Jan Camp 2011

Every year I make a resolution to camp out at least one night in every month. After Man Camp, I always think, "Hey, I've got the hard one done, if I can make it through January and February, I'll have it made!" Then I don't camp out again till July.

Maybe 2011 will be different. I did make it out on January14th. Just a solo trip, no fire. It was kind of a proof of concept to see if 2 three season sleeping bags would work as one four season sleeping bag. It worked swimmingly. I brought too much stuff, as per usual, but made it down and back in one trip, which is unusual, and an improvement.

It got sub zero, maybe -2 or something, so I feel like I have actually been winter camping. I stayed quite warm, listened to iTunes most of the night. One key seemed to be sleeping in my clothes, including my mukluk liners. Then getting dressed in the morning consisted on putting on my boots over my warm liners. No trying to stick a warm body in cold clothes.

I kept my water bottle under the one of the sleeping bags, and it didn't freeze. I used my candle lantern, it was awesome, casting the picturesque glow of a fire, but without the hassle.

The Kick Off to Boat Season 2011

Don has a friend who commissioned a boat to be build by Doug Hylan on the Benjamin River in Brooklin.

As they finished the boat they had an open house towards the end of January, so we went down to take a look. I was eager to go because I wanted to check on the progress to Robert and JoDee Baird's cat boat, the Mollie B., which is undergoing a fairly involved restoration there.

Doug had moved the Mollie B. outside for a breath of fresh air, and to open some room for the open house.



Here you can see the tale tell signs of a major refastening, and I think new ribs, as well.



This is the Deliverance, which has the look of an old fashioned sardine carrier:



Check out the fancy detail on the bottom of the sliding door:


In this one you can see Don plotting a course for Head Harbor:


On thing that I think about when I go aboard some of these yachts, is how luxury is relative. For example, here is the master stateroom on the Deliverance:

The picture above is the starboard side berth, looking forward. Below is the port side, looking towards the stern.

As you can probably piece together, the stateroom is about 8 feet long, and, at it's widest, about 9 or 10 feet wide, if that. You have to climb down a ladder to get into the room. Keep in mind that the Deliverance might be worth a half million dollars, and the only other place to sleep on the whole boat is the kitchen table in the galley. But to sit in that stateroom, even with its narrow berths, and the only natural light coming through two deck prisms and two 6" portholes, you feel like it would be the neatest bedroom in the world. Part of it is the finish, and the thought put into everything in the room. Nothing is happenstance, nothing is an afterthought. Every piece of wood is carefully thought out, individually crafted, and designed to squeeze the maximum utility and comfort out of every cubic inch of available space. Part of it too is just the romance of a big boat.

Anyway, I think there is a lesson that can be learned from this, namely, that living space can be small and wonderful at the same time, the two terms are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Here is the galley, with a footprint of 2' x 7', yet still beautiful and functional:

Compare that with the engine room, which is probably 8' x 12'. You can tell someone has their priorities right.

Here is a . . . uh . . . freezer? . . . ice maker? . . . something beautiful, anyway:

And on the starboard side, a tool locker, complete with benchtop vise:


Anyway, it is a beautiful boat, and it was a fun afternoon. A great start to the 2011 boat season.

Man Camp 2010

Man Camp continued the trend of adding an additional person every year. This year Peter Dauk joined Jason Barrett, Justin Millis and me at Camp Bravo.

I also continued my trend of bringing a little bit less gear than the prior year, but I still brought stuff, a fair amount of stuff, that I didn't need. Especially since the weather was so calm this year.

Peter had visited a few weeks before the big event and together we cut nearly a cord of firewood, but didn't haul any of it to the campsite. That made a huge difference in terms of comfort. Unfortunately it snowed a couple of times, effectively burying the firewood we had cut. Justin and I were tramping through the snow in the dark, looking for lumps that betrayed the firewood hidden beneath the snow.


The temps got down in the single digits, but the fire kept us warm. There was no wind, so most of us didn't bother with tents. I didn't bother with a sleeping bag or blanket either. I was very comfortable though. I think I suffered far more from the heat of the fire, which literally gave me the equivalent of a sunburn, rather than the cold, which was insignificant.



I rigged up a tripod with some board leaning against it, and then insulated my back and the ground with some foam rubber that I was going to take to the dump. I had fashioned a red-neck recliner, and it made all the difference. No cold could penetrate from below or behind, And the radiant heat from the fire could slowly roast me. I could lean back and doze, or listen to my iPod, and still feel the warmth from the fire.

Justin and Jason had a traditional bedroll going on. I think the old timers were on to something.
Justin's set up:


Jason's set up:



Peter had set up an improvised tipi, which I am sad to say I did not photograph. He brought his dog, and they made it through the night in fine style. I think he will bring less stuff next year, as will I. It is hard to resist the temptation to bring one more thing.

One thing we learned is that there were some dead trees that we cut down, old pines that had died several years ago, maybe many years ago, that Peter and I cut up. I thought they were too old and rotten to be much good. By morning, however, we were throwing 20" diameter tree trunks cut into 2' lengths on the fire and marveling how they burst into flame and put out searing heat in every direction.

Anyway, another great outing, and I think we will look back on this year as the year Man Camp became an institution, rather than an experiment.

Squeezie's Hobo Tooth

A short film. By me.



You're welcome!

By the way, I made this video a couple of weeks ago, maybe three weeks ago. The Hobo Tooth is still hanging on.

Nearly One Hundred Percent of Zoe's Points for the Season

New Year's Eve in Maine

This is an attempt to post a video. Did it work?

The Bassassins

Two weeks ago our baby-sitter took the night off, so, instead of going out on date night, I took Zoe fishing at our favorite nearby canoe haunt. The fishing was fair, it will pick up a bit more as the nights get cooler and some of the weeds die back a little.

Zoe caught this tiny minnow, but she was happy with it. She was really starting to get the hang of casting, and was able to unhook the tiny pickerel without loosing a finger. That is no small feat, because these bad boys are related to the deadly fresh water sharks of Borneo, and they have the razor sharp teeth to prove it.


Poor little thing, its not even as long as her arm.


Here it is, lunging at her throat, trying to rip out her jugular.


A few minutes later, I had to show her how it was done. Check this bad boy out! No, that's not a whale, that's a delicious bass. I didn't have my scales, but the bass did. Anyway, I figure probably he weighed 13 or 13 1/2 lbs. Probably a Maine State record, but I threw him back anyway.

Today, after two weeks spent on and around multi-million dollar yachts, I thought I should get back to my roots, so I woke up Kate and Zach for another trip in search of the lunkers. The morning was clear and bright, the seas calm. Just check out the reflection off this water:

I hooked another record delicious bass, but I let Kate reel it in.

A little later I hooked another Leviathan, and not knowing if the beast would be bigger than him or not, I passed the pole to Zach, with a stern admonition that if the great fish were to pull the fishing rod out of the boat, Zach should still hang on. I knew that if he could do that, the mighty fish would exhaust himself trying to keep Zach's life jacket under water, and that eventually they would both rise to the surface, where I could hopefully harpoon our prey like the mythical White Whale of Captain Ahab's fevered dreams.

In the event, none of that proved necessary, and Zach was able to land his quarry with no serious mishaps. All in all, a fine day on the river.

Here is Kate, trying to pet the fish.

This morning when I went to take a shower, imagine my surprise to see the throw-up bucket, complete with HUMAN VOMIT, sitting in the bathtub. Weird. I had already asked Joey how she had slept, and she had had a peaceful night, so I was a little perplexed. Not that I suspected bandits or anything, it was just weird.

When I called to check in this afternoon, the mystery was solved. Apparently Zoe (who had gone to the fair yesterday with Joey, her Grammie and Grampie, numerous siblings, etc. etc.) had a dream that she was on a fair ride, and that made her sick, so she got up an threw up, and, knowing that she would get no sympathy from her parents went back to bed.

I have no idea how it is that the real rides did not make her sick, but the dream about the rides did make her sick.

This afternoon Grammie was a little too wiped out from the fair, so Joey gave her the night off from babysitting. I decided to take Zoe fishing since she hasn't got to go all summer.

Zoe had a little luck, landing two small pickerel, really not much bigger than minnows, but she was excited because she was doing it all, from casting to taking the fish off the hooks.

While it was no substitute for datenight, it was fun. Oh, and Joey's mom came over anyway and took Zach and Eleanor for a sleepover, which of course aggravated Emily to no end, seeing as she never gets to go to the pool or fair or anything. Or something.

Long time no blog

Well, rather than try to catch up, here is what I have been doing between trips taking Magnus to the E.R.

In honor of Pioneer day, I decided to clear some land. The first day cut a path through the middle of the thickest part of the area I intended to clear. I have used this method before, and it has the benefit of making a path that leads back to the burn pile, it gives good access to the center of the problem rather than just chipping away at the edges, and also divides the work into two clear halves. Unfortunately I didn't have a camera for a before picture, but here are a couple of after pictures. This took about two hours, but of all the days, it was by far the hardest, if only because it was so hot, and I was so unused to clearing land by hand.



Here are some pairs of pictures that show the before and after, more or less from the same vantage point and angle.




Another pair:




Here is what the raspberry patch looks like if you mow it:



So far I have about 8 hours into it. Tonight Zoe, Emily, Zach and Kate all came out and helped for most of the 2 hour block. They were a big help. Zoe is a little freaked out by how big the burn pile is though. We'll probably burn that towards the end of September. It should be a doozy of a conflagration.

Logan Trip

On Thursday My two brothers, my nephew and my Dad drove up to a ranch in Paradise that has hunting and fishing. Fishing is catch and release, but there are definitely some big trout. You can't tell from the picture, but there are some lunkers in there. We didn't go to fish though, but we enjoyed looking at the fish while we waited for the sporting clays competition.

I neglected to take any pictures of the sporting clays. Here is a picture of Jake, Jon, me and Doug afterwords though. You can see how pretty it is up there.

While we were driving around we saw a couple of roosters just sauntering along the road.

Doug, doing what I can't exactly tell.

Jake, annihilating the applesause cookies my dear sweet mother baked for ME.

We stayed in Logan that night and the next morning we got up and went pheasant hunting. It was a little cool.

The view from the bench.

This is picture of our guide Sean, and some of the dogs we were hunting with.

Dad

It doesn't really show up in the pictures, but its pretty steep, up and down. The elevation is about 5,000 feet. There is not much oxygen for my sea level acclimated lungs to process.

By this time I was carrying 4 pheasants in my vest, and huffing and puffing in the thin air. I started shedding layers at this point.

We had a great time. We let a lot get away, but everbody was successfull and it was a lot of fun. I'm sure all of us will remember the trip for the rest of our lives.

I can't tell which picture I like better, so I'll post both.

Thirteen, if you're counting.

Cleaning the birds. Maybe its just as well that its out of focus.

I'm beat! Thanks Dad for a n awesome trip!