Aboard No Boundaries
June 22, 2009
When we decided that we wanted to have a website for keeping in touch with family and friends, we had little real experience to understand what it meant to have a website. We are learning.
Our best friend in website development is Adobe Dreamweaver. Several years ago I received a copy of Macromedia Dreamweaver which I dearly loved, and it was the tool with which we crafted our website initially. However, web design, like all other technical realms, changes over time, and we found ourselves needing an upgrade. Recently we purchased the Adobe CS4 suite, which includes an upgraded version of Dreamweaver as well as Photoshop and many other wonderful Adobe tools.
Dreamweaver is a wonderful product, but it is so versatile that the learning curve is quite steep. The big change from the older version of Dreamweaver was to move from building pages with frames to building pages with CSS – stylesheets. I had a hard time at first, because frames gave me a more visual reference during the design phase. However, the more I learn about CSS, the more I like it.
What this means for you is that our website will always be in a transitional state. Every time I learn a new trick, I can’t wait to try it out. For the latest website update, I reworked all the new slideshows. I was motivated to do that by the ugly appearance of the slideshows produced by Dreamweaver’s command that builds them automatically. I loved the fact that I could create a collection of photos, then issue the command and have a slideshow in less than five minutes. I hated the way the show looked – the font, the color of the text, the listing of file names and so forth.
Until the past week, I had not taken the time to pull the slideshow apart to figure out how it worked. After I did that, I realized that with a template and a stylesheet I could repair/rework that ugly slideshow and make it better. I’m still a novice at templates and stylesheets, so my first projects are still fairly crude, but they will get better. I hope you will like the new and improved versions. As always, I am open to suggestions for improvement or requests for any specific information or presentation.
We really do want to share our adventure with you. We hope you enjoy the trip. Keep talking and let us know what we can do better.
Aboard No Boundaries
June 10, 09
Planning is one of my best things. I have been a planner for as long as I can remember. I make lists, put notes on calendars, estimate time to goal, and measure my progress. Even though I am retired and cruising, I can’t help myself. Before I start my day, I always go over my lists – little tasks that need doing, projects I want to work on, meal plans. I am constantly revising and editing my plans to accommodate our cruise plans. Some people think I just can’t let go of being a consultant, but the real explanation is that much of my success as a consultant was the result of this quirk of my personality.
Planning is a good life skill, I think. Because I plan, I accomplish some things that would be ignored or forgotten otherwise. Maybe those things don’t matter to other people, but they matter to me. It makes me very happy to cross something off today’s list. It makes me happy to see that I am more than half done with a project. It is exciting to think during the day about my meal plans and how I can make the meals more flavorful or colorful or whatever.
However, as good and valuable as planning is, sometimes flexibility is the better skill. Every once in a while, reality throws a party that simply blows away all the prior planning in the world. When reality slaps you in the face, whining, “but I had a plan” will not help.
Last night, reality slapped us in the face with a summer thunderstorm. We cruised from the Tidewater Marine Service Center in Port Covington about 11AM bound for Lankford Creek on the Eastern Shore. We had heard that there might be some thunderstorms late in the day, but none of the weather reports we heard referenced that area.
Just as we were circling the eastern branch of the creek, around 5PM, looking for a place to anchor, we heard a weather alarm that alarmed us. The Weather Service was reporting an imminent storm in the tidal Potomac with torrential downpours, potential for winds at 60 mph, and even hail. It was traveling up a track from the southeast. Such a track was like an arrow pointing right at us. We had to plan for the extreme likelihood that this storm would soon engulf us.
We already knew that the East Fork is a poor place to be in a big blow. On a memorable evening several years ago, we spent hours circling in the East Fork trying to find a place where the anchor would hold. In the middle of the night we gave up and picked our way through the narrow channel to the West Fork, where we also never found good holding. To hear that such winds might be in our near future in this location was extremely disconcerting.
We had the advantage this time of making our trip to the West Fork, on the other side of Cacaway Island, in daylight. Yet, as we rounded the tip of the island, hoping to find a little shelter there, we could see the clouds building up east and southeast of us. They became huge. There were the soft bulbous undersides that spawn tornadoes. Some of the formations we could see showed us tumultuous downdrafts and chaotic activity. We began to see lightning.
We made a circle around the available space for anchoring. Another sailboat was already anchored almost in the middle of the channel behind the island, leaving us plenty of room to anchor closer in. We set the anchor as the rain began to fall, and then the storm exploded. Our anchor was set as well as we could manage in the location, but it could not hold against the fury that had us in its power. The storm commenced about 6PM.
On the previous occasion when we were beset by a storm in the East Fork, the wind blew furiously from one direction for hours. It was easy to see when the anchor dragged as the bow turned away from the wind and the beam of the boat became like a sail that the wind used to push us where it would. It was, therefore, easy to figure out where we needed to find shelter in order to get some relief from the wind. Knowing what we needed did not, however, automatically produce what we needed. It was a memorable 36 hours.
This new storm, on the other hand, blew in all directions. It whirled around us, and it whirled us around. Ferocious gusts heeled us over as if we were sailing in a high wind, even though we did not have any sail deployed. It was an amazing sight to see the waves change direction so rapidly that we might have been in a huge mixing bowl. At one point, we realized that we were being dragged very close to the other boat in the cove, so Larry drove into the wind and avoided a collision. Some time after 7PM the wind fell below 10 knots and the rain subsided.
We had kept the engine running and the radio tuned to the weather station throughout. Originally, the storm was projected to end about 7:30, so we thought we might be able to reset the anchor and relax, but it was not to be. First, the weather announcers changed the projection of the storm to run through 9PM, and second, we soon discovered for ourselves that the lull was only temporary. We did reset the anchor, but that work was hardly done before the wind slammed into us again.
Again we were dragged this way and that. At one point we could see that we were being pushed very close to the island, where we would be in danger of grounding. At another point, we were pushed away from the island, whirled and tilted and shaken thoroughly. Whenever possible, Larry steered the boat where he thought we would be safest, but things changed so rapidly that it was almost impossible to guess where to point the boat or to put the pressure. We briefly grounded near the island, but the bottom is silt, the real reason it is so hard to get the anchor to hold, and another gust shook us loose. Finally the wind died down, the rain stopped, and we began to see small openings between clouds. The sun was setting in a fierce red glow, turning the storm clouds into innocent-looking little cherubs.
After 9PM, the rest of the evening was predicted to be relatively calm. Winds were not projected to exceed 15 knots. We observed that the wind fluctuated between 5 and 15 knots, but we were no longer dragging. We had survived the assault and were little the worse for wear, except for complete exhaustion.
Of course, like always, I had a meal planned for this evening. I had thought we could dine on deck and watch the sun set. Needless to say, reality swept away that plan completely. Somewhere around 8PM when things were beginning to calm a bit, I thought I might make something to eat. We finally settled for some chicken salad and cottage cheese in the cockpit still watching the radar to see if more storms were coming our way, still watching in every direction, trying to be sure that the boat was still at anchor, not dragging again. All the planning in the world was irrelevant right then. The only plan that mattered was to continue to pay attention and be ready to do what it took to save the boat and ourselves.
I like being a planner. It gives my life order and direction. I am not happy without a plan. Cruising, however, teaches me that planning is only good when predictable conditions continue. When the unpredictable, the unexpected, the unwanted, overpowers your plans, it is time to flex. It is time to use God’s precious gifts of intelligence, courage and faith to get through the storm.
Ship’s Log
No Boundaries
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Some people will think this post is boring. Pass it by and move on if you like. However, this post is for everyone who ever asked me, “How do you eat?” It happens just as soon as they realize we live on a boat. A person whose only image of a boat is a runabout or a bass boat might well ask that question. This post is a listing of our meals for a week. If you think we are camping out or living on canned tuna, this entry should be reassuring.
To list what we eat for a week may be more information than some people want. I well remember an ancient radio program on which one announcer read the hospital menus for her ten-day hospital stay after emergency surgery during a trip to Phoenix. Most people don’t love their hospital meals very much, but this lady loved hers. She loved them so much that she told us all the possible choices for each day before she told us what she actually chose. Bless her for making over the food service staff in a hospital. They probably still wish she would come back and be a patient again.
I won’t bore you with all our choices. I think a week of menus should suffice to reassure anyone who fears we won’t be well fed, and a few curious cooks will enjoy a look into our galley. These are the meals for our first week afloat, out of Baltimore, out of town. There is no running to the grocery store for some forgotten item; it must all be aboard, or it doesn’t happen.
Saturday
Breakfast
Hotcakes with fresh sliced strawberries for the topping
Bacon
Lunch
Cheese sandwich with tomato slices
Dill pickle spears
Fresh Rainier cherries
Dinner
Baked chicken selected pieces
Steamed broccoli
Fried potatoes with onions
Hot slaw (you can find this recipe on the website www.lkharms.com )
Sunday
Breakfast
Hotcakes with maple syrup
Bacon
Lunch
Salmon salad
Apple quarters
Ritz crackers
Dinner
Italian Sausage
Braised Fennel
Penne with red sauce
Sliced tomato with Italian dressing and sprinkled with toasted pine nuts
Monday
Breakfast
Special K Red Berries with milk
Lunch
Salmon salad sandwiches
Radishes
Dinner
Marinated Sirloin on iron griddle (too windy for grilling)
Oven-fried Russet potato
Jamaican Kale
Slaw
Friendship cherries
Tuesday
Breakfast
Oatmeal with apricots and almonds
Lunch
Leftover chicken legs, potatoes and hot slaw
Pasta salad made with leftover pasta
Peach Crisp
Dinner
Pork Tenderloin slices with Cajun seasoning
Rice
Cajun Zucchini (onion, tomato, spice)
Slaw
Peach Crisp
Wednesday
Breakfast
Special K Red Berries with milk
Bananas
Lunch
Sandwiches made of leftover sirloin from Monday
Dill Pickle spears
Dinner
Caribbean Lemon Chicken
Eggplant browned on griddle
Steamed broccoli/cauliflower/carrot mixture
Salad with golden raisins and honey-mustard dressing
Thursday
Breakfast
Bran muffins
Banana
Lunch
Sandwiches with leftover pork tenderloin
Leftover slaw
Leftover green beans
Dinner
Split Pea Soup with chunky ham and carrots
Apple Salad
Corn Bread
Friday
Breakfast
Boiled eggs
Toasted Corn Bread Splits
Lunch
Leftover Split Pea Soup
Leftover Corn Bread
Leftover apple salad
Dinner
Homemade Pizza
Salad with Italian dressing
So this is a week of food afloat. I hope folks feel better about us now. We eat a fairly civilized diet, and we enjoy interesting flavor. Can’t wait to get to the islands and learn some new tricks.
Ship’s Log
No Boundaries
June 1, 2009
We almost have Baltimore washed off our boat. It isn’t easy. Baltimore has been a wonderful home for almost eight years, but it has its drawbacks. For as long as we lived there, we battled with the black guck that falls out of the sky. Most people blame the unsightly muck on Domino Sugar. No matter where it comes from, it leaves a mess on the surface of a boat that is very hard to remove. Last year I learned that magic erasers do the trick, but it takes a couple of dozen of them to finish the job. We bought them through eBay, a hundred at a time, because the volume required would otherwise break the bank even at Wal-mart prices.
We enjoyed worship on the aft deck yesterday. When we are anchored out like this, we don’t have any easy way to get to church. Instead, we improvise an altar on the aft deck and take turns speaking and reading and praying. For now, we don’t have our sound system like we want it, but later we will be able to play our CD of Dr. Davis on the organ for a prelude while we get ready for “church.”
We are learning to live life on 30 amps. That is a major concern when cruising. Many items run on DC, which uses battery power. However, anything that runs on AC requires the inverter, and the inverter must use a little power for itself when converting DC to AC. Therefore, we are extremely attentive to the use of AC. It takes a bit of strategizing to reduce the impact of using AC, and it takes more to solve some interesting problems.
For starters, our water heater and our coffeemaker require AC. We have finally learned that it isn’t a good idea to start both of them the minute the generator goes on. The inverter overheats when it is hit with that demand from both at once. So, we start the generator, start the coffee (we do have our priorities!) and after a bit, we start the water heater.
We also run to our computers and work like little turks while the generator is on. Larry’s computer has a better battery than mine, but we both benefit by using generator time as computer work time. For me, running Dreamweaver or Photoshop is so resource-intensive that I can run down my battery in an hour or less that way, so web work is definitely generator time. My little Dell mini has a better battery than my big laptop, but it is not the right machine for Dreamweaver or Photoshop. I use it for blogging and other writing tasks in Word. I can move files back and forth between the two machines using my flash drive, so it, too, is part of my 30-amp strategy.
There are other cruising challenges, and we will pass on the strategies as we learn them. If anybody reads this blog and has a good idea we can learn from, please shout it out. We are always ready to learn a new trick.