16 | December | 2010

Chores, chores and more chores….. But Randal is checking tasks off his list and our mattress cover got its first good washing in ages. And the bathrooms are scrubbed and the weather is cooperating for line drying everything. Tomorrow I think I’ll tackle the kitchen and maybe even vacuum some of the carpeting.

Last night we had dinner with several other cruisers up at the Hard Dock Restaurant run by the marina. This morning Julia from Papllion and I went for a slow, mid-morning walk. We went about 9 am which is middle of the morning here because of the heat. And late morning Nick from Devon Gypsy delivered a gift of books and things from our friends Elizabeth and Patrick on Labarque who are now in George Town. We had left some books and things for them because unfortunately our timing was off and we couldn’t all be in George Town at the same time. Boat delivery is a sailing community service that has gone on since there were sailors and people waiting at home wanting letters. Everything gets passed along until it finally reaches the boat it’s destined for. We’ve acted as courier a few times. It’s nice

On Monday DoraMac will go “on the hard.” We’ll be lifted from the water and placed on a stand as we were once in China and once last year in Batu Maung. The bottom will be repainted with primer and anti-fouling paint and the zincs possibly replaced. Not sure how many days it will take but it isn’t the most fun thing in the world. We can’t run our AC because it’s requires running ocean water through the system to cool it. We may well join the crowd at the pool in the afternoons to get away from the heat. We’ll use the marina showers too just as we did at the yard in Batu Maung. Dirty dishes need to be carried off the boat and washed away from the area so we’ll use paper plates and maybe eat more often at the Hard Dock…at least for dinners. We’ll also have to find our trusty bucket “porto-potty.” Luckily this boat pulling thing doesn’t happen very often.

So that’s about it. Is it baseball season yet?

DoraMac

Our new mascot….a gift from Patrick and Elizabeth.

Our front flag is a seahorse from Seahorse Marine…our boat builder. And we have some Red Sox flags to hang up too.

More photos

Randal at work

Installing our new wind indicator which tells speed and direction.

Roger getting into our boson’s chair.

Bread made in a slow cooker…..hmmm

It obviously didn’t quite work…

The bread pan was too small so the bread squished out from under the foil cover and rose over the top of the pan landing in the slow cooker.

It didn’t take all that long to make the bread because the dough doesn’t get kneaded. It’s quite sticky dough. You put it in the bread pan and cover it with foil to keep the condensing water off of the bread. (Some recipes tell you to put paper towels under the top of the cooker to catch that liquid which I didn’t.) I cooked it for 2 ½ hours instead of the 3 they said so maybe it was a bit underdone too. Part of it could be sliced and toasted and it actually wasn’t so bad but too whole wheat tasting for Randal. I might try it again with a bigger pan or less dough and cook it longer and use the paper towels. And more white flour. The recipe came from Cook It and Forget it. If anyone has made bread in a slow cooker and it worked, let me know how you did it. It certainly beats turning on the oven for an hour.