Day 318, Year 8: Galley Slave
Date: Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Weather: Sunny Day but Cool, High in the 60’s F, Low in the 50’s
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
Even though I was working in a land based kitchen today, I definitely felt like a galley slave. I completed blanching, peeling, deseeding, and pureeing the 33 pounds of tomatoes I bought yesterday for Heather and Jed. I will continue working on that job tomorrow by cooking down the sauce, adding the other ingredients, and canning the finished product. While working on the tomatoes today, I was also making a triple batch of granola and preparing an early dinner for Heather and gang as Heather and Jed had a Meet the Teacher Night at Sam’s School at 6:30 pm. As with the sauce, I didn’t complete the job with granola either. I have more granola that needs to be baked tomorrow. And tomorrow is the day of the week that I have ‘donated’ to Heather to help get some of those big house cleaning jobs done.
Before going to Heather’s this morning, Mark glued down the teak floor boards that he had removed in order to reinforce the sub-flooring in the aft cabin and I did some cleaning and organizing in the v-berth. In one-month from today, we could be sailing south and we certainly aren’t ready to do that right now. But one day at a time, we’ll get the jobs done. Tomorrow we will make the decision on which dinghy to buy. Economics is guiding our decision. What we want, we know we can’t afford. It boils down to two things—choosing between the two materials that dinghies are made of (PVC versus hypalon) and deciding on a tube size we can live with. Tonight the West Marine Rib-310 that is made of hypalon but has only 16-inch tubes seems like our best bet. But we did get an email from friends here on the Cape that have a dinghy they would like to sell, so tomorrow morning we’ll check that out before making the final decision.
