WhimSea's Log

Posted by Karen A. Brown

Just an update for everyone on the adventure of our boom. It has, apparently, taken a vacation to Chicago. Blew Moon's boom decided to stay home in Minnesota. The marina will be switching them out during the week and we hope to have the right boom and mast together again by the end of the week.

Feels sort of like a bad version of the Parent Trap, you know where the kids switched themselves. But at least it appears to be resolved!

Posted by Karen A. Brown

The season has finally started.

After a brief stop over in West Duluth where we were offered the opportunity to, um, support the community via a speeding ticket, we arrived at the marina on Friday night at a relatively early hour, well, early for us anyway. The party started, as it seems to, at the bathrooms with a few of us meeting up even before we get into the marina. There was a definite sign of the season on Superior, Troy was wearing shorts and Claire probably had three layers AND long underwear on! It was a beautiful night though, especially when compared to last week's snow showers.

On Saturday morning, the Yacht Club hosted a sign up/welcome event with donuts and coffee for all. We had a good turn-out, especially considering the chill in the air. It was a good day though for kicking back and enjoying some relaxation.

As you may recall, WhimSea was without a mast when we left the previous weekend. On Friday we found a mast, but no boom. Oh well, we figured, we'll just have to install it ourselves. Unfortunately, a walk around the place failed to actually produce our boom, so we went into the marina office and asked them.

'What do you mean you can't find your boom?' Didn't lend a lot of confidence.

And the hunt was on. After a look around convinced him the boom was not to be found, Dave picked up the phone and started making phone calls. Having no other choice, we made the best of the situation and found other ways to amuse ourselves.

Evening found us eating pizza with the Yacht Club, another membership drive event. It was a great opportunity to get together with people we haven’t seen all winter and catch up on the off-season.

Sunday was an opportunity for an excellent breakfast with friends followed by some marina-wide entertainment when Troy, Mark and Dave all climbed into the dinghy together and proceeded to row around the marina and check the depths. I got some pictures, which you can get to by clicking on the title to this entry.

Sunday we finished up left over pizza and retired to the beach for a beacon fire. It was so warm you almost didn’t need a coat. Since the moon was nearly full and the wind (at the time) was still more from land then water, it was pretty darned near perfect.

Monday morning gave us fluffy Belgian waffles (yes, Dave, they were nice and fluffy and crispy even), some time to do some maintenance (albeit a very, very small amount) before we were forced to head home for the work week.

Posted by Karen A. Brown

Earlier today, the Cutty Sark, a 138-year old tea clipper, burned in London. The Cutty Sark is the only tea clipper still in existence. She was built in 1869 during the British imperial grandeur. She made a number of trips to China during her years of service and even saw some service during the First World War.

On Monday, May 21, eight fire engines and 40 firefighters responded to a blaze at the dry dock at William Wark in Greenwich, south of London where the Cutty Sark was in dry dock. They managed to put out the blaze and investigators were going to be sent in to investigate the cause of the fire.

Luckily, much of the historic treasure that was on board the Cutty Sark had been removed for restoration.

Scotland Yard is treating the fire as suspicious and there were reports of people around the boat prior to the fire.

Posted by Karen A. Brown

Greetings and welcome to the new season! I am kicking off the season with a new blog entry and hope to be better about blogging weekly this season.

WhimSea's been in the water for about two weeks now and we've been watching as more and more boats join us at the docks. It's exciting to be preparing for another season and we can't wait to get it going. It's also been great to see old friends and reconnect with everyone.

I know it's hard to believe, but we awoke to snow on Sunday morning. What a weird spring it has been. We're hoping for much better weather this coming weekend for the KRYC kick off events.

So what's new?.?.?.?
Here's something. Before the ugly rumors that WhimSea has turned into a powerboat spread any farther (regardless of what Bob might think), we hope she's going to get her stick back sometime this week. Our pirate flags will fly once again, hopefully this weekend.

Hope to see you at the marina in the coming weeks.

Posted by Karen A. Brown

Splash down! WhimSea is in the water! Though later then the previous season, she's still in before Memorial Day which is nice. We'll probably head up this weekend to take a look and see how she's doing and start provisioning for the season. The mast hasn't been stepped yet, that'll probably come next week.