sailing – Page 8

What’s behind that Door?

April 1, 2015 | Leave a Comment

On our second day in lovely Georgetown, as we were walking down Front Street, in the residential area with its historic homes, we happened on this beautifully restored Federal style house with its front door wide open. Hmmm… Could this be my chance to take a look beyond front doors and porches??

The man from the red pickup truck said we should go inside for a tour. I thought he meant it was a historic house tour, with a guide. Bob and I entered the house and began calling out ‘hellos’ to no answer. I ventured a bit further and then really felt I should not be wandering about in this beautifully appointed house unsupervised. Bob went back out to consult the pickup truck man. He said that the house is for sale, fully furnished, and that it was open today for viewing. No one was inside, but we could help ourselves to a tour. Talk about southern hospitality, and trusting folks!

This house was built in 1815, so it is 200 years old this year. It is furnished with a mix of antiques and reproductions, and some of the antiques are considerably older than the house. The dining table and sideboard were fully set for dinner…. inviting!

The kitchen:

There were several wonderful sitting rooms

Want to go upstairs? Of course you do! (sorry about the crooked photos….I will have to edit them when I get home–in a month or so!)

There is even an upstairs sitting room off the master bedroom…. love the ottoman!

All this can be yours: the house, the furnishings, a beautifully landscaped city lot, and a small corner lot next door that has been purchased and turned into a lovely garden…but wait! There’s more! The price also includes a late model Land Rover to get you out and about. And are you ready for the price?….. 1.5 million and the place is yours. Pretty amazing. And you could live in this charming town. (You would have to get used to the smell of the paper plant though…well, there are always compromises, right?)

Salt Marsh or Rice Paddy??

March 30, 2015 | Leave a Comment

Last night we anchored alone in a quiet little estuary off the ICW, less than 10 miles south of Georgetown, SC. We didn’t make it to Georgetown because of waiting for mid-tide in some particularly shallow areas of shoaling. The shoaling seems worse than it did two years ago, and locals in Georgia have mentioned that there just isn’t money in the budget for keeping the waterway dredged as often as in the past.

Yesterday evening was beautifully quiet. After a long day of listening to the engine run it was so peaceful to be alone in a pretty spot. There was no wind, which is rather rare, so when the birds weren’t singing it was utterly quiet. Here are the marshes in the last of of the light.

I thought it was salt grass on all sides of us, but the guide book says they are rice paddies. Hmmm…. there were some flood gate type constructions here and there, so maybe they were rice paddies. Notice the egret in the foreground.

The sun set to a chorus of trilling blackbirds, and led to a cold but tranquil night–clear skies with a gibbous moon and lots of stars.

This morning the wind kicked up and dark clouds moved quickly over us bringing rain. As we left the anchorage we saw a bald eagle in a lone tree in the rice paddy/marsh. He took flight as we passed him.

Before the rain found us there were some stunning moments along the canal as we headed for Georgetown.

By mid morning we were anchored just off the public docks in pretty Georgetown–although it’s too bad about the noise from the steel plant and the railroad tracks, and the smell from the papermill, all at the head of the harbor! At the local museum we were told that those are rice paddies where we anchored, and the birds were most likely a type of bobolink that the locals call ‘rice birds.’ Rice birds have been a problem since rice was first grown in these parts. They can eat an entire crop of rice, and no one has figured out a way to deter them. So the current rice growing endeavor has failed. I don’t quite understand this problem since there has always been plenty of Carolina rice as long as I can remember!

Shameless Landlubber

March 29, 2015 | Leave a Comment

We have spent some wonderful days ashore between Fernandina, Savannah and Beaufort, SC. I can’t walk 10 feet without taking a photo– of window boxes, planters, a beautiful front door or porch. Clearly I miss land! –in spite of my little container gardens on Pandora.

Our last day in Savannah: camellias, cherry trees– even a few that have already begun leafing out!—azaleas, pansies. It is full spring here.

And just a few more doors…..I can’t help myself! Note the gas lamp at this door. There were many in Savannah.

Elegance on elegance…..would love to get a peak inside both these places!

This gate with ivy is so pretty I can only imagine how lovely the garden must be on the other side!

Lunch was fun in a well known English style pub with good pub fare: bangers and mash, shepherd’s pie, ploughman’s lunch. I took this photo to show my dear friend Lesley, but I wish I’d taken a photo of my lunch so she could see I was having a Branston pickle!

We visited the maritime museum that also happened to have a lovely garden surrounding it since the museum is housed in an historic house with beautiful grounds.

The museum had quite an extensive collection of ship models, but what caught my eye were some of the very few other items, relics from various ships. There was a wall of scrimshaw in one room, and I was intrigued with these lovely carved rolling pins. I don’t even have a rolling pin on Pandora since I only make a pie once or twice during our time onboard each year. I use an empty wine bottle….we always have one on hand!

And of course I had to take a photo of this lovely scene of children with a lamb. Not your standard scrimshaw image!

And just before leaving Savannah we had our photo taken by a couple of tourists after Bob offered to take theirs.

From Savannah we moved on to Beaufort, where I looked forward to visiting one of the friendliest yarn shops, Coastal Knitting. Just walking through the charming business section of town—so many beautifully tended shops and interesting restaurants—was delightful. And the residential areas were beyond wonderful! There were gardens in luscious bloom everywhere. Here is just a sampling!

This morning, just one day after leaving Beaufort, I found a comment here from a woman who lives in Beaufort, and who just returned herself from a couple of months onboard her trawler, armed with both knitting projects and a tapestry project. It is a thrill to know that there are other weavers out there! It can get so lonely out here without other weavers to talk to!

Non-weavers often recommend that I get an inkle loom or a little rigid heddle. I love these small tools and enjoy using them when I have a certain project in mind that suits them. But they in no way replace that urge to weave the type of cloth that I love. It’s just not the same, and an inkle loom is never going to satisfy my need to design and create fabric. Anyway—it’s very nice to be in touch with another weaver. Laura Burcin plans being onboard for a longer period next winter. I look forward to connecting with her in person. In the meantime, I feel I have gotten to know her a bit through her blog.

Should I talk about my “For Irene” sweater, which I have ripped back in order to make the lower body smaller? I certainly don’t want to! It has not gone as simply as I envisioned! I knitted most of this sweater in Portugal on my rosewood, interchangeable Knit Picks needles—size 4. At the airport in Lisbon, as I was headed back to the US, they were taken from me. Now that I’m trying to match the stockinette on the body of sweater, I am finding that none of my other needles are able to match the gauge of those particular needles I lost! UGH! I have started and ripped back five times now! This is a crisis! I did try to replace those needles in Coastal Knitting in Beaufort. They don’t carry the interchangeables, but they did have size 4 circulars from Knitter’s Pride which I have heard is the same manufacturer as Knit Picks. Alas, no luck on getting the same gauge!

I wanted to wear this sweater to a wedding in a little over two weeks, and now I’m rather convinced it won’t happen. Ah well, time to make peace with that. When I get home I can order a replacement for the needles I lost….

Domesticity Onboard

February 19, 2015 | 1 Comment

Who would imagine it could be so chilly in the Keys in mid-February? At the end of last week Bob and I spent a few long days at the Miami Boat Show, and so I rummaged through the back cabin where I store all my ‘supplies’ to find something small to work on while ashore. Nothing is worse than having idle hands while stuck ashore for hours and hours on end at a convention center. So I found a ball of sock yarn and started a sock.

Now, just a few days later, I really could use a nice pair of wool socks for my frozen feet! First one is just about done….better get craking on the second. I just cannot get over how cold it is most days. We left a small harbor just south of Miami Beach this morning and headed about 45 miles south to Rodriguez Key which is right near Key Largo. Poor Bob had to stand at the wheel all day in gusty northwest winds. Tomorrow promises to be colder, barely 60 degrees, and the wind will be considerably stronger at over 30 mph. Try standing outside in gale force winds in the low 60s with no warm clothing and see if you don’t get hypothermia. We surely thought by now, down in the Keys, we’d be warm!

One way to keep warm is to turn on the oven! So a couple of mornings ago I made the King Arthur coffee cake that is on the unbleached flour package. There is a crumb mixture made of sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and walnuts that gets sprinkled in the middle of the batter and then on top before baking. It made the whole boat smell terrific. I did not have walnuts so I used slivered almonds, and I put a little almond extract in the batter, but kept the vanilla in the crumb mixture. Great recipe– It’s a keeper!And one evening I made a dinner that I used to make quite often–in fact decades ago–when Bob and I were in college in the 1970s. It’s from the book The Vegetarian Epicure–who rembers that gem??? It’s called RussianVegetable Pie. The wonder of the internet is that I don’t even own that book anymore, but I was able to find the recipe online. I may not have the sharpest memory anymore, but the recipe looked very familiar and the finished dinner was as good as we both remembered.

This recipe starts with pastry crust made with both butter and cream cheese. There is a layer of cream cheese on the bottom, then a layer of hard cooked eggs. Next you add the layer of cabbage, onions and mushrooms that were sauteed beforehand. Place the pastry top and in the oven it goes! If this brings back good memories of the 70s, you can find the recipe here

Dinner is ready and the cabin is warm! Luckily there was enough for two nights, so I got to turn on the oven again to reheat it the next evening.

Seems that I’m on a roll of beating things to death these days. Must be brain freeze.

Speaking of cooking onboard, since I cannot bring all the cookbooks I might want to have on hand, I have been on the lookout for years for how to have recipes onboard. Writing or typing out my favorites to put in a notebook or recipe file was absolutely NOT a solution. Last year I discovered an iPad app called Paprika. You can type up your own recipes in it (but that’s not for me) or you can take recipes off the internet and store them in the app. This way you can access recipes even when you cannot go online. I have been collecting recipes from various magazine websites–my favorite being Cooks Illustrated– and various blogs, such as Orangette and Dishing Up the Dirt. I even have my much loved and vintage Russian Vegetable Pie in the app.

When we arrived in Rodriguez Key this afternoon I had hoped to make my next tapestry warp, but I am stuck on how to do it. I want to do the kind of warp that can be pulled around the loom as I progress. I normally tie the first and last warp of a continuous warp to the bottom of my copper pipe. If I do that I cannot make the kind of warp that can be advanced. I am stumped! I tried checking the internet, but had no luck with that. Maybe I’ll remember how to do this in my sleep tonight…..or maybe one of my Wednesday Group friends will come to my aid!

So instead of warping, Bob and I took a dinghy ride in to Key Largo and as we headed in to the harbor we saw the African Queen coming out. We were freezing but we had to take a detour and follow her so we could document the moment!

And Now for Something Completely Different!

February 17, 2015

We’ve been in Miami for a week….hard to believe since Bob does not usually sit still that long! While the weather has not been quite tropical, it’s a far cry more pleasant than what is going on along the East Coast farther north of here! But I can’t help thinking about this year’s winter in parts of the world where violent weather is the norm. And that brings me to Scotland….

Various tapestry weavers in New England, along with tapestry weavers from Ireland, Australia and Denmark, are– at this very moment– sending off small works themed “Postcards from Home” to an address in Scotland. The tapestries will have a little tour of northern Europe, starting with a show at Northlight Studio, in Stromness in the Orkney Islands off Scotland in late March.

Our tapestries may take a ride like this on the Stromness ferry.

Roughly a decade ago I became acquainted with Elizabeth Lovick from Stromness, and ordered a Ronaldsay fleece from her. At the time she wasn’t certain if the fleece would ever make it to me in its unwashed state, but it did, and I had a happy few months spinning yarn for a fisherman’s gansey for our younger son Chris.

Since then Stromness has fascinated me. I’m intrigued that now a little piece of my work is headed over there!

Here is a video taken just a month ago on Fair Isle in the Shetlands. This makes me appreciate that not all sheep are….well…..sheep! These are really tough animals, not easily intimidated!–certainly not by violent weather! Tommy Hyndman took this footage and had this to say about the weather:

Fair Isle, Shetland – January 10th, 2015 – Gale rages to hurricane level as seen about the Isle on land and sea. Peak storm levels were at night, but it was still very outrageous weather, with strong gusts of winds almost knocking me off my feet several times, especially in the north of the Isle.

Fair Isle has a population of 60 people, 1200 sheep, 20,000 puffins and a few very rare birds. Hmmm….is that ‘rare birds’ of the avian type?…I’m thinking all 60 human inhabitants cold easily be ‘rare birds.’

I’ve always said that I’d never want to go sailing off England or any of these islands in the North Atlantic, even in summer!–though certainly the rewards for such hardship would be great!

I can’t help thinking of the nonchalant manner in which the Scottish talk about weather. Even Archie, who has hardly spent any time on the water compared to me, is a far hardier sailor than I’ll ever be, just by virtue of being Scottish! I can hear him saying any one of the well worn phrases about weather, such as this one: “In Scotland there is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing.”

So when this recent article by Nigel Calder crossed my path, I had to laugh. What timing! Just when our little tapestries go winging across the pond to Scotland to get on a ferry boat to Stromness, one of the most respected circumnavigators has written an article about the very area.

His photos from the trip are beautiful, as you can see below, and his tale is compelling. Check it out!