The Caretaker's Concern for 8/24/2010

TCC for 8/24/10:

No new photos for today, a few from the archive.
8/8/10:


8/11/10:


8/18/10:


For those of you who happened to have read yesterday's post you will remember the Caretaker mentioned that he didn't expect yesterday to go as planned, it didn't.
After finishing up yesterday's internet work the Caretaker went out and about on the Island to take care of a few things before sitting down to compose the story about his experiences this past weekend. Well, he became a bit distracted and never got around to doing the writing he planned to do. The floating swim raft broke its anchor line and washed up on to the rocks between the Island and Sloop Island.

Stupid swim raft. Twice now this season.

The Caretaker figured he could go out in the tin boat (small aluminum row boat with outboard motor) and tie a line to the raft and drag it off the rocks. It was cold, rainy, and windy, the Caretaker would have preferred to stay inside, but to do so would leave open the chance that the raft would get blown off the rocks which would mean even more headaches. So the Caretaker threw on his bathing suit and headed out to the tin boat to start bailing at least 100 gallons of water, probably more, but just as he was getting towards the dock the house phone rang. So inside he went to get the phone. It was a member of the F. family over on Homer Point, apparently the laundry delivery guy was looking to leave the Island laundry with them. The Caretaker was confused.

Why is it that the laundry guy can't deliver the laundry when he's been doing so without a hitch for the last two months?

Long story short, it was a new delivery guy and was never told where to leave the laundry. The Caretaker's knee jerk response was to have the delivery guy take the laundry back with him and deliver it the next time he was in the area when it wouldn't be raining and the Caretaker didn't have a floating swim raft to retrieve, the clean laundry was not needed at this time. The delivery guy agreed to this.

Great, low priority problem can give way to high priority problem.

However, it didn't go down that way. After speaking to the delivery guy he asked to speak to the person from the F. family who called the Caretaker about the laundry delivery problem. The Caretaker's intention was to apologize to him for the inconvenience and to thank him for the phone call, which he did, but it didn't end there.

F. family member said, "why don't we have them leave the laundry here and you can come over now and pick it up?"

Caretaker, "I'd like to but I have a floating swim raft that has broken its anchor line and just before your call came in I was heading out to retrieve it."

F. family member, "how about if I bring it out to our boathouse dock and you can pick it up after you finish with the swim raft?"

Caretaker, "sounds good, I should be able to make it over in about 20 minutes to half an hour. Again, sorry for the inconvenience."

With that the Caretaker went to the boat, bailed out all the water and then headed over to the swim raft, alas, the wave action had lifted the raft up on to the rocks and out of the water, one side was supported by the rocks at the raft edge, the other side was hung up at the ladder on rocks beneath the water. The Caretaker quickly realized he would not be able to pull the raft off the rocks with the tin boat, he would have to get into the water and lift it out by hand. So, at this point, since the raft wasn't going anywhere being up and out of the water the Caretaker decided to grab some plastic bags and go pick up the laundry. After returning from getting the laundry the Caretaker swam out to the raft, heaved it up off the rocks and then walked/swam it around to the south dock to tie it up until the waves settled down for installing a new anchor line.

Before there was the blog the Caretaker sent out posts via e-mail, the following is from the Caretaker's second winter on the Island:

Island Ice Report for 4/24/2007:
No report, just a photo.


--The Caretaker