Happy New Year! Yesterday was a good day to be a Lake Travis sailor and a Seahawks fan. Not so great a day if you suffer from cedar fever. But I can take the bad with the good.
We had a really nice sail on Nirvana with Kevin & Edie. Nice winds. A gorgeous sunny January day. Then we made it home in time to watch the late game. My team won and is the number 1 seed in the NFC! 💙💚
I worked two shows of the Beauty and the Beast Broadway in Austin show from the Bass Concert Hall over the weekend. The show was great. My favorite number was “Be Our Guest”; great music and great choreography, including tap.
Between shows, I went up to the balcony on the 6th floor to see the post-sunset sky over the 40 Acres.
I just finished a cover for a smoker/grill for someone who lives out near Marble Falls. It was quite the puzzle requiring some mental gymnastics to get from taking measurements, to making a pattern, to assembly. It turned out great, I think.
I had to visit the grill several times. It’s a 45-minute drive from my house, which takes me right past Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge. So I popped in a couple of times to take in the view.
✅ That item is crossed off the list. Now, on to mending our jib (again).
We loaded up Porter Belle on the trailer yesterday to help John with the dock at his lake house. When the rain came over the July 4th weekend his cove went from high and dry to full in about 24 hours.
His formerly dry dock floated just fine. But its ramp/walkway sank. It’s still attached but hanging straight down. Its flotation block must have broken away in the storms. All the professional dock wranglers are still booked up so we spent the day giving it a shot ourselves.
At the end of the day, we were not successful. But it was fun to row up and down the cove a dozen or so times. And to problem solve different ways to try to raise the walkway. None of them worked. But the best part was that when we packed everything up, the giant flotation block miraculously floated by! We snagged it for when the professionals eventually make it out. There’s a reason they call them professionals 🙂
There are many ways to spend a good day at the lake. This was just one of them.
The flooding that hit the Hill Country this month brought terrible destruction and loss of life, especially along the Guadalupe River.
The highland lakes’ series of dams were built to contain floodwaters for the lower Colorado River. They’ve been doing exactly that and now Lake Buchanan is 100% full. Lake Travis has risen to 90% full, up 38 feet in the last two weeks, only 6 feet short of full.
As someone who has spent a good part of the last 20 years on the lake that has experienced too many droughts, this brings me joy in the midst of the sadness from all the loss.
Today we went out to the lake to take it in. And it’s a beautiful thing. The docks are close to parking lot level now, which is certainly a treat. Next week the marina will move all the individual docks back to their respective locations.
We went for a long sail on Nirvana with Kurt, Kevin, Gordon, and Scott. The wind was up and we had a really great day.
It’s nice to have our lake back, for however long it lasts.
Over the last year or so, I’ve had big gaps between posts. I’m not sure why. Maybe things have slowed down. Maybe I’ve gotten busier. Maybe I’m more introspective. Whatever the reason, I have wanted to get back into the habit of posting more frequently.
I hope my recent post about our Portugal trip broke the logjam.
While I’ve been going through photos, I’ve found a few that I’d like to share. Just for grins, I may mix in a few among future posts, even though they may be a few months old. Bear with me 🙂
Like this one that I took back in November! 🙂 Some friends of mine live in a beautiful part of Austin along the south side of the Colorado River. Sometimes we get together at their community’s park along the river for game day. This is a mosaic that adorns their community center. Isn’t it great?!
This week we were treated to some interesting happenings in the sky. There was extremely high solar activity due to some large flares and sun-things happening. We anchored out on a lovely, clear Thursday night and I captured some of the far away glow from the Northern Lights with my iPhone. The only thing I could see with my naked eye was a faint rosy glow to the north.
I was pleased that I could get some shots, even though we were way down in Texas.
This week, a comet is gracing us with its faint presence. It is low on the horizon after sunset. I was finally able to spot it through binoculars and grabbed a less-than-stellar shot of it from my Olympus camera with a long exposure on a tripod.
Hopefully, I’ll get another shot at it before it completely disappears.
While not NatGeo-worthy, I do enjoy the challenge of trying to capture a glimpse of these heavenly sights on camera.
Saturday afternoon the rain behaved better than expected. We attended a memorial for a friend who recently passed.
He was a builder, a sailor, a musician, a skydiver, a car guy, a hooligan, and more. He fought the good fight. Cheers, Wiz.
Monte and I crewed on Camelot for Kurt & Kevin this weekend during one of the Austin Yacht Club Summer Series races. It was a hot and steamy day on the water but we had a great time.
We took our friends Tim & Fiona and their three kids sailing on Nirvana today. We’ve done it many times over the years during their Spring Break holidays.
The kids are now 13 or 14, and 19 years old. It’s amazing to watch them grow up. They all have an intuitive feel for the helm. Monte and I didn’t need to steer much at all. It was a beautiful day for a nice long sail. I’m glad we got to spend it with them.
Monte and I both hang on to the cars we buy a long, looong time – one is 26 years old, the new one is 13 years old. It’s time for some new blood in the garage.
We’ve been thinking about getting an electric vehicle, as much of our driving trips are less than 70-miles roundtrip (to the lake and back) and much shorter errand-trips around town. We have been shopping for a month or two. Last week we found one we were looking for in San Antonio. So on a wild hair, we hopped into the fossil-fuel vehicle (ironic, right?) and drove 75 miles to see it, sit in it, test drive it. We liked it, so we brought it home!
We picked a Chevy Bolt EV. Pretty roomy. It’ll hold our boat loads to and from the marina (ice chest and our bags) and lots of room for groceries and other things.
Nice!
We ventured out tonight to see a friend return to the stage. Mike is a sailor, former B-Docker, and drummer in the band FatDog. They played at Infamous Brewery tonight. Kurt and Barbara joined us. It was nice to see him and Connie again.
The beer menu at Infamous is much improved since I was there last; more variety. I enjoyed a nice pilsner and a lager.
I have to give Infamous points for their very eclectic restroom art, best I’ve ever seen. 🙂
Monte and I decided to anchor out on a Sunday night instead of a Friday or Saturday, and it was well worth it. We went for a long sail and dropped anchor about 6pm. We had the cove to ourselves. The temps at night dipped below 70 and it was very comfortable below.
I went for an hour-long paddle in Arky south. I found and picked up the usual trash along the receding shoreline of the lake. I also found one treasure – a nice 20 lb vinyl coated mushroom-style anchor with stainless shackle. There was no line, chain, or any kind of rode attached, so I think it was lost simply due to a poorly tied knot. Their loss, my gain. C’mon people, learn how to splice 3-strand line, or at least how to tie a bowline knot!
It has been a long time since I checked on the geocache that I hid in the cove, so I did that as I paddled by. All good.
All in all, a very overdue and enjoyable one boat raft-up.
We just got home from a productive and fun weekend on the lake. Monte refurbished some of the cabinetry in the head over the last few weeks and re-installed it today.
Friends were seen. Noodles were floated upon. Laughs were had. And a really nice 4-hour afternoon sail with Kurt & Kevin aboard Nirvana.
Sheila365 