Back to Cape Cod, but worrying about the mooring.

After Stewart departed I needed to get ready to take off: after all, I am not planning to be back much (if at all) before November. This means that I need to get Dorado safely and securely settled.

So... I talked to various folks: Peter, Alan, etc. Peter says put the boat in a hurricane anchorage near shore, right up near the mangroves. Only problem is that it is illegal to have the boat there (even though enforcement is unlikely: boats have been there for years). Another problem is that I don't want to damage the mangroves and worry I might. Other folks might have claims on "their" illegal spot and get pissed at me... and I am a conciliator, not someone who enjoys conflict. Finally, I was told that rats and cockroaches infest any boats that are left by the mangroves for long. This final one really pushed Cynthia and me to look hard at other options.

The other option is to leave it on a mooring. Mine is .... questionable. The chain is secured around an old bulldozer track (or some big sharpish piece of steel mostly buried in the mud), and I fear that it is getting dragged back toward Gigi. I do not want Gigi bashing a hole in my stern in a hurricane! So, I designed a much better setup that would use my extra anchors to help secure the mooring chain farther away and help prevent dragging. But... I talked to Dickie, the local mooring guy, and he said he could take care of it. I pulled the one anchor I had down there, preferring to leave things cleaner for him. On the last day he came boating by and said he had hurt his back, but would be better soon. I've talked since, but he does not sound happy with his healing.

So.... I've set up two big anchors with nice long lines and arranged with a friend to place them if a hurricane comes. I'll cross fingers that it does not, that Dickie heals and installs my mooring, and that all is well. I'm kind of tempted to get a scuba certification, fly down, rent some scuba stuff, and spend a day setting up the mooring. Peace of mind is good...

I'm enjoying the cold here on Cape Cod. The heat in the islands enervates me, leaving me feeling weak and confused. Perhaps heat exhaustion? Whatever, ice water helps and so does swimming, but I don't want to need to keep ice at all times. Then again, perhaps I could beef-up one of my coolers so it holds ice longer.... and I have a long-term plan to get my refrigeration unit running again... but that will probably take another $1000 or so! "Boat"="bring over another thousand".


Leaving is not easy. I found myself mourning, perhaps sad at leaving this simple life on the water that I love so well. I took one final sail at the crack of dawn,

 sailed out to Leduck Island, and dropped anchor on a patch of sand among the coral heads. Wearing mask, snorkel, dive socks, and fins; I swam around the south side of the island, the ocean swell sweeping me back and forth even in 20' of water, enjoying new vistas. Not the most interesting dive, but I enjoyed the adventure and the time in the water. Then back to the mooring where I dropped my jib, folded it, and stowed it away. I struggled with the main, but ended up with a neat roll of sail that fits well below. Any stale nuts or other stuff went ashore to the chickens who flocked in excitement. And I sat outside eating my usual weird mixed rice/lentils/peas/onions and enjoyed a final sunset over the hills.

I showered on the last morning, then soaked all my clothes and squeezed them well, leaving me nice cool damp clothes to counteract the heat of the day.

And here I am in (mostly) gray, chilly, windy Cape Cod. I've been here for a bit over a week so far. Sometimes, when the sun emerges and the air warms, I can smell the inchworms devouring the young oak leaves. Life bursting forth fills the air with rich, interesting, sometimes spicy smells as it tries to pack a year of living into the few months of warm weather. Golden pine pollen coats the leeward side of ponds. Poison ivy spreads its reddish glossy leaves and ticks are busy hitching rides.... and meals. Stewart and Alex found an awesome place to dig steamers,

 although enough other folks are digging there to wipe it out in weeks. Being up here gives me a chance to be with Cynthia and friends and family: I like it!

Now, what to do about the mooring? Hmmm....

Stewart visits: lionfish, deep dives, porpoises, and other adventures.... all in only 44 hours.

My good friend Stewart and his wife, Alex, just spent a week in the BVIs before she headed home and he remained to spend the weekend with me.

Friday morning, before he arrived, I did errands on shore and, as I paddled out past Angel's Rest (Peter's house/bar) I saw a gray back appear for a moment about ten yards away. A minute later it appeared again. I kept station, paddling gently against the wind, and waited.... and saw two porpoises. They hung around about 20' from me, practically performing with a close tandem "stitching" for a couple minutes, swimming slowly above and below every few seconds. So cool! These are the first wild ones I have ever seen near by.

About 2pm or so Stewart showed up and we raised sails and headed to Hansen Bay, eager to pursue Peter to his favorite anchoring spot, sail, swim, and otherwise squeeze every bit of adventure from the little time we had.

As we approached Angel's Rest we noticed it moving: Peter had decided to pull anchor and head home for the evening. No worries: Peter would probably be out again Saturday. We dropped anchor and snorkeled a new "low-energy"* reef I've been enjoying, one with lots of little reef fish and live coral, Stewart enjoyed my hi-tech fresh-water rinse system,

and we enjoyed sunset and dinner.

In the morning I swam early, then we headed for Salt Pond. I figured this would allow us to get a nice sail, enjoy some large waves, see one of the nicest "energetic"* reefs I know, and enjoy some fairly clear water (the waves have been stirring up Hansen Bay and we could only see about 30'). Stewart took the helm while I relaxed a bit by the mast.

As we approached Salt Pond, the kayak surfed down a wave, then drifted back and hit the end of its line hard, pulling the shackle right out of the plastic. I can't recall if we swore, but we changed our plans and our course, choosing the pursue the drifting, blowing kayak. Here is where we ran into some trouble: we had our full mainsail up and, while we had been struggling to steer and planned to reef it in Salt Pond, found it very hard to do the fine steering we needed to retrieve the kayak.... or even keep it in sight. After about ten minutes we caught it on our third try (thank goodness for heaving-to and for the strap on the kayak stern) and tied it on a long nylon line (given to me by Seth, Stewart's father), and sailed into Salt Pond where we caught the mooring closest to the entrance reef.

Once there, we hauled the kayak aboard, installed shackle and a long bungee (nice shock absorber!), and relaunched it. Then we explored the reef for a half hour (during which I showed Stewart how to equalize pressure as one dives) and, when we returned, I scraped some oysters from the keel and fed them to the reef fish... and then managed to snap the handle right off the scraper. No worries: I still have two others.

Waves made the mooring spot a bit rough, so we decided to sail back to Hansen Bay for lunch

and anchored near Angel's Rest.

I cooked up a couple omelets, but could not find my ham, so they had onion, mushroom, swiss, and spam. Tasty! Then we swam over to Angel's Rest, bought a couple rum punches (tasty and strong: one each turned out to be a good limit for us lightweights), and admired the engineering and creativity of Peter's design. Then into the water to swim the hundred yards back home.

On the way one of us pointed off to our right, north-west, and said something to the effect of "what is that gray thing sticking up about 40' away?" We peered at it and realized it looked like a flipper and a porpoise nose... of one just lolling in the water, relaxing. It disappeared after a quarter minute or so, but I found it very exciting.

Once aboard, we relaxed, read, and rested, waiting for the it to be time for a sunset swim and letting the ethanol dissipate. By 5:30 we could wait no more and paddled to our dive spot and slipped in, anchoring the kayak. Beautiful reef... but a bit murky from the sediment stirred up by the weather. I tried diving down and swimming a few feet above the coral (I dove 20' and and Stewart definitely dove deeper than 15' quite easily) and the view went from flat and green to various colors and varied topography and loads of little fish.... and a lionfish.

I called Stewart and pointed it out to him, then dove again, pulled the marker ribbon from my pocket, and placed it several feet from the fish. From the surface one could hardly see the 9" fish 20' below us, but the ribbon made it far easier to locate in the chaos of coral. I thought for a few minutes and couldn't resist: "I want to get it now: are you up for going back to the boat and retrieving the spear with me?" I said. In five minutes we were back near the spot, dropped me off to find the ribbon on the edge of the drop-off to the depths, and, in another five, the fish rose out of the water on the end of the spear. We brought it home for measuring and photos,

then fed it back to the sea.

The next morning we paddled to the same reef as early as we could bear, after a cup of coffee hot from the (French) press, dropped anchor, and began to seriously scan the reef for lions out hunting for breakfast. After about a half hour I saw one, called to Stewart to come keep an eye on it for me, and swam off to retrieve the spear from the kayak. Approaching the kayak I spotted ANOTHER lionfish hunting.

"Stewart!" I yelled, "I've found another one! I'll shoot this one and then come over there to get that one!" He nodded and have me a thumbs-up, I quickly assembled the spear... dropping the point and having to dive for it just six feet from the lionfish... then regained my breath, dove, and speared it.

While Stewart watched the fish for me, he actually saw it attempt to ambush something, but could not tell if it was successful or not. Good hunters, those lionfish.

I swam to Stewart, towing the kayak with the dying fish in the bow; breathed and relaxed for a bit; then dove, stalked, speared the lovely, venomous, possibly poisonous, invasive predator; and set it beside the earlier catch.


"Um... did you know you have a nosebleed?" Stewart asked. "Your mask has a bunch of blood in it."

I pulled my mask off and emptied out the pink liquid. Apparently so many dives to such depth were stressing my sinuses a bit and mush have broken a few little blood vessels, but it didn't seem life threatening and sharks like fish blood, not mammal blood, so we kept searching for more beauty and more lionfish. We found lots of the former, but none of the latter... and I will return to that reef again, seeking both.

We headed back to Coral Bay, stopping at one of my favorite reefs for finding little lobsters, but the water was murky (6' visibility) and, I think, someone had taken all the lobsters, despite the fact that they were undersized AND in National Monument waters! I could really go on about this and the human tendency to use our intelligence to justify what we wish to believe and do rather than ... but I digress.

We sailed into the harbor, wing-on-wing,

caught the mooring, and took Peter's dinghy to shore. A big (24"? 30"?) iguana relaxing in the water by the shore startled us as it swam away. Stewart bought us very good burgers at Skinny Legs, then started hitching (no buses on weekends) to Cruz Bay. It took about five minutes, but he snagged a ride, caught the 1pm ferry and the 5pm flight to Boston (same one I will be on May 20!), and, I assume, is now back at work.

I love having my friends and family visit! And I love having them depart and getting my space back. So far I enjoy each aspect rather than pining for company when alone and pining to be alone when company visits. It is so human (and probably drives us to great feats... and self destructive behavior) to think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, but probably does not help our happiness.

 * as of two minutes ago, I am tentatively classifying reefs by whether they are in quiet/deep water ("low-energy") or in places that receive a beating ("energetic"). The corals are VERY different

Lionfish! Hunting with CORE, hunting reported lionfish, hunting on my own..

OK, I've been off the blogging for a bit... my neck/shoulders really hurt for nearly a week, perhaps due to diving down and digging around my mooring (hurricane season prep). Still, feeling 95% better and motivated... and am waiting for epoxy to set on my raised bathroom floor, but that is for another post.

So... lionfish. Last August I found my first and obeyed the injunction to report it rather than hunt it illegally in the national monument waters. In March I went back to the same spot and found the reef bare except for the lionfish... and shot the little bugger with great satisfaction. A week ago I visited the same spot and found a half-dozen lobsters, over a hundred little fish... and another lionfish in the same spot! When I left a little later three lobsters were contesting possession of the carcass.

I decided to head over the hill to Brown Bay to see if I could find any over there. Beautiful day: no wind, little waves, sun just rising as I stepped into the water... and there I saw little translucent bits of ribbon made up of double rows of little jellyfish(maybe). In some spots there might be only one every few feet, in other they were only a few inches apart... and SOMETHING stung my upper lip with an electric burn. I tried to avoid the concentrations, but after two more lip burns and one on my elbow (thank goodness for my wetsuit protection!) I managed to escape from the water and climb back to shore. *grumble grumble grumble!*. I returned empty-handed to my boat.

What to do? Well, the CORE organization is trying to reduce lionfish by encouraging folks to report sightings (http://www.corevi.org/submit.html) and getting the Park Service to let selected folks hunt them. I went online and checked the sightings (http://www.corevi.org/results.html) and found one fish in my area near Haulover. I sailed over there at first light and, after five minutes, found that beautiful predator hunting for breakfast!

 

Last Sunday CORE had a exploration hunt of Reef Bay, a place I love snorkeling, so I joined in and five of us did a pretty decent check, but found nothing. We did find some beautiful sharks, some sleeping, and all but one under 3'... but that last one was more like 8'... I am still quite tempted to snorkel the reef myself and pull in a couple lobsters.

Anything else lionfish related? Well, I snorkeled the north side of Hurricane Hole, from Turner Point to Water Creek and found none, but they could have been far back beneath a ledge. I did find a slipper lobster (googled pics) and dove down and caught it, but let it go unharmed since it is in the Monument. Also snorkeled another mile or so of shoreline and saw none. They really have strong preferences and never colonize certain spots while hardly being able to wait for other spots to become vacant. I think it has to do with requirements for specific shelter being the limiting factor, far more than food.

St Croix, Buck Island National Monument, and back home

Argh! I'm on a downward slide, watching netflix and eating. Something is definitely missing and even sudoku seems rather meaningless. I've even removed all the rusty nuts from inside the boat and have cleaned them before replacing them... but it seems less fulfilling than I had expected.

So, let's review....

Cynthia just left yesterday. Yes, I suppose this COULD have something to do with my current lack of ambition and action. I definitely miss my partner in adventure, whether hunting lionfish together or fighting over who does the dishes ("Get out of my way! I get to do them!") or pointing out a lobster or a shark

Before she arrived on the 12th, I installed my new composting toilet. I love the fact that it has no pump and needs not be emptied for a couple months and that I could get rid of all the old smelly nasty plumbing. Despite the ventilation, it DOES, however, smell rather strongly like a compost heap: not the rotten nasty slimy type, but the sort with grass and leaves and other stuff decaying nicely. Still, I hope and expect that I will be able to find some sort of bacterial culture (perhaps scraped from soil, perhaps from a termite nest) that will assist in making everything even better. Tomorrow, perhaps.

Once she arrived, we took a day to recover from her flight, play,

 and have dinner with Peter. Then we dropped the mooring at dawn and headed across the water to St Croix, the easternmost possession of the USA and the only bit of US soil ever touched by C. Columbus. Now, it turns out that this is a LONG sail, about 45 miles as we did it, and we reached Buck Island National Monument (NOT the Buck Island off St Thomas) at about 4pm, dropped anchor in the patch of water at the west end where anchoring is permitted, and, after a leap into the cool water

  and a brief recovery nap, went exploring.

 Buck Island satellite map
 Wikipedia (but map is upside down!)

Shallows and reefs surround the island on all sides, sometimes reaching a half mile from the island. We paddled upwind, around the north side, wending our way around the coral heads brushing the surface in the eight-foot-deep water. I wanted to head offshore, figuring there would be better reefs there, but Cynthia pointed out birds plunging into the water by the shore and we paddled over, pulled on fins, masks, and snorkels, and slipped into the water.

Wonderful activity! A pack of tough-looking horse-eye jacks patrolled the edges of a school of 4" fish, picking off any easy ones that ventured out into deeper water. Birds picked off the bait that ventured near the surface or took shelter in the shallows.... and a gray shape about eight feet long swept by me in four feet of water and sped off in startled surprise: nurse shark? Lemon shark? Cool shark!

After a bit we left and swam among the coral heads and sand flats back to the boat, watched sunset and ate an incredible dinner,

 and hit the hay.... and slept very well on the improved bed arrangement, rocking gently with a cool breeze blowing into the cabin.

At dawn we rose, ate first breakfast (pancakes, I think),

 paddled a mile upwind to the underwater trail, and enjoyed a wonderful swim through the beautiful lagoon, full of healthy brain corals, reef fish, and barracudas, surrounded by a reef of elkhorn coral. We swam along the barrier reef toward home, then found a break and swam through into deep blue water over sand, the reef rising beside us looking like a peach orchard that had been bulldozed into a giant pile for burning. Impressive and beautiful and I wish we could have seen it when the elkhorn coral was alive. Gradually we made our way back toward our anchorage, pointing out cool things to each other, wishing we would see a sign of any lionfish.

Short on ice, we decided to head to Christianstead, Wending our way through the fringing reefs (all over the place in St Croix, not to be found in St John and St Thomas), catching a mooring at Susana Santana Park, paddling ashore and walking past the copious plantings of coconuts and tamarinds and other tropical species (including one that is very noisy in the wind),

 happening upon a good hardware store where I could buy some plumbing for the composting head, before finally finding a grocery store and staggering back with groceries and ice.

The next AM we hiked around Christianstead some more and did more shopping, then headed back to Buck Island (I dropped the mooring line at one end of the sail and the anchor at the other and helped with navigation, but Cynthia is quite a competent sailor and handled the remainder). Once back, we decided to hike the one trail on the island. We went through coastal forests,

found a wonderful giant fallen tamarind that still survived,

hiked to the top of the island and visited the overlook,

and down, then swam and cleaned the boat bottom to cool off. We swam out into the reefs to the west and saw three nice lobsters crawling about: too bad it is a monument, but someone would have taken them otherwise. Still no lionfish.

Rain poured in the night, first rinsing the salt from the deck, then filling buckets and both water tanks. Yes! In the morning we wanted to head home, but realized we were running short on ice, especially since we did not intend to hit a store for a couple days. We headed west to Christianstead again as the sun rose,

snagged the mooring at 7:30, bought (small and rather expensive) bags of ice at the local marina, and were sailing north by 8:45. I sailed a bit, but mostly read "Good Omens" aloud while the boat steered itself (nearly correctly) or Cynthia put her hand to the helm to adjust the course.

We spent the night in Lamesure Bay, then snorkeled in Salt Pond and delighted at the healthy specimens of elkhorn, staghorn, and other corals. We sailed back to Hansen Bay and sample Peter's rum punch (we bought two for the two of us... and it is delicious and knocks you on your butt. I'm sure I could find a metaphor there, but why?). We spent the night there and in the morning sailed to Hurricane hole and explored delightful areas we had not seen before: wonderful corals and fish and mangroves and sponges and giant crab claws and the shed shells of lobsters: so much to see, even in one's own back yard!

Then we sailed back to my mooring, finished "Good Omens", and packed, and slept well. In the morning, yesterday, we caught the bus to the noon ferry, hugged, and made our separate ways back home.... although I stopped into the store in Cruz Bay to buy my Coffee coffee buzz buzz buzz ice cream. Now she is home with her dogs and I am here without her.

*SIGH*

Well, I think I'll go and polish the rust off the welds on my anchor chain and reinstall the nuts on my jib sheet traveler. Keeping busy is good.... anyway, I'll be up at the Cape in four weeks. And, in the meantime there are things to do and people to see. Time to get busy and quit wasting time.

another trip to St Thomas... squid, sails, lionfish, et cetera.

After a long long day of sailing I am simply ready to fall into bed and zonk out, but first I want to write this stuff down:

OK, I needed to get a couple things done that required another trip to St Thomas: sail repair, waste tank pump-out, get teak plugs and bolts for various projects, replace some tools I have dropped into inaccessible spots of the boat. While I'm at it, why not do a few other things as well? Visit Buck Island, try a new route, see about getting another sail and my dodger repaired, go shopping at Crown Bay, Home Depot, and Cost-U-Less (Costco light).

So, Sunday morning I set out for Johnson Bay in light winds, bearing loads of gunk on my hull, towing Peter's dinghy ("Plan B") as well as my kayak. It took about two hours to make my way there, then dropped anchor, and plunged into the water for the first time since my return and spent a really quite delightful hour or so scraping Plan B and Dorado. The only downside was a nasty rash inside my left elbow: I even took ibuprofen and iced it and, after a couple hours, the burning diminished. I'm used to skeleton shrimp trying to set their hooks in my skin, holding on to a new surface, but this burned badly and looked like nasty poison ivy. There are SO many defensive critters around here!

Sailing around to Buck Island worked just fine: I used the nice heavy nylon line I got from Seth (a friend on Cape Cod) to let Plan B drag far behind so that it did not surf into the stern of my boat. I could have made it all the way to Hassel Island that evening, but dusk might have been settling in, so I decided to spend the night at Buck Island, snorkeling around in the southern mooring field. Decent coral, very nice fish, much more rugged and deep as you work south along the shore... and then I saw a lionfish hanging fifteen or twenty feet below me near a vertical crack in the rock face. I froze, wishing for a spear, wondering if I should swim back to Dorado, snag it, and paddle back in the kayak. Nope: it took a good ten minutes or so to swim back in a beeline, I had begun to shiver, and the sun was setting. Maybe in the morning...

Well, my morning swim was completely delightful, but no sign of the lionfish. *grumble*! So I made my way back to Dorado and swam around it... and an entire school of blue angelfish(?) were nibbling eagerly at the remaining life growing on the bottom. I'm delighted that they enjoy my boat! And, who knows, maybe they will clean it significantly.

Sailed to Hassel Island, caught a mooring, brought my jib in to Manfred (he repaired it AND another for $70!... and thinks he might be able to repair rather than replace my dodger.), played with the tennisball-sized hermit crabs eating corn scattered for them on the sidewalk, shopped in town (mostly good, but Home Depot had only two of the eight things I needed (out of the others)... and Costco no longer carries my cereal.), chatted, got my tank pumped, fed the danged mosquitoes, and, after 30 hours, departed at 1:30 on Tuesday with plenty of time to get to Buck Island, but not enough to get to further bays.

So.... Buck Island again.... same mooring again.... swam out (through about 50 tourist snorkelers) to see if I could spot the lionfish. This time, as last time, I saw loads of fish, but the highlights were a gray and yellow fish (parrotfish?) carrying a little urchin, unsure how to eat it; seven squid in a little school, a shark sleeping in a pothole in the rocks, a really beautiful little electric blue angelfish with gold specks.... and the lionfish, hiding in the dark recesses of that crack! I swam back, geared up, paddled back, dove down.... and it was not there. Holding breath, rising slowly and scanning the crack.... and there it was, several feet higher than before! Nearly out of air, I rushed the shot and only hit it with a single barbed tine of the six, but that sufficed and I rose triumphantly to the surface.

The angelfish came back to my boat and I counted about 50 to 70 of the hand-sized critters. Other fish joined them: rainbow parrotfish, needlefish, jacks, and others. Very nice. I love that this location, clearly a favorite of humans, is actually benefiting from their attention: fewer lionfish and fishermen, far more reef fish, nice clean coral.

This morning I headed out well ahead of sunrise and headed SE, into the teeth of the wind, and (soon) into a beautiful sunrise.

 A bit later, looking behind me, I could see the first cruise ship of the morning heading into the harbor.

Plan B had been taking on lots of water (about 15 gallons per hour), so I made some changes that reduced that to just a few per hour. It also really reduced the shocks of the boat hitting the end of the tow line. Normally I head offshore, well away from the traffic, but this is where waves and wind are highest and Plan B worried me, so I stuck close to shore, even threading the narrow channel between Great St James Island and St Thomas. SO busy! I even raced a hobie cat for a bit.

By noon or so I decided I should check Plan B, but didn't want to snag a mooring. Then it hit me: I could heave-to! This is a maneuver I practiced once on my 8-day sailing course and have heard great things about. The general idea is to tack, but don't switch the jib. Then steer upwind until the boat balances and sort of sits in the water, making slow forward/sideways progress. I've heard horror stories about how hard it is to get right and we had some trouble on my 8-day course, but I spun the wheel to tack, spun it back to head up.... and the boat locked in, sitting stable and luffing slightly, eddies showing where water is sliding sideways past the keel, Plan B sitting on a nearly slack line. Very nice!

Five minutes later, with Plan-B bailed out, I tacked the jib and set off again.

Got home hours later, about 5pm, snagged my mooring, and furled jib and dropped main before the boat swung around on the mooring, then staggered back to the cockpit to pick up, clean up.... and install teak plugs on Gigi, the neighbor's boat.... and water Peter's plants... 

So, today was mostly a long and boring, as well as slightly stressful, sail in full sun after a couple excellent days of getting stuff done. I even had to use sunscreen today, but at least did a lot of reading and took a couple cat naps. And now to climb into that waiting bed and sink into slumber: I hear it calling....

So much waiting for me tomorrow! Composting head (toilet), taxes, plan for a sailing trip to St Croix, get airline tickets for other trips, etc, etc. But, first, sleep.

Oysters, deck work, and back home... for lots more work

Well, here I am, back in St John, sweating lightly in the closed cabin while a light shower passes... a pretty nice change from the cold of Cape Cod in the spring... although I miss my miss.

The last week or so on the Cape after ice-out (the amount of ice was really amazing and unusual... just as was the dry warmth of the west coast. Is this a symptom of "global weirding"? Well, one winter hardly constitutes proof, just data.).

So, what to say about the last week? Spring comes late to the to the Cape, so winter lingers. Cynthia and I collected oysters at an unnecessarily extreme low tide. These made a wonderful pre-dinner snack a few days later.

 

A local red fox really enjoys the bits and pieces we toss out into the "meadow", our local "kitchen midden". I tossed out some compost and nearly hit it before I looked. It dodged into the underbrush at this assault, but returned within two minutes to check for anything edible, watching warily for further missiles.

 

Another day, we took a walk on Morris Island with a north wind biting. The island sheltered us for most of the walk, but the wind really tore at us for the final five minutes. Cynthia pointed out that the multitude of bird carcasses on the south end of the island bore tags.... I wonder if researchers are investigating deaths or other details of this harsh winter. Anyway, we had fun looking at them and locating blueberry bushes for revisiting in July.

 

The deck is coming along nicely, but I'm having back issues and didn't get much done before heading back south. At least I got the posts & decking installed and set the top rail installed to keep folks from walking off the edge. I'll finish up before June.

Now that I am back (slightly over two days now), I've been going nuts with working on the to-do list. I've installed the required "St John, USVI" on the stern, installed the trim on Gigi (I brought Dorado alongside so I could use my power tools), repaired the aft pulpit feet, measured my spare jib, ordered materials on-line, & installed the trim for the jib halyard on the mast.

 

My back enjoys the flat, harder bed I have on-board. Sometime in the next few days I need to scrape the bottom and head down to St Thomas to deal with the waste tank and the sail repairs. I feel tired just thinking about the endless list.... maybe I should eat more coffee/chocolate. At the very least I need to do some of my night yoga on the deck: that always leaves me ready to face the day. Well, time to hit the hay...

Ice Out on Cape Cod

Since I was young I have read stories of the frozen north, of rivers and bays covered in a creaking, cracking, groaning shell of ice. One bit that really caught my imagination was the spring breakup, when the ice suddenly broke up and drifted away. I even saw such a thing caught in a satellite snapshot of a bit of Alaska on Google Maps.... but never saw it in person until this week in Cape Cod.

For the last few weeks, at least, some of the bays up here have been more or less locked in ice.... more than I've ever seen on salt water. Fishing boats locked in, floating docks damaged and partially sunken, bubblers at Pease Boat Works keeping a clear area around the docked boats to protect them, ice shoved up onto shore by the pressure and tides.

 

 

​A few days ago, as I passed Ryder's Cove, open water showed, so I pulled into the marina and saw great ice floes drifting with the outgoing current, collecting in the nook to one side of the parking area and bumping their way past and out into the open. It gave me a taste of the far more exciting breakup of the arctic rivers.

​

And now there is just open water everywhere... and I watched as the marina workers began assembling the docks for the summer hordes. Such a change, so fast! Here is the Mill Pond a couple days ago:

Not only that, but the ground, white since the blizzard (see my earlier post), has lost its blanket in the last few days. Spring really comes in suddenly here. "March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb" really applies. Of course, even before that, the long forgotten crocuses at my grandparents' place on Sedge Lane came up in the sunny lee of the breezeway..

​

The giant soiled piles of snow still remain: here are some at Nauset Beach in Orleans.

​How long will they take to melt? I saw one at Home Depot that must have been 20' tall!

And, finally, where the snow is gone it leaves the sand that was spread on roads and the wild winds fling it into the air in swirling clouds. March is definitely still roaring today.