Life in Boatland

The red bucket has many purposes.  Jake nov 6-2016  The day started out nicely.  We got underway, weather was pleasant, seas were pleasant.....right up until they weren’t pleasant at all.  I headed for the couch with my Relief Band, my stomach calmed down, phew.  I had a zoom doc appt scheduled and David got the iPad all set up for me.  I sat up to do the call, lasted about 4-5 minutes, I ended the call and laid back down....quickly. But it was too late, David got “the red bucket” out  for me.  Leslie and Grant know exactly which bucket that is.  It was ugly.  We pulled into the marina, David had to dock the boat alone and it wasn’t an easy place to dock. This was about 12:30, it’s now 5:30 and I am just coming back to the land of the living.  I’ve had some pretty funny names for our resident nightmare, Pixie and Dixie,  Ben and I added Ratatouille. A few other random thoughts, they have free washer and dryer here and they look...

 Still waiting on estimates for the work that needs to be done, still waiting to catch the rat (we’ve decided it has to be a rat). We were awakened at 5:45 am by a big noise, yay we got him! No we didn’t, it sounded like the trap was sprung and he was dragging it around trying to get out of it, but no he was up in the ceiling above our bed doing God knows what.  We are positive there is no food around, just the snickers in the traps and we take the dog water bowl up every night too.  David did find the sump pump (the showers and sinks go into there and are pumped overboard) had overflowed and water was in the compartments below the floors so it could have had shampoo water to drink.  It’s been over 2weeks I think that we have been chasing it, grrrr.  We left the dock and are anchored right off the marina, close enough to poach their internet 😬.  Tomorrow we go out into Chesapeake Bay and to the Eastern Shore.  This weekend we will be in Onancock, VA a...

 Thank goodness it cooled off today.  It’s 66 right now, perfect in my world, sweatshirt weather to most. David decided to change the oil in the generator, it took him 45 mins and he was happy to have that behind him.  Then he decided to rewire the electric cord that we plug into the dock, he’s been wanting to do that for 2 months.  I got out my sewing machine and finished the bed comforter.  We got to talking to our neighbor in the slip next to us, we both had reservations to go to the little restaurant by the marina office.  As of 3:30 they were open but then closed because they didn’t have enough staff to open for dinner.  There went our dinner plans. Our neighbors invited us to go into town to a restaurant that oysters were the specialty.  Neither David nor I am into raw oysters, so we passed on the oysters. The lift to launch a boat after completing it’s repairs.  Next are drapes and fabric boxes to hide all the junk. We got our crab pic...

 The mouse is kicking our butt. We are running out of places to look for it.  This is the 2nd stateroom, I guess he likes Fritos and gluten free pretzels.  Now I have so much laundry to get the mouse cooties off of everything, but I’m thinking of waiting till we catch it before going to too much trouble. Hot enough to come back to the dock to run the A/C. Mouse hunting in the ceiling panels. Mouse stash, grrrr,

 The internet was worse than dial up speed and I got tired of waiting for everything to load.  Here are the rest of the pics from yesterday.  We did clean the port side of the boat first thing this morning, it looks so much better now.  Since it’s 88 and 35% humidity, David took the dinghy into the marina to see if we could dock tonight. We would like to run the a/c but don’t want to listen to the generator running in order to power the a/c.  We’ll see if the dockmaster has room for us.  Other than that, it’s a lazy Sunday afternoon, time to nap while while listening to bad TV. Goose family, I think 6 or 7 babies. Black muck on the anchor when we pulled it up.  This is the beach muck too. Before and after cleaning the ICW stain off the bow. Wiping on the HCL. Can’t delete this duplicate, oops. Ellie’s swimming lessons and pulling the boat off the sandbar.

 Mouse chasing began at 6:30 am this morning, no trapping today.  The mouse was so bold last night, he was everywhere except (I hope) our stateroom.  There were so many big! poops that I had to vacuum first thing.  We are just not having any luck, next we’re trying Anne’s suggestion of Snickers.  Since we have no access to a car, we don’t get to go shopping very often, but Snickers is at the top of the list.  Remember the sailboat that took our perfect anchoring spot yesterday? Well, he left this morning and we quickly pulled up the anchor to move the boat. We “practiced” (meaning we didn’t pick the right place to start the process, ha) our anchoring 3-4 times before we were satisfied.  The weather was pretty nice so we launched the dinghy to take Ellie to the beach for a swimming lesson.  But before we could play we thought we might tackle the ICW “mustache” that now covered the bow and sides of the boat.  The water in the ICW looks like str...

Where did this day go? We woke up to no snapping noises! Every mouse trap was as we left it last night, except for one.  The trap under the table, left untouched, had a giant mouse turd by it.  Grrrrrr.  I was digging in my sewing basket for something and when I grabbed the pins, a mouse turd came flying out with it, grrrrr.  He is taunting us!  The workmen came down to the boat this morning to install the 8 new motor mount bolts, glad we discovered that as it could have had an unhappy ending.  When they were done working, we started the big rumbler and set off to anchor in front of the marina.  After doing the Family Circus method of picking the best anchoring area, we found the perfect spot.  We dropped the anchor, used the Captain Bernie method for “you ain’t going anywhere “.   But we did, the anchor wouldn’t set and we kept drifting backwards.  We pulled the anchor up and found the anchor, I don’t know...that twisty thing was all va...