Life in Boatland

 We are determined to catch this rat, went to the store and bought 24 more sticky traps.  David tore apart the ceiling in the guest stateroom and put a large trap up there. We will have to lock Ellie in our room tonight since there will be freaking traps everywhere. He is getting hungry enough to get into the spices in the galley, oh and he chewed the top of a drawer off.  His teeth must be enormous by looking at the size of the wood chips that were everywhere. We’re trying Slim Jim’s on tonight’s menu.  Had drinks with some boat neighbors, then came home to try crab cakes again.  Another colossal fail.  Since we had too much egg last time, we (meaning me) tried no eggs.  It just turned into “a drowned in butter melted dairy mess”.  It tasted ok but just way too much sour cream, cream cheese, butter, Mayo.  And you know that’s a lot when our Dairy Family says it’s too much. I put the leftovers in the frig but doubt they will get eaten, they’l...

 At 8am this morning, they cancelled the Crab Festival. The weather was pretty bad, 50 degrees, windy and raining.  I was all set for feasting on crab but ended up with chicken on the barbie from some smart fellow that had a tent set up with his smoker and was selling half chickens, burgers and dogs.  All the people from church stopped by to pick up some chicken (those in the know had called in ahead of time for the ribs) for lunch.  We stopped at the Crisfield Museum, it was free, I’m glad it was, ha. We went back to the boat, ate our chicken and took a nap to the sound of the falling rain.  We fixed a shrimp cocktail for dinner and started with our rat preparation. We are Trying to go to bed earlier and give the rat some dark quiet time to entice him out.  I can’t go home to see my kids until we catch the damn thing!  Weather is still bad tomorrow so we are hunkering down another day here in Crisfield, the No Crab Festival town and then heading back ...

 Harrison Kruft was born yesterday!  Mom Ashley was in active labor for 25 hours, Grant said she was a trooper! Stats: born 5-28-21, 11:24am, 5 lb 13oz, 19.5”.  He is already nursing, doesn’t cry much, very alert. So that has been our life for the last 24 hours. We are immensely happy that everyone is doing well, all are healthy (except Ashley did test positive for Covid, no wonder she has been feeling so bad these last 2-3 weeks.  Guessing Grant has it too).  I am very sad to not be in Phoenix to see all of my family.  We are thinking about driving home next week and leaving the boat at the boatyard to have the repairs done.  So back in Boatland, there are a million flies, the weather is cold, rainy and windy.  We got a tour of the town from the only cab driver in town, it was pretty fast, it’s a small town.  Tomorrow we are going to the Crab Festival.  Looking forward to that.  Rat update.....we took the stove out and found a hole...

 We sat in the mud again this morning waiting for the tide to rise so we could leave the marina.  The stern was floating but the bow was buried.  We were trying to beat the winds coming up while we were going across the bay. We finally left Onancock about 11am, the winds were less than predicted but it was still a bumpy ride.  After the fiasco the other day, I just threw in the sponge and took a Dramamine.  There were tons of flies, 40?, that went across the water with us, not sure where they came from but they now live in a new home or didn’t survive the trip.  Our rat traps were waiting for us, yay, David already has them set up,  loaded with coconut and ready to go.  There were no turds this morning, I’m guessing he is still stuck on that sticky trap.  The rat traps may be a moot point.  There is a wind turbine, the giant kind with the 3 blades to generate electricity right here at the edge of the marina.  That’s not a good sign,...

 Man, as soon as we turned the lights out last night, we heard the big noise! Yay!  Got out of bed, ran upstairs.  No rat BUT he had stepped in a sticky trap and dragged it away with him back into his hidey-hole.  We wonder if he is now stuck in some tight spot and can’t move around because of the 3x4” trap stuck to him.  We found no turds anywhere so he seems to be stuck where he is.  He seems to like coconut,  so we put a pile of it in the middle of the floor and surrounded it with sticky traps, maybe this is the beginning of the end!

Storefronts. Old church, isn’t it beautiful! The 50 gal barrel planter.  Thought it was so clever. “Virginia is for lovers” state motto.   We have seen these love signs in so many different places Breakfast cafe. In the golf cart. Movie theatre. super Blood Moon. Pumping out water to work on the pilings. The reflection in the water is the color that the moon was.  Ben is still around and chewing and pooping. We get our rat traps tomorrow, I hope it will put an end to our month long chase.  The marina has golf carts for rent, $10/hr or $40/day.  We thought it might be fun to try one for an hour to see what was in town.  The carts had governors on them so we could only go 15mph, maybe, but don’t worry we had our seat belts on, ha. It only took an hour to drive around, there was a donut place that looked amazing and crowded too, but no gluten free anythings so we just drove by.  There were some cute store fronts. One store had a flower container made from...