Cruising with a Dog
Living Aboard a Boat
Sum It Up Sunday
Sum It Up Sunday: Only It’s Monday
Monday, February 24, 2014TheCambrians
For what are considered late winter months where
the average temperature is supposed to hover around 50°F, it’s been cold, wet
and miserable most of February. For the
better part of the week, foul-weather gear has been hanging in every available
space in a vain attempt to dry out. The
ports have been dripping wet with condensation, along with our wardrobe
lockers. The heater’s been running 24/7. In other words, it’s been pretty grim. And while we sit here and watch the deck and
our cockpit canvas turn green, there’s not a whole lot we can do about it right
now. But it’s been a slightly different
story down below.
On Monday we made a trip up to Port Townsend to
Edensaw Woods to buy the white oak David needs to trim out the headliner; and
he’s been busy drawing detailed plans for the project, including the exact
locations for screw holes. As luck would
have it, the marina has an extensive shop where he can round the edges of the
wood to match what we already have onboard.
Hopefully he’ll be able to do that some time this coming week and we can
start work on board.
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| Two of the three new house batteries. |
Our new house batteries arrived and we picked them
up from Poulsbo Friday morning. It
probably doesn’t come as a surprise that we’ve been dreading changing them out;
but it turned out to be easier than we thought it would thanks in part to the
guys at the marina who kindly brought them from our truck down to the cockpit
of the boat . . . and took the old ones back after they were changed out. Talk about service!
The biggest surprise came when we saw what exactly
we’ve been using for the past 15 years (yes, you read that correctly) – 200 amp
Mastervolt gels. Based on what we could
see from the cases and how well they performed, David was sure they were Sonnenschein
Industrials. So now we’re even more
impressed with how long they lasted and hope to get at least seven years out of
our new Dynos, which are locally made.
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| Two of the three old batteries. |
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| Hauling the old batteries out with the help of the winch. |
Yesterday turned out to be one of those days (hence
the late blog entry). Sally had been
improving lately but suffered a few setbacks this week – one of which happened
around 5
o’clock yesterday
morning. She had an accident on the
floor, which was fine, until I stepped in it and left trails of feces
throughout the boat. Half asleep, I picked
up what I could with a paper towel and then did the stupidest thing with it . .
. put it in the head which immediately clogged it. Not just any head, mind you. No. It
had to be the one (and only) hooked up to the holding tank.
Accidents happen, so that’s no big deal. But Sally spent the next several hours pacing
back and forth and in a level of stress we haven’t seen her in for weeks, which
is. I don’t want this for her, but I
have absolutely no choice in the matter . . . and that pisses me off. I miss her.
We miss her. And the minute we
think she’s coming back to us, god laughs.
It’s hard to handle and yesterday left me feeling defeated again for the
first time in weeks.
But that’s what husbands are for, right?
They pick up the slack whenever you can quite carry
the load. David took Sally for a very
long drive in this completely miserable weather so I could clean the boat,
launder the carpets and clear my head without stepping on Sally or shooing her
out of the way every five minutes. By
the time they got back, the boat was fresh and clean, the paper towel had
dissolved, and I cried a sufficient amount of tears that I felt a little
better.
So what changed?
We decided to try a different supplement and took
her off the Senilife in favour of Canna-Pet on Tuesday, which clearly isn’t
working. I was convinced it would be the
answer to all of our problems; but it’s not so I ordered more Senilife and
hopefully we’ll be back on try by the end of this week. Hopefully . . . .
