Day 332, Year 9: More Cleaning, Organizing . . . and Shopping
Date: Thursday, September 18, 2014
Weather: Sunny with Blue Skies, Daytime Temp Low 70’s F
Location: Quissett Harbor, Falmouth, Massachusetts
It is times like these that make me very glad that I don’t live in a huge home. Day after day we continue to work to get all of the storage areas on this little boat cleaned out and reorganized, and day after day we find we have more to do. We are making progress, but today was an especially productive one. Last night after reading the weather forecast for the next week, I decided that today was the day to take everything out of the v-berth and put it out on deck in the sun. So this morning we started that job. First we removed all of the stuff on the v-berth cushions and then we took the cushions outside on deck. Next we removed the wood panels under the cushions and took them outside. The final task was to remove everything stored under the v-berth—the spinnaker, the storm sail, the drogue and parachute which we have never needed to use and hope that we never do, and the four huge off-shore life jackets we are required to carry for off-shore travel. No one every uses them unless your boat is sinking, but they have to be there and you want them there, just in case. We also have at least 500 feet of various lines that we store under the v-berth . . . just in case. These are lines that we have replaced, but the old line was good enough to keep. All of this is stuffed under the v-berth and needs to be aired out periodically. So this was the day. Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny but almost 15 degrees cooler than today. That’s quite a dip. But today was sunny and warm and a perfect day for drying things out. As soon as we got everything on deck, I left to go to the Post Office and to go shopping. Mark has been posting items for sale on eBay and he has been successful in selling a few things, thus the need for my stop at the PO. And then I went off Cape to the closest Home Depot that had the foil-backed bubble wrap insulation that I need to line all of the storage areas. My shopping trip started off targeted, but somewhere along the line I got derailed. I decided that as long as I was near a Carter’s kid clothing outlet that I needed to stop there, and then I decided that as long as I was there, I might as well drive another 20 minutes to Hyannis to buy the food items I need for provisioning for the winter that are only available at either Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s. And then as long as I was in Hyannis, I decided to drive home by Heather’s to deliver a few items that I bought for her. And as long as I was there, I encouraged her to go running and then pick up Sam and Jonah while I watched Ollie nap. I won’t bore you any longer, but you see how my day went. By the time I got back to Windbird, we had to move fast to get things put away before the sun went down. Thankfully Mark had cleaned the area under the v-berth and it was ready for us to put the new bubble wrap insulation in place and repack. So we did. And while I was out shopping, Mark installed a new Seagull water filter, took off the Dorade boxes and removed the cowl vent hardware so the wooden boxes can be sanded and varnished, put a new clothes line in the shower, and spent a couple of hours on consulting work. It was a productive day but the boat cleaning project is still only half done. So we will continue tomorrow. We have four more days of summer and I plan to be done with cleaning by the official moment of fall equinox on Monday evening. As I drove around today, I saw a few trees that have started to turn and back here in Quissett Harbor the first boats are being taken out of the water. Definitely a sign that summer is coming to an end.
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| 140918 Day 332 Cape Cod, USA–First Boats Out of the Water |
