Tue 30 Nov – Jehossee Island – To get an early start and put this bridge debacle behind me I was going to have to get up around 5:30 am and get everything ready because the bridge has opening restrictions at 7 am for people who live on Sullivan’s Island and are heading for work. The bridge will not open for boat traffic between 7 – 9 am. So, I was up at 5:30, the temperature was 36, I thought about it a little (very little) and I said the hell with it… It was dark, it was cold and I’m tired of being cold. I rolled over and waited until 9 when it will hopefully be warmer. At 8:00 am I went up on deck and the sun was up, the wind was non-existent, and I made a new breakfast, which reminds me…
If you remember during my last Bahamas trip, I started conjuring up new recipes, something I called ‘Recipes from the Marsh’ because I started doing it while anchored in a marsh. Aine is proud to announce… back by popular demand the new and improved ‘Meals from the March’, meals that can be inventive, using basic ingredients found in Aine’s galley, and can be prepared in a single pan. There has been such a clammer for its return, well maybe not exactly a clammer, but at least one person has asked repeatedly for its return, well if you exclude me maybe there wasn’t anyone else, but it’s happening anyway. Deal.
Recipe #1: Three egg, faux sausage, Swiss cheese, Mrs. Dash Chipotle. Take a hot dog out of the fridge, shred cut it with a mix of fine and bulky pieces, placed in a small skillet with some vegetable oil and give it a light browning, spread it out in the pan and crack each egg over the hot dog pieces, lay strips of Swiss-cheese and cook over medium heat until there is a slight crust on the bottom. Sprinkle Mrs. Dash over the top. It is very tasty, the Mrs. Dash has a slight kick and it’s a good, fast, hot breakfast to stoke the furnace on a cold day.
Back to today – It was slightly less cold today, (that’s right I didn’t say warmer because it wasn’t, it was less cold); Charleston Harbor is always a sight be behold from the sea. Had an interesting encounter with two pelicans today. I was transiting a relative calm body of water and then right next to the boat, out of nowhere, splash… two pelicans land right next to the boat, so close in fact that I wondered if they were trying to land on the boat. After landing they both just stared at me as I motored off. Within a few seconds, splash, they were back next to the boat again. What the hell are these two birds doing? This time as I passed them I watched from the back of the boat, well yep, they took off and headed for the boat again, and again, and, and… This happened four more times, I have idea what they were after.
This evening was routine maintenance day; time to change the oil in the engine (happens every 50 hours), the oil change took about 20 minutes, it’s all pretty routine now, easy in fact. But when I went into the engine compartment, I noticed that I was getting much more water leaking into the boat then normal from the shaft log nut. I guess I should explain this before my wife loses her mind, the propeller shaft has to be both inside the boat and (obviously) outside the boat. The propeller shaft comes from outside the boat through a flexible tube called a shaft log. On the inside of the boat the tube has a big nut on the end that squeezes sealing packing tight around the shaft so that only a little bit of water can get inside the boat (which is all normal, its why you will see water being pumped out of a boat automatically). The normal ‘leakage’ is about one or two drops every 10 seconds, but it wasn’t dripping, it was flowing, albeit slowly. The shaft log nut requires a special tool, which as it happens I always carry with me. I tightened the shaft log nut and drew the lock nut down to lock it in place. No dripping now.
Breakfast – Three-Egg Faux Omelette , Lunch – Triple-Decker Ham and cheese sandwich, Dinner – Penne, tomato sauce, cheese, chocolate chip cookies