30 June 2011 Best Intentions

Thursdays have become our day to clean Seguin.  I think it started because we know the weekends will be busy, and on Thursday we are still re-charged from a day ashore, and the pace of island life still has not settled in.  Let’s face it: no one enjoys cleaning, so while we have to do it while we have energy.  Accordingly, the entire morning was spent sweeping & swabbing both sides of the duplex, changing linen, and I got to charge up the composting toilets.  The cistern got filled and I changed the lights in the tower (ironically, the interior of the lighthouse had no working lights).

Thursday is also a prime candidate for mowing & weed whacking, for the same reasons it is a good day for cleaning.  I had every intention of clearing the south trail today.  Honest I did.  But things happen.  For instance, I had just stated began my latest macramé project, and felt like putting an hours worth of work into it, when I realized I had messed up, and had to pick almost the entire thing apart.  The hour I wanted to do turned into three hours full of knots, tangled lines, and impolite language. 

After I got that straightened out, I put my shoes on, and headed over to the Whistle House to get the weed whacker, when my friend Mike Walker appeared on the hill with his lady friend Kelsey.  Mike is a recent grad from Maine Maritime, and at my suggestion, a soon-to-be 3^rd Mate with Military Sealift Command.  All thoughts of lawn & trail maintenance were put aside, the beers were broken out of the fridge, and Mike & I launched into ship talk that had our better halves rolling their eyes immediately.

A slightly obscene view of Darcy's physical therapy

Mike & Kelsey stayed exactly long enough for me to convince myself I didn’t really have time to get any meaningful work done on the trails, and anyways the birds are probably still guarding them pretty ferociously.  Having rationalized my laziness to my satisfaction, I headed into the Keeper’s Quarters to make dinner, do the dog’s physical therapy (he has the most expensive hip a dog has ever had, I want that sucker to work!), and play some mandolin before bed.

01 July 2011 Over the Top. Really.

There are many phrases you can use when telling a story which sound benign, but are really quite ominous to those in the know.  For instance, “it seemed like a good idea at the time” is fun, while “alcohol may have been involved” is almost always a herald of woe in a tale.  Then of course is my personal favorite “It was a plan that couldn’t fail”.  SO….

It was a plan that could not fail.  Amy & wanted to move a bunch of big trash (not house trash) to the bottom of the hill for pickup tomorrow and figured the easiest way to do this was to load it on the tram.  The normal procedure for moving the car to the top of the tram is to have a person at the top use arm signals to indicate to the operator at the bottom when the car is in position.  This does not work for us as Amy is too short to see her arms from the bottom, but I didn’t let this stop me.  I armed both of us with portable VHF radios and told Amy to say, “stop stop” when the car was at the top.  Thinking all was well, I went to the bottom, fired up the donkey engine, and sent the car on it’s way up.

Now people who use radios professionally develop a “radio voice”, that is usually their normal voice pitched an octave or two lower; in fact it’s a running joke on the ships to compare who has the most exaggerated radio voice.  When concocting the plan with the tram I forgot two important things 1) Amy doesn’t have a radio voice and 2) Radio voice actually helps the sound travel through the mic and promotes clarity on the receiving side.  What this meant to us is I did not hear Amy say, “stop stop”.  In fact my first indication anything was wrong was when the engine bogged down fierce; I immediately de-clutched the engine and heard Amy screaming “STOP STOP YOU BETTER COME UP HERE!!”

At this point you probably all want some pictures.  Keep wanting.  I am willing to make my shame public with one thousand words, but not one picture.  Try to visualize this scene: I reached the top to see the beautiful blue expanse of the Atlantic stretching out before me, with the tram car pulled over the edge of the tracks, resting on the framework for the pulleys, in a crooked, unhealthy fashion.  The guard railing had been torn off of the platform and was laying nearby, Amy was standing off to the side trying to reduce her already small stature further, Darcy Dog was tied to a post & working himself into a seizure of barking and excitement, with a small clutch of tourists pointing and whispering amongst themselves. 

Surveying this, and knowing this wonderful scene existed only because of my talent & skill, I reflected that I could laugh or cry, so I might as well laugh.  Step one was to assure Amy I was not mad, step two calm the hound down, then convince the tourists that while not usual operation, I had encountered these problems before & was quite capable of fixing it myself (“Nothing to see here, move along, move along”).  The last step was to find the longest, biggest piece of pipe I could lift, and use it as a 12’ pinch bar to lever the tramcar back up onto the tracks. 

Believe it or not, within twenty minutes we were back in business, with the car rolling merrily down the track, bearing a full load of trash, with nothing damaged aside from my pride.  And the lesson here?  I don’t know if a big enough lever can move the world, but it can make your humiliation less obvious.  Until you write about it in a blog, that is

02 July 2011 Understatement

“So, ah Nate, I think we dragged your mooring a bit last night”.  This was a new way to start my day, as I stared at the radio in one hand, paint brush dripping in the other, mulling over the statement just made.  I had gotten up early to get a jump on what I presumed would be a busy day, and after making coffee & filling the cistern, had began some small painting projects.  What I had not done was walk down to The Cove, to check on the boat that had spent the night on one of our moorings.  Clearly, I should have been more concerned.  “Okay” I responded, “Are you folks alright?”  “Well, we are now, around 0430 when we were banging on the rocks I wasn’t sure we would be, but I got it off pretty quick”.

Understand at this point I am forming a picture in my mind of what has happened based primarily on the word “drag”.  While in a full gale a ship can drag an anchor for a mile or more, on a relatively calm night the most a small boat could drag a mooring would be a few feet.  Or so I foolishly assumed.  I wished them well, and took my time descending the hill to check out the situation.  Turns out the mooring was not dragged a few feet, or a few yards, it was carried over 300 yards, clear to the opposite corner of The Cove from its starting point.   

This path, of course, goes directly across the path of the cable.  Given the fact we still had lights in the Keeper’s Quarters, and in the Tower, I knew he had not dragged the mooring anywhere.  The only thing I can figure is that at low tide, all of the slack had been pulled out of the mooring pennant to avoid swinging, and as the tide came in, the boat just lifted the anchor up, and away they went.  What I want to know is, how we’re going to get it back?

Our day only got busier from there.  Amy tells me we set a daily record for visitors this summer, with a total of 37 just today.  It goes without saying that with that many visitors, the mooring shenanigans did not end.  I had people rafting boats together, I had people trying to anchor who I stopped, one guy who did anchor before I could stop him (he claimed it was an emergency because his engine died…an emergency he responded to by calmly touring the island for two hours, than starting his boat up again right away when it was time to leave), and finally the crown champion, the dude who tied up to a lobster buoy.  I rowed up to this clown, who had a boat full of people and beer, and quietly observed he was using a lobster buoy for a mooring.  Gesturing with a beer can, he replied, “Ahh, it’ll be alright, I’ll only be a minute”.  I considered that position, and responded “Well alright, but the fisherman won’t like it if he comes by, and the Game Warden will probably assume you’re trying an illegal haul”.  He was gone in about ten seconds flat.

   

I’m wrapping the night up in my usual spot, on the futon, with Darcy Dog curled up next to me, and listening to the Dunn Family Players- our museum guests asked me if I minded them bringing up a few instruments.  Two guitars, a mandolin, and a banjo, played by knowledgeable folk, make for pleasant background sound while finishing the log.  Happily the weather, beautiful all day, remained so into the evening, with the temp in the low 60F’s, clear visibility, and light SW’ly breezes

03 July 2011 Crafty & Knotty

The temperature continued dropping throughout the night, and we awoke around 0630 to a clear and cool morning, but with little breeze and fog visible inshore of us.  By the time the Dunn’s began rolling at 0900, the fog was definitely getting closer, and the skies began to threaten some drizzle.  I walked down the hill with them to get a few minor things done in the boathouse before the weather turned, and when they had departed and my tasks completed, I returned to the top, and announced to Amy that due to the inclement weather, and our efforts the day before, today would be a lazy day.  She didn’t argue.

Amy's blanket, 3/4 finished

 In fact the only argument of the day, and it wasn’t even really an argument, stemmed from me wanting to turn the heater on, not for Amy, but for my sourdough, so the little yeast bugs could ferment.  We ripped through my last two loaves, one disappearing when Jason & Laura visited, the other going on Friday when Mom, Dad, and my Grammy & Grampy came to visit.  This time I’m making a sourdough with whole wheat flour & toasted seeds; pending the results I’ll get more adventurous with future loaves.

Bread baking aside, Amy & I spent the majority of the day being crafty.  My mandolin strap, the picture below, is finally coming along smoothly, not quite the way I envisioned, but good enough.  Hopefully I’ll have it done in another couple of weeks and I can try it out for use.  Amy put in a gigantic effort on the baby blanket for our friend’s child, due in a month.  I talked her into letting me put a picture of it in the blog finally.  Even three-quarters done, pictured above, I think it is beautiful, and cannot wait to see the finished product. 

We did have a few visitors despite the fog which continued closing in as the day progressed.  Dad came out and towed the errant mooring, not back to its original position, but at least into a useable spot.  He and I tried to find another mooring to hook up with the grapple hook, but succeeded only in finding seaweed.  He left to go do some fishing before the weather got nasty, and I assisted Amy in giving tours to a the few folks who had ventured out with Ethan.

Beginnings of my instrument strap

 The day concluded with a new experience for Amy, eating fried Spam.  On Saturday Brian & Lynn Spivey visited again, thoughtfully bringing us new Legacy Food, including a matching can of the rusty peas, and a can of Spam.  I was content to leave them on the shelf until Amy mentioned she had never partaken.  Almost immediately, as we were already having breakfast for supper, the can was open, the contents sliced up, and I was serving up greasy & salty hunks of fried pork.  Amy’s opinion of Spam, well, let me put it this way, Darcy & I ate our fill.  After the experiment in pressed meat products, we concluded the evening play Scrabble, listening to rain drum on the roof, and the usual noise of the foghorn. 

05 Jul 2011 Pup, But Not Ours

I’m sure most of you, being observant folk, will notice I skipped the entry for Independence Day.  This is because despite my college education, large vocabulary, an ready access to both a thesaurus and dictionary, I can only come up with so many ways to describe a day so foggy, that standing at one building on Seguin, you cannot discern another.  We had no fireworks, no sun, five visitors who came in a group and stayed only ten minutes; we celebrated by clearing the South Trail and eating vegetarian chili for dinner.  Oh yes, and Darcy & I went swimming.

Today was far better all round.  We woke up to clear visibility, a light breeze, and bright sun.  Amy & I ate breakfast, worked on a painting project, then hit the two trails on the bottom of the island with pruning sheers to make them more passable.  Thanks to the birds hatching and clearing out, we now have three of the four trails fully cleared for use.  I intend to do the North Trail before this weekend, weather permitting, and if the eggs have hatched.  

After finishing up the trail maintenance, we went to the Boathouse, Amy to knit, and I to put Turk’s Heads knots onto some of the spars for my boat.  It was slack low water, and as I set up to begin work my eye was roving the beach, looking for anything interesting.  At first I didn’t notice anything odd, then I focused on what I thought initially was a dead seal; my worst fear out here is Darcy will get into a dead seal.  I was just going to tell Amy to grab the mutt, when the dead seal on the beach started flopping around.  Nope, not dead, and now I really needed to grab the puppy. 

After I had secured our pooch to a post, using a French Bowline effectively for the first time in my life, I scrambled down to the beach to check out our new furry little friend.  He didn’t appear to be injured or sick, I think he (or she) was just tired and lost.  I took some pictures (clearly) moved a log out of the way that was blocking its return path to the water, and left it alone.  He came and went a few more times throughout the day.  I hope the little dude survives.  Also, if anyone is wondering, yes the authorities have been contacted about the seal, they want us to wait and see how it does.

Darcy being unimpressed with my knot skills

 Aside from the blubbered & flippered variety of visitors, we had plenty of other guests as well.  USCG Helo 6004 stopped in for a visit again, of the same nature as the last one.  I’m enjoying our new status as a pit stop, all we need now is bag lunches & a tank of jet fuel, and we can be a full service station.  Ethan brought out a boatload of folks, including Amy’s mother, grandmother, great-uncle, and little sister.  We had a good time showing them our island life, and soon enough Ethan was back to pick everyone up.  I sent Amy in with her family to get a bit of a better visit with them, leaving Darcy & I to hold down the fort tonight.

Dinner of leftovers, a nip of rum, and Dracy & I are passing out on the couch like the couple of wild bachelors we are.  The night is ending cool & clear, with a gentle SW’ly breeze, and the temperature still pleasant in the 60F’s, but dropping.  The dog & I are both looking forward to a day ashore in the morning.