09 July 2011 Dory

The forecast for this morning included patchy fog- apparently Seguin was a patch, because the foghorn never shut off all night, and when we arose this morning visibility was around 100 yards.  This curtailed my ambition to an extreme, as well as Amy’s, so our activities were limited to making coffee, reading, and listening to a man with a burning alternator cause massive confusion on the radio by calling “any Coast Guard Station” for help.  By the time order had been restored on the airwaves, the visibility had cleared, and it turned out this joker was only a mile to the south of Seguin.  For the furor he caused, he looked to be making good time under power, and did not take the most direct route to shore either.  I’m suspicious of the extant of his distress.

After the mayday that wasn’t, the weather improved rapidly, with the fog clearing out completely and the temperature soaring into the high 70F’s.  I spent the bulk of the afternoon working on disassembling the dory that Dad & I brought out on Wednesday.  Like many fixer-uppers, my little dory is turning out to be a bigger project than I anticipated.  I found that the transom is delaminating quickly, and the athwart ship stiffeners are pulling away from the hull.  Given I don’t intend to put this boat to extreme use, I probably will fix most of this with Marine 5200.  Fun project aside, it would be nice to actually launch the dory from the Boathouse and use it, before the summer is over.

The only break I took was to assist a few of our visitors; they had come ashore at low tide using an inner tube.  I looked up from fighting with a stubborn screw to see them debating how to use the small piece of floatation to traverse the bulk of the Cove (it was now high tide) while battling an adverse wind…as predicted the wind had freshened to a moderate NW’ly breeze making the Cove quite choppy.  Needing a break from the task at hand, I volunteered to use our dinghy to row them back to their boat.  This turned out to be a winning proposition for everyone, as once on their boat, they gave me two cold Shipyard Summer Ales, the island a $25 donation, and due to the beer I returned to the dory with more patience than I had previously.

The evening was so beautiful I moved out to the porch to practice mandolin, thus sparing Amy & Mr Darcy, and getting to enjoy the view of the Atlantic to boot.  I managed to talk Amy into leaving windows open tonight, as the clear skies and dying breeze is making for very pleasant sleeping conditions.  With the barometer at 29.9” and rising, and the temp in the high 60F’s, I’m looking forward to another beautiful day tomorrow.