The Caretaker's Concern can be blamed on Wreck-Loose Island Publishing.
Send all complaints to:
WLIPublishing P.O. Box 1521 Bolton Landing, N.Y. 12814

WreckLooseIsland@yahoo.com

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

The Caretaker's Concern for 10/5/2010

TCC for 10/5/10:

There Caretaker still has more flower photos from the Fort Ticonderoga trip but he decided to mix things up a bit and post some landscape photos from the archive.

9/9/10:

9/7/10:

9/16/10:

8/12/10:


Originally the Caretaker had planned to spend this past weekend in NYC, that however ended up not happening. He was all set to go this past Friday morning when he decided to have a late morning Stinger on the rocks (a new favorite drink of his) before taking the boat over to the mainland. Standing at the bar having just finished shaking his libation and taking a sip while looking out the window he noticed that there was something funny about the sailboat as it bobbed sluggishly at its mooring in the small cove on the West side of the Island.

That's funny... Oh crud, it's sinking.

So, instead of relaxing for a short while with his drink before departing he instead went out to the South dock to asses the situation. Turns out the sail boat had taken on a lot of water due to the excessively heavy rains from the past few days and especially the deluge of the night that poured all night long and into this same morning. The sail boat has no caps on the centerboard closet so once the water breached the holes water began to fill the sailboat directly from the lake. This the Caretaker figured out once he got out to the sailboat to begin bailing it out, but before he could do that he had to bailout the tin boat, which came as no surprise to the Caretaker because due to a leaky hull the tin boat is perpetually sinking. The flotation in the seats is what keeps it from fully submerging, however, this time around was the lowest the Caretaker had seen it in the water. Usually the Caretaker bails the tin boat out with a five gallon bucket, it being the quickest way, but the boat was so low in the water that he feared sinking it if he got in to bail the water, instead he dropped the sump pump in and pumped the water out which took quite a while but it gave him an excuse to go back to his drink and take in the cloudy morning sky.

Now that the tin boat was pumped out the Caretaker hopped into it and pushed himself over to the sailboat, tied the boats together and then got in the sailboat to start bailing water. After much effort in rapid motion the Caretaker was able to lower the water level in the sail boat to just below the top of the centerboard closet access holes when he noticed that water began pouring out of the holes.

Uh-oh, that's not good. Should probably replace the caps so this doesn't happen again.


So the Caretaker began to bail faster as more and more water poured out, eventually he was able to bail enough water out to get the water level below the bottom of the access holes, eventually water stopped pouring out of the holes and eventually the Caretaker was able to bail out nearly all of the water from the sailboat.

Due to all the rain the lake level was quite high, about 4 inches below flood stage. After returning to the South dock in the tin boat it occurred to the Caretaker that due to runoff from the mountains there is a chance that the Lake could reach flood stage which would be bad for the Caretaker's possessions stored in the boathouse below the stairs which is the lowest point on the Island and the first to get flooded out when the water gets high. So, the Caretaker decided it would be best to haul all that gear out and get it to higher ground. To make a boring story short by the time the Caretaker had finished with all of this he needed to take another shower and by the time he finished with that there wasn't really any reason to go to NYC for Friday night because given his very late start he would have totally missed what he was going to see, maybe caught the last few songs at best. Not to mention he got a phone call regarding something that would need his attention the Sunday of that weekend, so, the Caretaker canceled his trip to NYC. On Saturday morning, it turned out, his services were needed elsewhere, so, for the most part the Caretaker was off Island for most of the weekend but it wasn't doing what he had originally planned. Which in many ways bummed the Caretaker out because his plan was to see the Becca Stevens Band in its entirety perform (i.e. every band member present) which is something he has yet to do.
Thankfully it looks like the Caretaker will still get the chance to see the full band play before he moves to Florida for the next few months, apparently they have a gig on the 29th at The Jazz Gallery which is somewhere in NYC. The Caretaker will definitely not be missing this show, come heck or high water, as they say.

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

IR 8/28/07:

No report, just this photo of light on water:

Photo doubled over and rotated:

--The Caretaker

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