Category Archives: living aboard

Introducing Beryl Skogkatt

Posted on by under living aboard, News, photos, The Crew

We have exciting feline news for all.  We are honored to introduce Mahdee’s new ship’s cat, Beryl Skogkatt (Beryl or Berrie for short) to our friends, family, and the schooner-folk who follow our blog.  Just like house cats are a wonderful part of many shore-based households, ship’s cats have always been good crew and an important part of life aboard sailing vessels.

Sitting on the chart table:
Beryl

A close up:
beryl2

As many of you are aware, I have had cats from the time I was a toddler; David and I have had cats for our entire married life.  We’ve been blessed to have four long-lived cats: three Maine Coon Cats–as well as a cat of unknown origin who was suspiciously Norwegian Forest Cat-like. We’ve grown used to having these large and gentle cats around us. Our beloved ship’s cat, Beamer, passed away two years ago and we’ve been without a furry friend aboard the boat since then.  When we began thinking about adopting another cat, we of course focused on Maine Coon and Norwegian Forest Cat breeds or mixes–though we really were thinking it would be nice to have a bit, shall we say “smaller” kitty aboard.  We contacted a couple cat rescue groups near us and discovered the best of all kitties–a mix-breed two year old tabby female; petite for a MC but more the size and facial look of a NFC (lest we think she’s really petite, she weighs 12 lbs…but that is much smaller than our last, 22 lb Ships Cat, Beamer) and carrying that gentle and calm, people-oriented personality that we’d grown to love about both these breeds.  We learned that she’s a bit under 2 years old and her family moved moving away and couldn’t take her with them.  We were very happy to bring her aboard as the new ship’s cat.

We found that Beryl wasn’t answering to her old name at all.  She would come running when I called “kitty, kitty” or clucked my tongue a certain way. Though we’ve adopted pre-named cats before and kept their names, we decided to re-christen this one.  We thought about it for a couple days while we observed her character, form, and actions.  A pretty cat with lovely long fur, she’s quite a graceful climber–and that does fit the Norwegian Forest Cat breed:  Norse Legends refer to the Skogkatt as a “mountain-dwelling fairy cat with an ability to climb sheer rock faces that other cats could not manage.” Since the Norwegian Forest Cat is a very adept climber, many believe that the Skogkatt legends could be about the Norwegian Forest Cat.  Many people believe that the ancestors of the Norwegian Forest Cat served as ship’s cats aboard Viking ships.

My desire was to give her a strong, seagoing name.  The name of an adventuress. I pondered and then came to the realization that I should name this kitty after an iconic woman sailor known for epic cruises during her mid-life as well as impressive mountain climbing and solo adventure travel as a young woman and finally she was a woman who established a Canadian nature preserve in her retirement and re-introduced the swift fox to the wild there. Oh, yes, I would have loved to have met  Beryl Smeeton. Our kitty is very pretty and I’ve seen pics of the pretty young Mrs Smeeton. Our kitty is perhaps a bit sweeter of nature than the fearless, adventurous, and practical Mrs. Smeeton was. A wonderful book High Endeavors: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Miles and Beryl Smeeton can be found on Amazon via our e-store A wonderful story about Mrs. Smeeton’s own ship’s cat, Pwe, is here. Beryl also wrote two amazing books about her travels alone: Winter Shoes In Springtime and The Stars My Blanket.

David and I decided that this was a sound and fitting name considering that Beryl is also the name of the mineral which is more commonly known as aquamarine, emerald, morganite and other jewel stones depending on color. Our kitty’s pretty eyes are an unusual aquamarine color. Seeking more information about the name, we googled it for baby names, and we learned that the meaning of Beryl is “light green semiprecious gemstone”; that beryl was considered a token of good luck; and that the eighth foundation stone of the wall of New Jerusalem was made of beryl. That all sounds really good to us–and thus, kitty became Beryl Skogkatt just today. We shall surely call her Beryl most times–and if she’s especially cute, perhaps Berrie will emerge as a term of endearment with her full name of Beryl Skogkatt reserved for more formal proceedings.

Firewood, other wood, and projects

Posted on by under living aboard

firewood

Sorry it’s been so long to post here. Happy 2012 and good cheer to all!

The run down on what we’ve been doing–we visited our former house-mate and friend, America, in Portland for a week. We’ve missed her very much and haven’t seen her since we left Washington, DC in 2006. It was great to hang out with her and her husband Shamir there in Portland. We also enjoyed the drive up and back–it was green, wet, and just very pretty.

We purchased new tires for Wesley while there (no sales tax and better pricing) so upon our return to San Francisco Bay area, David changed out a clunking ball joint and then we took the car to an alignment shop. On the drive back to the boat, I saw a nice little cabinet shop in Redwood City. I immediately thought of the wonderful piles of firewood (mahogany offcuts we had in San Diego from our huge boat planking project) and how those are pretty much gone now. I have stashed about a week’s worth of mahogany, oak, and other hardwoods under the floorboards. We’ve been using the kerosene heat and cooking stove mostly since I’m stingy with the wood these days. So, we stopped in the cabinet shop and the very nice fellow manning the desk did give us their hardwood offcuts. Some very kind fellows in the back also brought us a bit more as we were loading. Nice people. We shared the new little firewood stash with friends Jackie and Mark since they’ve been primarily using wood heat on their boat lately. I hope the cabinet shop will be a good source of wood for both boats in the future as well.

As I walked into the shop, I was immediately transported to three different places: first, the shop of a wonderful wood re-finisher in Corpus Christi, Texas. He taught me how to clean up the finish on David’s grandmother’s bedroom furniture and he refinished several pieces of furniture for us while David was a flight instructor stationed in nearby Kingsville. That refinisher also had some lovely cherry shield back chairs that I really coveted. They belonged to a customer who had the refinishing shop strip them and then never returned to pick them up–but the nice man couldn’t bring himself to sell them because he worried that the own must have good reason for not returning for such nice chairs and would eventually come back. The chairs remained in the shop for the 3 years we lived in Texas. The Redwood City shop had a similar set of chairs sitting in the front room. The second place I was mentally transported to was….home in Washington, DC. Our workshop was so very nice there–the cabinet saw, planer, dust collection system…oh…so good for projects…and so many projects we had there in our house! And, finally, I thought about San Diego and the awesome tools we had access to at the North Island wood working shop as well as at the boat yard. Oh, yes, and our still huge stash in San Diego of Sapele and AYC for completing Mahdee’s interior!

Seeing all that cabinet work going on and the refinishing projects…makes me realize that I’ll be really happy once we’ve settled into the Bay area for a bit and we can outfit another workshop, bring our woods North from San Diego and start doing projects again. David is itching to build our main saloon table. Of course, the problem there is that we actually have the lovely large pieces of Sapele for that project on the boat! Just not all the tools…

Blogging

Posted on by under living aboard, Musings, News

notebook

2

3

I began blogging in 2006 because I didn’t want to forget. I wanted to document the process of rebuilding our 1931 schooner Mahdee. I suspected it was going to both be a frightful and a wonderful project—and it was. At first I put up a website with lots of photos of various projects in play, then a blog with more words and less in the way of photographs. We started out password protected so only those of you who could be bothered with registering and remembering a password would come and see what we had to say about life’s happenings while rebuilding Mahdee. We relaunched the boat and then decided to open up the blog to the world. Still shy, we’ve kept the script in place which precludes search engines from indexing the site. That’s fine with David and me. Low profile. Good for now.

I’m in the process of reviewing the blog and deciding what to do with it. Though we have many, many interior projects to do and lots of sailing adventures to enjoy, we don’t have boat project after boat project to discuss day after day on the blog. Weird little stories about finding Irish Felt, uses for beeswax, and the sweet smell of wood…less and less of those stories unfolding each day. We’re still living aboard Mahdee and finding life aboard a 1931 schooner to be perfect for us.

We’re now nested into a little harbor in the San Francisco Bay area for the winter. With Mahdee’s big projects completed and only little ones ongoing, we’re restless for something new and challenging. David and I briefly entertained the idea of sailing off to far away and exotic places and then said “nah, now is not the time.” Now is the time for new challenges in other areas of life. We have neglected interests and hobbies as well as professional growth as we focused on Mahdee’s many needs. Now, we’ve begun to resume the fun hobbies of our pre-Mahdee life as well as to get back into the swing of the working world. So, it looks like 2012 will be a life on a 1931 schooner with a modern twist. It will be fun to blog about our happenings. Yes, there will still be stories about beeswax and boat projects. Whether anyone enjoys reading about the next phase—I don’t know. But I began blogging in 2006 because I didn’t want to forget.

Google Analytics Alternative