- Date: April 23, 1987
- Location: Cairns, Queensland, Australia
- Subject: Living on the Hard- Makeshift Kitchen
Dear WaterFairy:
We have been living in the boat yard for a few days, since we pulled Sacha-B out of the water and placed her on the hard. Mom and Capt have been working long days making repairs and painting the boat. I thought it would be fun to live in a boat on land, in the boat yard. The best of both worlds, I thought. Guess what WaterFairy? I was wrong. Not only is it not fun, but it is really just a pain in the neck. Why? You ask, I will tell you.
First, it is really noisy in the boat yard. But it is to be expected, Capt said, because everyone is working like the devil to get their boat fixed and back in the water. Some captains are motivated to return to the sea because they miss the water. Some captains are motivated to get back to the sea because it costs a lot of money to be on the hard. Capt says he’s motivation is to return to the sea and get his “girl” back in the water-but Mom told me it’s really his wallet that is making him work hard. HAHAHAHA!
Second, it is hot! There is not much of a sea breeze to blow down the hatch and cool us off. Most nights we drag our mattresses out on deck, where it is a little cooler. The problem with that is there are so many mozzies (mosquitoes) that it’s hard to get away from them. We start the night by lighting a mozzie coil, which is like incense and works great to keep the buggars away, but once the coil is done burning, the mozzies come back in full force, waiting to feast on our blood, driving us back down below. YUCK- because of the bugs and YUCK because sleeping down below is hot and stuffy.
Third. We can’t use the toilet, shower, or ocean pump when on the hard, so it’s a lot of up and down the ladder. I thought that would also be good fun, and it was……. for about the first three trips-then it became work. Mom took one of the 5 gallon buckets and tied a painter around the handle. This way we can put stuff in the bucket and lower it over the side of the boat, down to the ground. We started out using this delivery system for the Capt’s tools, then realized it was a good idea to get anything on board! So we can lift some groceries or laundry up, and tools down. Climbing up and down the ladder is hard enough without trying to carry something.
While we were on the hard, Mom decided to order all the meat for our trip. We went to the wholesaler butcher shop down the road and Mom gave the guy a long list of meats we wanted. The butcher told Mom he could pack all the meats into meal size portions, vacuum seal them, label them and freeze them hard as a rock. He is going to deliver them to us once we get back into the water and have the freezers working and the temperature well below freezing. So that is another big thing we can check off the list.
Another thing that stinks about living on the hard is we don’t have a working freezer or fridge. When the boat is in the water, we could turn on our little auxiliary motor, named the Yanmar, to charge up the batteries and keep the freezer and fridge cold. We have to live with a cooler and buy ice every day from the Yacht Squadron store. Mom set up a little kitchen on the ground so we don’t have to cook in the galley which would be too hot and tons of work getting the water on the boat. We can’t use the sinks because the water has nowhere to drain but out the seacocks and down the sides of the boat, onto our heads, as we work. Capt made a kitchen bench out of some work planks and we have the cooler as fridge, two buckets for our sink, a large 7 gallon water jug with a spigot as our faucet, dish strainer, BBQ grill and our picnic plates and cups. We also have crates of food and spices we might need. This is definitely like camping.
We are all looking forward to getting poor Sacha-B back in the water and back to our way of life. Nobody is more interested in this than the Capt. He sure does hate being on the hard, no matter how much tea he has, he is still a bit cranky.
We still have our daily happy hour, but this time it is around the underside of the boat. Today, Toni from Mollemok came by and gave me two books! She is so nice and fun, and even though she is a grown-up, she doesn’t mind spending some time with me. The first book she gave me was a student edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is adorable, bright orange and 4 in x 7 in. She told me that when she was little, she used to play a game with her family using the dictionary. Someone would open the book to any page, pick a work, just read the definition and see if anyone could guess which word it is. Toni and I played the game for a few words, so to be sure I would remember how it is played. This was my favorite word:
Definition: 1. a thick, sticky substance in some plants. 1. any watery solution of gum, glue etc. used as an adhesive. Word: mucilage. Toni actually knew the word! She said she knew the word because she did a lot of gardening when she was on land, and she also went to college.
The second book she gave me is The Joy of Cooking, by Irma Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker. It is all about cooking, and stories about cooking and drawings about cooking, all 854 pages of it! Toni said she loves to just read it like a book and has gotten so many ideas about food and cooking. She also both books come in handy when there is nothing else to read.
I am still doing my home schooling, but most of the time I go over to the Cruising Yacht Squadron and set up a spot under the roof. I am finally finishing up my sea urchin project.
