Thursday January 17: Wild Wind in Paradise

The weather in paradise has certainly changed. It's those doggone north winds!

Overnight it poured rain. Then the sun came out. Then the north winds came in. This is a picture taken about 5:30 tonight. The wind is howling (30 knot gusts) and the water in the marina is up about a foot above normal with all of the water being blown this direction. Sometimes it's good to be tied to a dock  :-)

This morning Steve managed to make it to his dentist appointment dry - but came back pretty soaked an hour later. Oh well.

There were definitely nice days this week. John and Colleen (our dock neighbors) tried out their dinghy for the first time. Teddy (the dog) sure takes up his space! Steve helped John get the sail up after a short paddling around the harbor. This is the first time John had the dinghy out.

Most important job this week was to replace the zinc on the shaft. The old one is on the left, the new on the right. As you can see, the zinc is definitely doing it's job!

The idea is that the zinc gets eaten away by the interaction of the metal with the saltwater instead of the metal parts of the boat getting eaten away. Better to lose the $15 zinc than the $800 shaft again ....

More to be replaced in a couple of weeks.

I tried my first dinghy fishing this week. It was sort of windy when we left and by the time Steve and I made it to the bridge, the waves were just too much. No way could the anchor hold - nor could we even fish and stay in the boat!

So back we went - nice ride regardless.

Success though yesterday as the winds had died. And we were actually catching - not just fishing!! Certainly one of my favorite things is to catch fish but just fishing is not so much fun .... Nothing was large enough to keep but it was still fun.

Last Sunday we had a Google Hangout with the kids!! We are finally going to have 'Christmas' in January :-) With Matt, Wendy, Becky and us meeting in the virtual hangout at a given time, we'll open our presents. I can't wait!!

It worked reasonably well although the audio was a bit slow. Perhaps a 3-way call along with the video from the hangout will be the way to go.

Looking forward to a good time for sure :-)

And looking for the winds to calm a bit - it's really crazy out there!