While some of you are viewing erotic sand sculptures on sunny beaches and worrying about a ‘cold wave’ that may drop temperatures to near 60ºF/15ºC, we have a blizzard.
The official weather service definition of a blizzard is large amounts of snow or blowing snow, with winds in excess of 35 mph/30 knots, and visibility of less than ¼ mile/400 meters for at least three hours.
By that pleasingly precise standard Evanston has not actually had blizzard conditions and the storm is winding down. To the west of us they have had more snow and wind and probably a blizzard.
Nevertheless it is not a beach day and my sympathy for those of you who may soon have to endure 60º is limited.
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Now that Thanksgiving has passed and December is almost here—and the weather may have something to do with it—I am going over my to do and buy list for GANNET.
Assuming she has not been damaged while I have been away, the main to do is antifoul. It is possible that I will go the way of least resistance and pay the tiny boat yard at the marina to do the job. They won’t let me do it myself.
There is a leak by a stanchion to be sealed.
I would like to paint the small areas on the deck between the Raptor nonskid pads.
The interior wood needs oiling.
The whole interior needs painting, but that is not going to happen.
The to buy list is not extensive either.
I am waiting to order items until just before I return to Hilton Head so they can be delivered there and I don’t have to take them with me on the flight.
Freeze dry meals. 60 to 80.
Waterproof Pelican case for this iPad Pro.
Halyard shackle with opening ½”+. The existing shackle barely fits over the new mainsail headboard, forcing me to spend too much vulnerable time standing at the mast when I remove or attach the halyard.
Tiller pilot. Always and forever. I have three working Raymarines. I’ll buy another. The Pelagic went into standby mode spontaneously when I tried to use it sailing to the Chesapeake. Mine is a prototype and production models may not have this problem. I am not inclined to hassle with it further.
Clevis pin 1¼” x ¼” for the boom gooseneck.
4 Blue Performance sheet bags. Replacements for those in the cockpit that are showing their age and miles.
Jetboil stove. The self-ignition on the Jetboil I was using failed on the way to Saint Michaels, so I began using the backup. I’ll buy another for backup.
Rechargable battery charger. One of these failed, too. I had a backup and now need another backup.
AAA and AA batteries. Not rechargable. I have become somewhat disenchanted with rechargable batteries which take a very long time to recharge, usually over night, and sometimes don’t last as long as they should. So I am going to take disposable batteries with me as well. My main uses of batteries are the Velocitek, headlamps, flashlights, and the handheld Autohelm remote.
Velcro for lee cloth shackles. When not in use, the pipe berth lee cloths fold under the berths, but routinely fall out, with the shackles on the lines at the corners going into the bilge. After all these years and miles, I am finally going to try to secure them with Velcro when not in use.
I will do other provisioning by bicycle or possibly Uber in Hilton Head.
All in all not much to do and buy.
I have yet to book my flight to Hilton Head because of possible developments with the evil condo. It will be sometime after January 1.
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I have made the transition from MacBook to iPad Pro almost completely and have not opened the MacBook for several days.
As I have mentioned before, the most intractable problem has been with Blogger, whose code seems to have serious conflicts with Pages in IOS. It is possible that after trial and error—lots of error—I have solved it and that some uniformity to the formatting of this journal may resume.
I write an entry in Pages, export that into Word, copy that to Outlook, email from Outlook to Gmail, open the attached Word document in Gmail, copy and paste it into Blogger.
Nothing to it.
Don’t ask me to explain. I can’t. But it has to be done exactly that way.
