Century Club: Tim Ford

Saturday, March 29, 2025
Number of days:
1 day

The club has a bunch of floating docks that nature deams necessary to destroy regularly.  

So new ones have to be built and launched and fitted once the old derelict ones are towed out of position.  You'd be surprised how tricky it is to fit a bunch of right-angle pieces together. Folks have to be added and subtracted to achieve the right ballast to get the attachment pieces to fit together and then pinned in place.  

PSA is lucky to have a crew of members who have the skills and knowledge to buld, position and secure these things. Sounds easy, but it isn't.

Wednesday, March 26, 2025
Number of days:
1 day
  • Un-kicked glop
  • relief form 20-25 kn breeze
  • about 75% of rot out
  • visitor section of cockpit
  • street legal

Same drill. 

Attack rotten ply core, paint & install new head floor, and paddle out to the cove (in the lee of shore) for lunch. I also got a look at my mooring for 2025 and it needs work. It's coated with slime and barnacles. Before I move RAINBOW I have to clean this thing up.

Ospreys have shown up in force and one hung out about 50 feet away, squawking constantly and competing with crows and kin for a coveted spot in the nearby trees.

On a down note, I laid-up some epoxy/e-glass in two or three leaky spots cockpit hatch spots. It never got as warm and I'd expected and I had to leave with the stuff still un-kicked. I like to babysit epoxy lay ups when they've almost fully kicked, to smooth them out (tool of choice: human thumb dipped in human saliva) but this wasn't possible as the stuff was still too gooey.   Fingers crossed.

Oh. And we now have a legal bathroom.

Tuesday, March 18, 2025 to Thursday, March 20, 2025
Number of days:
3 days
  • They're baaaaaackkkk, and already claimed a shoal-pole
  • solitude standing, just the resident black squirrels chattering
  • Note to self: don't camp near a bunch of treble hooks...
  • Newer and dryer wood
  • Nukin'
  • Getting legal...or at least trying

Got a 3-day hall pass to work and live on the boat and paddle as paint dried and epoxy kicked. Conditions varied from a calm sunset excursion into the cove's backwater swamp, and then the next day of relative normalcy (water in the creek!) and then all hell breaking loose on Thurs as a "smokin' southerly' built to 40 kn.  

Luckily, got a paddle in around noon, reached the point that separates the fairway out to the river and said, "nuh-uh, ain't going any farther," as puffs to 30 were very hard to paddle into and the chop was coming over the bow once in a while. This is while still in the creek!

So I bailed. And then it got windy.

On a mission to rid the below-decks wood of any moisture/rot.  Installed a new hatch structure and got it tabbed in with a yard of 3" biax tape against the hull layup, so that should last another 20 years. 

What's also gone is: the old head. It was illegal as it was a direct discharge via a thru-hull and with my luck, I was sure to get boarded and fined by one of the many wonderful regulatory agencies on the bay. Porta-potty arriving tomorrow. Yay!

Great and very productive three days in mid-March. Heck, I'll take it, noisy ospreys and all.

 

 

 

Friday, March 14, 2025
Number of days:
1 day

I have to replace some below decks wood that got wet and became soft over the years.  A multi-tool is a boost for stuff like this.  Can't believe I built an entire boat without owning one. 

Paddled for over an hour and got to visit the far NE cove...I love it back there, with no visible houses or docks, just an awful lot of Great Blues.  I don't think I've ever seen as many herons, so closely packed in and apparently not sqaulking about territory....at least not yet.

 

Friday, March 7, 2025
Number of days:
1 day

Didn't even bother to paddle. The list keeps growing. Good thing I love working on boats!

I'm not a huge fan of halyards belayed to a horn cleat. In my hardware box, I did find one single Spinlock cam cleat. Now, the question is, why was it in the hardware box...did it fail at some point on the i550?  

I gave it some rigorous tests, but it wasn't loaded up sufficiently because it's not mounted.  Do I drill more holes in the boat? Or just let it slide and use the original hardware.

Plenty of time to think about this...plenty.

 

Tuesday, March 4, 2025
Number of days:
1 day

I loved building the i550 and I had a bunch of great sails on it.  But I can't believe I passed 17 years without having a boat upon which I could sit comfortably below, eat lunch and maybe even take a nap or overnight if I wanted. 

I think I spent perhaps 3 or 4 nights sleeping aboard the i550 and it was marginal. And not afloat, unless you count a floating dock as "afloat."

But having a boat with furniture below and an actual keel and all the stuff that's needed to venture out and keep the rig pointed at the sky means: lists.  Lists on keelboats only persist, they never completely disappear. Soon as you whittle something off one end, something else pops up on the other. I sat below and worked on mine. 

It was 64 degrees in the cabin and that was excellent.

Lots of ducks, (ruddies) and geese, but still zero osprey.

 

 

Wednesday, February 26, 2025
Number of days:
1 day

Finally, water back in the creek!  Instead of 20-30 feet of sand in front of the rocks, they were almost completely covered at high tide.  Haven't seen that in about two months. 

And RAINBOW was floating.

Knocked a few barnies off the bottom, lowered the motor mount to make the 3.5 HP more at home, and switched the solar panel to a new, less vulnerable spot. 

Kayaked out to the day marks. A lot of ducks. I'm having a hard time I.D.'ing these. I guess they are Ruddy ducks, but I don't see the prominent tail sticking up out of the water.

Who knows? 

Monday, February 17, 2025
Number of days:
1 day
  • old alum mine remnants
  • needs a bit of work...

Look, OK there was a 57 kn puff at Gibson Island earlier, but by the time I put the kayak in, the closest data buoys were showing nothing above 30 and 33 (TPML and FSKM).  So I wasn't worried about it. If you see a big puff barreling down the creek, put the nose into it and honker down to lower the center of gravity and reduce windage. You can ride out anything up to 35 that way, easily.  45-50?  I don't know. Never tried it in a kayak.

One thing I do know: with all the north wind bowing most of the water out of the Northern Bay and Blackhole Creek, it was pretty easy to stay in water less than knee-cap deep. I mean, it was shallow. So shallow I repeatedly ran aground in the kayak. Beaches I land on, in normal times, where I can step onto dry sand, I couldn't get within 60 feet.  I could've almost walked to Blackhole #3.

The remains of the alum mine were quite visable in the clear, late winter shallows.

RAINBOW was ridiculously aground. I got a great view of how bad it needs a bottom job. Really bad.

Friday, February 7, 2025
Number of days:
1 day

Good things about kayaking the Magothy in Feb.:

- no other boats out

- no screaming Ospreys (yet)

- extreme water clarity

- gorgeous clouds and lighting

Just don't dump the boat.

Checked the solar/BMS and voltage on RAINBOW, and quite happy with 12.84 on arrival!

 

Tuesday, February 4, 2025
Number of days:
1 day

Ice had finally receded enough to actually go some where!  This time, just to the back of the creek. But that was enough.

And, I finally installed the solar panel and the Battery Management System, it was a cinch and I should've done it six months ago. But the weather was perfect and things went pretty smoothly. 

Will check the battery on Friday and pray it's not down to the paltry 7.94 volts I found this morning.

 

 

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