ozweaver – Page 55

Into the Final Month

April 4, 2014 | Leave a Comment

We’ve spent the last three days or so sailing, and sailing hard. It’s not much fun when the wind is ahead of the beam, which means we are sailing into it. Pandora goes like a bat out of hell, but heeling a lot, and that means sailing hard on her side. Since this is also our home, it’s not much fun to have all our stuff bashed about hard to one side. We batten things down, and put away as much as we can, but I can still hear all the stuff in the cabinets tumbling around. There is precious little glass onboard, as you can imagine!

The sights are lovely, as you can see, but the wind continues to be challenging. We have spent the past three days with some wonderful friends on board a very comfortable catamaran called Nati. And we’ve just said goodbye to other dear friends on Ariel. That’s life onboard. Unlike living on land, when your house location changes all the time, your friends change too. Luckily, we bump into friends now and then all along the way.

A day spent on Joe’s Sound with our friends from Nati. We walked some beautiful white beaches, dinghied into mangrove flats, and had a lovely dinner of perch from a lake in the Adirondacks that Anne and Dick cooked up for us. How amazing is that? They had a friend visit who brought them frozen perch, and venison that he had killed himself while hunting and fishing in the Adirondacks. What luck for us to get to have some perch!

We are back in Thompson Bay, planning to go ashore shortly for a walk and ending with happy hour and hamburgers at the Long Island Breeze. Tomorrow we have reserved a car and will do a little touring of the southern part of the island, ending the day with dinner at Chez Pierre, a bit north of here, where we had a lovely dinner watching the sun set last year. I have high hopes for an equally great dinner and sunset there tomorrow evening!

As usual, when when the winds are calm I try to weave…. slow, but steady progress on my ‘toyland.’

It is 31 days until I fly home. I wonder what this last month on board will bring…..hopefully some long awaited fair weather and calm seas!

Dry Cleaning, Cruiser Style

April 2, 2014 | Leave a Comment

We have left the Exumas and headed east into the Atlantic to some of the islands we visited last year. We are currently on Long Island, a far cry from the island of the same name we are so familiar with!

Ocean Breeze resort is one of the places where cruisers flock to do their laundry. It’s a pristine little resort, and the laundry room is spotless. You can sit on a deck overlooking Thompson Bay drinking a cold beverage or even having lunch as you do laundry.

Last year, while I waited for my wash, I met Nancy from Trumpeter who took an hour or so to teach me how to make the local basket which is a tightly coiled technique using Silver Queen palm fronds. We have bumped into them again this year! Here! How serendipitous! Nancy makes about 100 baskets each season and delivers them to school children back in the US, when she and her husband George do a program on cultural differences. This year she has made a wedding present basket that is truly amazing. I hope to get a photo, but for now here is a photo from last year when Nancy was patiently instructing me.

So….back to laundry. This is one of those places I count on. Yesterday morning Bob had already taken the sheets off the bed when a little voice told me I should call Ocean Breeze on VHF radio, and when I did I learned that their water maker is not functioning so there is no laundry available! Oh no! That made me realize a few things: first, I have thought that water makers have made life on these islands so much easier. While people still do collect water in cisterns, mostly during the hurricane season, and ration water at all times whether from the water maker or from the cistern, I never thought how fragile it is to rely on these modern conveniences. When mechanical things break down out here it is not so simple to make repairs. So, Ocean Breeze is carefully rationing their water now.

So that brings me to dry cleaning. We have heard of this and have now we’ve experienced it! When cruisers cannot do real laundry they take their sheets and towels and hang them out in the breeze and the sunlight. I imagine that there is some benefit to this…. clean air and bright sunlight must have some cleaning properties. Anyway….this was our only option. Next hope of laundry is either Black Point in the Exumas or Rock Sound on Eluthera. Must get it done before next guests arrive!

When you visits places like this, you have to expect some inconveniences….like resorting to cruiser style dry cleaning.

We have had a little tragedy onboard Pandora. My wonderful little window box, full of very happy plants, fell overboard! You cannot imagine how sad I am about this. Whenever we move location we put the window box in a safe place, usually in the dinghy that is up in its davits. One day, last week we just moved from one side of Elizabeth harbor to the other and we didn’t even give my precious little gems a thought. I was at the wheel, and I didn’t even see them go over. My chives had somehow figured out it was spring and were bursting into bloom. I was looking forward to having the flowers on salads. The geranium was full of happy red flower heads, and the parsley had gotten quite full and delicious. We didn’t realize it had all gone overboard until about an hour after anchoring. Bob took off in the dinghy to see if by chance it was floating in the current. There was a pretty strong current taking it out to sea, and he only found the empty window box. The plants had fallen out and probably sank. I feel just miserable about this. All the islands and cays down here have such a desert climate that my little window box was quite a bright spot in my days. I am so sorry about its salty demise. I don’t even have a recent photo of it, but this is from a month ago or so…

Lastly, I dug out an old sock project that I brought on board. It is the “skew socks” from Knitty Winter 2009 by Lana Holden. I am having a great time finishing up this crazily fun design! The straight sections are basically diagonal knitting , and the shaping of the toe and heel is quite creative! I don’t even know how I would begin to envision this on my own, but I am certainly having a great time following the directions. The heel ended up being a flap that jutted out on only one side of the circular row. After knitting the entire heel flap (which looked nothing like any heel flap I’ve done before!) you put half of the flap on each of two dps and graft them together with a bit of spare yarn. The working yarn ends up just where you need it to be to continue knitting around minus the heel flap that just got grafted together. The graft ends up being a vertical line rather than the typical horizontal, and that is part of skewed-ness of the design.

Five years ago, I posted this photo from the instructions on knitty, and now I am even more smitten by the cute photo and the designer’s sense of humor and love of math!

Hardly Spring

March 28, 2014 | 1 Comment

We are into the first week of spring, but it still feels like winter. We finally made it south to Georgetown on Great Exuma, a great jumping off spot for going further south, but the weather has us pinned here. Georgetown is the largest settlement in the Exumas by some factor of 10 or so! It’s where everyone gets last provisions before heading into the remote regions beyond.

So we are wiping through our newly acquired provisions just sitting here in a very bumpy anchorage. I am surely getting tougher at bumpy conditions, as I attempt to continue work on my little tapestry.

One day, we were visited by this turtle numerous times. Considering how shy turtles are, how quickly they disappear whenever we reach for our camera, we were amazed that this guy kept diving down and returning to look at us yet again. He hung out with us for quite a while. It’s our first successful photo of turtle after years of attempts! We think this is a green turtle, but what fascinates me about them is how beautifully golden they are. They seem to have their own light as they glow right below the surface of the beautiful waters here. I wish we could have captured that in the photo. You cannot imagine how this guy glowed like golden sunlight as he floated near us. Stunning!

Yesterday we spent a little time onshore Stocking Island (across from Great Exuma) and had lunch at St. Francis resort and then a walk on the ocean side beach, where the waves were truly impressive. Seeing the force of the Atlantic made me quite thankful for our sheltered anchorage, even if it is considerably less ideal that I would prefer!

Here is the view of the anchorage off Stocking Island from St. Francis’s outdoor dining deck.

Creative Outlets

March 22, 2014 | 1 Comment

Sometimes while we are hiding out from storms the waters are actually calm enough for me to work. It hasn’t been often! On good days, we tend to set off sight seeing and shell collecting, but on others I manage to get a bit of work done!

TAPESTRY

I started my tapestry idea (a shelf of spools) a few weeks ago by doing some sampling, and learned a lot by the time I unwove the whole thing. I’d done about eight spools at that point and had worked out that I wanted the circles to be all different sizes and different shapes, and the little cardboard tubes and empty space inside the tubes to be fairly (but not perfectly!) consistent.

This is the first tapestry I am making without a cartoon! …. it is very freeing! Archie Brennan is always talking about the ‘open journey,’ by which he means not making too many decisions ahead time, letting the work at hand determine what should come next, and this is my first attempt at that. I’m doing the same with color choice, choosing colors based on what has just been done. Naturally, I wish I had a lot more choices onboard with me, but so far I have not been disappointed to make do with what I have.

I am facing my blank warp and creating as I go. I do ink on a freehand circle or two before I weave, and each circle I draw is based on the circles that have come before them, and each color choice for the circles is based on the colors I’ve already used as well as the loose ‘plan’ of where I hope to go. This is really a fun journey…..I would call it a tapestry vacation! A little side trip along an untraveled road (for me) with lots of beautiful scenery! A playland!

KNITTING

My other big project onboard is a sweater that was posted on Pinterest with a link to Ravelry.

When you click on the floral sweater photo on Pinterest you get directed to this sweater on Ravelry.

The floral sweater is far more appealing to me than the little squares version! Finding the origin of this sweater was a bit challenging, but when I get focused on something I can be a bit maniacal.

The little squares pattern is by Ruth Sorenson, and her directions call for 480 grams of Kauni Effekt “Rainbow” (EQ). I had planned to use traditional Shetland Fair Isle construction for a loose fitting jacket with front opening, and I decided to increase the amount of yarn to 600 grams. With a little searching for the thistle pattern I found this designer, who used the thistle pattern for a shawl she calls “Mrs. Barrista,” which was available for purchase in English. Bingo! (I don’t know if she is also the designer of the sweater, but it’s not on her blog.)

After doing a gauge swatch and determining that I’d use 10 repeats of the thistle pattern for the body, I cast on for corrugated rib and steeked the front opening, and have just been zipping along up to the armholes. Now I am at the armhole openings and thought I’d better make a plan.

While traditional Fair Isle construction makes for such easy knitting, it is not the most flattering look on me. I look better in sweaters that have a bit of armhole shaping, and even more importantly I need sloped shoulders. These two issues that are quite important to me will necessitate some fiddly knitting. Here is my sketch.

I will bind off an inch or so of stitches at the beginning of the armscye and start the steeks. When I start the sleeves I will pick stitches along the armhole opening, and I will work back and forth (HORRORS!) until I fill in that 1” of bound off stitches, and then I can resume knitting in the round down to the sleeve cuff. It will only be fiddly for about a dozen rows or so…maybe less…

The other fiddly bit will be making my shoulder line sloped. I have not yet settled on a definite plan for that, but I think that may also require working back and forth for the last several rows at the top of the body. It shouldn’t be that bad! I’m forging ahead with the sweater since I don’t need to worry about the shoulders for a while. Maybe something else will occur to me by the time I get to there! I am thinking of making a short row plan…

If there are any knitters out there reading this, please weigh in on what you’d do if you were making this sweater! I could use some input!

COOKING

I wonder how many of us use cooking as a creative outlet, especially when we can’t do what we really want to do! I enjoy the challenge of cooking down here, where getting food is a hit or miss scavenger hunt. Thursday, I happened to hit the pink store in Staniel Cay as they were bringing in fresh produce from the mail boat. I got both fresh mushrooms and a head of cabbage on the same day! (Only someone traveling down here can appreciate the rarity of fresh mushrooms in the Bahamas!)

Cabbage, which I hardly ever eat at home, is quite a staple down here, and it always brings back great memories of cooking in college with my brand new edition of the Moosewood Cookbook. It had a catchy name I no longer remember, but I do remember that the Russian cabbage pie was one of my favorite meals from that book. Thank you, Molly Katzen! I’m sure I could have googled the recipe if only I had internet. Since that was not an option, I had to do the best I could on memory alone.

I remembered the pastry crust had cream cheese as well as butter. So I made a crust with 4 TB butter and 4 oz. of cream cheese. I made 4 hard cooked eggs, sautéed the mushrooms and set them aside to sautee the cabbage that had been salted and left to wilt for about 20 minutes. I seasoned everything liberally with dill and a little salt and pepper. I layered all this in my pie shell, along with the other 4oz of cream cheese left in the brick.

Since I do not have a pie dish onboard I made this dish in my 9” springform pan. It has come in very handily as a substitute for many other pans. I’m glad to have it with me!

Dinner was delicious! Who knows how far from the original I have strayed, but we enjoyed it just the same! It does take a bit of doing to make something like this on a boat in a galley that is smaller than a NY City apartment kitchen. If not for the space it takes to pre-cook all the separate parts of this dish, I would definitely say this would become a staple meal on Pandora. It may become a staple in spite of the space challenge!

Winter Advisory on the First Day of Spring!

March 21, 2014

It has been a particularly harsh winter along the eastern coast of the US, so no surprise that a 1,000 miles south in the Bahamas the weather has also been a bit challenging. There have been very strong winds clocking around the entire compass rose, so that each week we end up needing to find a safe anchorage that has good protection from all directions. There are only a handful of safe places that fit this bill, and if you don’t get there early there won’t be room for even one more boat! Everyone is looking for a hiding place these days.

But I don’t expect that anyone enduring an East Coast winter in the US will have much sympathy for us. Still, it’s been quite challenging to stay safe, and that has caused me a fair amount of stress! As our weather router warned us this morning, March is going to go out like a lion, not a lamb!

And yet, there are still idyllic spots in between the weather fronts. We did some shelling while hiding from the weather in Pipe Creek, near Compass Cay. Our most exciting find is the tulip snail (right side, center)! They are a predator of little conchs.

At Compass Cay you can swim with the nurse sharks that they encourage by feeding them each time the fisherman are cleaning fish or beheading lobsters. If bull sharks or lemon sharks come near the dock, someone chases them off. The first day we were there there were almost as many young children in the water as there were sharks. I wish I had a photo of that! Well, in six weeks, I should have a photo of our 30 yr. old son Rob playing in the water with them!

Big Major’s Spot is very popular, so you can never be the only boat at anchor here, but it’s not a safe place in these endlessly clocking winds, so we weren’t there for long this year. The pigs come running at the sound of a dinghy motor. There are baby pigs this year, and they are growing fast. They doubled their size in the two weeks between our visits!

I was so busy taking photos of Bob with the babies, looking through the lens, I didn’t see the 800 lb. mama come right up to the boat and stick her head into the boat, almost bumping me with her big snout! Perhaps she thought the camera might be tasty! I almost shrieked!

We hid for several days in the Exuma Land and Sea Park at Warderick Wells, where we spotted these ramoras who came to check out the vegetable scraps we had thrown overboard.

Also at Warderick Wells, we spotted a flock of egrets on one of the small cays, and we startled them into flight with our approach! Back at home we tend to see individual egrets, not entire flocks.

On top of challenging weather, we have also had plenty of little problems with electronics and gear. In one hard blow at Staniel Cay our anchor got stuck under a limestone ledge, and then was damaged getting it out. It is now impressively ruined! Luckily we have an equally large spare on board. This boat has more spare parts than food and clothing. You can always wear dirty clothes, or eat canned soup for days, but replacing engine parts, or electronic parts, or needing an anchor is not something you can do without even for day!

One of the challenging equipment failures during this trip is the loss of my iPad, close to three weeks ago. Not only does it have a couple of highly important navigational aids that we rely on, but it also is the hotspot for our computers, and my library of books and knitting patterns and cooking recipes (this is a HUGE loss!). While my iPad is still under warranty, I have no way to send it back to the US for replacement. Since there is no place to buy a new one down here, we have ordered one online through our older son back in the US. The iPad is being delivered to Watermaker’s airline in Florida, and they fly people and equipment to many of the little airstrips on various cays in the Exuma chain. Our deliver will happen later this week at Staniel Cay, a good choice for us since we can easily walk to the airstrip from the harbor. We didn’t want to add a taxi ride (often a golf cart taxi) to the expense of shipping by charter plane!

As I write this, we have the new iPad! I have my recipes back (whew!), my knitting patterns, and Bob is currently re-loading the Garmin Blue Charts! Hopefully this is the end of such big challenges. We came down here to relax!

Author name: ozweaver

Into the Final Month

Dry Cleaning, Cruiser Style

Hardly Spring

Creative Outlets

Winter Advisory on the First Day of Spring!

Subscribe to receive notifications when I post: