World's fastest birthday card

More derelicts from the graveyard

Here are more boats destined for the dumpster...

A fine waterman's boat at one time

Partially chopped up already

On the hard for so long that the propellors are partially buried in the dirt

That's a fiberglass hull, folks -- the wooden stand is slowly punching through it

Don't know when any of these last saw water

The lawn mower does it for me in this shot

Cindy's baby

Cindy changing the fuel filter on the Yanmar

For those who have their doubts, here's Cindy pampering her baby -- our Yanmar diesel.

Cindy got hooked on mechanical things like engines when she was a kid, helping her shade-tree-mechanic father service their cars in the family garage.  When we first met, she repaired her own exhaust system on the Toyota Camry she owned at the time (I simply drove the car up onto the wheel ramps for her) and she has done other repairs when she had the tools or the inclination to do so.

Detail oriented

Of all the projects she's tackled, she admits the diesel is one of the toughest, simply because she doesn't know it top-to-bottom, inside-and-out yet.  It doesn't help that we have two service manuals from Yanmar and the excellent "Marine Diesel Engines : Maintenance, Troubleshooting, and Repair" by Nigel Calder -- none of which completely agree on how to service our particular engine.

Reading one of the three conflicting diesel manuals we have on the boat

So Cindy will dig into the texts, read until she's cross-eyed, run through everything several times, ask me to double-check the steps she intends to take (not that I really contribute anything other than knuckle-dragging brawn), then does it.

And far more often than not, she's successful.

Like yesterday, when she bled the entire fuel system after de-winterizing the Yanmar and it fired up instantly.  No smoke of any kind.  No hesitation.  It just fired up like a pro had done it.  There was a little variation of 100-200 RPM initially, but that evened out after the first minute.

Dock queen

Presented without comment...

Osprey update

What a location for a nest -- huh?

It turns out that the pair of ospreys that attempted to nest on the large power cruiser in our marina recently are well known to everybody here: they are the same pair that has built a nest on the armature of the marina crane -- about 500 feet away -- for many years.

When the boat owner discovered the new nest being built on his boat, he just raised his fabric dodger over the nest, which quickly convinced the birds to abandon that effort and resume in their old location on the crane.  Now their nest has been firmly established again and the female is constantly sitting, with the male continuously flying his latest catch back to her.

The crane rarely moves, so it's the perfect spot for this pair of ospreys

Crab update from Southern Maryland watermen

We had breakfast this morning at our local favorite, Courtney's Restaurant, and spoke with both Tom Courtney and his younger crabbing/fishing partner.  Here is what they shared with us today:

• The bigger crabs are still out in the deeper regions of the Bay.  Tom and his partner are finding so few large crabs to keep and sell that they're still relying upon fishing presently to bring in the money.  Crabs large enough to bring to market are selling for $110 per bushel right now (triple that at the seafood markets in Annapolis and Baltimore and up to $90 per dozen in some of the pricier restaurants), but that will plummet once the bigger crabs begin to hit the market in earnest.

• The crabs that they are bringing up fairly close by are white, meaning that they have no meat to them yet.  And they're also bringing up peelers that are quite small, so they can't bring them in to sell as soft-shell crabs.

• Tom said there is evidence of a dead zone heading down the Bay and that the crabs in their fishing traps are all clinging to the upper parts of the nets for air.

• Tom also mentioned that he found a dead snakehead in one of his fishing traps, about 8 pounds in size, but obviously dead for a day or so.  He said it was too far gone for him to check the stomach to see what it had been eating, but he was concerned about seeing one in such brackish water.

• Tom went on to talk about how Hurricane Agnes of 1972 devastated the eel grasses of the lower Chesapeake and that they had struggled for decades afterward for the crabs to recover.  He said he was concerned that the same thing may have happened last year with the double whammy of Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee, and that he may be feeling the impact of those two storms for the remainder of his life.

We always learn something new when we talk to these guys and really appreciate them sharing their insights.

Walking the docks at sunset

We had some nice light last night and decided to commence on our evening sight-seeing tour of the docks to observe whatever presented itself...

Nice light under the boat shed

Dried shrimp on the "A" dock!

More of them

A spider web from the previous night

Study of textures

The crabs are finally in

A crab on one of our marina pilings -- finally!

We've been hearing the local watermen state that the crabs were getting a slow start in our area; not many in the shallows, lots of peelers, none that were good sized yet, etc.  By our own observation, there have been very few to begin perching on our marina pilings... until today.  Now -- all of a sudden -- there are crabs everywhere!

Early morning harbor view

 

Cool old photo

Spotted on Notes From the Wooden and Iron World this morning.  Check out the view from the exposed helm!

National Maritime Museum: Steam tug Ben More on the Thames

Haul Away Joe

I always appreciate a properly performed sea shanty.  A tip of the hat to intheboatshed.net for the find...

OpSail 2012 in New York -- The Parade of Sail

I readily admit it: I'm a fan boy of Tall Ships.  This video is via The Old Salt Blog...