The Patchwork Boat: General Update

   We've been living aboard for a couple weeks now (or maybe a few; I can't remember and am too lazy to do the mental math), and have gotten mostly moved in. The cardboard boxes of stuff are finally out of the salon, and their contents squirreled away in the proper drawers and cupboards. Our diesel furnace, which went kaput 2 days after we moved, has been replaced with a newer and safer model, so we finally have heat. Most importantly, however, I have moved my favorite potted plants aboard. I had been storing them on Cornwall's front porch, but some sub-humanly vile jerk smashed the pots on the sidewalk, resulting in an emergency run to Fred Meyers for more pots and soil. Luckily, I got the plants in their new pots soon enough, and they all survived. The plants are now scattered around the pilothouse. I stuck them down with museum putty, so hopefully we won't be assaulted by flying cacti next time the boat starts rocking.

    Speaking of rocking, we had our first proper storm on Misogi this week. 60 MPH winds combined with a very high tide resulted in waves smashing over the breakwater and two foot swells within the harbor. The docks, which are fairly rigid concrete structures, were bucking and undulating; and Misogi was rocking enough to make dishes slide around. I thought it was pretty fun.

    The less fun part of the storm was the resulting mess. Although nothing got damaged, the spray coming over the breakwater coated everything (including the cars way up in the parking lot) with a crusty layer of salt. I ended up spending an hour this weekend cleaning the salt off of all of Misogi's windows. Our boat, by the way, has 36 windows. 36 windows is a lot of windows, and most of them are either weirdly shaped and angled, or in hard-to-reach places. It takes great skill and perseverance to clean them all. I did get them all cleaned though, so now I just have to clean the non-window parts of Misogi at some point. That might be even more work.

    The only major problem with parts of the boat that we have restored is black spots on the deck. They're tiny little pitch black speckles that started appearing as soon as we moved Misogi outside, and have been multiplying rapidly ever since. They don't come off when scrubbed with soap and water, and seems to ooze black pigment when they get wet. We're really hoping that the black spots are just soot from other boat's exhaust, and not a paint defect, because it would really suck to re-kiwigrip all of the decks next summer.