Marina Living

Or:  There are Marinas and then there are Marinas.....

Marinas seem to come in three flavors, in my experience:  First are just plain working marinas.  They're ugly stacks of boats and lifts, and they work on boats for a living.  No one lives there.  They are places where vessels are warehoused and repaired.  This is where you take your boat to pull the engine, to replace the mast, to reseal the outdrive boot.  They have the equipment to do heavy stuff like this.  Then you pay them a lot of money and leave.

Second seems to be what we term the "Plastic Penis People" because that's what all the boats look like.  Massive fibreglass phallic symbols with MASSIVE engines.  Their owners come down every third weekend from the city and roar at high speed around the bay, largely ignoring the bay itself.  These places are slick and often beautiful, but they're all about showing off your wealth.  Livaboards typically aren't welcome as having your $750,000 Bay Ripper Turbo 6000 parked next to a sailboat with kids clothes drying on the lifelines may make you seem less important.

Then there are marinas for people who just love boats.  They tend to have a good deal of aesthetics, but the aesthetics tend toward spaces for the people who use the marina:  tables and walks and chairs and lounge areas.  Middle River Landing, mercifully, is one of those, and we count ourselves lucky to have landed here.

Boat people are a diverse, friendly. and helpful lot.  At a functioning marina there's is a lot of socializing, a lot of sharing food and drink and stories, and there's always someone willing to lend you a hand when docking or dragging stuff aboard.

Healthy marinas, too, tend to have a lot of wildlife about.  Where we are, ospreys patrol the water constantly.  There are ducks and geese fishing around the pilings.

And occasionally being abominally cute sleeping on the floats.

The opportunities for birdwatching, fish watching, and people watching are just plain endless.

Being on the water, you tend to adjust your cycles to that of the light. I find myself getting up far earlier than I'm usually want to, and turning in earlier, once the dining and socializing dies down.  One reason is certainly that light is not always so easy to come by aboard a boat.

But it sure can be pretty.

In picking a marina, wander around a bit and talk to the folks that have their boats there.  If you can see yourself having a barbecue with these guys, if they're funny and easy to talk to, then you may have found where you want to be.  

Check out our other blogs on water living, Onboard Cooking (which has a lot of new stuff) and Life, Art, Water, you'll be glad you did.

M

Short Apologia

We've been having some connectivity problems of late, so our next couple of posts have been delayed a day or so.  Check back shortly :)

M

But What do you DO all day?

Boy we got that a lot going into this venture.  "You'll be bored" they said "you'll be back to work inside of a month." they said.

"They" are nuts.

So I thought I would give you a little chronologue of our day on the Floating Empire.

Morgainne is up with the sun.  She's always been an early riser.  Me, I'm a theatre geek.  I think I was fourteen before I discovered there was a 4:00 o'clock in the morning TOO.  So she gets up, makes herself some coffee (fresh ground, french press....we don't mess around), then comes back to bed to read.

I'm generally conscious by 8:30 or so.  I hose off and we have breakfast.  Sometimes something as mundane as cereal, sometimes pancakes, toad in the hole, eggs and sausage, or a frittata (more on frittatas later.....got leftovers?  Make em into a frittata.  Even Chinese food.  Honest.)

Mornings I write.  That's not exactly true.  Mostly I write in the middle of the night, in my head, and then write it down in the mornings.

Morgainne works in her studio, making Art.

Then Luncheon.  As former restauranteurs, we both cook, and food is important to us.  Most of the stuff we try to eat is fresh, local, and homemade.

Afternoons we run errands, hang out, read, or go for a ride along the beautiful Middle River in our dinghy.

And of course, working on the boat itself.

Then it's time for SERIOUS cooking, dinner being an event with us.  It being summer, we cook out a great deal.  While the coals heat it's time for beverages by what has come to be called at the Marina here "The Drinking Tree".

Followed by some serious grilling and dining.

Then sunset.  They're beautiful here.

Morgainne often turns in early, reading, or we'll watch a film.  Then I will often work later into the evening, writing, doing research. . .

Since we've been here, living as we choose, not having to work multiple other jobs just to survive, we've been wildly productive.  Morgainne has completed 12 art pieces, with numerous others in work.  I'm a good quarter way into a new novel, am working on an online interactive RPG, finishing up some other articles....

....and of course, our blogs Floating Empire, Onboard Cooking, and Life, Art, Water, our youtube channel Mungo's Forge, and more to come.

Of course, in closing, we both think the cat has the right idea:

What do we do?  What do YOU do?  Let us know in the comments below.

later

M

The Color of Light

I just wanted you guys to see some of these.  The light here on Floating Empire, being on the water, being the vessel she is, is amazing.  We get sunsets like these all the time:

And the warm light of our lanterns at night is really wonderful:

No wonder Morgainne, who is, after all, a visual artist, loves this place.

M

Correcting Design Mistakes

Yes, yes, I admit it, Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa, we screwed up in a couple of places in designing Floating Empire.  You never know, though, until you try.

We spent part of yesterday correcting one of the irritating design errors that had the potential to do some damage.  You may recall during construction that the crown of the roofline is carried by two beams spanning the kingposts:

The problem was, this left about a 24" flat space on the center of the roofline.  During rains, the membrane collected water here. . . .GALLONS of it, and we were afraid it was stretching our roofing.  We had used a bit of the left over luan in strips to reenforce it, but it wasn't enough to take the weight.

The solution was pretty simple. Today we inserted a line of 2" X 2" fir on top of the arcs all the way down the spine of the roof, forming a ridgecrest.  (the ridge board is mostly on top of the luan stripping, which we used to help guide it, so it's not terribly visible.

It should, from all appearances, work just fine.  They're predicting thunderstorms this afternoon, so we'll give you a full report.

M

Check out our other blogs at Onboard Cooking and Life, Art, Water

and we love to hear from you.  We answer all questions and would love to hear your ideas.

Just use the comments section at the bottom.  We'll get back to you, we promise.

Where have all the Russians Gone?

Just as a quick note, for the couple of months of this blog, we've had a pretty steady viewership from the Russian Federation.  The moment the Ukraine thing went down and Mr. Putin started making statements about the internet being a CIA plot, they vanished.

Anyone else on the blogosphere noticed this?

So sad.  I can only conjecture that they're afraid of being caught visiting a Western site, even one as innocuous as this one.

sigh.

I may have to speak with Tzar Putin, AKA Mr. Manboobs, about messing with my blog audience.

M

Little Stuff

Took it easy today, but did manage to get some little stuff done.  Attacked the aft windows with caulk (always remember, silicone sealant is your friend) to try to stop the last couple of little irritating leaks we have ahead of the promised rains tomorrow.

I added some shelves to the bath area prior to actually getting it plumbed in this week (haven't gotten the guard rails up on them yet)

Finally got the trim up around the forward window, which I'd meant to do since we BUILT the boat. . .

Got the grid system installed in Morgainne's studio so she can have somewhere to put her stuff. . . .

And in general found more places to kick back and use the space we have.

It's a process :)

Video tomorrow, I promise.

M

hey check out our other blogs: Onboard Cooking and Life, Art, Water

and leave us a comment.  We love to hear from you guys.

M

I'mmmmm Bailing awayyyyyyyy

Seriously,

The recent, record breaking, car flooding, road collapsing torrential rains left us with high tides, muddy water, and a pretty good idea of anywhere that the boat leaks.....

....fortunately the hull isn't one of them.  We still have a few things in some of the windows to address, though.

 The water was higher than we've seen it, and became this bizarre amber color as silt washed into the Middle River.

 Note how down at the stern the Marina's work boat is.  We wound up going out in the rain and bailing her a bit, just to keep the motor from going under.  One more reason why marinas NEED livaboards.

 Our intex dinghy, however, has no cover, and picked up nearly a foot of water....(yeah, I know, ugly bathing suit.. . . .what can I say, it turned up in my laundry one day)

So while I'm bailing, Im thinking...you know, on a hot day, this would feel pretty good.  So maybe the next heatwave, we festoon the boat with a sunshade and fill it with fresh water and a couple of Painkillers, what do you say?

More shortly,

M

There's low tide, and there's high tide....

And then there's REALLY high tide:

Remember This Post, which included a picture of a 4' low tide?  This morning, with a low tide and an east wind, for the first time we woke to THIS:

This is the first time I've ever stepped DOWN to the dock.  Gives us a bit of an idea of what a hurricane tidal surge could do.

Caveat....

...but it does make it easier to get to the showers :)

Rainy day today, so I'll be getting some writing done, and hopefully some more posting.  Stay tuned.

Got any questions?  Ideas?  Comments?  Offers to send us vast amounts of money?  Leave a note in the comments section.  We promise to get back to you.  Love to hear from folks.

New stuff on our cooking blog at Onboard Cooking, and check out Morgainne's companion blog at Life, Art, Water

later

M

A brief review...

...while we're editing some video for you:

While on a supply trip to Lowes the other day we ran across this stuff:

Interesting?  It's a coconut shell based charcoal, bound together with cornstarch.  We thought we would give it a shot.  You can see some of the results over at our cooking blog at onboard cooking.  The charcoal burns very very hot, and for quite a long time, but we did find it a bit of a bear to get started with a chimney starter, and it takes quite a bit to come up to temperature.

Still and all, it works well, and though I still prefer natural lump charcoal, this is a good, tree-friendly alternative.

We've been doing quite a bit of exploring recently, now that we have our little Intex licensed and legal.  The little electric inflatable has taken us all along the banks of the Middle River, exploring things marked as "Ruins" on the marine maps, places with abandoned docks peopled only by ducks and ospreys.

I'm still boiling down some video, but hope to have it up for you shortly.  In the meanwhile, please check out our companion blogs Onboard Cooking and Life, Art, Water.  And please leave comments below.  We love to hear from you, and we always answer, promise. :)

Later

M