Pensacola FL Sailing Blog – sailingnightwatch

IT’S COLD, NO OXYGEN, BUT REALY A BEATIFUL PLACE August 23, 2016

We got here Thursday afternoon, Temp was in the high 60’s, warmer then we were expecting. Till Monday the temps were in the high 60’s and not bad. Nights are in the low 40’s. One does not venture out in those temps.

Monday afternoon it rained in Telluride. It snowed on the peaks. This morning I can look out the living room window at a 14,000 ft. peak and there is still snow on the top.

Oxygen is just something one must get used to. I may be to old to start that process. The grandkid was born in Vail at 7500 feet. She has lungs that would be the envy of a free diver. She runs and bikes and never gets out of breath. Grandpa is a block behind trudging along taking a deep breath every 4-5 breaths. If I try not to keep up with an 8 Y.O. and stay off the hills I may survive. Telluride is at 8,ooo Ft. The ski area is centered around Mountain Village which is at 10.000 feet. Between the two towns is a ridge at 12,000 feet. You take a gondola for free from one town to the other and over the ridge. I have posted pics on my Facebook page.

The weather here is like Tampa with 35 degrees less temp. The mornings are sunny and it rains about 3pm. When it is not raining, it is very dry here. I am afraid to touch my noise, may get a nose bleed. I am afraid my skin will dry up and flake off. All this is why people move to Florida.

I am hiking as much as possible. We took off to see a mine Saturday. The mate gave up about ½ way. Now that is a first. I have been doing my yoga and that has helped my knees and hips. I was doing good and would have had no problem going to the mine and back…, I think. This afternoon we are going to drive up there. It is a showery day, and we would get rained on hiking there. Before that we are to go to the local museum. It is housed in the old hospital and has part of the hospital restored as it was in the 1800’s. My daughter says it is scary. The rest is mostly old mining equipment.

We are thinking about going out to the Moab desert for a couple days. It is not the season to go out to the desert, so we are having a hard time finding a motor home to rent. It is also hard to find a hotel open. They are closed for the hot season, or something. If we do not make it there, there are other places to see.

We got here Thursday afternoon, Temp was in the high 60’s, warmer then we were expecting. Till Monday the temps were in the high 60’s and not bad. Nights are in the low 40’s. One does not venture out in those temps.

Monday afternoon it rained in Telluride. It snowed on the peaks. This morning I can look out the living room window at a 14,000 ft. peak and there is still snow on the top.

Oxygen is just something one must get used to. I may be to old to start that process. The grandkid was born in Vail at 7500 feet. She has lungs that would be the envy of a free diver. She runs and bikes and never gets out of breath. Grandpa is a block behind trudging along taking a deep breath every 4-5 breaths. If I try not to keep up with an 8 Y.O. and stay off the hills I may survive. Telluride is at 8,ooo Ft. The ski area is centered around Mountain Village which is at 10.000 feet. Between the two towns is a ridge at 12,000 feet. You take a gondola for free from one town to the other and over the ridge. I have posted pics on my Facebook page.

The weather here is like Tampa with 35 degrees less temp. The mornings are sunny and it rains about 3pm. When it is not raining, it is very dry here. I am afraid to touch my noise, may get a nose bleed. I am afraid my skin will dry up and flake off. All this is why people move to Florida.

I am hiking as much as possible. We took off to see a mine Saturday. The mate gave up about ½ way. Now that is a first. I have been doing my yoga and that has helped my knees and hips. I was doing good and would have had no problem going to the mine and back…, I think. This afternoon we are going to drive up there. It is a showery day, and we would get rained on hiking there. Before that we are to go to the local museum. It is housed in the old hospital and has part of the hospital restored as it was in the 1800’s. My daughter says it is scary. The rest is mostly old mining equipment.

We are thinking about going out to the Moab desert for a couple days. It is not the season to go out to the desert, so we are having a hard time finding a motor home to rent. It is also hard to find a hotel open. They are closed for the hot season, or something. If we do not make it there, there are other places to see.

IT IS TIME August 15, 2016

That is a good thing. We will be heading to Colorado to meet the grandkid on her own turf. Daytime temps are in the 60’s. I have not been in that cold of an environment for over 3 years. I am not looking forward to that part of the trip. We have been digging out our winter clothes and seeing what fits and has not rotted away. We should be able to handle the 60’s. Nighttime temps are in the low 40’s. That will be a challenge.

I tried on my blue jeans. First time I have had long pants on in a long time. I have seen a sweater back behind my tee shirts. I need to dig it out. I have a couple long sleeve tee shirts. A couple sweet shirts and a light jacket. That’s it folks. Shoes are a joke. I own one pair of deck shoes. I have another old pair of shoes that are some what rotten. I wear them when hauling up the anchor and rinsing the mud off the chain. They stink and make your feet stink, BAD, but serve there function. They stay way back on the aft deck. I am going to have to buy another pair of deck shoes…, maybe when we get back.

We are going hiking. That will be interesting. We are also going for a swim. At a hot spring. Also we are looking at going in the Moab Desert in Utah. We are going to rent a motor home for us old folks. The rest like camping. Like sleeping bags only. The grandkid likes that stuff. I always felt that if one was going on a vacation, why on earth would you go if you must leave the comforts of home? Carrying your home on your back, sleeping on the ground, eating food that only a marine could love. Going behind a tree. Hoping that what ever is in the tree does not want you for a snack. I know there are many of you that think camping is great fun. That is good, your keeping all the people that make camping gear in a job. Keep up the good work.

My adventures have always been around water and sailing. Since being back I have done my best to keep the marine industry going. So far we have done our part for the air conditioning people, now working on feeding the water maker builders. I have not even mentioned the medical community. The removal of cataracts is only a month away. We also have to get the windmill people out. It runs but does not pivot. If they have to bring it down, I want to work on better balancing the blades…, maybe.

My pump rebuild projects are becoming a pain. Two of them I can not get apart. I will have to use the Dremil to cut off a bolt head on each pump. Then get the bolts out and replace them the pump heads. I have rebuilt my freshwater pump and can not fine a small air leak. It is on the intake side of the pump. It is so small, it does not leak water. When the pump is running, you can see air bubbles coming into the discharge hose. There are no bubbles on the intake side. That is driving me nuts. I have had that pump apart so many times, but still the same thing. There is one more thing I can try, but when I tried to do that the other day, I could not get the pump back together. The others are finding a hardware store that sell real stainless steel bolts in the sizes I need.

Next week I probably will not write this. By then I may have froze to death, died of lack of oxygen, fallen off a mountain, knees just fallen apart, or other fun thing that my little mountain girl will lead me into. The kid, when there is no snow to ski on, is into rock climbing and repelling. She is 8 years old and has developed biceps and triceps. I am looking for something to do when we have to get off the boat, but I don’t think it is rock climbing. It does sound like fun. Have to work on my pull ups. If I can even do any. Maybe I should add get a heart attack to that killer list. I am looking forward to this. Not the killer list, but trying to keep up with my mountain girl.

TOMORROW IS THE DAY August 8, 2016

The mate should be back on board by about 3 P.M. tomorrow WAHOOOO!! It will be nice to have someone to talk to again. Also my cooking is getting boring. I have a small group of things that I can prepare. That means I get one type of meal per day per week, then start the process over again. Last Thursday was grocery and laundry day. I was forbidden to rent a car for the day till the mate got home. That is fine by me. She will probably want to add some thing to my list. I hope so. I am getting tired of my menu. Laundry is fine. When we rent a car, we can get the laundry done.

Tomorrow I will be out of food. That is unless one wants rice and chicken breasts for the foreseeable future. I do rice and pork chop with a heavy coating of Barbeque sauce. The excess sauce goes good with the rice. Not bad. Wednesday we will have to make the grocery trip. I have a good stock for lunch, and I can survive on Toast for breakfast. By the time dinner rolls around on Wednesday, we should be back from the grocery store. I ate out twice in two months. One was last Friday to help have a meal for this Tuesday night. My two meals were at the pool bar at the Yacht Club. Both were very good. One was a poor boy shrimp basket the other was a French Dip. Both were very good. I think I did very well in only eating out twice.

Our hot windless days went away Saturday. There is this tropical low sitting in the Big Bend area of Florida. It never really got itself together, so we get an almost feeder band with wind in the 20’s for a few minutes. But, it rained hard till about 5 pm. Now there is only a heavy mist. Sunday was a little lighter then today. Tampa is very flat. That means the streets flood. Big time.

We have 3 leaks. One by our sink in our stateroom. We have had it for 4 years. To fix it we would have to pull the mizzen mast. All the time we were cruising it had stopped leaking. I think that was because the humidity caused the boat to swell and that sealed it up. At least that is my theory. Now with the air conditioning on, the boat has dried out and we have the leak back. Now there is one in the forward head. Fixing it was one of my projects I did over the last two months. It is still there. I am really stumped on that one. I found a place where I thought water could come in and calked the hell out of it. Looks like I missed. The last one is buy the depth and speed gages. I replaced the depth gage in the Bahamas. It appears that it needs more calk. Even when we had the tropical storm right after we got here, it did not rain like it has for the last 2 days and none of these leaks were around.

The Olympics are on and our wifi does not have it running. I will have to check it again. I can’t imagine that the 2 bars that have TVs do not have it on. They run on the same wifi that I get, so if it is not up I may have to visit the bar tenders.

I tried Saturday to talk to someone about how to get it on, but only got the chef. She is from the old country, I have not figured out which old country, but we have a very difficult time communicating. Plus, I knew when I tried to explain what had to be done to get it on the wifi, we were way beyond her pay grade. So, I check with the BBC news every few hours and get updates and some 30 second film. I tried CNN, but they are to busy beating Trump to a pulp. They did a little blurb on Michael Philips getting his gold. If you did not know that he was a swimmer, you would not have known why he got his metal. They did not even mention that he swam with 3 other on his team. They did not even mention their names. What a bunch of jurks.

Guess I better check on the Olympics.