The Boate

lazy day in the berkeley marina

we cut the marine ply to fit the shape of the ceiling. after we (actually, mostly steen) cleaned up the scraps and sawdust, i went above and stretched out in the cockpit to catch some of the late afternoon sun and 80º warm, calm weather. steen tested out the double berth in the cabin....next thing i knew it was quarter of six.
i just passed one of the more uniquely fragrant jasmine bushes i have ever smelled on the way to and from lilly's to pick up dinner. the moon is waxing, i am walking around in a t-shirt with the balcony door open...things are good.

dr. sandersteen

i don't remember what game it was, but i played one recently where some dudes who looked an awful lot like this were chasing me around trying to kill me. luckily this was not the case with steen, who was more intent on killing the burrs and rough spots on the ceiling of the cabin. then we headed off to ashby lumber, where we discovered what i already suspected was the difference between "marine" plywood and "normal" plywood. price. $40+ for a .25" sheet of marine plywood. maybe we'll be on america's funniest home videos later this month as the suckers who believed there is any practical difference between these two grades of lumber. (is plywood actually lumber, or is it more like a glue and sawdust product?)

cabin duty

steen got down to the boate early today and chiseled out the majority of the old plywood. i showed up and made sure i got a picture of me working, for the next time steen accuses me of "avoiding hard work". come to think of it, i shouldn't have been smiling. looks like i am enjoying myself (which i was). fuck.

roof rot

steen and i headed down to the marina today to go for a sail. the wind was kinda dead, and both big dave and tiffany bozic had flaked. we decided to have a look at something that has looked suspect since we bought the boate. the previous owners installed this hand rail in the cabin, and did a really bad ("that's sub-par work, man" was the opinion of jay, the local live-aboard boat-workman) job of securing it. they drilled through the roof of the cabin, and threw some galvanized bolts into the holes, and then slathered some clear silicone gel around the protruding bolts. at one point today, i was inspired to say "those guys were fucking shitheads". it was that bad.
in any case, water has been slowly leaking down into the laminated plyboard sandwiched between the fiberglass on the deck and the resined finish of the ceiling in the main cabin. this, to resort to my usual conversational parlance, is FULLY not cool.

if it were just a matter of us being wailed aesthetically by water stains, a simple thick coat of paint would suffice to push this problem out of sight and therefore out of mind. a bit more investigation, however, revealed that rot has set in, and could eventually cause serious structural issues (two of the mast stays are anchored in this region of the ceiling). this has to be dealt with for peace of mind and overall sense of preparedness, particularly before the end of summer, when we're out there with a fresh breeze and some good swells.
after staring at the ceiling for a while, and consulting the aforementioned local expert jay, we decided to get into action. we had to get a saw, set the depth just inside the fiberglass of the deck, and cut the offending cancerous plywood out. off we went to orchard supply hardware on ashby.
but why buy a miniature makita radial saw when another power tool, one for which you have been waiting for the slightest excuse to purchase, could do just as good a job? yes, gentle reader, witness the dremel moto tool. it spins up to 35 gajillion rotations per minute, and i think the variable-speed control mechanism is actually a chip capable of controlling the power grid of a small city (ok, i made that up). it also has the flexible extension shaft, and we got an adjustable-depth cutter housing to go with it. steen, selfish bastard that he can be sometimes, figured that since he already had a photo of it brand new and unsullied in its packaging, that he could go ahead and bollocks the whole thing up. so here's the best pic i got of it:

so here's what we'll be doing for the next few days. tonight there is a big fashion show over at the gallery, and everyone is encouraging me to show up and "check out the models". *yawn* i think it may be a take out chinese and everquest kind of saturday night.

weather app

this is a must-have app for people running os x. so damn cool.

warm and breezy

steen, tara, erica and i went out for what was definitely the most pleasant day of 2004 so far. steen is going to post the log entry over on the boate page, but it looks like his brand new ibook is hating it. he's getting the mac flashing "?" of death at startup.

A Taste of Summer

The wind was up, the ladies were down, so we hit the bay with much anticipation. Straight outta the blocks we felt the need to blow a little carbon off the old girl so we opened her right up and let rip first tack out of the marina. With nothing to hold us back but maybe a small garden growing on the hull we head over to the lee of Angel Island and as reliable as you want the weather died down and the sun blasted us with the first taste of the summer to come.
After an hour or so of floundering in the 'doldrums' the mighty power of the honda outboard was introduced and we made swift time back into the eye of the action. Rounding the port entry buoy and clicking off a few shots of some basking seals it was back home to the marina so the girls could make true on a promise of a dinner appointment. Upon arriving back, news of a not so fortunate and enjoyable day made it's way via the 'dock vine' to The Boate. Some poor sod lost his mast and 7 grand worth of sail due to a failed stay. Brought home the importance of maintaining a sea-worthy vessel such as The Boate. I admit there was a tear in my eye when I thought of how The Boate takes just as much care of us as we do of her. More to come tomorrow......
click for more photoes

arrrrrggghhh.....balmy weather warming the cockles

ahhhhhhh, the title of this post refers to the fact that all creatures that i saw and spoke with out there in berkeley (the ones with pulses at least) are exhibiting behaviors of randyness. (is that even a word?) something about the sudden change of weather has acted as a defibrillator, and the circulation is flowing. sunset at the marina was incredible, i wish i had my camera with me, but there will be more and more beautiful sunsets to come this year, i can feel it, and they will be captured in their time. the mallard drakes were preening and splashing and in all ways attracting attention to themselves. even a hetero human male like myself was taken by their water-fowlish masculine beauty. (wait......admiring male ducks doesn't make me gay, does it?)
the sky turned a blood-orange red behind the masts of the sailboats, and for a few short, magic minutes i was immersed in one of those cinematic-perfect visual states, listening to the police "message in a bottle" live, and wondering silently to myself why the fuck any of the castaway crew of the bounty wanted to return home to england from tahiti, after being left there by spencer christian and the rest of the mutineers.

luckily, there weren't any attractive sirens in the marina, saving me the embarrassment of having to lash myself to the mast. i feel pretty blessed to be living in what surely is one of the most beautiful places on earth. when it's not cold and foggy, that is, because then it kinda sucks.

summer leapfrogs spring

it felt like summer today. i headed down to the marina and just kicked back in the sun with "the plague wars", reading about the dirty wars in rhodesia. hideous instances of biological warfare, like seeding cholera in rivers and anthrax-laced cow cakes. it seemed a little too incongruous, reading about depressing stuff in the midst of such a beautiful day, so i headed over to the hardware store to get a tarpaulin to replace the tattered one covering the mainsail, and while i was there i got some orange-oil based wood cleaner/polish. tried a bit of it on a slightly discolored bit of wood in the corner of the head (where the porthole was leaking), and it made it look so good that i spent the rest of the afternoon refinishing all the wood in the cabin. that and monkeying with the fresh-water sink faucet thingy, (i am certain there is a saltier nautical term for fixtures in the galley, similar to a seacock or something vaguely naughty sounding). i ended up splashing a lot of water around, and had to bust out the bilge hand-pump to clean up after myself.
i would have liked to have gone out sailing, but right now i am feeling pretty good about having accomplished quite a bit of maintenance work today. i apologize to regular readers of theboate.com, i wrote this entry for my personal blog, and then decided that i was going to post it to both. next time i'll try to pepper my language with some more "avast ye's" and barnacle-smelling maritime aphorsims.