Since the Solomons Island Calvert Marina area was somewhat rustic there was a lot of wildlife. The marina itself was once the site of the first amphibious landing base, rapidly created during WW2, training many of the folks who applied their new skills in Normandy, and coincidentally, the Solomons Islands in the Pacific. Some of the facilities may be newly painted but original.
After we arrived we saw a fox that had just had kits, then saw a nutria (or a pudgy woodchuck?). Since it was our first day it didn't strike us as unusual so we didn't take pictures, but then we didn't see them again all month. Days later we saw deer across the road, and daily we saw lots of Canadian Geese.
A nesting box had been built atop a pole at the foot of our dock, currently inhabited by some sort of bird of prey with a four foot wingspan and one or two little ones. She didn't like me taking pictures, expressing her displeasure with a high pitched keening sound.
I'm thinking the picture below, taken at the base of the pole, is of a woodchuck. I'm honestly not sure, because I don't really ever recall seeing a woodchuck in person before, zoo or otherwise. We're not used to these cat to dog sized mammals that are not cats or dogs running around.
One evening we were a little bit lazy, and we had gotten into the bad habit in Brunswick of just pushing a full trash bag into the cockpit to be walked to the dumpster on our next foray from the boat. Not really an Alice's Restaurant kind of situation, but enough for said local wildlife to open a pop-up buffet while we slept below.
Over the next few days we hit up a local Tractor Supply still looking for gangway options that weren't $2k and in Ft. Lauderdale. We had a late lunch at a Cafe Rio of all places before grocery shopping. Those mormons get around. I really like the mormon angle in the Expanse TV series.
I swapped out the heat exchanger anode (right) for only the second time. Despite a similar amount of time having passed it looked much different than the first (left). I'll have to keep an eye on this. We rarely had the 10 pound zinc fish hanging while we were traveling, and we were hooked up to several dock power pedestals of questionable condition.
The next day the water pressure pump kept cycling on unexpectedly. It looked like a leak in the forward head. The original cold water line finally gave out after the last work done, with a slight crack at the end spraying a tiny stream of water. I hadn't cut it back because it was just barely long enough as it was and we were in the middle of nowhere at the time. The original tubing was now two decades old and really stiff, very hard to push onto the barb. Off I went again to West for some supplies, then spliced some clear reinforced hose at the end after cutting back the old hose a few inches. The day after that the water pump was cycling again. The hot line was leaking a little now, but I tightened up the hose clamps some more and that seemed to finally be it.
No comments:
Post a Comment