Tuesday, December 30
The most unusual thing that took place on this quiet, gray day was a conference, attended by a flock of fluffy seagulls, that was held on the solar panels that are mounted on the arch over our dinghy in Braesail’s stern (we call that area “the dinghy garage”). Because I was in the boat’s main cabin, I wasn’t able to take a picture of them—the instrument panel and the helm obstructed my view. They stayed for quite a while—until Walt climbed into the cockpit and shooed them away. I didn’t look at the solar panels to see if they contained any “comments” deposited by the conferees!
It wasn’t until about 4 pm that I could glimpse a few patches of pale blue sky above the silent mirror of the sea’s surface, across which no wind whispers breathed.
Walt ran the boat’s engine until our batteries were sufficiently charged to meet our electricity needs—the cloud cover wasn’t allowing enough photons to reach our solar panels to do the job. It was a little noisy, but we were still able to listen to excellent Christmas organ works. Walt worked on his German exercises and a few condo association and boat projects, and I wrote a long blog post and read and composed some email, cleaned the exteriors of the cockpit windows (brrrr—it was shivery out there!), and did my own daily German work. A supper of left-overs and a boating video ended a day during which the number of my steps was only 1/10th of the total I’d walked on Monday!
Braesail - A grand yacht in the Salish Sea 