Stalking the wild asparagus in Michigan

9am, May 27
I'm sitting in the Muskegon, MI airport, waiting for security to open for my flight to CA for ten days: good opportunity to write up a blog post!


As a child, Stalking The Wild Asparagus stood high in my list of favorite books, not that we had a whole lot of actual asparagus in Cincinnati: we would be lucky to find a handful of stalks each year. North of Grand Haven, however, many fields grew the stuff as a commercial crop for years and, although the fields are now orchards or corn, the seeds the birds spread far and wide mean that the feathery stalks are a common roadside plant and, in the spring, we look for the old weathered remains as markers for the new shoots that rise in May.

Cynthia and I, unused to such bounty, have been picking the stuff by the quart, eating loads, and giving some away. Lucy enjoys nibbling the stalks and sometimes we need to repeatedly force her back so she does not eat our harvest, although she has not yet shown interest in the unpicked stuff.

Exhausted and delighted in NC: my masts are vertical once again!

Written May 15

Progress continues, here in hot and steamy NC. On the day I arrived in town, I lit a fire under the folks selling me the black locust and they shuffled some pallets of lumber, picked out the two best pieces, and planed it down while I waited.

Their bigger stack of it lay behind fifty or so loaded pallets, so we made do with the approximately fifteen board feet we could get. Then my friend Paul offered to lend me his truck to pick up douglas fir for the mast.

So.... the fir went into the side of the mast, the black locust went into the masthead (a spot that often seems to decay),

and, after a week of gluing and shaping and sanding.... and a few more days of applying finish....

we were ready to screw on the sail track,

install the spreaders and stays,  and get the masts installed just ahead before the days of thunderstorms predicted to remain through my departure Friday.

Is all perfect? Not really: life continues in a two-steps-forward, one-step-back fashion.

Example 1: in preparing for stepping the masts, I tied the roller furler to the spreaders to hold it in place until I wrapped it and the stays with a halyard line.... but forgot to untie it. So, I taped the kitchen knife to a couple long scraps of wood and solved the problem.

Example 2: The new mast step works well... and I secured the steering cables pro tem to steer the boat to the launch area for the mast stepping, but I found the support for the stuffing box is shot and I'll need to fix that.

Disassembled steering block, mast step, engine exhaust, and stuffing box....

So the yard guys towed Transience over and back and I have a plan for the repair, one that I can do while the rain pours down outside.


Good things abound. I head my first whippoorwill a few nights back: very cool. My neighbor Lee invited me to go sailing with him and we have taken his 34' Tartan out a couple time for an hour or two each time... and I am learning how to navigate this ridiculously shallow harbor entrance. My neighbor Clark, two boats off, sniffs the air, asks what I am cooking, and I invite him over; yesterday he helped with the mast stepping; and we frequently share ice or eggs or advice (he may have located a leak in the deck that had me stymied). And there are lots of folks walking dogs so I can chat with one and pet the other.


Now, Friday, the warm rain pours down as I sit on the clubhouse porch and write. Last night Lee caught me on a sunset walk and invited me in for the evening clubhouse drink and Zack and Bob and Amy joined in for talk of gardening, sailing, dogs, and rain. At 2pm today I'll head for New Bern to return the car, at 5:50 my flight departs, at 10:30 I'll hug Cynthia.... once Lucy calms down enough. And, in ten days or so, off to CA. Life is busy and complicated and contains some serious problems.... and is good.