Wanderlust: May 2011

Monday, May 30, 2011

Gotta love living in the Northwest

There are terrible weather reports from all over this planet.

But we are so lucky to live in the moderate Pacific Northwest where our tornados rate at EF0 (zero on the 0 to 5 on the Enhanced Fujita scale) with damage in the $100's.

And where we don't have to worry about UV rays...as we only have 55 sunny days of the year.

Nor do we need to experience "hot and muggy" as in the first 5 months of 2011 we have had only 5 minutes of temperatures at 70 and none above.

Now sometimes in the deep gray and soggy days of winter here we may forget these advantages but we never forget our ... raingear.

Meet Bobby the Bob-Tailed Baby Jay

So much we learn! We wrote about Bob the bob-tailed jay in the blog 6/7/08. Wondering why and how he lost his tail and whether he could fly.

I was surprised the other day to see another bob-tailed jay. And because I was able to get so close to him, I was able to see that he was a baby with lots of fluff and none of the skittiness an adult jay has. A little online research and, yep, now we know what a baby jay looks like.

The Recalcitrant Deflated Inflatable

After years of admiring one, we bought an Aquapro inflatable with an aluminum hull in 1997. Love it. Love how light it is to carry up a beach. Love the shape of the hull which gives us speed and stability.

Even Miss Lily loves it with her Ditzy Doggie Dinghy Hammock (blog 9/4/09).

Just a slight problem though, the Aquapro company did a crappy job with the inflatable's tubes seams. Over the 14 years of ownership, we've had it in the shop 3 times for major tube repairs because of leakage. The last time the repair lasted less than a year and we were told that it was time to toss it as we had got all the life that is expected out of our inflatable. Oh, really? So we started looking for a replacement and really didn't find any we liked as well. What next?

Try and repair it ourselves? Whoa! Checked it out on the internet and found a product that compared itself to a sheet of Kevlar. That the sealant can stop air leaks up to 90 psi (the inflatable is under 10 psi blown up). That it can be used to repairs soccer balls. That it's used by raft repair companies and the US Navy Seals. Can we do it? Yes!

And we did. We had plenty of time to put this $ealant in the tubes and had pulleys we could use to help tip the dinghy so that the sealant could seal in all the nooks and crannies. Dean created a set of tools to allow us to get into the tube valve.

We ended up putting 4 "doses" of sealant in the tube we had trouble with. It got a little crazy when we neglected to read that subsequent doses should be 1 teaspoon instead of 1/2 cup! Took lots of turning and tipping to get that much sealant to spread and dry.

We had a nice little tool to catch the valve as we unscrewed it from the side of the tube. Worked great until the time it didn't. How exciting to figure out how to reach into the bottom of the tube, turn the valve over (of course, it landed "buttered side" down). But with our smarts and talents we persevered! And now our "throw away" dinghy is holding air for days at a time!

We are keeping our fingers crossed for an uneventful boating summer with no leaking problems with our dinghy!

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Here seagull - here seagull - squawk

What have we been missing?

Today we finally made it to watch the 23rd Seagull Calling Contest in Port Orchard.

There were 55 participants from babies to babes to people in seagull costumes to pirates and puppies.

There are no rules.

Judges and gulls can be bribed.

The Call Gulls shamelessly flattered the judges and won a prize.

A singing puppy (who didn't seem to attract any gulls) won the animal caller category.

And the little kids were wonderful!

We can just imagine their mothers telling them when they are screaming at home that they screech just like a seagull. They had the chance to prove it!