For a 20% chance of rain this morning, it was a beautiful day in Oriental with no rain. I slept in so the Admiral went to the Farmer's Market without me. She said the market was pretty sparse, which is not surprising given the early season. I took one of the scooters to West Marine to buy a new quart of varnish. Then I came back and water sanded the rails. After washing them off and partially drying them with paper towels, I had to wait for them to thoroughly dry. Fortunately, that did not take long in the gentle SW breeze. Meanwhile, the Admiral took one of the scooters and went grocery shopping. The big problem was the large amount of pollen in the air. It is so thick that there are bright yellow clumps of it floating on the water. Pollen, like dust, is not good for a smooth finish. One of the locals who stopped by to watch me paint said that they call the pollen that sticks to the varnish "Savannah non-skid". When I applied the varnish, the gentle breeze was off the water and that greatly limited the amount of pollen that settled on the varnish before it dried. If you look closely along the bottom of the picture, you can see what looks like small, yellow spots on the picture. That is pollen that fortunately landed after the varnish had set up and can be brushed off. There are now about 7 coats of varnish on the rails, and there is a feeling of depth when you look at the surface. Now, that is a very "yachty" thing.
We headed down town for lunch. I had a first ever oyster sandwich with sweet potato fries. I love oysters raw, fried or sautéed, but I had never had them in a sandwich before. It was actually quite tasty.
After lunch we set out to see the marine consignment store, marine oriented antique shop, and the hardware/marine supply store. We ended up buying all sorts of supplies for projects as well as bicycle helmets since we had forgotten ours at home. Earlier in the day the Admiral had mentioned that we need to replace the seat cover on the aft wooden seat in the dinghy. The cover has a thin pad for the seat with very useful zippered saddle bags for storage that hang down in front and behind the seat. We had laughed and said that we were unlikely to find one in the near future. Our last stop after lunch was the Island Waterway Provision Company, which was very much like a local version of West Marine. Sure enough, they had the dinghy seat cover. For a small town the marine supplies available here are pretty amazing.
As I mentioned yesterday, there are 1100 bikers in town for a multi-day event.
The riders choose their own route from 5 to 100 miles, and they seem to start whenever they are ready. When they finish they all seem to head to either The Bean (coffee shop) or to a waterside restaurant for a beer. They seem to be fairly serious about the biking, but they are also having fun.
Speaking of fun, after a well earned nap, we set out across the street to one of several art galleries (photo). It is in a converted house and has quite a few rooms full of art.
They had the usual "flat" art like oils, watercolors, and photos, but they had a lot of physical, 3-dimensional art. Welded animals and fish as well as lots of wooden art. When we had just left, I commented to the Admiral about how much I had like some of the art, especially the pecan wood bowl with a brass ships wheel nutcracker on a raised island in the middle of the bowl. It turns out that it was her favorite also. You can guess what happened next...
Well, tomorrow we are off early for a fairly long trip (52 miles) to Belhaven.
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