Up at 02:30

When living on a boat, especially when one is on the anchor, the smallest abnormal noise or motion of the boat has a tendency to immediately jerk one out of a sound sleep. I'm not sure if it is because one is much more aware of what the boat is doing on a subconscious level, or if it is just plain self preservation - the boat is home, a safe haven, and is the best life raft you have - and is so vulnerable to so many things. There is always the slight probability that something bad can happen - she can drag anchor at the worst moment and you can end up in a place you do not want to be, whether it be aground, adrift, against a seawall (close call in Elizabeth City) or on the rocks - a line can part and leave you in the same scenarios as above, a seep can turn into a drip that turns into a leak, that ends up filling the boat - these are all things that can and do happen on boats at time, so it is best to be vigilant and responsive, and there we are back to being wide awake at 0230 in the AM. This morning it was none of the above, but rather the dinghy hitting the side of the boat, and one of the metal rings tie down rings on the side of the dinghy going tap tap tap against the hull. Upon waking up I had no idea what the noise was, other than it was loud, aggravating and screamed that something was amiss out on deck. So I was dressed in a hurry and out on deck, only to find that the wind and current had shifted, and the dinghy was slapping hard against the hull. No worries, easy fix.

So now I am wide awake, its now 0330, and what better time to blog. So here are a few random thoughts.

To date there have been 418 visits to the blog from 10 different countries. This is over a 3 month period, but the vast majority of these have come in the last month or so. The visits have come from the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, South Africa, Bahrain, India, Turkey, New Zealand and the Philippines. There have been over 715 page views, and the most visits per day have been 20. The ads that Google puts on the page have generated $7.24, enough to buy 2 gallons of diesel fuel. (not one to be totally commercial about this, but look at the ads people, I need to refuel soon!)

I am going to try yet one more new thing in the galley, I have baked bread, made cookies, fixed some great potato soup and Ginger Root Tea, but tomorrow I am going to try my hand at homemade, from scratch, pancakes. Now anyone that knows me well knows I love pancakes. It is the breakfast of choice, and I have used Bisquick mix for years with great success. On board the boat I have gone to Hungry Jack, as it requires no milk, but that was exhausted a few days ago, so now I am going to mix up a recipe I downloaded for pancake mix. I have over 20 lbs of flour aboard, so I might as well get some use out of it, other than boat bread. If it works out ok I'll publish the recipe and tell you how it went. If it doesn't go so well, this may be the last you hear of it. I have also down loaded a recipe for biscuits, having never made biscuits from scratch I am going to give that a try as well, I am so used to the cans from Pillsbury - just pop it open (doesn't that moment when the tube pops open always catch you by surprise?) put them in the oven and bake at 375 for 10-12 minutes...well not anymore, those were the days of living onshore with a refrigerator. Now it is make things from scratch, substituting canned, condensed or powdered milk for the real thing. Again, if you don't hear about it again, the biscuits didn't make the cut either.

I welcome notes and comments on the postings here, if you have insight, hints, ideas, or observations - write me. I have gotten great feed back so far from Facebook (John Freeman is the name to search for, maybe I can put a link to my page there) and I am going to open a special email for this blog so that I can correspond with those that care to correspond with me. The new boat email is : ardenvoyage@yahoo.com. So drop me a line for all things boat. Please don't send the cute email your Aunt Emmy forwarded to you, or those pyramid scheme "send this to everyone you know" emails, I get enough of those on my personal email, and they all end up in the trash bin. I will respond to all emails directed to the boat.

So here we are in the wee hours of the morning, its Saturday, again, and another day is about to begin.