Captain’s Log 11/25/19, Powers Out
This blog is about living aboard a boat in the Pacific Northwest and snow-birding to Arizona while training an artificial intelligent mental health virtual assistant named Rubi ready to provide support in the traumatic aftermath of COVID-19.
The clutter on the boat is back since James is working on the insulation. I moved most of my bedroom items to the truck, but there is still an array of tools and bedding spread over the main cabin and galley of the boat. The galley counter has become a work bench. James is making great progress with the insulation and we can tell that it’s helping as the condensation has ceased in the areas that are now insulated. Staying on top of the mold by constantly cleaning with mold spray and the drip in the areas that are not insulated is now very apparent as it becomes more colder outside, and warmer inside!
Since the glue is so smelly, I’ve been escaping to downtown coffee shops with the dogs and leaving James to work with a respirator. I am excited and have a warm fuzzy feeling to have discovered Pelican Bay Books has a sister of my exact same childhood piano I had given to Minseo. After doing some work on my laptop, and reading, I’ve made it a habit to play piano there. On occasion I gather quite the audience. I used to be self-conscious when I play in front of people, but as I do it more and more since piano playing has become rather public than a private event in my house, I’ve adapted, and I believe my playing has improved! I’ve become conscious of what I’m playing may sound like to the listener and try to make it as playful and enjoyable as possible. That can be different than mulling thoughts and emotions over alone at the piano which often turns into a repetitive musical pattern of meditation.
James texted to tell me that the smell had diminished on the boat and the clutter was kind of picked up, so it was all clear to come back to the boat with the dogs. On my return, I took a long walk with them on the trail and through the forest. I was amazed at how cold and calm an evening it was. I got back to the boat and was starting to make dinner when the power went out. There went my dinner plans!
I had nothing to fix on the grill, so we broke into the cheese and crackers and as it got darker, that’s when it started to get really cold. It had already been quite cold on the boat since James had had it open all day to vent the glue. The fact that there was no heat now, was disappointing and unbearable to me since I had been cold all day trying to warm up at the drafty island bookstore. I had never taken off my down coat and stocking cap all day.
James thought it was time I learn to start the generator by myself. We climbed the ladder to the top on the flybridge to examine the situation. I had to lift the heavy generator out of our top dock box, fill it with gas, start it and plug it in. Easy, right? Did I mention I’m a klutz?
Luckily, the generator wasn’t as heavy as I thought. Just awkward and James moaned as I scraped up the side of the dock box as I let it down on the top deck. I fumbled with the gas. I really don’t like the new gas cans with all the safety tabs. I have a really hard time switching the nozzle to the “on” position and holding it open while pouring. I don’t have quite the strength so jammed the nozzle in the generator and pried away only to have a fine stream of gas drizzle down the sides of the generator! “Ahhhh, fuck!” I yelled. It felt as if the whole dark marina could hear my cursing. James grabbed the can out of my hands and made me try again even though I didn’t want to. I exclaimed, “why in hell did they make cans so hard to use?” He showed me how easy it was use it by hovering the nozzle over the generator cap and releasing the lever. Okay, so I had to hover, instead of jam it in. And use my weaker hand to hold it up, and my stronger hand to release the lever!
Once I got the gas in, I pulled, and pulled and pulled on the pulley to get it started. No luck. I Wasn’t strong enough. Apparently, I must add weights to my daily cardio workout! James started pulling and it took him a couple tries and it started up. He said it had sat with old gas too long since summer, so he was afraid the carburetor had been gummed up.
I found the plug, plugged in the generator to the boat, and voila, we had power. It took a few tries to figure out how many heaters we could have running without tripping the generator breaker, but for the first time all day, we started warming up and invited our boat neighbor two boats down, Ron.
As we all ate cheese and crackers huddled around a space heater, I recalled another time the power had been out when I was a child. It was due to a windstorm instead of a semi hitting a power pole that had caused all downtown and the marina to lose power. It had been the ides of March in 1998 that I’d never forget.
Winds were always scary when living in my family home. Sometimes, when it was blowing bad, my grandparents and I would sleep on the hide-a-bed downstairs next to the fire to avoid the noise and keep warm. It was weird, we lived on a grassy knoll a couple lots from the ocean cliff and the wind would come off the hill behind our house, instead of from the ocean that night. The trees in our back yard were the first thing the wind hit from the hill going out to sea. The wind was coming from a slightly different direction off the hill. A direction different enough that the trees couldn’t take it.
I had seen trees fall in our yard before. They were usually the scraggly weaker ones near the road. I had come home from the school bus one day walking through the back gate to watch the tallest fir in the yard that had previously lost most of its branches, twirl dance and then fall dramatically across our yard just missing me. I ran inside to tell my grandpa a tree had fallen next to me. He came out, not really believing me, and then when he saw it, he looked really stunned and then concerned that I had been in the yard when it fell.
That was the first falling of trees in a domino of trees. After that, trees began to fall each year, getting closer and closer to the house. My grandpa would often fall the sick looking ones himself and I’d calculate the angle of the fall since I was learning trigonometry. I’d help him with an elaborate pully system he would rig to guide the tree down as to not hit the house or fence. We always had a constant supply of firewood. However, as more trees fell, the ecosystem of trees became weakened. The shallow root systems in the clay and all the Pacific Northwest rain didn’t help.
During the Ides of March, it had been raining heavy and I was half asleep as the wind was howling outside. I sat straight up when there was a crack and a massive bang and the whole house shook. It sounded as if outside was now inside! I opened my bedroom door and stepped in the hall only to have my foot sink into what I thought was cotton. It was the insulation from the attic in the hall!! I ran down the hall in the pink insulation to my grandparent’s bedroom. My grandpa was hollering in the master bedroom and my grandma greeted me outside the living room looking dazed. My grandpa burst out of the bedroom and said, “whoo boy! That was a close call!” We looked in the bedroom and branches from a massive fir tree were hanging over the bed along with the sheet rock of the ceiling and a layer of pink insulation. Ceiling popcorn was still in the air. A tree had hit the house! Its branches had bursted through the attic ceiling, but most of the tree had been stopped by the strong rafters. A large hole was gaping to the early morning sky. It had luckily just stopped raining, but the wind was still howling.
My grandpa and I went outside with flashlights to look at the damage while my grandma collected her nerves and made coffee. Having heard the wind and being scared, she had been sitting in the living room. She had been sitting in one chair closer to the bedroom and then said she had moved across the room right before the tree hit. There was fallen sheet rock and a broken rafter protruding into the chair where she had been sitting earlier.
Our flashlights revealed a giant uprooted root system of the tree that wasn’t very deep for the massive tree. Wet roots were gnarled, and webs of loose clay, grass and dirt were making cool patterns around what had been the base of the tree. A fir, tree, over 100 ft tall was across the house and whose top had fallen off and landed in the driveway. At least my grandparents kept the cars parked in the garage and not in the driveway.
The wind was still strong, and more trees were swaying. My grandpa ushered me inside and we ate breakfast and my grandma was on the phone with her sister, Aunt Maggie. That was only when they thought that maybe they should call someone to help, but we didn’t call the fire department. We calmly ate breakfast as if nothing had happened and as soon as it was daylight, the insurance people were out with an inspector.
This was quite the contrast to what happened several years later when our next-door neighbor had a tree fall on their house. They had a flat roof and the big boxy house was cut in half all the way to ground level like a birthday cake. The husband had just been deployed overseas and the wife had just rolled over in bed in his spot when the tree came through the roof, just missing her. The ambulance and fire department came with sirens squealing. We liked to avoid drama.
Ron and James really liked my story of the fallen tree and our reaction. Unfortunately, after that, my grandpa had all the fir trees in the yard removed by a logging company. The park like setting of our backyard was forever altered. At first it was a giant mud trap. It was only until after I inherited the house that I was able to landscape, plant smaller trees and bushes and restore it to some beauty.