25 May 2011

Regardless of the amount of experience one can have with Seguin, she will always throw a curve at you.  Ninety-five percent of the time this comes in the form of water coming either up from the ocean or down from the sky.  Hence during the packing process Amy & I packed everything possible into watertight, durable containers, or put everything into boxes lined with garbage bags. 

We arrived at Popham imagining I had Seguin beat this time; then I realized the floats were not in and the tide stood a solid seven feet below the wharf.  With the assistance of Ethan and dependable Gravity, we transferred all of our thoroughly waterproof and now thoroughly awkward & heavy boxes to the boat.  Note to self, rig everything with lowering bridles next time prior to leaving the house.

Of course even foresight of this possibility would not have saved us from one 44 lbs package that you could not attach a strap to:  Mr. Darcy did not appreciate being manhandled down a vertical ladder into the waiting boat.  Had I had free hands to take a picture, I would have, because watching Darcy cling to Ethan with all four paws after I handed him off was hilarious.

Boat loaded, off we went to the island.  The trip out was chilly but otherwise uneventful, we made it to the cove around 1700.  Amy went from all stop to full ahead with the Seguin experience, as I pretty much dumped her out of the dinghy & started thrusting boxes into her hands, yelling “just get it up the beach, we’ll move it later!”  I made five trips with the dinghy, getting all of our stuff & the gift shop swag on, and all of Cyndy’s stuff and Cyndy off.  With turnover complete (“No disasters Nate, the cistern is half full, pump’s off, everything is unlocked, and I didn’t mess with the composting toilet, bye bye, have fun”), quite abruptly Amy & I found ourselves alone on the beach surround by our gear, food, and a gleeful dog who in five minutes had already managed to find the ocean, roll in sand, and get covered in prickers.

I would wager that Amy & I are the first keepers in recent memory to move all our gear up the hill by ourselves, and I loved every second of it.  The donkey engine ran like a champ and after about two hours our gear & supplies went from beach to tram, tram to top, top to the quarters.  The folks who opened for us the weekend prior did fine work, we moved into a clean house.  Amy took care of the bedroom while I took care of squaring away the galley.  Darcy, being ever helpful, managed to insert himself in the way every time we were moving something heavy.

By 2000 we had eaten dinner (what my father would refer to as a Railroad Job, but it was hot, tomorrow I’ll do some real cooking) and made ourselves reasonably comfortable.  With cups of tea in hand I walked Amy up the tower for her first time and we watched the western sky go pink & finally dark.  The sun set with a gentle E’ly breeze, low SE’ly seas, mostly clear sky with some cirrus clouds to the north, and fog rolling in from the south.  I imagine Amy & Darcy will learn what the fog horn sounds like tonight.  My last act before bed is to clean the coffee pot for tomorrow morning, so there will be no delay in the java juice.      

26 May 2011

Up early this morning after a solid nights rest.  I got coffee & eggs going while Amy cursed me in a loving fashion for dragging her to a damp, cold island.  Once we had eaten she gained a new perspective on the day, and all was well.  The wind was still gentle E’ly, but the skies were closing in and I could see a solid wall of fog to the south, flirting with a decision to roll in; at 0800 on the nose Amy & Darcy got to hear the Seguin Whistle for the first time.   

We spend a couple of hours down on the bottom of the island checking our situation out; most of the buildings seem to have survived well.  The Boat House is missing a couple pieces of siding, four shingles gone on the north side of the Donkey Engine house, not too bad.  The big issue may be the tram, I have a sneaking suspicion that a couple of the braces have rotted out near the bottoms.  There is a pronounced dip in the track, and a new inboard list.  I’ll be checking into that first dry day we have.

 All in all it was a busy, but good day.  A cursory building inspection done, the big composting toilet has been maintenanced and The Cone leveled, the cistern is over half filled, Amy got the gift shop inventoried and set up, I raked up the first round of grass clippings from the front of the Keeper’s Quarters, bread was baked, soup made, and Darcy found his first dead seagull.  Fantastic. 

We also got the antennae mounted for the VHF radio and got a sat check with USCG Station Boothbay Harbor.  By evening Amy was very curious why I wanted to leave it on all the time .  Personally I find the occasional fisherman or ferry making a call soothing being used to the sound of Indians, Pakistanis, Filipinos, etc, screeching obscenities at each on VHF 16.  Not good enough for her, I explained that it was important to guard the channel in case of a mayday or someone trying to call us.  Not five minutes went by after that conversation when we listened to a search for the sailing vessel Afterglow (she had no charts and her electronics were shot) go down only three miles away at White’s Ledge; the search was done by USCG Boothbay, a Sea-Tow boat, and Dad in his boat.  Point-set-match.  I would rather listen to my father than the Filipino Monkey  on the radio any day.  

If anyone wants to know what the Filipino Monkey is, ask me when you come to visit us on the island.  I promise it is nothing derogatory, it just would take up way too much space to explain here.

Looking out towards the tram from the tower

After a solid ten hours of fog, with the temperature falling, Amy talked me into starting a space heater and blocking off the living room, which is where we are wrapping up the night.  Amy can keep the space heater, I’m enjoying a nip of The Balvenie 12 year, courtesy of her father (thank you Don, it’s excellent).  Wind is starting to shift to more SE’ly than E’ly, the barometer is trending up, and I’m hoping for better weather in the next 24 hours. 

27 May 2011

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.  Woke up to a blanket of fog this morning; by 0800, 24 of our first 36 ours on Seguin have been completely socked in listening to the foghorn.  After breakfast Amy opted to stay inside next to the heater reading (she’s making a game effort at The Fellowship of the Ring trying to figure our why I like Tolkien so much), while I took Darcy outside in a vain effort to bleed off some of his energy.  We walked the rocks on the bottom of the island, not much to see but breakers and fog.

By the time we got back the sun had warmed the morning up nicely, albeit without burning off the fog.  As the grass was way too wet to mow Amy & I tackled the garden.  In pretty short order we had dislodged all the grasses & mosses that had taken root, turned the dirt, plucked numerous stones, and even propped up the rock wall in places.  Our little garden plot is ready to receive seeds, which we will sow in the coming days.

Amy working on lawn next to the garden

We took a break for lunch and by the time we were done around 1330, the fog had thinned and visibility opened up to about 3 miles.  We had a solid 5 hours with no fog signal, which we used for two omnipresent Seguin activities: mowing grass and raking up the hay.  It took me four hours to mow the bulk of the lawn up top, with Amy raking hay as I went, and Darcy running rapidly between the two of us yelping & growling for all he was worth.  The task of getting the lawns under control is daunting, but I think it is likely once we finish this round of raking & mowing, and doing it one more time Monday or Tuesday, we’ll be ahead of it.

The day wrapped up quietly.  Amy tried to teach me some yoga, which I’m fairly certain is her way of getting back at me for bringing her to a remote island for the summer.  Much to the dog’s joy we took a walk down the South Trail to stretch our legs and check out how much we need to do to make it passable.  After a dinner of leftover curried carrot soup & bread, we retired to the living room for a game of cribbage.  We went to bed with solid fog, a gentle NE’ly breeze, temp in the low 50’s, and 30.00 inches of mercury, barometer holding steady.    

28 May 2011

The foghorn is rapidly becoming part of the normal background noise on the island, along with the breaking seas and the gulls.  The fog is still thick as pea soup outside.  Our morning routine is already shaping up, with me preceding Amy downstairs by twenty minutes to start the heater in the living room, feed the dog, and get coffee rolling.  I imagine this is a routine that has been played out for many years on Seguin, except in former days the keeper would have been lighting a fire in the stove instead of flipping a switch.

We headed down to the cove early in anticipation of the arrival of my parents; due to the stalled cold front they opted to come out this morning despite the weather, as fog and 3 foot seas is easier than clear visibility with 5-7 foot seas.  I had enough time to luxuriate in the view from my composting toilet, then fill our dinghy with air, before the appearance of Lovely Linda in The Cove, carrying my parents and some un-necessaries-but-niceties they brought along for us. 

Much to Darcy’s consternation, it took me two trips in the dinghy to get my parents & the stuff ashore.  I’m not sure what went on in his little pea brain, but whatever the process he decided he just had to jump in the fifty-five degree North Atlantic, and chase me down.  Showing his poodle heritage, he made it all the way out to Lovely Linda where I was helping Mom into the dinghy, and paddled all the way back when I wouldn’t help him.  Not only did he do it, he did it with style.  No splashing and he didn’t even get his head wet.

Darcy coming to help

Having my parents visit, even for a few hours, was fantastic.  They’re great company, and Mother is a top-notch cook; she brought out chicken salad and sourdough rolls to share for lunch.  Any meal I don’t have to cook is a good meal.  Dad & I wandered around the island for a bit, inspecting the buildings, happily he agreed with my assessment on most of it.  They hung out for a few hours, than rolled back to the bottom of the hill to head out.  Before leaving Dad had to work on something, and settled on the fan in the composting unit on the toilet.  It had tripped offline and I had not reset it.  As it turns out, the fan had seized and the plug burnt up in the process.  He got the fan moving again, but allowed himself to be talked into leaving the plug for me to finish up in the morning.

After my folks left I used the low tide as an opportunity to start scoping out mussel beds along the inter-tidal zone on the north side of the island for future harvesting.  I met with some success, but I hope to find more on the southern side.  What I did find tons of were periwinkles, which I intend to learn how to cook, due to the sheer abundance of them.  Amy is dubious but at worst I figure I can clean them and feed them to Darcy, who is not picky.

The sun set without us actually seeing it today.  The visibility never opened to more than a mile, and as I write this between the dark and the fog you can’t see much more than 100’.  There is a moderate E’ly breeze, and the outside temperature is 56F and falling.  The barometer is holding steady at 30.1 inches, where it has been for the majority of the last 24 hours.

29 May 2011

Nature, in all the myriad of forms it takes, is normally pretty nifty.  Watching a storm, seeing a beautiful flowering plant, or observing a predator plying its trade, can all be fascinating.  What is not so awesome is when your dog finds a very dead and desiccated seagull carcass, and decides to have a mid-afternoon snack.

Prior to coming to the island, Darcy had a weeklong bout on intestinal distress that was severe enough to prompt me to engage the services of Stanley Steamer at my condo.  The vet was of the opinion that this was caused by him eating a handful of raisins that had dropped on the floor; apparently raisins are toxic to dogs.  Now riddle me this, raisins bring Darcy to Death’s door, but he eats the head off a long deceased bird and he’s fine.  What gives?  Really?

This was not the only entertainment the beast provided for us today.  While we were down at the beach he started spazzing, shaking his head violently, growling, hopping around, putting on quite the display.  It turns out he tried to eat a rubber band used for lobster claws and it got stuck on his tooth, confounding him and agitating him greatly. 

In all other respects it was a day much like the past few, waking up to fog, and going to sleep to fog.  We did manage to complete raking the lawn, and get the rest of the lawn on the top of the island mowed.  I also repaired the plug on the composting toilet fan, so now it smells much more like pine shavings instead of night soil, while using the throne.

I made a big pot of chili for dinner in an effort to warm us up.  I sincerely hope to move away from soups & breads in the next couple of weeks and maybe start doing some grilling for dinner.  While hearty soups are obligatory with this weather, it seems to me that an island summer should involve, I dunno, a hog with an apple in its mouth, turning on a spit above an open flame, rather than a stock pot & people in wool hats.

To end the evening off, I completed my first knot project, a square knot sheath to hold my knife.  It’s a little rough around the edges but will suffice for a working piece, and it was good practice, as the next project is a square knot mandolin strap.  Stay tuned.  We turned in with a freshening SSE’ly breeze, temps in the high 50’s, and the barometer at 29.96” and falling.  The seas were SE’ly at four to six feet.

30 May 2011

We awoke to the sound of the foghorn again, but this time it was just messing with our heads.  I went outside and saw blue-sky overhead, by the time we were wrapping up breakfast the fog had lifted enough we could see Popham Beach.  The temperature also started rising immediately; the space heater got a reprieve from its duties for the first time in 4 days.

Not wanting the good weather to go to waste I decided to take up my new favorite sport: off-road mowing.  Amy, sensing danger, opted to stay up top and work in the museum, while I headed to the bottom to do battle with the flora of Seguin.  Due to an engine casualty on the new, 7HP, self-propelled mower, I had to work with the old 4.5HP mower that actually had been condemned, until the new one crapped out. 

Darcy took off to the hills on hearing the metallic banging and string of profanity the first time I pulled on the starting cord.  A word to the wise: if tin snips and a hammer are needed to successfully start a mower, things are probably not going to go well.  I did get it running, and it did work, for about 15 minutes, burning mostly oil I think, before the bolt holding the blade in place sheared off.  Not so surprisingly, I didn’t even hit anything.  It just came apart.

This necessitated a trip to the top of the island again, to retrieve the other condemned mower, and haul it down to the bottom.  I got mower number two running without using fine adjustment tools, and got the rest of the bottom mowed, plus part of the south trail, just as our visitors arrived. 

They came in two groups, about an hour apart.  The first was a group of Sebasco Estate employees, scoping out charter boat trips; they were very energetic and promised to return multiple times this season with tourists and barley sodas.   The second group consisted of two folks in kayaks, one of who promptly threw up when he came ashore.

I politely enquired if they had a rough trip paddling out to the island, to which they replied yes indeed, the mouth of the Kennebec was very rough, with some standing waves close to Pond Island.  I offered the observation that trying to exit the mouth of the Kennebec at a max ebb tide could be a harrowing experience in a good sized power boat, never mind trying to paddle through it, and that you should rarely try to hug the east side of Pond Island.  I love being helpful.  They were good sports about it, agreed that they would not try it again, and asked if there were any charter boats making daily runs to the island. 

It turned out the charter boat was not needed (although I did provide them with Ethan’s card), after resting for a couple of hours, eating some food, scoping out return courses and landing sights from the tower, and finally buying some t-shirts, they gamely loaded into their kayaks and paddled off to the north.

Amy & I finished the day off in the cove, her doing yoga, the pooch playing games with the waves, and me setting up my chair in the Boathouse.  The hanging recliner which was an impulse buy back in Mississippi was clearly meant for Seguin, as the height of the Boathouse door is perfect to accommodate it and it rests perfectly on the skids when I take it in for the night.  The day wrapped up clear with a moderate SW’ly breeze, E’ly seas, and temps cooling off into the low 60’s from high 70’s earlier in the day.     

31 May 2011

Everyone knew from the get-go that Nate would be happy as a pig in poo spending the summer secluded on an island. However, there has been some concern as to exactly how contented I would be in this situation.  As it’s the last day of the first week, coupled with the fact that I have not been here prior to our current adventure, I thought it may be interesting to close out week one with my thoughts, observations and few remarks.

Many followers of this blog are probably long standing Seguin loyalists like Nate, while many of you are possibly just as unfamiliar with the Island as I was when Nate first suggested we submit a keeper application. For those in the later group, I feel it necessary to point out a few things.  1) The lighthouse and the keepers quarters sit at the top of a 150 foot hill.  2) The only toilet that can be used with regularity is located at the bottom of the 150-foot hill.  3) There are extensive grounds that need to be mowed and raked every 3-4 days (this takes all day).  4) With the exception of space heaters, there’s no heat. With these considerations in mind, it’s easy to see why one might not be wholly pleased with a summer spent by the sea.

Needless to say, after a week of island living, my body hurts.  I heard somewhere that walking up a steep incline burns more calories than running on a flat surface. I believe it.  My legs and bum haven’t been this sore since field hockey pre-season in college.  The constant raking and mowing has done a number on my arms as well. However, here is the silver lining- I’m hoping all of this manual labor will result in a completely ripped Amy by the end of the summer. Here’s hoping- I mean really, how could it not? 

I came to the Island expecting these trials and tribulations, if not entirely prepared for them.  That said, my largest battle has not been with the expected, but with the unexpected (that Nate conveniently forgot to mention). The water here is a reddish brown and far from drinkable.  This poses two problems.  1) We need to carry all of our drinking, cooking, and tooth brushing water onto the island every week in six-gallon tubs. Did you know that a six-gallon tub of water weighs approximately 50 lbs? I didn’t. Have you ever tried to carry five six-gallons tubs of water up a steep incline? I haven’t either.  But I did carry one.   2) I am a not-so-natural blonde.  Did you know that a high concentration of iron in water will turn not-so-natural blondes, like myself, from pretty pretty blonde to rusty red?  In an effort to combat the inevitable ruin of my luscious locks, I have not been washing my hair. Gross I know, but the alternative is far worse in my opinion. I am currently bathing with a plastic bag over my head held in place with hair ties. Step next: obtain a shower cap. I can assure you that Nate is far from pleased with this development, but he can deal. He did say he hoped this summer would convert me to a lover of rustic living.

Minor qualms aside, it can’t get much better than Seguin.  We have settled in nicely, I am beating Nate at cribbage, if not Scrabble, and the weather is finally heating up.  So much so that Nate actually went swimming today. I think that was positively foolish. The North Atlantic is never warm, let alone in May.  However I did enjoy watching him and Puppy frolic and play in the water. I sat safely (and warmly) ashore with my book. 

The remainder of the evening will be spent listening to Nate pluck away at his mandolin (though if I have my way the metronome will be silenced in short order), and I will finish my book.  An excellent end to week one on Seguin.