Wednesday, September 30, 2015

September 15-20, 2015 USCG captain's license test, Savannah, GA


Tuesday
Dave checked out our genoa sail that has been to Mack Sails twice.  We asked them to move the spreader patch lower on the sail.  The spreader patch protects the sail where it may rub against the spreader arms for the side stays that support the mast.  The patch was completely above our spreader arms.  So Dave called Mack Sails to see what they had to say about it.  The man in charge said that instead of lowering it, he just made it larger.  Well the top of the patch needs to start at the bottom of the existing patch.  They said we could send it back, but Dave didn’t feel good about sending back the sail a second time.  Plus it keeps us from going anywhere for another 2-3 weeks.  So he just asked him what we could do ourselves at this point.  He recommended a UV protected dacron that can be sewn on.   So Dave thinks he will just sew it on by hand.  He thinks he would just unfurl the sail and sit on the deck to sew it.  So I guess it can be done anywhere.  He’ll order the material now so it can be shipped here.  When you are on the move, you don’t have a shipping address.  So that’s another reason to stay in one place and get projects done. 

We also asked about the patch going to the end of the protective covering.  When the genoa is rolled up on the roller furler, only the protective sun protection cover is exposed.  Ours has the white spreader patch showing.  Their explanation was that the spreader patch will wear out faster than the covering.  So it can be replaced without involving the cover.  It makes sense, but we have never seen it that way on any other boat.  Just makes you curious. 
The green is the "sacrificial" covering. Only a small portion is exposed to the sun on the main sail, but the full edge of the jib sail is covered for protection from the sun.


 The white section was supposed to line up with the spreader arm to protect it from chafing.  But we've never seen it brought all the way to the edge where it shows when it is rolled up.

Wednesday
Our heat exchanger was finished, so another boater gave Dave a ride to the radiator shop to pick it up.  He spent the day cleaning the engine and putting everything back together.  It was great to hear the engine running when I returned to the boat!!

I played cribbage with some friends in the afternoon.   Then I made a popcorn salad for the 3rd Wednesday pot luck happy hour.  It is similar to a pasta salad, but uses popcorn.  Something different for a pot luck.

Thursday
Dave spent the day studying at the local library for his Captain’s license test on Saturday.  I did yoga and laundry.  Then I made a scalloped corn casserole for another pot luck.  This was dock 8’s “pitch in” that was a going away party for a couple boats on their dock.  
Sherri/dock master, Paul and Debra/sailing away party
Friday
Dave spent the day studying in the boat and in the yacht club.  There were several ladies in the yacht club working on recovering some cushions for one of the ladies.  Dave was working on a navigation test in the yacht club because he could lay out the chart on a large table.  A few of the ladies came over to ask him what he was doing.  He explained that he was taking a test as review for his captain’s license test tomorrow.  So they said they wouldn’t bother him.  Then a couple times, one came over to ask him to look up something on the internet.  The second time, Ricardo gently guided her away from Dave. 
Sailors working on recovering cushions.  They have the thread hanging from the ceiling to keep it from curling.
We drove to Savannah about 5:00 and went to our friend Amy’s house for the night.  We brought Ricardo with us.  She had cooked a wonderful Chinese meal for us.  Dave spent the rest of the night reviewing for his test while we watched a movie.  I love sitting on a big recliner/couch since we don’t have that on the boat.


prep for Chinese dinner

I thought the teeth were interesting. 
sauteed with onion and garlic and sauce

Saturday
Dave left early for his test and we had a lazy morning at Amy’s.  Dave finished around 10:30 and PASSED!!  He came back to Amy’s and the 4 of us drove into the old part of Savannah to enjoy the rest of the day.  We walked around Forsyth Park, then enjoyed coffee at a local coffee shop.  Amy’s 17 year old daughter, Sabrina, joined us.  We wanted to go out to eat.  I suggested the City Market area and Sabrina recommended her favorite pizza place.   So we enjoyed pizza outside with a couple pitchers of beer and people watched.  After eating, we walked through the city market area and over to the River front. 

On the way back to Amy’s, I asked Dave if he wanted to pick up more beer to celebrate passing his test.  Everyone was actually tired, so we decided not to.  But first, Amy commented “didn’t you have enough beer this afternoon?”  Dave said “you’ve never been beer drinking with Mary and her sisters, have you?”
congratulations Dave!!

Dave, Mary, Amy, Ricardo celebrating

Dave playing in the fountain
Sunday
I went to church at St John the Baptist cathedral again.  It is a beautiful church.  I went to the 10:00 mass and they had a beautiful choir of about 40 people.  They had a concert the night before and sang some of the pieces from the concert. 

Dave and I headed back to Brunswick that afternoon.  Ricardo decided to come back with Amy later.  Since we had a rental car, we drove through the town of Darien on the way home.  We were told there was a good restaurant on the river.  We found Skipper’s Fish Camp and had some oysters and beer (reminds me of a Jimmy Buffett song, Tin Cup Chalice.  “give me oysters and beer any day of the year, and I’ll be fine”.

When we got out of the car at the marina, a bunch of sailors on dock 8 stood up and clapped for Dave.  I had texted one of them, so they knew he had passed.


Skipper's Fish Camp in Darien, GA.  Their dozen is 15!


Wednesday, September 16, 2015

September 12-15, 2015 shrimp and crab feast, Brunswick, GA

Saturday
Rainy day spent on small projects.  At 4:00, I went to the club house to watch the Alabama foot ball game. Roll Tide!!
another amazing sunset

About 6:00, Randy and Deb Louchart came to pick us up for a mini vacation.  They live in Atlanta, but are from SD.  We met through mutual friends in 1980 or 81 in Brookings, SD.  They rented a VRBO-vacation rentals by owners-about 10 miles inland, but on a small waterway.  We had pulled pork and a tabbouleh salad that I made for dinner at the beautiful 5 bedroom home. 

Sunday
Great frittata made by Dave for breakfast.  And relaxing morning on the porch. 
view from the house
5 bedroom house
great front porch

chef Dave
We went for a drive today looking for fresh shrimp.  The usual places were closed on Sundays.  So we drove to Jekyll Island, drove around, and ended up at the Rah Bar for an afternoon snack of seafood nachos.  While we were there, a shrimper brought in a basket of fresh shrimp for the restaurant.   So we followed him outside and asked if he had more to sell.  He  said he had a bout 100 lbs at $2.50/lb.  We only wanted about 10 lbs, so we compromised at 50 lbs.  He said he actually gave us about 60 lbs.  We were tickled.  Can’t get them any fresher than that.
on Jekyll Island on the Intra coastal waterway

shrimp in coolers right off the boat-Jekyll Island
Deb with 60 lbs of shrimp

So we  put them on ice and headed back to the rental.  We hauled them up the 12 stairs to the kitchen in pots and put them in the kitchen sink.  Then we started cleaning enough for dinner and ceviche.  We removed the heads of the others and put them in bags to freeze.  We found several squid and a few little fish in with the shrimp. 
all transferred from cooler to sink
assembly line
bonus with the shrimp-butter knife for dimension

Randy breaded and cooked “bang bang shrimp” for us for dinner.  He made a special “bang bang sauce” to go with them. 
chef Louchart making 'bang bang shrimp"

After dinner, Deb and I started a jigsaw puzzle in the living room.  Dave and Randy sat telling stories in the kitchen.  She and I would just shake our heads and sympathize with each other.  Those two just feed off of each other with nonsense. 

Monday
We started the day with mimosas on the deck.  Today, I made the frittata and Deb flipped pancakes.  We also put together the ceviche with what we had at the cabin-shrimp, onion, green pepper, jalapeƱo pepper, lemons and limes.
mimosas
mimosas

While we were cooking, Dave took a crab trap out on the dock and put it in the water.  He used shrimp heads as bait. 

I enjoyed a brisk swim in the swimming pool.  Deb and Randy enjoyed lounging by the pool while Dave took a nap.
refreshing

The tide was going out, so Deb checked the crab trap and we had 12 crabs!!!!  Two females were taken back to the water.  We transferred them to a cooler and watched them fight with each other or act like a chain of monkeys when you tried to lift them out of the water.  Randy would fetch one crab.  Then Dave or Deb used an ice pick to pith the crabs.  Then Dave broke open the shell and broke them into two halves.  Deb used the garden hose to rinse all the parts (good farm girl).  And I was the “historian”.  Somebody had to document the moment. 



days catch
more fun than a barrel of monkeys
group effort
trying not to get pinched as he checks the gender
pith-ing with an ice pick
beautiful blue crab ready to cook

We decided to have a seafood buffet instead of going out for dinner.  First we ate the boiled crab, then the ceviche and left over shrimp from last night.  We had a couple salads to round things out and had a fine meal.  

Spent the evening with a mix of cards, jigsaw puzzle and TV.  Very relaxing!

Tuesday
Happy Birthday Randy!
Randy planned this weekend to celebrate his 60th birthday.  They had the week off to go to a wedding in SD.  They will return to Atlanta today and fly to SD tomorrow. 
Thank you so much for inviting us to join you in your birthday celebration!

Randy and Deb Louchart, Mary and Dave Roth

September 8-11, 2015 radiator and day sail Georgia

Tuesday
I made the mistake of asking Dave if there was anything I could help with today.  I ended up scrubbing our dinghy cover, 2 ThermaRest pads and my yoga mat.  They had a combination of stains and stink. 
yes, sometimes I actually work

Dave went to a radiator shop today to talk to them about fixing our heat exchanger on the Yanmar engine. In the heat exchanger, the raw water comes in cool and goes out hot.  There is another loop with antifreeze which circulates through the engine and will heat the water for our hot water tank when the engine is running.  Also the exhaust from the engine mixes with the raw water and is exhausted overboard.  We have had a leak on the neck where you fill the antifreeze.  Dave had tried a few things to repair it himself that haven’t worked.  He talked to an engine mechanic in Savannah that was going to replace a part for us.  But we found out Yanmar doesn’t sell the neck anymore.  They want to sell you the whole heat exchanger (cooling assembly) for $2000.  So Dave removed it and took it to a radiator shop so they can repair the leak with silver solder.  There was a lot of grunting and swear words coming out of the aft cabin where there is access to the side of the engine.  We could see into the cylinder exhaust holes .  The #2 cylinder was full of gunk-carbon build up, from not burning out, since it wasn’t firing.  Dave will clean that before replacing the heat exchanger.  Dave took off for the radiator shop on a bicycle with the metal heat exchanger in a back pack in the rain with lightning and thunder.  He wanted to get there before they closed today.  He stopped in the marina office and our sail was here!!!!  He also had several small packages from his Amazon shopping day last week.  So he was “delivery boy” today. 
checking out the dirty #2 cylander

Wednesday
A few women decided to plan to play cards on Wednesday afternoons.  So we had fun playing cribbage.
Dave put on our genoa sail today with the help of a couple guys while I was at happy hour :)
huge dead horseshoe crab found at the dock
interesting under side

Thursday
I made pulled pork using our Wonderbag.  We made it for this weekend, but had a great meal fresh from the pot.  It went into the bag about 1:00 and it was still hot at 6:00 and really tender.  Love that bag!

Friday
We went for a sail with Ricardo and Amy on Ricardo’s boat.  It was fun to sail on someone else’s boat.  It is a 383 Beneteau, so it is similar to ours, but 38 feet instead of 43.  We went out the St Simon’s inlet onto the ocean.  It was great experience for Amy and she loved it. 

Amy as we are leaving the marina

Ricardo and Amy

Dave just loves being out on the water

new Facebook profile picture

we shared the channel with a cargo ship as we came in

lessons in sailing

I think she likes it

Ricardo can now enjoy the sail

September 7, 2015 marina Labor Day party

The marina always throws a party for us on holidays.  Today they had a low country boil and live music.  We were introduced to low country boils in Alabama.  They had two big pots of boiled potatoes, corn on the cob, sausage and shrimp.  The seasoning is what makes them different.  This had a nice spice to it.  Everyone brought salads and desserts.

Canadian Randy helped cook

low country boil
transferring the kettle to the table in a dock cart
that's why they call it a "spread"

Yesterday, Amy had bought a watermelon to bring.  So last night as we were playing Mahjong with two other boaters, we came up with the idea of “spiking” the watermelon.  Another boater had coconut rum, so we used 2 cups of it to put into the watermelon last night on our boat.  Today, Amy cut the watermelon into a pretty basket.  It tasted good with the coconut flavor, but not too strong of an alcohol taste. 
spiking the watermelon with coconut rum in the gin bottle
Amy's artistic work.  we left the hole so people would know it was spiked

The marina provided a keg of beer, a champagne punch, wine, Redbull and Jagermeister, and Kahlua.  They like to throw a party here.  And since no one has to drive home or work the next day, the boaters like to party.  Boy were we glad we paced ourselves.  Actually the keg was empty when I went to get my second glass.  Whew!  That was just fine with me.  I put some ice in my glass and poured some kailua over the ice.  Someone asked “are you mixing that with anything?”  I said “well there was beer in this glass before I put ice in it.”  We enjoyed the band and actually danced a bit.  Dave said he saw a few people stumbling back to their boats. 

3 piece band on the dock

working hard to get the last of the keg-had to hold it down in the floating ice to pump the last drop

view of the party on dock 8 from our dock 9