Our friend Ann saved us a rental car bill and hauled Kacey and Tim to the airport this morning., Kacey was flying back to St. Louis to return to work, and Tim to Pittsburgh, PA where he will spend six weeks tending to his parents, specifically his mom who just had some surgery and is requiring full-time care. This means six weeks of single-handing for me on Kintala on the mooring field at Dinner Key in Miami. While I will desperately miss The Captain, I suspect that the six weeks will pass very quickly. I have a to-do list a mile long and it began this afternoon with some sail repair for Ann and Bill's sails that got damaged on Bill's recent trip to Bimini.
Doing sail work in Kintala is a challenge due to the limited space in the salon. The gymnastics involve flaking the damaged sail so the work is accessible on the machine without opening the sail completely and ending up with a sail cloud filling the whole salon. In this particular case, there was multiple bits of damage so the sail had to be transported multiple times back to the grass off the dinghy dock for flaking to expose the next repair location. Normally this would not be an issue because I usually have a second pair of hands to help, and some extra muscle, but today I had to haul the sail up and down the 8 companionway steps and on and off the dinghy by myself, all of which took place in 20-25 kts of wind and 2 foot waves in the mooring field. Thankfully we had our daughter's dinghy which, although it's old and hideously ugly, turns out to be a much more stable and pleasant ride and I simply couldn't have done the sails today in our dinghy and in this wind. I'm pretty tired this evening and my muscles are protesting the abuse, so I'll be off to bed soon to be sung to sleep by the howling of the wind in the rigging.
Doing sail work in Kintala is a challenge due to the limited space in the salon. The gymnastics involve flaking the damaged sail so the work is accessible on the machine without opening the sail completely and ending up with a sail cloud filling the whole salon. In this particular case, there was multiple bits of damage so the sail had to be transported multiple times back to the grass off the dinghy dock for flaking to expose the next repair location. Normally this would not be an issue because I usually have a second pair of hands to help, and some extra muscle, but today I had to haul the sail up and down the 8 companionway steps and on and off the dinghy by myself, all of which took place in 20-25 kts of wind and 2 foot waves in the mooring field. Thankfully we had our daughter's dinghy which, although it's old and hideously ugly, turns out to be a much more stable and pleasant ride and I simply couldn't have done the sails today in our dinghy and in this wind. I'm pretty tired this evening and my muscles are protesting the abuse, so I'll be off to bed soon to be sung to sleep by the howling of the wind in the rigging.
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| Our daughter's boat. Photo courtesy of Kacey Cramer |
2 comments:
Wow Deb, I knew you were going to be doing some alone time but 6 weeks didn't really sound like a long time until now. I can't wait to hear how the two boat fare during the trip northward.
Hi Deb, That's some really impressive sewing and sail work. When we repaired Via Bella's jib on your machine, there were two of us moving it around - I would have been lost if I were doing it by myself! Thanks again for your help in Oriental. Wish we were there with you in Fla so we could lend a hand with your daughter's boat. -Nancy
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