Weather

Make that 51 shades of gray

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I spoke too soon. Yesterday was forecast to be partly sunny. If that means fog so thick you can’t see 100 yards, then it was. We were surprised by a knock at the door in the dark and fog by a trio of young men who sailed here from Portland. I expect we’ll hear more from them this morning.

We had a few other visitors during the day.

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A photographer, Friend of Seguin, came out to photo-document the buildings. Capt. Ethan also brought a young family from our neck of the woods, Lake Champlain. They own a CSA, Blue Heron Farm, on Grand Isle, VT and were here for an end of season vacation with their adorable daughters. Their CSA includes yarn!!!

I have yet to identify a family of small hawks who call the island home. I can’t find the Peterson bird book that used to be here, so I am using my Audobon app which is even better.

Today is glorious. Sunny and warmer. I’m not even wearing any wool. Very optimistic.

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I may even need my sunglasses with their homemade croakies.

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Outhouse bound

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Outhouse outfit We’re in the middle of a four day storm.  Hurricane Ophelia is passing offshore tonight stirring up the wind and water.  There’s no way on or off the island for a few days, which is always interesting. It makes me just a little more cautious.  No power tools, careful walking the quarter mile or so (in full foul weather gear) to the outhouse and spend way too much time indoors.

At least I have several knitting projects underway and lots of food to cook. Yesterday I made a couple of loaves of bread, chile and chicken soup. Tonight I’ll bake an apple pie. What could be more cozy.

Was this really summer?

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I’ve heard the temperature has been 8 degrees celsius colder than the average summer temperature. I believe it. I only went in the water once and that was when a dinghy dropped us off in water up to our chests. All this beautiful turquoise water and I haven’t been swimming! I’ve worn wool on almost every day of my Tasmanian summer and often several layers. And now it’s fall.

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Last night, there was loud scratching at all the windows. It sounded like a B horror film. I thought I heard someone whispering, “red rum, red rum”. This morning I found dragonflies attached to the house. Naturally, they are huge. The insects and spiders are all supersized here. The bull ants, huntsmen, beetles and dragonflies.

Mild rain was predicted last night. It poured and poured. Tim set buckets around the house while I slept. We recorded 62 mm this morning, which is the most we have had in one day during our stay. Actually it’s more than is recorded for entire months, even the winter ones.

Now we only hope that the sands haven’t washed down onto the jetty road. We thought we would spend our last few days here walking the walks. Instead we may be shoveling the sand, again. Where’s the ibuprofen…and my mittens?

I think I’ll wait until later to look.

The wind abates and there’s trouble in the garden

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Clear skies

The wind settled down overnight after four days of 30 knots with gusts to 70. The garden survived. After the first night of strong winds, I barricaded the small seedlings as best I could from the wind. They had been spinning around in circles while the wind blew. A large group of tomato plants took a nose dive. Today I removed the wind screens and resupported my fallen tomatoes.

I noticed one of the beet seedlings missing just like in the cartoons. It was dug out of the bed and there was a small pile of dirt nearby. I smelled a rat. I knew there was a reason there were a hundred rat traps lying around the garden when we arrived. They’ve moved back up to the garden. I thought I noticed some of the tomatoes had small bites taken out of them but I think I suppressed it. So I got out the peanut butter and set a few traps. This is war! So far it’s two points for the Home team and 0 for the visitors. Or should they be the home team and we the visitors? I’ve been coddling these seedlings along for two months. During this last gale, even after it rained, I had to go out and water the garden to wash the sea spray, which blew in from Little Squally Cove, 1/4 mile away, off the leaves. Just like “Jaws”, “First the shark, then the rogue wave, then the tomatoes falling overboard!”

During a walk yesterday, I saw some strange vegetation. Glowing, bright red fungus, Eucalyptus trees that bleed and shed their bark instead of their leaves. Some sort of berry or parasite that grows on the leaves not from the stems. And of course more rocks where I found half a man but is he lying down or sitting up?

Toxic fungus
P2200133.JPG  Shedding bark Berries on the leaf

Man about to be eaten by spotted serpent

Apparently red skies in morning also predict a gale

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Sunrise Deal Island.jpg

Sunrise Sunday

Tim has been wearing a hat most of the time because his sunglasses died. Two days ago, when we went to Squally Cove, a willy waugh whipped it off his head, took it straight up in back of him and then deposited it about 20 feet in front of him. Later that night, one of the fishermen in the cove recorded wind speeds of 70 knots and all three boats in the cove dragged their anchors during the night. And it continues today with 15 foot seas off the island.

We have a small fishing boat sort of stranded here. They can’t leave because of the weather and weren’t planning to be here more than a day or two. It’s been five days now. Maybe tomorrow will be calm enough for them to go home. Sometime this week a group of kayakers from Surfriders should arrive as part of a fundraiser/clean up effort. They plan to spend the first hour on each island cleaning up the beach. They’ll have it easy here unless we scatter our trash, packed to take off the island, on the beach.

The wind shifted to the west and yesterday I walked to a couple of lookouts to see the surf. Squalls blew by. Waves crashed on Erith island with surf rising at least 200 feet up the cliffs. It’s nice to come back to the comfort of the cottage on days like this.

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Pictures don’t always tell the story

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We’ve been buffeted by a gale for a couple of days. It began with a front with lots of rain that pounded the roof. We had caulked leaks in the roof in preparation, to no avail. We listened to the beat of water dripping into a couple of bowls the early part of the day. Then the skies cleared but the wind remained and we went for a walk to Squally Cove on the southeast side of the island. We were exposed to the wind on some bare spots and at times I had to keep my head down to prevent the wind from blowing me away. This posture enabled me to see some interesting ground photos though.

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When we got to the cove, we were surprised to find three boats there. One fisherman had been anchored at Hogan Island, to the northwest of us, but got blown out to sea in 50 knot winds. While we sat on the beach, we saw sea smoke: clouds of water blown across the surface. We initially thought it was sand, but there are only rocks in Squally. As we watched the water, we saw williwaws hit the surface and the water would spiral out from it as if a fan had blown it in a circle.

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The picture of the tree in the compound looks like a nice, bright sunny day. What it doesn’t clearly depict is the tree’s leaves being blown in 30 knot winds. I think we had at least a Force 7 on the Beaufort Scale.

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Red skies at night predict a gale the next day!

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We are enjoying our last full moon on Deal Island and the skies cooperated.

Full moon over the Museum

We had fog on and off all day, and even recorded several mm of water in the weather gauge from it.

Fog rolls in and out

It lifted in the afternoon and produced another beautiful sunset with the sky ablaze.

Whew

As I walked around last night, I marveled at the size of the island and its sheer cliffs. The lighthouse hill is a 1000 foot cliff on the edge of the island. The island is 1600 acres and is inhabited by two people, us! We are surrounded by soaring hills and big sky and usually big waves.

There is a small chance we may get to see the Southern Lights over the next several days. There is a certain chance we will have gale force winds over the next several days. The weather is very exciting here. Especially from the comfort of our cozy, caretaker cottage. The wind howls and whistles, the rain pounds the roof and the sun is brighter than we have ever seen.

Lighthouse hill alit

  Lightouse hill afar

Deal Island Sunset

It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood

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We took it easy yesterday because the day before we worked on clearing the jetty road of sand that washed down during our day of record rainfall. Now I know. Record rainfall means more roads to clear. We’ve yet to get back to unearth one of the the culverts on the lighthouse track. I know I won’t get any sympathy from anyone in the northeastern United States who have spent all winter digging themselves out from under record snowfalls. The fact that a record is set is exciting for about a moment until the reality of it sets in.

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We are working on a project for the island, building a bench from reclaimed materials: old wood, bolts and and nuts. I think even the hand saws were reclaimed. We’re not allowed to have power tools. No fun evacuating a lighthouse caretaker because they cut off a finger with the power saw. So we saw the old fashioned way. Well Tim saws and I sit on the wood to keep it steady and spin my drop spindle. Reclaimed means we find a bolt in one box in the workshop, then have to sort through all the nuts to find its mate.

Sometimes we have to shoo skinks off the wood.

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While we were in the workshop, a fog settled over the island and it became totally still. At one point, I went outside and couldn’t see beyond the solar panels, which probably means they weren’t doing much for us that day.

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The weather changed and after dinner there was an incredible sunset and the sky was an iridescent orange and pink. Then I caught the moon as it was setting across the water over the swashway. Now it’s back to work clearing tracks.

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Monday morning quarterback

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Morning light

Well actually Monday morning spectator. It’s 11:00 am on Monday, February 7, and we are watching the Super Bowl, live, on Australian television. How weird is that? To celebrate, I made a batch of pretzelsSuper bowl pretzels but the beer may have to wait for a more reasonable hour of day. The advertising ads don’t compare and are, in fact, rather depressing.

The most common one is for “Senior Insurance” to lure people over 50 to sign up for insurance to pay for funeral costs. Benefits up to $15,000, no medical needed. Nice and uplifting for the game. I’ll get my cane and hobble up the hill later today. How cute was Cameron Diaz feeding popcorn to A. Rod? It’s just not the same without the E*Trade commercials or a bet riding on the game, or at least those box scores for each period (or is that quarter?).

We have watched cricket here without really having a clue as to what was going on, and, apparently, the match can last for days.

Enough of spectating, time to get back to action. The garden produced the perfect tomato today. I’m starting to tidy it up again and make sure it’s in good condition for the next caretakers. The only trouble is we have had record cold temperatures and I just planted a bunch of seedlings. They’re out there shivering and blowing in the wind.The perfect tomato  

After dinner, we fired up the computer to watch the American Super Bowl ads. Seems like a strange activity but it was a way to do what family and friends were doing at home. We don’t want to miss out on pop culture during our three months. We had to stop because the colors outside were incredible, bright orange and pink as some clouds and a brief shower passed by. Then a rainbow at the end and a glorious sunset.

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Sunset

Deal Island record rain reported on the news

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Our record rains were reported on the news last night. I missed it. The rain has stopped and the weather today reminded me of a crisp fall day in Maine. It will be windy for the next few days and with a southerly wind (perhaps from Antarctica) and I had to find my wool socks again. Tim went off to do manly things and I hung around the house. He found some of the culverts we just cleared full of silt after the last downpour. I guess it’s back to the rock pile for me.

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I spoke with the crew of a boat, which anchored at Erith Island last night, and gave them the weather forecast. it looks like they will be here for a few days. They made an ill fated attempt to leave this morning and encountered big seas and 30 knot winds. So they came back.

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The garden is a big success. I’m pulling carrots out in bunches. I finished spinning a skein of alpaca on the drop spindle.   And it’s sooo soft.

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Here are photos of the turkish drop spindle, spinning, then being taken apart

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to result in, like magic, a center pull ball of yarn. Lastly, I take both ends of yarn and spin them together again to ply the yarn (combine two or more strands together). So after about 4 days work, I have 100 yards of 2 ply, lovely alpaca yarn.

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