to just focus on what I've learned. And I want to encourage anyone who is interested in sailing to try it because it is AWESOME!!!! And to share it with someone you love makes it even more awesome.
I've added another thing to my bucket list and that is to sail on all 5 Great Lakes. And I think I know myself well enough to know that once we've done that, I'm going to want to sail on the Carribean. I mean who wouldn't want to be sailing on the Carribean and not have Jimmy Buffett playing on the boat? Another smoldering dream.......
My surprise early birthday present is going to add another fun feature to sailing days and evenings. I love paddle boarding because of the accessibility it gives me. I can explore coves and shorelines. I also can work on keeping my balance strong. I was so surprised when I unwrapped it. I didn't think I'd ever get an inflatable and I envision that P2 will go with us no matter what body of water we decide to play on.
I know that I am VERY lucky gal. I am healthy and I finally have someone that loves me for me. I have a family that loves me and a good job. Sam and I try to get as much out of every day that we possibly can. We've lived enough life to know that no one is promised a tomorrow. And a phone call can change a life forever. That knowledge makes our sailing adventures even sweeter because no one is promised a future. However, the future is a fun thing to think about when you have a happy life. And speaking of the future, don't tell Sam........ but someday, I hope we get a bigger boat. Shhhhhhh..........
Thursday, July 31, 2014
An Inflatable SURPISE!!!
7-30-2014
Sail #9
Well we finally made it back to the boat last night after what seemed like forever! It was really just 10 days but felt like weeks. We both had missed the water and were so ready to get back out there. The winds though were not really cooperating. While we had a breeze for most of the day it had all but died by the time we got to the lake.
Even though the wind was not blowing hard enough to sail I was not too bothered by it as I had other plans in store for tonight. While Cindy was out playing with her sister in Havasu her birthday surprise had been delivered to the hanger. I took advantage of her being gone to get it wrapped up and placed inside the Memory Maker Sunday afternoon. I had several little surprises waiting on her when she got home and after she found all of those I told her she had one more to find. She looked all over the house, a couple of times, but could not find anything. She even accused me of leading her on just to get a good laugh out her. I assured her there was one more surprise and that she would know when she saw it. Then I reminded her that it took her 3 days to see the paddles I had put up at the top of the gable on the front porch so I was sure she would eventually find this one too LOL!
Arriving at the sailing association we found our Memory maker sitting patiently waiting on our return. I was glad to see that the surprise was still sitting inside her on the table. Helps being tall enough to peak in the windows. I unlocked the companionway then went about other task so that Cindy would be the one who opened the cabin to find her surprise. As you can see in this video, I think she liked it!
All this past winter and spring when we would talk about our idea of how sailing would be we always seemed to return to the idea that in the evenings when we would anchor I could fish while Cindy would paddle her paddleboard around the cove. Well after unsuccessfully trying to find a way to carry Patsy, Cindy's rigid paddleboard, aboard the boat I knew exactly what I was getting her for her birthday. Patsy was a huge hit for her birthday last year and I was pretty sure a inflatable board to carry aboard the boat would be a huge hit as well. I am glad to say I was right!
After Cindy calmed down and we got Patsy II, or P squared, to go with M squared, we finished up getting ready to launch and then headed over to the ramp. Cindy is continuing to learn how to back the trailer down the ramp and did a fine job of getting us in the water. We made quick work of the launch and I picked up my lil lady at the dock then headed out across the lake. The wind was still dead so we just motored along heading to our favorite cove on the south shore.
Once anchored we set about getting Patsy II ready for her maiden voyage. I used the electric air pump I got to use with the inflatable boat we took to Michigan to inflate the board up as much as I could. The electric pump is only good for 1 psi and the board requires 15 psi so I had to switch to the hand pump to finish bringing the board up to pressure. It took just a few minutes of pumping and the board was rock hard. So far so good. We added a bungee cord to the front tie down rings so Cindy could carry a life preserver on it as Indiana considers paddleboards to be vessels and you have to have a pfd on board. We attached the rear fin to the board then tied a painter line to the front tie down ring so we could tie her off to the boat when she was in the water. After dropping the port lifeline we slide all 10 1/2' off her into the water and she floated for the first time!!! After putting the paddle together and getting it adjusted for Cindy's height it was time for Cindy to give it a go. Sitting on the port side of the boat Cindy stepped onto P squared and away she went!
Cindy paddled all over the cove we were anchored in. I watched her some with the binoculars and could see her looking down into the water for fish then looking up in the trees the whole time wearing a big smile on her face. While Cindy paddled I worked on one of our floaty chairs that had a leak in it. I found the two pin holes and repaired them then installed the new rubber bumpers that the pop top rest on when it is down.
Our online buddy in Massachusetts who was the only other person I could find who owned a Hunter 20 like ours had bought new bumpers for their boat. He had enough left over for another boat so he kindly sent them to us. Many thanks Rob, they worked great! The old ones were so brittle they were breaking apart and falling off just leaving the screws in their place.
Cindy came paddling her way back to the boat after a nice tour of the cove
still wearing that same happy smile, and fortunately, she still had her bottoms on this time LOL!!! Unlike the night she paddleboarded with Libby at Grouse Ridge. Long story that she still refuses to share on the blog...
We were both getting hungry so after sharing a beverage in the cockpit it was time to fire up the grill and cook some dinner. It was perfect evening to have dinner on the water as we practically had the lake to ourselves. The water was calm and although we both wished we could have sailed some it was still great fun to just motor out and play on the water. There is just something very calming about a relaxing evening on the water. Soon it was time to sit down and enjoy our dinner of corn on the cob and steak ka bobs. The sweet corn was maybe the best we had this season as it was so sweet and flavorful. I really think cooking it on the grill with the husk still on it helps seal in the flavor. It is like it gets steamed inside the husk.
After dinner was done and dishes were washed and put away I asked Cindy if she would mind if I gave P squared a go. She was thrilled to see me try her out, I think half hoping I would fall off and she would get a great pic of me dripping wet. Well I did not fall off but she did get an awesome pic of me!
Upon my return to the Memory Maker we dried off P Squared and deflated her which turned out to be really easy. We rolled her up, put her bag in her travel bag, and tucked her away under the cockpit seats then headed back to port. Cindy had not slept well the previous night thanks to the time zone change from playing out on the west coast and was about to fall asleep on me as we motored back across the lake. Cindy did an awesome job of lining the boat up on the trailer and she slid half way up the bunk boards making my task of winching the Memory Maker back onto the trailer much easier. We put our girl back to bed and then headed home to bed ourselves.
Cindy was a very happy lil lady on the ride home. She had been talking about inflatable paddle boards all summer and really wanted one but I kept telling her they were too expensive. Luckily they have come down in price quite a bit and I looked and looked till I found a deal I could not pass up. After seeing Cindy's reaction when she unwrapped it and the happiness on her face as she paddled back to the boat it was worth every penny. Plus now next year when we go to MI on vacation with the gang we can take P squared along with us as she does not take up much room at all.
After how much Cindy loved the paddleboard I got her for her birthday last year I was really sweating what to get her this year that she would like just as much. I am glad to say I hit it out of the park back to back years! Now I can start worrying about what to get her for next birthday!!!
Sail #9
Well we finally made it back to the boat last night after what seemed like forever! It was really just 10 days but felt like weeks. We both had missed the water and were so ready to get back out there. The winds though were not really cooperating. While we had a breeze for most of the day it had all but died by the time we got to the lake.
Even though the wind was not blowing hard enough to sail I was not too bothered by it as I had other plans in store for tonight. While Cindy was out playing with her sister in Havasu her birthday surprise had been delivered to the hanger. I took advantage of her being gone to get it wrapped up and placed inside the Memory Maker Sunday afternoon. I had several little surprises waiting on her when she got home and after she found all of those I told her she had one more to find. She looked all over the house, a couple of times, but could not find anything. She even accused me of leading her on just to get a good laugh out her. I assured her there was one more surprise and that she would know when she saw it. Then I reminded her that it took her 3 days to see the paddles I had put up at the top of the gable on the front porch so I was sure she would eventually find this one too LOL!
Arriving at the sailing association we found our Memory maker sitting patiently waiting on our return. I was glad to see that the surprise was still sitting inside her on the table. Helps being tall enough to peak in the windows. I unlocked the companionway then went about other task so that Cindy would be the one who opened the cabin to find her surprise. As you can see in this video, I think she liked it!
All this past winter and spring when we would talk about our idea of how sailing would be we always seemed to return to the idea that in the evenings when we would anchor I could fish while Cindy would paddle her paddleboard around the cove. Well after unsuccessfully trying to find a way to carry Patsy, Cindy's rigid paddleboard, aboard the boat I knew exactly what I was getting her for her birthday. Patsy was a huge hit for her birthday last year and I was pretty sure a inflatable board to carry aboard the boat would be a huge hit as well. I am glad to say I was right!
After Cindy calmed down and we got Patsy II, or P squared, to go with M squared, we finished up getting ready to launch and then headed over to the ramp. Cindy is continuing to learn how to back the trailer down the ramp and did a fine job of getting us in the water. We made quick work of the launch and I picked up my lil lady at the dock then headed out across the lake. The wind was still dead so we just motored along heading to our favorite cove on the south shore.
Once anchored we set about getting Patsy II ready for her maiden voyage. I used the electric air pump I got to use with the inflatable boat we took to Michigan to inflate the board up as much as I could. The electric pump is only good for 1 psi and the board requires 15 psi so I had to switch to the hand pump to finish bringing the board up to pressure. It took just a few minutes of pumping and the board was rock hard. So far so good. We added a bungee cord to the front tie down rings so Cindy could carry a life preserver on it as Indiana considers paddleboards to be vessels and you have to have a pfd on board. We attached the rear fin to the board then tied a painter line to the front tie down ring so we could tie her off to the boat when she was in the water. After dropping the port lifeline we slide all 10 1/2' off her into the water and she floated for the first time!!! After putting the paddle together and getting it adjusted for Cindy's height it was time for Cindy to give it a go. Sitting on the port side of the boat Cindy stepped onto P squared and away she went!
Cindy paddled all over the cove we were anchored in. I watched her some with the binoculars and could see her looking down into the water for fish then looking up in the trees the whole time wearing a big smile on her face. While Cindy paddled I worked on one of our floaty chairs that had a leak in it. I found the two pin holes and repaired them then installed the new rubber bumpers that the pop top rest on when it is down.
Our online buddy in Massachusetts who was the only other person I could find who owned a Hunter 20 like ours had bought new bumpers for their boat. He had enough left over for another boat so he kindly sent them to us. Many thanks Rob, they worked great! The old ones were so brittle they were breaking apart and falling off just leaving the screws in their place.
Cindy came paddling her way back to the boat after a nice tour of the cove
still wearing that same happy smile, and fortunately, she still had her bottoms on this time LOL!!! Unlike the night she paddleboarded with Libby at Grouse Ridge. Long story that she still refuses to share on the blog...
We were both getting hungry so after sharing a beverage in the cockpit it was time to fire up the grill and cook some dinner. It was perfect evening to have dinner on the water as we practically had the lake to ourselves. The water was calm and although we both wished we could have sailed some it was still great fun to just motor out and play on the water. There is just something very calming about a relaxing evening on the water. Soon it was time to sit down and enjoy our dinner of corn on the cob and steak ka bobs. The sweet corn was maybe the best we had this season as it was so sweet and flavorful. I really think cooking it on the grill with the husk still on it helps seal in the flavor. It is like it gets steamed inside the husk.
After dinner was done and dishes were washed and put away I asked Cindy if she would mind if I gave P squared a go. She was thrilled to see me try her out, I think half hoping I would fall off and she would get a great pic of me dripping wet. Well I did not fall off but she did get an awesome pic of me!
Upon my return to the Memory Maker we dried off P Squared and deflated her which turned out to be really easy. We rolled her up, put her bag in her travel bag, and tucked her away under the cockpit seats then headed back to port. Cindy had not slept well the previous night thanks to the time zone change from playing out on the west coast and was about to fall asleep on me as we motored back across the lake. Cindy did an awesome job of lining the boat up on the trailer and she slid half way up the bunk boards making my task of winching the Memory Maker back onto the trailer much easier. We put our girl back to bed and then headed home to bed ourselves.
Cindy was a very happy lil lady on the ride home. She had been talking about inflatable paddle boards all summer and really wanted one but I kept telling her they were too expensive. Luckily they have come down in price quite a bit and I looked and looked till I found a deal I could not pass up. After seeing Cindy's reaction when she unwrapped it and the happiness on her face as she paddled back to the boat it was worth every penny. Plus now next year when we go to MI on vacation with the gang we can take P squared along with us as she does not take up much room at all.
After how much Cindy loved the paddleboard I got her for her birthday last year I was really sweating what to get her this year that she would like just as much. I am glad to say I hit it out of the park back to back years! Now I can start worrying about what to get her for next birthday!!!
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Vacation Time!!! Day 5
7-14-2014
Time to head home...
Monday morning in Empire MI found me sleeping in next to my beautiful lil lady instead of crawling out of bed at 5 am to go fishing. The 48 hour fishing licenses that Bill and I bought had expired and we deflated the boat yesterday. Time to sleep in and enjoy a lil R&R before heading south.
We meet Bill and Libby downstairs for breakfast while Jerry and Amy loaded their things in their car. They stopped and sat with us a bit before heading off to have breakfast with the friend of theirs they ran into yesterday at Sleeping Bear Dunes while they were waiting on us to discover that lake Michigan was a long way off! After breakfast and saying our good byes we loaded up Pearl and settled up with Holly before we slowly pulled away from the Cottonwood.
Our plan for the drive home was a simple one. Take our time and if we saw something that we wanted to stop and check out we were going to do just that. We told friends of ours that have a place at Bear Lake, that is just maybe 45 mins south of Empire, that we would stop by for a visit on our way back so that was the first real planned stop. Before leaving town we had to make one more pass by the beach and sink our feet in the sand one last time. We walked along the beach a ways but ran out of room between the tall grass and the water. Last year there was a wide area between the water and the grass. At first I was perplexed why the grass had grown so far out then it hit me. The grass had not grown, the lake had! With all the ice cover this past winter and run off from all the melting snow the lakes were up quite a bit. There would have been no way to ride a sand bike from Empire to Sleeping Bear Dunes this year like we did last year. Cindy picked up a souvenir rock and we headed south.
Amy had asked us earlier if we saw the fly fishing shop in the small town south of Empire on the way up. I missed it so we were on the look out for it on the way back. We found it in Benzonia so we pulled in to check it out. It was called Backcast Fly shop and was rally a pretty neat little store. They had great prices on embroidered t shirts with fly fishing logos so I had to get one for myself and one for Dottie for taking care of boys while we were gone.
Back on the road we soon arrived at Scott and Mary's for a quick visit. They have a neat lil vacation cabin on Bear Lake and were up for a week. If you follow our blog you might remember that they had us up last summer and Scott gave us our only "real" sailing lesson. While the lesson did not go as smoothly as I am sure he had hoped it would it did firmly plant the seed in us that we wanted a sailboat! Scott was not home as he was still sailing in Traverse Bay so we visited with Mary a bit before continuing on down the road. We hope to have them down to sail with us on the Memory Maker soon.
Just east of Luddington MI we stopped at a really neat cabin furnishings store that we had seen last year but did not get to stop. What a cool store! I wanted one of everything! One of the things I saw that I really liked was a canoe being paddled by two raccoons.
I have always had a soft spot for raccoons and after raising Remy the raccoon I am kinda attached to the lil buggers. It was a bit pricey, ok it was crazy expensive, and Cindy questioned my sanity for wanting to give that much for it. Sadly I left it behind, but I have their number!!! The store, like Sleeping Bear Dunes, was much larger than it appeared to be from the road as it just went on and on. We had to get out of there before our charge cards got overheated! Turns out that the store is also a showroom for custom wood stairways like you would see in million dollar log cabins. I should have taken a pic of the stairway I was standing on when I took this pic as it was a massive spiral stairway made from a the whole log of a tree. It was really something to see.
After both of us got a bad case of the "got a have its" we continued our journey home. We had brought along our styro foam cooler that we had bought on return trip home last year so we could bring home more blueberries and cherries this year. So we had to stop to get some on the way back as we were all but out of blueberries. The cherries we bought last year barely made it home before they were all gone. We decided to stop at the same road side market we stopped at last year which is just north of Holland MI. Pulling in we saw that they had hickory bent wood double rocking chairs sitting out front. Now Cindy and I have been wanting a double snow shoe rocking chair for sometime but I have not been able to find a good deal on one so we were still looking for something like that. We want something we can pull right up in front of the fire and sit in together on cold winter nights. We bee lined it for the rockers and tried them out. Oh my they were so comfy!!! As we sat rocking in them we each took turns guessing how much they might want for them. I think we settled on 599 or more. We agreed if it was a reasonable price we needed it but we both felt it was going to way more than we wanted to give. We finally got up and got our produce we stopped for. While paying for the produce Cindy nonchalantly asked how much the double rockers were. I think we were both a bit shocked when the girl said 299!!! I finally found my voice as I was so excited( hey, it's the little things in life that get me) and told her that if it was ok to see if we could get it in our car we would take one. She said go for it so out we went to unload Pearl in the parking lot and see if we could get the chair to go inside her rear door. After several tries and maybe 15 minutes of trying this way then that way our chances of getting this rocker home were not looking good. I contemplated tying it down to the roof rack but it was such an odd shape I did not see anyway that was going to work either. I could see that Cindy was clearly bummed we were not going to be able to get it so I said lets try it one more time. This time we turned it around, flipped it over and, turned it upside down as I did not think we had tried that combination yet. It went in a lot further but still stopped with about 1 1/2" of the runner catching at the top of the door opening. It was so close and I was not going to let a 1 1/2" keep me from getting a great deal on a double hickory rocker. If I could just get the part I was holding to drop down a bit more I think it would go. Then it hit me! I had to put the spare tire on the week before when we got the flat tire at the sailing association and I remembered that there is more room under the floor where the spare tire is kept. So we took it back out and removed the floor and tried it again.
IT WENT IN!!!!!! Now we just had to cram all our luggage, an inflatable boat, kayak paddle, and a cooler full of blueberries and cherries back in around the chair.
It took a bit of shoving and squeezing but it all went in and the doors actually shut without any need of assistance from hydraulic rams so we were good to go!!! We were both excited at the great deal we got. I don't think that we were even out of the parking lot before Cindy said "You know what this means don't you?" I didn't but I was pretty sure I was about to find out. Cindy informed me that "Now the couch is going to have to get replaced". Why is it that one thing always leads to another, to another, etc? Now not only is the couch on the chopping block but our end tables are getting the axe to. I will give her that one as our end table is actually a piece of outside furniture that I brought inside to temporarily serve the purpose. So now I am making new end table to match the dining room table I made. the couch might have to wait just a bit longer though.
It is already mid afternoon and we had not made it very far down the road. I don't think either of us really cared as we did not want to see our fun trip end any sooner than it absolutely had to. We soon found ourselves stopping again just another hour into the trip home because we can't let a chance to stop in South Have pass us by. We headed straight for the Black River tavern for a beverage and snacks. While there I had to take a pic looking out at the lighthouse and send it to gang to see if they could tell where were
The lighthouse looks kinda small in the pic so they were unable to figure it out. Turns out they were all driving in a pouring rain storm in the Indianapolis area so we were glad we were not in a hurry to get back. If we timed it right we would get home after the storms passed. After our snack at the Black River Tavern we took another walk our to the lighthouse and back, then got Cindy a shirt see saw on the trip up that she wanted but did not get. Amy texted us and told us about an antique store a few blocks to our south that had a lot sailboat and camping items in it so south we went. We found the store but did not have much time to look around before they closed. Cindy was still able to find a few treasures that would be returning home with us ;-)
By now it is 6 pm and we still have a good 5 hour drive in good traffic ahead of us. We both knew we should really get on the road and try to focus on getting home. Reality sucks. We tried our best to keep our eyes on the road so we would not see anything else we wanted to stop and check out. We did slow down going through Lapaz, IN which is where the shop was that had the wooden canoe we had stopped and looked at on the way up but luckily the shop was closed. Probably a good thing as the last thing I needed was another project.
The hours ticked away as the miles behind us added up. Michigan got smaller and smaller in the rear view mirror and I was bummed to leave as it such an enjoyable trip. I had really enjoyed having Cindy by my side almost constantly for the past 5 days and I knew once we pulled in the driveway the vacation was over and it was back to the real world. Thanks to a rolling convoy of trucks hauling really long concrete stringers for the new over passes over I 65 on the south side of Indy our vacation was going to last just a bit longer as it took a while to get past the construction. But it was not long before we were turning onto our road and the reality that our fun trip was about to end. Edward and Wilson were thrilled to see us as tail were wagging at warp speed! Fortunately the rocker came out a whole lot easier than it went in and we were unpacked in fairly short order. It was a little past midnight when crawled into bed and I joked how once again we made the most of every minute in a 24 hour day.
That is one of the really awesome things about Cindy and I. We don't have to be on vacation to make the most of every day we have together. I seems like I don't get much sleep anymore as we are always dragging in at some late hour from playing somewhere! It all kinda re-enforces the signature on my emails that says "Life is Good, Live it Large". While Life is good(really it awesome now that Cindy is in it) life is short. So we live it Large, and we live it NOW!!!!
Time to head home...
Monday morning in Empire MI found me sleeping in next to my beautiful lil lady instead of crawling out of bed at 5 am to go fishing. The 48 hour fishing licenses that Bill and I bought had expired and we deflated the boat yesterday. Time to sleep in and enjoy a lil R&R before heading south.
We meet Bill and Libby downstairs for breakfast while Jerry and Amy loaded their things in their car. They stopped and sat with us a bit before heading off to have breakfast with the friend of theirs they ran into yesterday at Sleeping Bear Dunes while they were waiting on us to discover that lake Michigan was a long way off! After breakfast and saying our good byes we loaded up Pearl and settled up with Holly before we slowly pulled away from the Cottonwood.
Our plan for the drive home was a simple one. Take our time and if we saw something that we wanted to stop and check out we were going to do just that. We told friends of ours that have a place at Bear Lake, that is just maybe 45 mins south of Empire, that we would stop by for a visit on our way back so that was the first real planned stop. Before leaving town we had to make one more pass by the beach and sink our feet in the sand one last time. We walked along the beach a ways but ran out of room between the tall grass and the water. Last year there was a wide area between the water and the grass. At first I was perplexed why the grass had grown so far out then it hit me. The grass had not grown, the lake had! With all the ice cover this past winter and run off from all the melting snow the lakes were up quite a bit. There would have been no way to ride a sand bike from Empire to Sleeping Bear Dunes this year like we did last year. Cindy picked up a souvenir rock and we headed south.
Amy had asked us earlier if we saw the fly fishing shop in the small town south of Empire on the way up. I missed it so we were on the look out for it on the way back. We found it in Benzonia so we pulled in to check it out. It was called Backcast Fly shop and was rally a pretty neat little store. They had great prices on embroidered t shirts with fly fishing logos so I had to get one for myself and one for Dottie for taking care of boys while we were gone.
Back on the road we soon arrived at Scott and Mary's for a quick visit. They have a neat lil vacation cabin on Bear Lake and were up for a week. If you follow our blog you might remember that they had us up last summer and Scott gave us our only "real" sailing lesson. While the lesson did not go as smoothly as I am sure he had hoped it would it did firmly plant the seed in us that we wanted a sailboat! Scott was not home as he was still sailing in Traverse Bay so we visited with Mary a bit before continuing on down the road. We hope to have them down to sail with us on the Memory Maker soon.
Just east of Luddington MI we stopped at a really neat cabin furnishings store that we had seen last year but did not get to stop. What a cool store! I wanted one of everything! One of the things I saw that I really liked was a canoe being paddled by two raccoons.
I have always had a soft spot for raccoons and after raising Remy the raccoon I am kinda attached to the lil buggers. It was a bit pricey, ok it was crazy expensive, and Cindy questioned my sanity for wanting to give that much for it. Sadly I left it behind, but I have their number!!! The store, like Sleeping Bear Dunes, was much larger than it appeared to be from the road as it just went on and on. We had to get out of there before our charge cards got overheated! Turns out that the store is also a showroom for custom wood stairways like you would see in million dollar log cabins. I should have taken a pic of the stairway I was standing on when I took this pic as it was a massive spiral stairway made from a the whole log of a tree. It was really something to see.
After both of us got a bad case of the "got a have its" we continued our journey home. We had brought along our styro foam cooler that we had bought on return trip home last year so we could bring home more blueberries and cherries this year. So we had to stop to get some on the way back as we were all but out of blueberries. The cherries we bought last year barely made it home before they were all gone. We decided to stop at the same road side market we stopped at last year which is just north of Holland MI. Pulling in we saw that they had hickory bent wood double rocking chairs sitting out front. Now Cindy and I have been wanting a double snow shoe rocking chair for sometime but I have not been able to find a good deal on one so we were still looking for something like that. We want something we can pull right up in front of the fire and sit in together on cold winter nights. We bee lined it for the rockers and tried them out. Oh my they were so comfy!!! As we sat rocking in them we each took turns guessing how much they might want for them. I think we settled on 599 or more. We agreed if it was a reasonable price we needed it but we both felt it was going to way more than we wanted to give. We finally got up and got our produce we stopped for. While paying for the produce Cindy nonchalantly asked how much the double rockers were. I think we were both a bit shocked when the girl said 299!!! I finally found my voice as I was so excited( hey, it's the little things in life that get me) and told her that if it was ok to see if we could get it in our car we would take one. She said go for it so out we went to unload Pearl in the parking lot and see if we could get the chair to go inside her rear door. After several tries and maybe 15 minutes of trying this way then that way our chances of getting this rocker home were not looking good. I contemplated tying it down to the roof rack but it was such an odd shape I did not see anyway that was going to work either. I could see that Cindy was clearly bummed we were not going to be able to get it so I said lets try it one more time. This time we turned it around, flipped it over and, turned it upside down as I did not think we had tried that combination yet. It went in a lot further but still stopped with about 1 1/2" of the runner catching at the top of the door opening. It was so close and I was not going to let a 1 1/2" keep me from getting a great deal on a double hickory rocker. If I could just get the part I was holding to drop down a bit more I think it would go. Then it hit me! I had to put the spare tire on the week before when we got the flat tire at the sailing association and I remembered that there is more room under the floor where the spare tire is kept. So we took it back out and removed the floor and tried it again.
IT WENT IN!!!!!! Now we just had to cram all our luggage, an inflatable boat, kayak paddle, and a cooler full of blueberries and cherries back in around the chair.
It took a bit of shoving and squeezing but it all went in and the doors actually shut without any need of assistance from hydraulic rams so we were good to go!!! We were both excited at the great deal we got. I don't think that we were even out of the parking lot before Cindy said "You know what this means don't you?" I didn't but I was pretty sure I was about to find out. Cindy informed me that "Now the couch is going to have to get replaced". Why is it that one thing always leads to another, to another, etc? Now not only is the couch on the chopping block but our end tables are getting the axe to. I will give her that one as our end table is actually a piece of outside furniture that I brought inside to temporarily serve the purpose. So now I am making new end table to match the dining room table I made. the couch might have to wait just a bit longer though.
It is already mid afternoon and we had not made it very far down the road. I don't think either of us really cared as we did not want to see our fun trip end any sooner than it absolutely had to. We soon found ourselves stopping again just another hour into the trip home because we can't let a chance to stop in South Have pass us by. We headed straight for the Black River tavern for a beverage and snacks. While there I had to take a pic looking out at the lighthouse and send it to gang to see if they could tell where were
The lighthouse looks kinda small in the pic so they were unable to figure it out. Turns out they were all driving in a pouring rain storm in the Indianapolis area so we were glad we were not in a hurry to get back. If we timed it right we would get home after the storms passed. After our snack at the Black River Tavern we took another walk our to the lighthouse and back, then got Cindy a shirt see saw on the trip up that she wanted but did not get. Amy texted us and told us about an antique store a few blocks to our south that had a lot sailboat and camping items in it so south we went. We found the store but did not have much time to look around before they closed. Cindy was still able to find a few treasures that would be returning home with us ;-)
By now it is 6 pm and we still have a good 5 hour drive in good traffic ahead of us. We both knew we should really get on the road and try to focus on getting home. Reality sucks. We tried our best to keep our eyes on the road so we would not see anything else we wanted to stop and check out. We did slow down going through Lapaz, IN which is where the shop was that had the wooden canoe we had stopped and looked at on the way up but luckily the shop was closed. Probably a good thing as the last thing I needed was another project.
The hours ticked away as the miles behind us added up. Michigan got smaller and smaller in the rear view mirror and I was bummed to leave as it such an enjoyable trip. I had really enjoyed having Cindy by my side almost constantly for the past 5 days and I knew once we pulled in the driveway the vacation was over and it was back to the real world. Thanks to a rolling convoy of trucks hauling really long concrete stringers for the new over passes over I 65 on the south side of Indy our vacation was going to last just a bit longer as it took a while to get past the construction. But it was not long before we were turning onto our road and the reality that our fun trip was about to end. Edward and Wilson were thrilled to see us as tail were wagging at warp speed! Fortunately the rocker came out a whole lot easier than it went in and we were unpacked in fairly short order. It was a little past midnight when crawled into bed and I joked how once again we made the most of every minute in a 24 hour day.
That is one of the really awesome things about Cindy and I. We don't have to be on vacation to make the most of every day we have together. I seems like I don't get much sleep anymore as we are always dragging in at some late hour from playing somewhere! It all kinda re-enforces the signature on my emails that says "Life is Good, Live it Large". While Life is good(really it awesome now that Cindy is in it) life is short. So we live it Large, and we live it NOW!!!!
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Vacation Time!!!! Day 4
7-13-14
Day 4
The alarm seemed to go off just as soon as I got to sleep this morning. In reality I had gotten more sleep last night than the previous night but my butt was dragging a bit due to the non stop fun and all the activities we were doing. I again woke up at five to meet Bill to go fishing. Stepping outside revealed it was not "dark" again this morning. In fact it was even brighter this morning than yesterday. Probably due to the full moon that was just stunning.
We had left the boat in the barn so it just took a few minutes to tie it down and head to South Bar lake. We were on the water by 5:30 and although it was still technically dark we could see just fine. I am thinking I could get used to life up north in the summers with the days that don't end and views of the moon like this one!
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We had hoped for calmer winds today but we were starting to get the feeling that along the beach the wind is always blowing off Lake Michigan. We stayed close to the west shore this morning to keep from getting pushed by the wind as much as possible. With the cold front passing last night the fishing was a bit slower than the day before but we caught quite a few bluegills but none the size of the ones we were catching yesterday. Darn fickle fish.
We fished till about 8 when we decided we better head in so as not to be late. We had another busy day planned today with a bike ride to Sleeping Baer Dunes and Glenn Arbor on the books. We paddled back to the beach to get out and both of us had a severe case of stiff knees as we crawled out of the boat. Had the water been warmer I think Bill would have preferred to just roll out of the boat and crawl to shore! Once we were up on the sidewalk I looked up and saw two love birds sitting on the wall looking out over the lake as the enjoyed their coffee.
I took a quick pic and sent it to their phones and just waited. It was not too long before I saw Amy look down at her phone and then slowly turn her head around to see me waving back at them. My, how technology has changed our lives today. You drive 8 hours north only to have your pic sent to you from across the parking lot as you enjoy your morning coffee.
Back at the Cottonwood we carbed up on yummy homemade bread and blueberry muffins to help prepare us for the upcoming bike ride. I was having a bit of discomfort in my chest from where a pulled a muscle while kayaking on Friday. We managed to get stuck on a submerged log and while pushing us off it I pulled a chest muscle. Little did I know how much that was going to come into play today.
Jerry and Amy had brought their bikes with them so they were getting all ready to head out after breakfast
while we had to drive into town to get our rentals. We all had a good laugh over Jerry's padded biking pants. The razing we gave him was all to disguise our jealousy for not having our own padded riding pants!
Once we all got saddled up on our rented mounts we headed off up the Heritage Trail towards Sleeping Bear Dunes. We can't say enough good things about the trail. It is really, really nice and we can't wait for them to get it completed all the way to Traverse City. Hopefully it is done when we go back next year. Along the ride Amy snapped a great selfie with us all in it!
Not to be outdone I had to try my hand at action video while we made our way down the trail
The more we rode and the steeper the hills got the more the muscle issue in my chest was starting to really bother me. Each time I would take a really deep breath it felt like I was being stabbed in the chest! I was a fess with a brace on my left wrist from cracking my bone to a stabbing pain in my chest. Being a man and not wanting to seem like the weak leak I continued on, taking very quick shallow breaths.
We arrived at the Sleeping Bear Dunes parking area and were greeted with the sight of one large pile of sand!!!
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A two dimensional pic just can't show how steep and tall the dunes really are. I don't think any of us did any real research on the dune trail as we all thought you just climbed up to the top that we could see from the parking lot and bam, there is lake Michigan. Well..... That is not the case! Had I just looked at the map that hung over the table that Holly served breakfast on every morning back at the Cottonwood I would have clearly seen it is quite a trek to the lake from the parking area. So with blissful ignorance Cindy and I take off up the dunes with Libby and Bill. Jerry and Amy stayed behind and took a few action shots along our climb
Still clueless about the fact the lake was over a mile away we raced to the top wanting to be the first to see the lake
only to discover that one, you need to be able to take really deep breathes without having stabbing pains while climbing the dunes and two, that the lake is not over the first dune but is in fact another hour hike further west!!!
We climbed a bluff a little ways down the trail that let us see Lake Michigan and Manitou island to the northwest and it gave us a great view of Lil Glenn and Glenn Lakes to the southeast.
Bill and the girls with Lil Glenn Lake in the distance. Look how small the people coming up the trail look in the lower right corner of the pic. What story would be complete with a pic of me with my beautiful lil lady?
Let's just say the walk back down was much easier than the hike up!!!
The sand was really soft and you would sink half way up to your knees in most places. No wonder it is constantly shifting from the winds blowing across it. We made it back to Jerry and Amy and the bikes without me stroking out on everyone from taking such short breaths. The whole time I was just hoping I did not hyperventilate from my screwed up breathing pattern.
While they waited on us Jerry and Amy ran into a friend theirs who has a house on Lil Glenn lake and was out for a bike ride. They also talked with a park ranger who told them about the life saving station museum to our north. So off we went in search of the museum on our way to Glenn Arbor.
The museum is actually at a little "town" called Glenn Haven. The town originally sat on the northwest part of Sleeping Bear Dune's beach but it was being buried with sand so they moved it to the southwest part of Sleeping Bear Bay. The life saving station was used to rescue boats that got into trouble out in the bay or the straights between SBD and Manitou island. According to the info there were a lot of ship wrecks there in the early days. They had a large row boat inside a boat house that sat on a special railroad type track that lead to the bay. When they needed to go help out a boat that was in distress they would open the doors to the boat house and roll the large row boat to the water where they would launch it. They also had a "cannon" type launcher that would launch a projectile with a 1200' rope tied to it out to boats in need. If they got lucky and got the rope close to the boat they could grab the rope, tie it off to the boat and get pulled in. While there we ventured down to the beach area. What a beautiful beach and if you did not know better, or get in the water, you would have thought you were at Cape Hatterus! Cindy and I had to at least get out feet wet, no matter how darn cold the water was!!!
Guees which feet are mine!
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Day 4
The alarm seemed to go off just as soon as I got to sleep this morning. In reality I had gotten more sleep last night than the previous night but my butt was dragging a bit due to the non stop fun and all the activities we were doing. I again woke up at five to meet Bill to go fishing. Stepping outside revealed it was not "dark" again this morning. In fact it was even brighter this morning than yesterday. Probably due to the full moon that was just stunning.
We had left the boat in the barn so it just took a few minutes to tie it down and head to South Bar lake. We were on the water by 5:30 and although it was still technically dark we could see just fine. I am thinking I could get used to life up north in the summers with the days that don't end and views of the moon like this one!
We had hoped for calmer winds today but we were starting to get the feeling that along the beach the wind is always blowing off Lake Michigan. We stayed close to the west shore this morning to keep from getting pushed by the wind as much as possible. With the cold front passing last night the fishing was a bit slower than the day before but we caught quite a few bluegills but none the size of the ones we were catching yesterday. Darn fickle fish.
We fished till about 8 when we decided we better head in so as not to be late. We had another busy day planned today with a bike ride to Sleeping Baer Dunes and Glenn Arbor on the books. We paddled back to the beach to get out and both of us had a severe case of stiff knees as we crawled out of the boat. Had the water been warmer I think Bill would have preferred to just roll out of the boat and crawl to shore! Once we were up on the sidewalk I looked up and saw two love birds sitting on the wall looking out over the lake as the enjoyed their coffee.
I took a quick pic and sent it to their phones and just waited. It was not too long before I saw Amy look down at her phone and then slowly turn her head around to see me waving back at them. My, how technology has changed our lives today. You drive 8 hours north only to have your pic sent to you from across the parking lot as you enjoy your morning coffee.
Back at the Cottonwood we carbed up on yummy homemade bread and blueberry muffins to help prepare us for the upcoming bike ride. I was having a bit of discomfort in my chest from where a pulled a muscle while kayaking on Friday. We managed to get stuck on a submerged log and while pushing us off it I pulled a chest muscle. Little did I know how much that was going to come into play today.
Jerry and Amy had brought their bikes with them so they were getting all ready to head out after breakfast
while we had to drive into town to get our rentals. We all had a good laugh over Jerry's padded biking pants. The razing we gave him was all to disguise our jealousy for not having our own padded riding pants!
Once we all got saddled up on our rented mounts we headed off up the Heritage Trail towards Sleeping Bear Dunes. We can't say enough good things about the trail. It is really, really nice and we can't wait for them to get it completed all the way to Traverse City. Hopefully it is done when we go back next year. Along the ride Amy snapped a great selfie with us all in it!
Not to be outdone I had to try my hand at action video while we made our way down the trail
The more we rode and the steeper the hills got the more the muscle issue in my chest was starting to really bother me. Each time I would take a really deep breath it felt like I was being stabbed in the chest! I was a fess with a brace on my left wrist from cracking my bone to a stabbing pain in my chest. Being a man and not wanting to seem like the weak leak I continued on, taking very quick shallow breaths.
We arrived at the Sleeping Bear Dunes parking area and were greeted with the sight of one large pile of sand!!!
A two dimensional pic just can't show how steep and tall the dunes really are. I don't think any of us did any real research on the dune trail as we all thought you just climbed up to the top that we could see from the parking lot and bam, there is lake Michigan. Well..... That is not the case! Had I just looked at the map that hung over the table that Holly served breakfast on every morning back at the Cottonwood I would have clearly seen it is quite a trek to the lake from the parking area. So with blissful ignorance Cindy and I take off up the dunes with Libby and Bill. Jerry and Amy stayed behind and took a few action shots along our climb
Still clueless about the fact the lake was over a mile away we raced to the top wanting to be the first to see the lake
only to discover that one, you need to be able to take really deep breathes without having stabbing pains while climbing the dunes and two, that the lake is not over the first dune but is in fact another hour hike further west!!!
We climbed a bluff a little ways down the trail that let us see Lake Michigan and Manitou island to the northwest and it gave us a great view of Lil Glenn and Glenn Lakes to the southeast.
Bill and the girls with Lil Glenn Lake in the distance. Look how small the people coming up the trail look in the lower right corner of the pic. What story would be complete with a pic of me with my beautiful lil lady?
Let's just say the walk back down was much easier than the hike up!!!
The sand was really soft and you would sink half way up to your knees in most places. No wonder it is constantly shifting from the winds blowing across it. We made it back to Jerry and Amy and the bikes without me stroking out on everyone from taking such short breaths. The whole time I was just hoping I did not hyperventilate from my screwed up breathing pattern.
While they waited on us Jerry and Amy ran into a friend theirs who has a house on Lil Glenn lake and was out for a bike ride. They also talked with a park ranger who told them about the life saving station museum to our north. So off we went in search of the museum on our way to Glenn Arbor.
The museum is actually at a little "town" called Glenn Haven. The town originally sat on the northwest part of Sleeping Bear Dune's beach but it was being buried with sand so they moved it to the southwest part of Sleeping Bear Bay. The life saving station was used to rescue boats that got into trouble out in the bay or the straights between SBD and Manitou island. According to the info there were a lot of ship wrecks there in the early days. They had a large row boat inside a boat house that sat on a special railroad type track that lead to the bay. When they needed to go help out a boat that was in distress they would open the doors to the boat house and roll the large row boat to the water where they would launch it. They also had a "cannon" type launcher that would launch a projectile with a 1200' rope tied to it out to boats in need. If they got lucky and got the rope close to the boat they could grab the rope, tie it off to the boat and get pulled in. While there we ventured down to the beach area. What a beautiful beach and if you did not know better, or get in the water, you would have thought you were at Cape Hatterus! Cindy and I had to at least get out feet wet, no matter how darn cold the water was!!!
Guees which feet are mine!
The water in Sleeping Bear Bay was clear and blue and view across it was beautiful. Just a lil on the chilly side, like maybe mid 50's if you took the temp in a very shallow place!!! But there were people out swimming in it so either they liked cold water or they were training for the local Polar Bear plunge in July!!!
We got back on the road and pedaled on into Glenn Arbor for lunch. After our trip up to Empire last year a friend of Cindy's who comes up to this area a lot told her we stopped 10 miles too soon and that we should have gone up to Glenn Arbor. Well, he was right. We found ourselves there everyday of our trip! Such a neat little town. Today we decided to eat lunch at the Boondocks restaurant on the corner of M22. We got lucky and they had a one table left outside on the deck! We all got a cold beverage with our lunch and enjoyed the wonderful weather.
After lunch we strolled around the town and found the sister store to the shirt shop we had been at in Traverse City the day before. Again they had really cool shirts for very reasonable prices. Of course we had to buy some more and I got a sweatshirt for my daughter while Cindy got a shirt for her daughter and grandson. Like Sleeping Bear Dunes the town is a bit deceiving in size. It has a four way stop instead of a stop light and just driving through it on the main streets it seems quite small but once you start walking around you find it has several side streets with many shops little shops lining them. By the time 3 in the afternoon rolled around Bill and I were starting to feel the effects of getting up at 5 am every morning to fish
It just took a few minutes in a comfy chair for Bill to doze off LOL! We got him back on his feet and headed off to do some wine tasting on the edge of town. The wine there was a bit more on the dry side and being on bikes gave us a good excuse not to buy any. Before long it was time to head back to Empire as we wanted to make sure we got back in time to make it to the bluffs for the sunset tonight. We were hopeful that with the sunny skies we have had all day we would be treated to a beautiful sunset tonight.
The ride back was defiantly more up hill than the ride to Glenn Arbor. There were a few places that were pretty steep and I was really struggling. I was fine as long as I did not have to completely fill my lungs. Once I got to where I needed to take a deep breathe I was really in pain. Such a fess! I wound up bringing up the rear of the pack on the steep hills but would take the lead again once I got my blood oxygen level back in the safe range and the fear of passing out had passed LOL!
We made it back to Empire after a fun ride and returned our rentals. Back at the Cottonwood we had time for quick showers before it was time to, yep, you guessed it, eat again!!! I swear we consumed a lot of calories on this trip! We decided to give Joe's Friendly tavern in Empire a try tonight. Luckily we beat the rush and they sat us as soon as we walked in. Being a Sunday night I am not sure how big the rush might have been but we beat it anyway. We laughed so much over dinner I thought I was going to die with the stabbing pain in my chest! Who knew having such a good time could be this painful???
After a yummy snack it was time to head back to the bluffs for the sunset we had been waiting the whole trip for. This time the hike to the bluffs was at a much more leisurely pace and we were not all winded when the lake came into view. There were several other people already there when we got there but they soon trickled out and we pretty much had our area to ourselves as posed for one last group shot
Poor Jerry, we gave him such a hard time while he was trying to take our pic using his camera on a small table top tripod that he sat on the bench in front of us. He was pressing the button then running back through the sand to take his position next to Amy. The first attempt he clipped the bench and knocked the camera over. The second try was a failure as we had no idea when the camera was going to take the pic. The third try Amy was taking her glasses off. Well, you get the idea. Finally a young couple came walking up and she offered to take the pic for us. Good thing as Jerry was starting to look winded LOL!
While we all waited for the Kodak moment I snapped one of Jerry and Amy
and of Bill and Libby waiting on the sunset
and one of Cindy taking a selfie of herself
Before long it was time for the moment we had been waiting on since watching the sunset from this same spot a year before.
All too quickly the sun slipped down below the horizon and was gone for another day. It is just such a beautiful place to watch the sun set. As Cindy and I watched the sun go to bed we talked about how cool it would be to be sailing out there and watching it from the helm of our boat. Maybe someday.
Heading back to the cars we had hopes of sitting by a fire on the beach again but it seems Sunday night must be the night all the locals go hang out at the beach as all the fire rings were taken. We tried hovering around one in hopes they might get the hint but to no avail. We were all wore out and tomorrow was going to be a long day with the drive home so we gave up and headed back to the Cottonwood for some much needed sleep. On the drive from the beach we caught sight of the moon rising up over the hills to the east. It looked huge as it was still really low in the sky and we could scale it visually in respect to trees. I know Cindy, like me, was dreading the fact that this was our last night here. It is just such a wonderful area that makes you feel like you are stepping back in time to a simpler era. With no McDonalds and no WalMart it almost makes you wonder how we ever survived without places like that now that we have had them. But once you get away from them you learn to slow down, relax, and do a little better job of planning ahead.
Sleep came easy once we climbed into bed. There is just something nice about being wore out when you go to bed. It makes for a short transition between being awake and being asleep. I was asleep in 3 short steps. All it took was spooning with my lady as I pulled her close, I gave Cindy one last kiss good night before I closed my eyes, and then it was lights out!
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