Checking out the Nail Salon

Checking out the Nail Salon

Mon-Tues 23-4 Oct 2023

Yesterday I became the first member of our family to set foot inside a nail salon. Well, they say life is about exploring new opportunities and pushing boundaries. To be honest, this wasn’t a premeditated visit … it just sort of happened … as it does, when you are trying to get a propane tank refilled. I hired the marina courtesy car for 2 hours (a good deal for $20 including gas) and set out to do a number of jobs. First stop was the Hicks Propane Bottle filling Station, where a sign out back, by the large propane tank, said use the side door. When I entered, as instructed, I found myself in a nail salon. “I must be in the wrong place” I said, “Oh no sir, this is correct” said an oriental gentleman, working on a customers fine set of nails, “but we are very busy at the minute, so please leave the tank and come back in a hour”. If I gave you a hundred choices of complementary businesses to run in conjunction with a propane filling station, I don’t think anyone would come up with nail salon.

I also got my latest Covid booster … yes that would be the vaccine that has conservatively saved a million lives in the USA alone … for any anti-vaxxers out there! I didn’t feel brilliant last night and it wasn’t until the early hours that I figured it was probably the response to the vaccine. I took a couple of ibuprofen and that helped.

I continue to make progress on my boat job list and was very excited to complete some work on our engine control panel. A couple of the panel lights have been blown out for several years, and the engine-stop button has lost it’s rubber waterproof coating. However, I could never figure out how to get access to the panel and feared it would involve removing the autopilot and approaching from the backside, leading to extreme bodily contortions and much bad language. After several years of procrastination, I found that individual sections of the panel are easily unscrewed from the front, and replacing the broken bulbs and engine-stop switch turned out to be trivial.

This evening a fellow sailor dropped by for a drink and then we grabbed dinner at “Floyds”, a local restaurant nearby. Ben is 74 years old and solo sailing his 37 ft Pacific Seacraft “Loon”. Tomorrow morning he is heading south off the coast to Charleston, SC, which is probably a ~30 hour passage. He will then wait for a good weather window and sail across the Gulf Stream directly to the Abacos region of the Bahamas. He has done this a number of times before and estimates it will take about 72 hours. He cat-naps 20 minutes at a time during the day, then stays awake all night. I know I couldn’t function with that little sleep.

Mike

... still at Morehead City Yacht Basin

C-Dock, Morehead City Yacht Basin. Even in dead calm conditions there is still some motion on the water, which is picked up in these 1 minute exposures

Both panoramas are stitched together from a sequence of individual shots, taken with a 70 mm lens. another evening I'll try and get out with a wider angle lens as well