The Tale of Wags: News from the Country Estate June 29

Greetings,

With the continued wet weather came speculation that we can expect more of this wet weather pattern as a result of climate change (man-made or otherwise). It certainly puts a damper on outdoor on-site work like the photo below.

A carriage-house style garage timber frame.

We raised that frame on June 16 and got a few days of passable weather in order to board the roof with tongue and groove last week, but since then we've had little respite from low-pressure systems that stall out in the gulf of Maine and send wave after wave of precipitation. In addition a heavy fog and cloud bank has covered the coast for the last month or so. Just a few miles inland, we have seen the sun a few times, but more often than not we have been spending out days inside, playing cribbage and making cookies.

On a slightly less moist day, I was able to frame the deck for a shed-addition for some friends of ours who reside seasonally near/on Damariscotta Lake. Unfortunately time and weather has not allowed any more progress.

8x12 floor for a new section of a shed.

I did find one day with passable-enough weather to help a friend launch his 26' Rhodes Meridian sailboat in Rockland. Before launching we narrowly avoided making the boat a lawn ornament on River Road in Bowdoinham. When I pulled over to make an adjustment the 6-8000lbs of combined weight proved to much for the saturated soil of the shoulder and as I pulled away, the wheels dug themselves 18 inches into the ground, right up the trailer axles. After some tense tippy moments, we were able to pull the boat and trailer out of harm's way and on through to Rockland. In the parking lot of the Snow Marine Park, we painted the hull and prepared to step the 32' aluminum mast by hand. This required KT's brother Shane on the ground with a 16' 2x4 pushing the mast up, me on the stern holding the mast over my head and the boat's owner at the pivot point making sure the pin fastened and the wiring went where it was supposed to go. After the pin went in, I simply walked the mast forward and up (no easy task !). It was such an exertion that my knees were shaking after I got it up. But as you can see in the photo, up it went. We finished wiring and taping the turnbuckles and went off the launch ramp.

In order to float a boat that draws six feet off a trailer, you have to get the trailer pretty far into the water. You can see in the photo above that there is a small wheel attached under the tongue of the trailer. We unhitch the trailer from my truck and lower it onto the small wheel and:

...attach a chain and pull the truck away to take up the slack, at this point we pull the blocks that hold the trailer from rolling down the ramp and slowly lower the trailer into the water. We had lost two hours and the tide had gone down considerably, so we had to use 40 feet of chain rather than the 20 feet we expected. This allowed us to put the trailer way down on the ramp and well under water while keeping the salt water away from my truck's rear end.