Century Club: Richard Turman
Low 50's with low breeze allowed me to get out on the kayak again, after several weeks with it being too cold. Beautiful!
High 50's with low breeze was enough to entice me out to two evening kayak trips. Great to get out on the boat again.
65 degree weather enticed me outside on the kayak, and it was beautiful. So nice that two folks were taking their powerboats out fishing. Wind west from 5 with gusts to 8 or 9, which kicked up some chop, but managed it well enough and stuck near the shore, given how cold the water still is.
Nice 57 degree afternoon encouraged me to go out. No boats moving at all, which was wonderful -- just ducks out and about, with the occasional goose honking around. Up Valentine Creek, over to Plum, out to the mouth of the Valentine where it meets the Severn, and home. Lovely to kayak in February!
55 degrees oiut with only 5-7 knots from the West made it a beautiful time to kayak up to the headwwaters of Valentine Creek and then hug the shore around to Plum Creek and then return by coming to the narrow entrance of Valentine onto the Severn. Only other boat out was a kayaker who was fishing. Ducks and Heron were the ohly other things moving at sunset. Wonderful!
59 degrees and less than 3 knots of wind made for a beautiful evening. Went out just after sunset and had a good 30 minutes out on Valentine Creek and onto the Severn River and back. Wonderful to have such unseasonably warm weather!
60 degree day called for kayaking, since I couldn't go sailing because the boat was winterized. Fascinating to have the air temp in the low 60s fighting with the water temp, which was about 40, and had cold air rising off of it. No other boats out as I went near the headwaters of Valentine Creek and back to our home. And then completed work on winterizing my Tartan 245 by removing the outboard, which I'd not removed when I'd taken everything else off the boat in mid-December. Worth doing, but difficult to reach everything while sitting off the end of the boat.
Today I kayaked overr to my powerboat, blessedly on a neighbor's lift about half a mile away by water, and took out the drain plug. That completes the last task I can do this year on that boat. Put the winter cover on it a week ago, but couldn't get to the drain plug. SO much water in there -- it ran for a good five minutes. Really glad I emptied it. I forgot to take the battery out before putting the cover on, but I'm not going to undo the whole thing just for that. Hopefully the battery charger can bring it back to life in the spring.
Last night, on December 16, I reluctantly decided to winterize "Lark" since I couldn't see any days when it would be above 50 degrees (or even 45) when the wind would be in the 5-10 range vs. the 15-20 mph range. And the nights are going to be below 30 for the forseeable future, and the owner's manual for my Torqueedo battery says it can not be charged when it is below 32 degrees. I shut off the power to the boat several days ago, when it was to be below 30 at night, but since we're going to have days below 20, it made sense to remove this 42 lb battery. Which Tartan had put into a nearly inaccesable box under one of the bunks, and placed a strip of wood across so it was screwed into place. One of the four screws holding that strip of wood nearly stripped, so it took about an hour to just get that strip off, after which the challenge was to get the battery itself out of this nearly inaccessible spot and hook the six connections.
One of the other driving reasons to winterize was that I needed to take the jib off, since we'd had wind gusting to 25 mph and the jib sock was causing the boat to move on the lift, as it (and the mainsail cover) was catching the wind. So I dropped the jib, and then took the main off for the first time. And then took the lead-acid house battery out, too. And then took the pad for the berth out, which I found had a snap all the way at the bow. Which was wet from rainwater coming in.
Trussed the boat up onto the lift, increased the angle by which the bow is higher than the stern so hopefully we'll get less water collecting in the cuddy, and then lifted her a last time for the winter.
I'll look forward to March when I can take her out again!
45 degrees seemed about the right daytime temp to put the cover on for the winter, but we'd already had some sub-30 nights, and it was overdue. However, the mechanic had only just come by to winterize the engine, so now was the time. After carrying the canvas-support frame I've made from wood over to my neighbor's dock where the boat is on a lift, strung it up with line and then put the cover over top. Then the hard part started, which was getting the far side lines under the boat and attached to the dock side. This requifred me to take two kayak trips out and under the boat, using the boat hook and a paddle to push the line to the dock side where it could be retrieved, mercifully, by my buddy who volunteered to come out and help -- which saved me hours!