From Sailboat to Trawler

From Sailboat to Trawler
M/V ENDEAVOR

Wednesday, March 31, 2021

THIS PLACE IS FOR THE BIRDS


 One of the things I enjoy the most about this location is the plethora of birds that cruise these waters. We're tied up to a dock at the marina, with our starboard side alongside the dock. The port side looks out over what we call "the lake". (It's actually a small bay whose name I cannot recall.) The birds fly around all day but about 5PM (coinciding with our cocktail hour) they get particularly active. We like to sit up high on our fly-bridge where we have a nice view of the surrounding waters and the sky overhead.

Mostly we have 3 varieties of birds-----the usual Seagulls, Cormorants and Pelicans---oh so many pelicans. We'll occasionally see Frigate birds flying high overhead but they seldom come down close enough to be exciting. We'll also see  Osprey soaring overhead---but they, like the Frigates, usually don't come down very close.

Seagulls are actually kind of boring. They fly by, very seldom diving on prey. Their flight pattern seems to consist of fairly relaxed wing flapping and some occasional soaring for short spurts. But they're pretty fast in the air. About the only time they are a bit interesting is when they've spied someone at the fish cleaning station when they congregate and fight for morsels and then chase the one who succeeds in snagging the fish guts. (Remember "Finding Nemo"?------Mine, Mine, Mine, Mine) They don't like to fly too close to the boat but will occasionally fly over close enough to concern us with the possibility of a little doo doo being dropped on our decks.

Cormorants are a bit more interesting. They're terrible flyers---flapping their wings violently to get off the water and continuing their rapid flapping as they fly to their next destination. There's no soaring involved. They fly like they mean it. But they fly very fast, once airborne. The don't seem to want to mingle even with others of their own specie. They are excellent swimmers and divers. They'll stay down for minutes at a time often surfacing with a fish in their mouth.

But my favorite is the Pelican. A wondrous bird the pelican. His mouth can hold more than his belly can. I love to watch them fly by. Some of the adults are huge with 6 foot wingspans. They fly beautifully and gracefully for such a large bird. They'll fly by, flapping their wings gracefully and leisurely and then soar for 6, 7, 8, 10 seconds, often dropping down to inches off the water where they soar often toward a water landing. As opposed to the pelicans I use to observe in Galveston Bay these pelicans don't dive straight down into the water after their prey. In fact, I haven't seen one of them do that dramatic dive. I don't know how they get their food.  Quite often you'll see them flying and soaring in pairs. Are they mates or just following each other? Sometimes you'll see 2 or 3 flying along and then 3 or 4 or so will change their course and fly with them. I don't know where they're going or why they seem to be more active during my cocktail hour (just before sunset). Perhaps they're flying home for the night. Rush hour?  It really is a beautiful sight and I continue to be entertained by the beauty and grace of their flight. 

Well-------You can ignore some of what I said above. After I started drafting this post we went out to the sand bar with our folding chairs to enjoy an afternoon of sitting in the water, sipping a beer (and smoking a cigar) and listening to music from our friends boom box. Looking off toward shore--about a mile away---I saw what I thought were waves breaking against the shoreline. But it was a calm day and there were no waves to speak of . It turns out that it was a large number of pelicans diving for fish in the manner that I had been familiar with back on Galveston Bay. There were so many of them diving that it truly looked like a breaking wave. Then, later, back on the big boat at the marina I saw this going on across the bay:

This is a guy on his anchored boat throwing fish cleaning remnants into the water. The birds congregate waiting for the next contribution then they fight for it.

EUREKA!!!!   It finally dawned on me. This bay is surrounded by about 8 or 10 fish cleaning stations, including two right here at our marina. Also---the bay is very shallow. The pelicans here , first of all, would break their necks if they dove for fish; and secondly, they don't have to dive for fish. They simply fly around looking for whichever fish cleaning station is in business and head over there. They can always fly the 1/2 mile to the ocean if they want to go diving for their prey if there's no activity here on the bay.
So---forget the above about these pelicans don't dive---They dive elegantly and savagely where the water's deep enough. So, enough for your ornithology lesson for today.


                               


Sunday, March 7, 2021

THE PENULTIMATE PROJECT

 When we bought the boat it had horrible, dirty, oil stained carpet throughout. It is OK in the bedrooms but the main salon was a mess. So----Diane made it her mission to replace the flooring. At first we shopped replacement carpet but received ridiculously high bids for the cost of the carpet. This led us to reconsider and ultimately decided to replace the carpet with a vinyl flooring product that looks like the popular teak and holly wood product. We found the vinyl product by cruising through the Mainship on-line forums and then found it at Defender.com, a large marine product store located in California. This is, I believe, the same flooring we had in Opus V, our prior Mainship 400 and we really liked it. When we were shopping for the boat this time we knew we wanted the vinyl flooring but with the dirth of Mainship 400's on the market we had to settle for one with a dirty salon carpet.

On our way through this flooring journey we came across a young flooring installer by the name of Alex Parera. We met with him a few times to assess the job and finally he agreed to do our installation even though he had never installed this particular product before. Alex emigrated to the US from Cuba in 2014 during the more lenient Clinton policies with regard to Cuba. Later he succeeded in getting his parents here as well. Having had no carpet laying experience before, he learned the trade after he came to the US. He started his own business after a while---Parera Carpet---and has been quite successful staying much busier than he wants to be. He is truly a terrific young man and I've never seen a tradesman work as hard or as meticulously as he did, completing the job beautifully in a day and a half. He was assisted by another Cuban emigree and also by his father. They had worked a couple of hours on 2 different days and finished the job on a Saturday, working non-stop from 8AM to 5PM (without a lunch break). They had a particularly difficult time removing the old glue-down carpet and padding and then the hundreds of staples that had been used in the original installation. Then they meticulously laid the new flooring and made the cutouts for the 4 different removeable panels that lead below decks into the engine room and the equipment room. Here's what it looked like during installation:









                                                                 And here's the finished product:

                                                        

                                                                            

                                       

                             Diane is a happy camper. And you know what they say:  Happy wife--Happy life.

I call it the penultimate project because we have one more major one to do. When we get to our next marina, in the Ft. Myers area we will contact  a guy that built a new fly-bridge enclosure for Opus V and have him build us a full enclosure for Endeavor. Right now it only has an unenclosed bimini cover. So---Kaching, kaching--(sp?) and we'll finally be finished with all the major projects that we felt we needed to bring this boat up to Opus V standards. It really is a labor of love because we truly love this life-style and want it to be as pleasurable and comfortable as possible.