Things Never Go As Expected

On Father's Day, Conrad got tools and I got lobster!

6/21/2012:  Our Camden living room is littered with shipments we've received for the boat - a compost toilet (to replace the currently installed, old marine toilet), a gimbaled cook top (because there's no cook top and this kind keeps the pots on it level when the boat isn't, and clamped on so nothing spills), tools (a Father's Day Sale scores an 18 volt drill, circular saw, sawzall, flashlight, battery charger, batteries and a tool bag for $99), marine refrigerator (to go under the steering station seat), marine batteries and battery charger, AC converter, rotary saw, and a marine band radio.  There's a six-gallon hot water heater on order, and three "foot pumps" to help conserve water (if you want water, you have to pump it, not just turn on the spigot).  If it's not here yet, it soon will be....

Rockland Breakwater Lighthouse

 On Saturday, there were lobster boat races in Rockland.  Every harbor has races in the summer between the boats of the lobster fleet moored in its harbor.  I catch a few of the races when I hike out the mile-long Rockland Breakwater across the flat-topped, giant, granite blocks of the breakwater to the historic lighthouse at its end.  It's the first Maine lighthouse I've been inside and I explore the two-story living quarters of the lighthouse keeper, and climb up to the light. 

Rockland Breakwater stretching (from mid-left side of photograph) out into the harbor

Conrad is still struggling with the masts.  The spreader ends were so corroded when the boat was taken out of the water and the masts taken down five years ago, that the ends had to be forcibly removed from the spreader.  (A spreader "spreads" the sail at its top when the top is flat instead of pointed; then you may have a smaller, triangular topsail above that.)  Conrad spends a lot of time researching on our laptop and discovers that the manufacturer of our masts and rigging no longer is in business.  He is able to find out who bought the stock in case we need another spreader, and also finds an entirely different outfit that still makes replacement ends for the spreader we have.  The new ends arrived yesterday and we

Spreader end and bar of soap

hope they will be sufficient, so we don't have to buy a new spreader, which would be even bigger bucks than new ends - $200 for these itty bitty black things, pierced by a U-bolt (a free turning short, U-shaped bolt).

The engine and transmission oil analysis is back.  Good news - no heavy metals in the oil samples, so no rebuilding of the engine or a new engine necessary (whew - that would have likely taken the rest of the summer).  Conrad's current major project is figuring out the best technique to remove the windows without stripping away the thin fiberglass around them.  Our recent Maine rain revealed that some of the windows leak now the boat isn't covered in plastic.  We were hoping to put off replacing windows until the future, but it's obvious that some of them can't wait.  So last week we took a four-hour round trip drive to see samples of marine Plexiglas, and ordered two 4' x 8' smoke gray sheets.  Tuesday we repeated the trip with our trailer to pick up the order, driving through sylvan inland countryside pocketed with small and large lakes, farms and hardwood forests, and crossing over rivers and deep inlets from the sea.

Going to get Plexiglas, we cross the Sheepscot River to Wiscasset, founded in the 1600's, with its classic church steeples.

Once he has some old windows out, Conrad will cut the Plexiglas to fit, and bolt and caulk it to the space where the old windows are.  None of these things are small tasks and our time in Maine is looking like it will be longer than we expected.

The view from our camp site at Lobster Buoy Campground

 We are out of our rental at the end of June but we've found a gorgeous, funky hideaway called the Lobster Buoy Campground to move to.  The aging hippie owner, with a blue bandanna headband tied around her shoulder-length, graying hair, has some summer campers who have been coming for over twenty years to her campground and home at the head of a cove near Owl Harbor.  The 40 camp sites all have views of the cove, and we reserve one starting July 1.  Now that the rain seems to have subsided (well, there were only a few, brief thunder showers this morning), we're hoping for a terrific time there in our tiny tent trailer.