Day 57, Year 9: Undercover with a Christmas Tree
Date: Monday, December 16, 2013
Weather: Clear, Cold, Windy Day; Calmer Evening
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, North Falmouth, Massachusetts
No, I haven’t gone undercover, but Windbird has. Finally she is getting covered, right now as I write this log at 10 pm. It is COLD outside–25 degrees F here on the water and almost 10 degrees colder inland—but BoatWorks, the guys putting the plastic bubble over Windbird, decided to come tonight to the job. It has been too windy or has been raining or snowing almost every day, so they have started working at night once the winds die down. I know they are freezing out there, but I sure am glad to get the cover on before tomorrow’s snow. Yes, it is going to snow again, but by tomorrow evening it will warm up and rain. And then when the temperature drops at night, we might get snow again. ‘Official’ winter is 5 days away, but someone forgot to tell the weather gods. Either that or they decided to play a trick on us and send us a really good dose of winter early.
Now to the Christmas tree part of the day. In addition to getting covered tonight, we brought our little Christmas tree inside, put on the lights, and have just finished decorating it. We bought the little 3 foot-high fir tree a month ago and have kept it outside until tonight. We bought it early for fear that the small ones would be gone by the time we were ready. It is still as green and pretty as when we bought it, but I’m sure it will start drying out now that it is inside. We’ve never had a live Christmas tree on Windbird. We’ve always decorated but thought a tree would be too much in our small cabin. But it is sitting on the table beside me and looks beautiful.
Today was a chemo day for Mark, which should have meant a day of rest. But somehow it ended up being anything but that. The guys from BoatWorks came to the boat this morning to check things out, but by the time I got outside to talk to them, they were gone. Still, I figured the visit meant they were thinking of covering the boat tomorrow, as I never dreamed they would do it tonight. But their visit got me busy cleaning the deck and getting a few things off the deck so they would have room to work. The birds have been super busy since Saturday when Mark sprayed off the boat, so I took advice from Heather and used a car window scraper and brush to get the frozen droppings off the canvas and deck. This was MUCH easier than spraying down and icing everything in sight. I picked Mark up just after noon and when we came home, I went out with a hammer to break the two-inch thick ice in the dinghy. We left it in the water as we knew it would be needed when covering the boat. I thought we had been pumping it out regularly, but we have gotten so much rain and snow in the past week that it was full up to the tubes. The first two-inches were frozen and there was water underneath the ice. I banged away, lifted out the chunks of ice, and then pumped the remaining water out. Then Mark came out to help me lift the dinghy out of the water. We used the dinghy pulley to raise it up and tie it to the side of the boat. We wanted to make sure it didn’t fill up again before the boat got covered. We should have stopped there, but we didn’t. We then drove to Hyannis to return a Christmas gift and do some food shopping. And then we came home, had dinner, and decorated the Christmas tree. They say there’s no rest for the wicked, so we must be mighty wicked indeed!
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| 131216 Day 57 Cape Cod, USA–De-icing the Dinghy and Decorating the Christmas Tree |
