6 a.m. this morning, still pre-dawn darkness, found me hunting sea lions with a flash light.
At too repeated intervals during the night I heard them close by. They barked and grumbled and groaned. I woke up. After a while they stopped and we all went to sleep. Then they started again.
Despite the disturbance--and though I brought ear plugs with me to block my fellow humans, they were not conveniently at hand--I was too comfortable in my sleeping bag to get up.
However when I woke for good just before 6, I dressed and went hunting.
I thought I had heard three different beasts, but about 100' away, at the end of the finger between the two 90' slips perpendicular to GANNET’s, currently occupied by a 70’ power boat and an 88’ sailboat, I found not three, but five sea lions, all of moderate size, perhaps adolescents or young adults.
I walked toward them, waving my arms and shouting, and they slid into the water, the first three quickly, the last two reluctantly.
During the day I have subsequently chased sea lions from that location three more times, once two, the other two times a single lion. One of these was larger and stood his ground, er, dock, so I took a nearby dock cart and ran at him. Responding to the noise and aggression, he, too, left.
I think conditioning is going to take a while; but here is the ineluctable deal: I stay off the bait barge; and they stay off this dock.
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Predicted rain fell last evening, well after I reached GANNET in early afternoon. Not much, but enough for me to close the hatches.
I found the little sloop in fine condition, other than a grimy deck with a few bird splatters, and a jungle growing along her waterline,
I’m having a diver come on Saturday, but I lay down on the dock and cleared the waterline growth with a putty knife this afternoon. It looked too slovenly to live with for even two more days.
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Returning to GANNET now has become routine. I leave enough on the boat so I don’t need to go to a supermarket immediately, which is just as well because I didn’t get to one today. Everything is in place. And in San Diego there is no mold or spiders.
After checking that the bilge is dry--it was--and the batteries kept fully charged by the solar panels--they were--I filled the water tanks: my half gallon plastic jug and one liter drinking flask, then settled in to listen to the baseball game on the radio, with a glass of red wine from a box opened a couple of months ago--it was no better nor worse than then--and a dinner of freeze dry Chicken Dijon, before retiring to a sea lion serenade.
Today San Diego’s one day aberration has passed and the weather has returned to expected perfection.
I scrubbed the deck, and after it dried bent on the furling jib, put the bow sprit back in place, and reattached the tiller extension.
I also charged speakers and my electric razor.
Unless I’m forgetting something, GANNET is ready to go.
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The top photo was taken from Central in GANNET’S Great Cabin, post seal hunt dawn.
