What we did today… nothing, nada, zip, zero, zilch. Most of the excitement for the day was grilling salmon for dinner and watching as the flies descended in droves! YIKES! I’d never seen anything like the black cloud of giant flies that zoomed into our cockpit the minute David lifted the grill lid. NO! I slammed the companionway screens into place from below …
Finally David managed to get below with the prized perfectly grilled salmon without letting in a single fly & we feasted on our salmon, veggie pilaf quinoa and garden salad…. while torturing the buzzing flies frantically attacking the hatch screen directly above our heads.
Interestingly enough, as soon as the salmon was gone & dinner dishes done, no more flies. I guess they liked the salmon aroma? It WAS tantalizing, but really? I’m glad glad glad we have good screens! The screens don’t keep out no-see-ems, but they also don’t keep out all the air, so the tradeoff is important. They DO keep out mosquitoes, black flies and bees looking for fresh water! The moral to this story is, be sure to give proper consideration to screens! Including the companionway!
(NOTE: We do have noseeem screens that simply lay in the hatch screens and block all the air, and most of the noseeems when necessary. We also don’t have the bars back in the hatches for now while we’re in the US.)
The rest of the day? We woke up — the older we get, the better that is! We had coffee — I love good coffee and our Keurig single cup coffee maker works for us. Then we went to town to get “stuff” for upcoming projects.
I’ve decided my varnish needs two more coats asap … David decided the gelcoat spots on the cabin top need attention asap and both of us decided that reprovisioning was rising in importance every day. So we went to town … so hopefully the first chance we get, we can go anchor somewhere to make sure everything is in working order to venture further afield.
In the meantime, the health insurance Affordable Care Act is stressing me out! I’m a perfectly healthy, 58 year old female, normal physicals annually, not overweight, don’t smoke, maybe a glass too much wine occasionally, but other than that… no high blood pressure, no meds, nada. I was “lucky” enough to get through on the ACA healthcare.gov site and “registered” only to find that my health insurance will be increasing from $249/month to $585 a month. WAIT! I was promised (by our Prez, Mr Obama himself) that “if I like the health insurance coverage I have I can keep it” — so imagine my surprise to get a letter from my insurance company cancelling my individual policy as of January 1, 2014.
I’ve been spending too much time researching options. An increase of more than $300 a month? Need to get off my soapbox, it occupied far too much of my time today …. sorry…
Back to now … you’ll be happy to know that the flies are gone and have not returned. Time to enjoy sitting out in the cockpit, watching the moon rise and celebrate being lucky enough to live aboard! 🙂 Thanks for listening! Hopefully tomorrow will be better! Leave a comment if you have a better idea on screens … I don’t care about health insurance, don’t leave a comment on that! Cheers! Jan
