IT'S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS!

SHIP'S LOG:

There is something wrong about there being snow on teak decks! I was hoping that when I next saw snow it would be on a TV in a bar in the Caribbean somewhere! Needless to say, I am not happy.

Friend Kenny is coming by to install some speakers so that I will have tunes on ABISHAG. Strangely, when the boat was sold, the previous owner took out the speakers but left the radio/CD player. The cold weather makes working on the boat difficult but the heat has been on all weekend and it shouldn't be too, too bad.

The transmission filter with the hole in it is gone and replaced with a newly manufactured piece. This will keep the oil from dripping into the bilge where it ferments and begins to stink. That problem is solved and the water that ends up in the bilge should now be fresh and sweet smelling . . . . Yea, right! Another good point about being "stuck" in Mystic is that I got the opportunity to replace several of the engine hoses which looked problematic.

Getting to the boat today, I found the deck covered with several inches of ice. There would have been more but the gunnel is only so high and the rest got washed overboard. The nasty little storm of Sunday really coated everything and the ice got in everywhere. It plugged all the deck drains and scuppers causing the ice to build up. Even the cockpit, with the Bimini and dodger, was filled with enough ice to cover the teak grating. The electrical cable from the boat to the dock was covered by a layer of ice and snow and when it was laid out, it wasn't supported. As a result, it disconnected from the dockside terminal and there was no electricity going into the boat from whenever it disconnected until I re-connected it today. The weight of the ice, along with the fact that the ice "stuck" it to the deck, along with the movement of the boat in the wind, was just enough to disconnect it from the terminal. Disconnecting shut down the power panel which has the invert switch on it so the "radiator/heater" it was powering shut off and the boat was "just a tad cool' to say the least. Reconnecting the power activated the inverter and the radiator and produced a modicum of heat. I was hoping that the boat would have been "comfortable" enough to work in, and it probably would have been had the heater remained on since Friday. It was another one of those plans that went astray.

MASTER'S PERSONAL LOG:

I don't want to say that I am slow on the uptake or anything like that, but I am beginning to suspect that maybe, just maybe Mystic will be the farthest south I get before Spring. Considering I had thought that the middle of October would be late to make a start, the present situation really makes that laughable. I was going to start living on the boat this week, but considering that it is not suppose to even make it into the 30's for a high, I have decided that discretion is the better part of valor. Somehow, shoveling snow off the boat and hissing blue breaths were not images that ever crept into my mind when I was sweating up a storm back in August and September. while I was working on the boat today, in the bright sunshine, I was listening to the marine radio and they were talking about a gale off shore for today and tonight, and high winds for the rest of the week. I looked over the route for the hundredth time and wondered what it would be like out there today. "Not pleasant" was about the best I could come up with. Boy, I would hate to make a start and then get stuck somewhere. I can see such an event as putting a real damper on the whole enterprise. It is why I wanted to get away before it got anywhere near this cold. I am not a winter person and I hate the cold. I also miss the sun, being a sufferer of S.A. S. (Seasonal Adjustment Syndrome). When we have so few hours of sunlight, I get the blahs and it is tough to get motivated to do much. Every little job becomes a major project and frustrating in the length of time it takes to get it done.

Still the thought of seeing palms trees, discarding shoes, jackets and long pants for short, sandals and T's has the power to keep me working at it. I guess the 6months of work I was going to do in three is going to take 6 after all. I'll be moving the boat into wet storage....when it gets warmer!