Just call me “Sneezy”

No matter how careful David is with dust collection, the very fine dust of the Alaska Yellow Cedar (AYC) has me sneezing immediately following the first cut. Then within 1/2 hour I’ve got a sinus headache that’s killer. Truly amazing since he’s cutting wood outside the boat nowhere near where I am inside the boat. The smell of the AYC is wonderful but the after effects are awful for me. Today, I got smart and took an antihistamine as David started working. So far the headache is at bay but I can feel my sinuses stopping up so it’s only a matter of time…

And to think that it was ME who decided to use AYC on many parts of the boat’s interior!

How do I???

Sometimes this living on a boat thing is funny and challenging in unexpected ways. For example, tonight we’re going to a Commodores’ Ball hosted by three San Diego yacht clubs. This means we’ll be in formal wear. In my case a silk dress and in David’s case a tux. The sort of thing one doesn’t want getting covered in salt water while rowing to shore from the boat and the sort of shoes one doesn’t want to get wet at all.

Since we’re always anchored out somewhere, we briefly considered getting a slip and then decided it was too much of a hassle to find one and get the car positioned near it. The logistics continued to stump us for a bit until we decided that we’d anchor at La Playa adjacent to San Diego Yacht Club and use their nice shower facilities for getting dressed. I called the SDYC to confirm that we can use their facilities as well as leave our dinghy at their docks for the evening and now everything is set. The plan is that I row to shore, drop off David to pick up the car parked in a neighborhood near La Playa anchorage, I then row over to SDYC and tie up the dinghy at their docks and David meets me in the yacht club parking lot with the car. That’s the basics of transport.

I still have to steam the wrinkles out of David’s tux this afternoon on the boat and we still must manage to get the formal wear to shore (in a bag!) without damage but it is easier this way than wearing it for sure. Oh, and since we don’t have a blow dryer, I’ll be washing my long hair around 2 pm and sitting in the yacht club reading room letting it dry for a couple hours before getting dressed…but, I have a plan!

When we return, we do the whole thing in reverse–change clothes, David takes the car to the neighborhood parking area, I row over from the yacht club to the beach rendezvous with David and back to Mahdee we go.

The San Diego Samba

I think I’ve got it all down–where we’ll be anchored or at a courtesy dock every day for the remainder of 2010. I’m so pleased. And, I’m so proud of myself because I’ve optimized it so that we have a minimum number of times that we have to move Buttercup (the car) between Coronado Island to Shelter Island. Right now it looks like we’ll be moving her from Shelter Island to Coronado once and back to Shelter Island once. That is wonderful since to do the car move the process is for me to row David and his bike to shore and have him ride the bike one way (which includes a ferry ride) to shuttle the car the other way. The whole car moving takes between 2 hours and 3 hours depending on whether David happens to make it to the ferry at the right time or he has to sit around for almost an hour waiting for the next ferry.

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