Saturday - Wednesday on Shawnee

Now that's it getting closer to our exit date of Oct. 7 we are beginning to load up the boat.  Here's half the first load at the club dock awaiting the launch.  Food, yellow jerry jugs for extra fuel, sheets, and canvas bags full of clothes (we always bring too many clothes.)

 On the launch our usual trip out to Shawnee in Marblehead Harbor.

View of Marblehead Harbor from one of our walking sites (when we try to get 10,000 steps in for the day.)  You can see Marblehead light way out at the point.  Marblehead Neck is on the right.  A causeway unseen to the right connects the mainland to the neck.

On Saturday we cleaned up the corrosion on the anemometer and I was hoisted back up -- Drew's workout -- again to clean the inside of the anemometer at the top.  The seal on this newer anemometer must have not held as well as the old one so I put a smearing of silicone paste on the outside.

Getting the red and green lines ready - 2 halyards - one is a safety and the bosun's chair on the deck.

 On my way up a view of the cockpit where Drew is winching.  The solar panels are on top of the bimini.

This picture shows the opening where I cleaned the green dots of corrosion with a brush and screw driver, screwed back the anemometer, smeared on paste to better waterproof it, and came back down.  Should have taken a picture of the anemometer but couldn't pull the camera back far enough.  The black circle under the red arrow is the cap that can be screwed on if there is no anemometer.

There was no line left to pull me up any higher.  Here is the pulley and the red rope I was hanging from.  The green safey is pulled to the side on another pulley.

On Sunday we had Drew's brother and wife, Ann, on board for brunch.  Should have taken a picture of the spread we had along with Bruce's homemade candied grapefruit rinds and delicious deviled eggs.

Tuesday morning we awoke to a still, foggy harbor.  Couldn't see land.  Would need a GPS or compass to get to land and back.

Later the fog lifted and we dinghied in at low tide to shore.  Here's Tweety at the town landing dock.  We went in to get groceries.

 Low tide here is pretty big, about 10'

Here you can just see at low tide the dark cement disks or cylinders = mooring weights stored on the beach.  They are attached to the mooring balls and hold boats in place.  Drew explained that cement isn't super dense so a 5,000 lb. cement weight is only 2,500 lbs. in the water.

The reason we came down to the boat was for Drew to install the new GPS that will connect the auto pilot to the Max Sea route without turning on radar.  Opting out on radar all the time will save a lot of battery power.  We don't need radar during the day.  You can see the opening in the Navigation panel where he is doing the installation.  He has 2 days to put it in.  We sailed up without this connection - many sail without this but many call it basic with all the electronics available today.

[Now I am off to get a needed pedicure. and maybe a movie, "Sully" tonight]
Reading:  The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World by Andrea Wulf, the story of an amazing explorer, scientist, naturalist who influenced and was read by Darwin, Jefferson and many others in the mid 1800s.  Just finished The Hare with Amber Eyes  by Edmund de Waal - excellent historical book on a Jewish family from pre WWI to the present.