Century Club: Tim Ford

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.

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.

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.

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.