The wind and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigator.
– Edmund Gibbon
Snowy Egret
We have an abundance of cool wildlife around Mahdee. Seeing all of it is one of the great joys of living aboard our schooner at Westpoint Harbor. One fellow, in particular, has my greatest respect and admirations — the Snowy Egret. While serving in the US Navy I had many opportunities to wear an outfit that was completely white — from hat to shoes and everywhere in between. This was especially true when I was stationed in Washington DC because the all-white uniform was mandatory for one half of the year. Despite all of my experience with white, I could never keep my uniform white for more than about 10 minutes. I could take a shower, get into the uniform in a professionally cleaned house and have black and grey spots showing before getting out the front door.
Back to the Snowy Egret, I watch him hunting for food while walking over muddy embankments strewn with rocks and vegetation which is also covered in mud. I have never seen the Snowy Egret be anything but brilliant white. Truly amazing! He darts after food in the water and between rocks and never has a single spot of mud or grime. The plumage on this bird is simply fabulous — better than any Navy uniform by far. Once upon a time, before becoming a protected species, their feathers were twice as valuable as gold. For me, I know that the best way to keep those feathers looking great is to leave them with the Snowy Egret where, every time I see them, it makes my day.
Beryl’s Winter Perch
In the summer, ship’s cat Beryl spends her time sprawled out on the boat’s sole, taking advantage of close proximity to the year-round cooling of the Pacific waters. This makes a lot of sense because typically summertime Pacific water temperatures are in the 60’s wherever we’ve been and winter temperatures much lower. Water in the 70’s beneath the keel is quite a rare situation aboard Mahdee.
In the winter, Beryl finds the sole a bit cool for her liking and she climbs to higher perches in the boat. The closer to the cabin overhead, the warmer it is of course. We have the old mainsail as a spare stored adjacent the main saloon in an area we call “the storage bed” because it does nothing but store various things for us. In theory, it IS a bed, but… Back to the sail! with all its bronze sail slides attached, weighs over 100 lbs and takes up quite a bit of space as well. We move it rarely since it takes both David and me both to get it to a new location in the boat. The top of the sail sits about 24″ below the overhead and it just so happens that a fan we have hanging high up in the galley behind the solid fuel stove, pushes air across the stovepipe and directly to the area where the spare mainsail resides. This is a prime warm spot.
This year, when it got cooler, Beryl began to hang out near the diesel bulkhead heater — the heater we usually run 24/7 if it’s cold but we’ve decided to not use this year. Instead, we’ve been keeping the solid fuel galley stove stoked with cleaner burning Anthracite from Pennsylvania. It only took her a few days to relocate to a better, warmer perch atop the spare mainsail. There she sits, hours on end, watching all the goings’ on aboard Mahdee.
