Eileen Quinn Music: Friends

Hi guys I have found a link to the song that always makes me cry "Friends". This site lets you listen to a lot of her music but you'll want to get the CD's so you can listen to her in those secluded anchorages. Ahh...I'm missing my friends.

http://www.stumbleaudio.com/#quinn4/12

Ooh, and look I found the "Anchoring Dance" too, which I think causes more aborted cruises than anything else. There's actually a real dance which Eileen's husband does with great rhythm.

http://www.stumbleaudio.com/#quinn/1

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes Master Recipe: Boule Recipe

I love to bake bread and most of all I love to eat fresh bread, but I have always struggled with getting it to rise on the boat and the mess it makes on the boat. Here is a simple, no-knead, almost no mess basic bread recipe from the book Artison Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I'm providing the basic and white bread recipe but I really encourage you to buy the book and yes, you can find it down there in the Amazon section of my page. Of course, I downloaded it to my Kindle, but I've found the Kindle is not ideal for this something about using my sticky fingers to turn the page doesn't seem like a good idea. You won't believe the number of recipes you can make from this simple process using different flours and slightly different techniques. The real challenge will be seeing if this works when I get home to 10,600 feet in CO. I'll keep you posted.

The 5 minutes a day title is kind of misleading because it does not include the "resting" and baking times.

I'm going to try to post a link to a video showing the authors of the book going through this process at the bottom of this blog. Keep your fingers crossed.

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

Basic Boule Dough Recipe

(Artisan Free-Form Bread)

Makes 4 1 lb loaves. The recipe is easily doubled or halved

You can store this dough up to 14 days in your refrigerator in a plastic lidded (non-airtight) container

3 cups of lukewarm water
1 ½ Tablespoons of granulated yeast (1 ½ packets)
1 ½ Tablespoons kosher or other course salt
6 ½ cups unsifted, unbleached, all-purpose white flour, measured with the scoop-and-sweep method (scoop your measuring cup into flour and sweep off excess with a knife with out pressing or compressing the flour into the cup)

1. Warm the water slightly: about 100 F.

2. Add yeast and salt to the water in a 5 qt bowl or preferably in a resealable, lidded (not airtight plastic container. Don’t worry about getting it all to dissolve.

3. Mix in the flour all at once with a wooden spoon until the mixture is uniform. Don’t knead.

4. Cover with a well fitting, non-airtight lid (I place plastic wrap over the bowl without sealing it). Allow the mixture to rise at room temp until it begins to collapse, approximately 2 hrs. Longer rising times up to 5 hours will not harm the results.

5. You can use the dough at this point, but it is extremely wet and sticky. It is better to refrigerate if for 3 hours, or even better, overnight to make it easier to work with (it’s still very sticky compared to other bread dough)

On Baking Day…

5. The gluten cloak: Don’t knead, just “cloak” and shape a loaf in 30 to 60 seconds. Here’s how. First, prepare a pizza peel (I use any flat thing I have, right now I’m using a piece of tile, you could try a cookie sheet) by sprinkling it liberally with cornmeal ( I can’t find cornmeal right now so I’m using flour but the bread does not slide off easily on to the baking stone) to prevent your loaf from sticking to it when you slide it into the oven.

Sprinkle the surface of your refrigerated dough liberally with flour. Pull up and cut off a 1 lb (grapefruit size) piece of dough, using a serrated knife. Hold the mass of dough in your hands and add more flour as needed so it won’t stick to your hands. Gently stretch the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all four sides, rotating the ball a quarter-turn as you go. Most of the dusting flour will fall off; it’s not intended to be incorporated into the dough. The bottom of the loaf may appear to be a collection of bunched ends but they will smooth out when baking. This entire process should take no more than 30-60 seconds. (I actually don’t get how to do this part, I just kind of roll it around in my hands adding a little more flour until it’s not as sticky and shapeable.)

At the bottom of the article there is a link to a video of this process.

6. Place the shaped ball on the cornmeal-covered pizza peel or other flat thing. Allow the loaf to rest on the peel for about 40 minutes (it doesn’t need to be covered). Depending on the age of the dough, you may not see much rise during this period; more rising will occur during baking.

7. Twenty minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 450 F, with a baking stone placed on the lowest rack (I’m using a ceramic tile until I can get back to the land of available baking stones). Place an empty broiler tray, or any shallow pan that will hold a cup of water, on any other shelf that won’t interfere with the rising bread.

8. Dust and slash: dust the top of the loaf liberally with flour which will allow the slashing knife to pass without sticking. Slash a ¼ inch-deep cross into the top using a serrated bread knife.

9. Baking with steam: After a 20-minute preheat, you’re ready to bake, even though your oven thermometer won’t yet be up to full temperature. With a quick forward jerking motion of the wrist, slide the loaf off the pizza peel onto the preheated baking stone. (Using flour, I have to more-like scrape the loaf off onto the stone/tile and then hurriedly reshape it on the hot baking stone/tile) Quickly but carefully pour about 1 cup of hot tap water into the broiler tray and close the oven door to trap the steam. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until the crust is nicely browned and firm to the touch.

10. Allow to cool completely, preferable on a wire cooling rack, for the best flavor, texture and slicing.



Crusty White Sandwich Loaf

Makes one loaf

1 ½ pounds (cantaloupe-size portion) Boule dough
Neutral-tasting oil for greasing loaf pan
* You must use a nonstick pan; they work well but still require a light greasing. Wet dough, the kind in this recipe, sticks horribly to traditional pans.1. Dust the surface of the refrigerated dough with flour and cut off a 1 ½ lb portion. Dust with more flour and quickly shape into a ball as described above.

2. Lightly grease a 9x4x3 inch non-stick loaf pan with a neutral-flavored oil.

3. Elongate the ball into an oval and drop it into the prepared pan. You want to fill the pan slightly more than half full.

4. Allow the dough to rest for 1 hour and 40 minutes (or just 40 minutes if you’re using fresh, unrefrigerated dough). Dust with flour and slash the top crust lengthwise.

5. Twenty minutes before baking time, preheat the oven to 450 F with an empty broiler pan on any shelf that won’t interfere with the rising bread. A baking stone is not essential when using a loaf pan; if you omit the baking pan you can shorten the preheat to 5 minutes.

6. Place the loaf on a rack near the center of the oven. Pour 1 cup of hot tap water into the broiler tray and quickly close the oven door. Bake for about 35 minutes, or until brown and firm.

7. Remove the loaf from the pan and allow to cool completely on a rack before slicing.

Here's the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce3k5uRkEPI>Artisan Bread Making

Boat Etiquette 101: Clothing Optional Anchorages

Imagine your cap’n and you are anchored in a secluded bay, there’s no one around for miles and you’re doing the Brooke Shields and Chris What-ever-his-name-was Blue Lagoon thing. You haven’t put a stitch on for days and you’re starting to get a little sore on your tender parts. (From sunburn, you perverts). You just came up the companionway with two more cold ones when you spy something on the horizon.

“What the hell is that?”

“It kinda looks like a boat,” the cap’n replies.

Dismay starts creeping in…

“Surely they aren’t coming in here.”

“There’s plenty of room. We’ll probably never even see them.” the cap’n offers magnanimously.

An hour later the crew of the other boat wave and holler out greetings as you scramble to put on clothes. They pass by so close you’re afraid they are going to ask if you happen to have some “Grey Poupon”.

Your horror grows as you watch the first mate move to the bow and commence doing the “Anchoring Dance”*. You don’t even have to get out the binoculars to watch them.

There goes the neighborhood!

I have been asked to share some rules of cruising etiquette with you newbies and you not so newbies who should know better. Just consider me the Miss Manners of the cruising world. The scenario above is the subject that comes up most often on the irksome scale. It seems that most capn’s didn’t really want to go explore the world when they convinced you to move aboard a boat, they just wanted to get you naked.

Rule # 1:

If you sail in to a secluded anchorage and there is another boat there, give them their space. Believe me, they are not going to be enthusiastic about an impromptu raft-up. By all means go and meet them but have the decency to respect their indecency by giving them a shout out on the radio or waiting until they go into the beach, if they have clothes on. If you fail to heed this advice, we….uh, I mean they can’t be held responsible for what you’ll encounter. And believe me again, it ain’t always pretty.

And for God’s sake stow the binoculars, or at least use some stealth when using them. There is nothing more embarrassing than to be caught spying through your binoculars to find a pair (binoculars, you pervs) staring back at you.

Rule #2:

On the flip side. Know when to keep your clothes on. You’re members of a community now and not some charterer who’s jumping naked off the Willy T with a cap’n you’ve never seen before in front of people you’ll never seen again. (Those were the days!). The locals of most islands are very religious and conservative, and besides that there are cameras everywhere and do you really want little Johnny Googling his grandmother and seeing that?

If you’re in a harbour and within viewing distance of restaurants or boats keep your clothes on. And please don’t engage in questionable calisthenics on your catamaran’s trampoline. The men are gonna love you and the women gonna hate you. It causes unnecessary tension and eyestrain.

A bathing suit is fine on the boat and beach but cover up when going to town. If you don’t look good in a bathing suit it’s bad enough and if you look good, again…the men are gonna love you and the women gonna hate you.

That being said, if I had the goods I’d be strutting them to heaven and back.


P.S. When I started this article I was gonna write one article about all of the etiquette issues cruisers encounter but I found there was just too much to say. Ya’ll know how wordy I get. It must be the southern in me, his name is Jack Daniels. Just joshin’ ya! Wink wink nod nod. Anywho, this has become a series of smack downs, the next one being about the radio.

* I want to give credit to Eileen Quinn for the term the Anchoring Dance which I stole from one of her CD’s that I own. She has provided us with a lot of laughs and a few tears through the years with her music. I have links to two of her CD’s that have this song on them way down yonder in the Amazon area of this site. And yes I do get a little money if you buy through me, but not enough to buy you a beer in the Bahamas. If you’ve never heard her song “Friends” your missing the anthem about what cruising is all about.

Leaving On A Jet Plane: Medical Emergency

Hi all!
I’m sorry that I’ve been delinquent in posting but I have a really good excuse. About a month ago, I jetted the Cap’n out of here on a turbo-prop to West Palm Beach.

It started out as a normal day with the cap’n not feeling too good which we just attributed to the fun the night before. Throughout the day he felt worse and worse, I didn’t learn until later when he confessed it to the doctors that he’d been having tightness in his chest for 10 days. I finally convince him that we call BASRA (Bahamas Sea and Rescue Association) http://www.basra.org/. This is a totally volunteer organization that receives no funding from the government that needs and deserves your support. You never know if your going to be next one calling them so here is their website, if you’d like to assure that they are there for you. I am not implying that they won’t help you if you don’t donate, they help everyone in need, but like everybody in these trying financial times they need your support. This story is easier told by saying things we were fortunate in doing or having and things we wish would have had in place or done differently.

We were lucky that we were in a familiar harbour with established friends and contacts available. We were able to hand Stanley, the killer bichon, off immediately to trusted friends, Phyllis and Neil on Chapter X . I had never even considered what I would have done with a pet in the case of an emergency like this. I had barely hung up the mike from calling BASRA before a dock friend, Mads was there with assistance and an offer of a defibrillator from his boat (thank God we didn’t need it) and within minutes a member of BASRA, Chris Prewitt, whose sailboat was moored right behind us was knocking on the hull to transport us to the main dock where the boat that would transfer us to Marsh Harbour was waiting. We were fortunate they were already responding to another emergency and were at the ready. I thank God that we were not at some uninhabited cay with no one around.

It was unfortunate that we did not have an emergency bag ready just in case this should happen. Even so, I thought I did pretty well, throwing in passports, all the cash we had, (including the money our friends on Exit Strategy had given us to relay to their mooring ball owner since they were leaving for a few days), our wallets, checkbook, cell phones (but no chargers) and 3 pairs of underwear apiece. The cap’n managed to throw in a couple of packs of cigarettes. Unfortunately, I forgot extra clothes (that was solved by a scarey, creepy public bus ride to a Dollar store 5 days later. Who but sailor trash goes to a Dollar Store to shop in West Palm Beach?), cruising permit, which caused us to have to buy round-trip airline tickets when we were lucky enough to fly back to the boat. And scariest of all I forgot my make-up and toiletries. After we got back, our friends Amy and Pete, from Double Vision told us they always keep a ditch bag ready, even though they no longer live on a boat, great idea for everyone.

We were fortunate that we had established friends in Marsh Harbour who met us at the clinic and helped hold me up. Chris and Tara from OII (Out Island Internet) stood by and made Cola runs for me and used their own personal cell phones to call our family to let them know what was going on because my fingers wouldn’t work to dial and they also started to arrange a charter for us out. In the end this was unnecessary because the doctor said the cap’n would require a Medevac. Brenda from Tupps Wine and Liquors, who was worried about losing her most loyal customer (just kidding, Brenda). She gave us immeasurable support and even told me I looked great even though I knew different. And to our magical friend Patti Toler who did things that I’m sure we’re not even aware, plus she loaned me a hairbrush and some lipstick.

We were fortunate that Dr. Schwerna and his staff were on duty that night. Under their hands the cap’n became stable and I became less afraid. The emergency staff at West Palm Beach were very impressed with his treatment. We are thankful to Dr. Boyce for loaning a necessary medication from his private clinic and for his staff for bringing it over on what was now becoming a late evening.

We were unfortunate, that we did not have Medevac insurance. In fact, I have actively pooh-poohed it on several message boards, saying , “Who would want to wait 8 hrs. for a Medjet to arrive when you could charter a plane in minutes. . There was no way I would have been comfortable flying alone with the cap’n on a charter that night. He required medications and constant attention, and while a charter might be okay for a fracture, it was not appropriate for this situation.

We were fortunate that we had enough credit on our credit card to pay for the evacuation ($8,400.00 plus change) because it is required upfront. I don’t know what they do if you don’t have the money to pay. I strongly suggest you sign up with http://www.medjetassist.com/ or http://www.diversalertnetwork.org/ or another like service. The plane was Beech B-1900 with two pilots, a doctor and two EMT/nurses. They also arranged transport by ambulance to the hospital. The eerie thing is I had just asked the cap’n during our last flight over that I wonder what they do in reference to customs and immigration when you are flown in on a medical emergency. Now I know. In our case, we first had to land in Fort Lauderdale to clear in because West Palm’s customs had shut down. I was right about waiting for a jet for 8 hours, it was now the wee hours of the morning and the ordeal had started about 3:00 pm. All of us except the patient and one nurse disembarked from the plane and walked across the tarmac to the immigration office. As always there was no hurry and another Medevac plane was clearing in at the same time. There was some problem with the manifest and no one seemed to be concerned that my cap’n was having chest pains out on the tarmac. We finally cleared and then the nurse that had remained with the cap’n had to go in and clear. I was able to present the capn’s documentation for him. Finally, we were back in the air on the way to WPB.

We were fortunate that we had changed our international medical insurance (which required us to be out of the US for 6 months of the year) before we got back on the boat this year. When I couldn’t find other things to keep me up nights worrying, I worried about this requirement since we hadn’t been able to fulfill it last year due to my dad’s illness. Turns out I was right to worry.

We were fortunate for the good care at Good Samaritan Hospital in West Palm Beach. We were fortunate that the cap’n did not have an MI (heart attack) but an arrythmia that was able to be treated with meds and a change in lifestyle. We were fortunate that the docs insisted on a heart cath because we were coming back over here and they didn’t want a repeat perfomance. We were fortunate that the heart cath showed no damage and that it, according to the doctor, “looked a hell of a lot better than it deserved to” given the capn’s lifestyle. After the capn had been off cigs and rum for a week., we were fortunate that there were still a few nurses willing to take care of him.

We were fortunate to have the support of our friends who called or sent flowers when we were in the hospital and when we returned to Hope Town , several of whom were on the dock to greet us with applause and hugs.

Yesterday, we were fortunate to volunteer at the Hope Town Fire and Rescue Fair, http://www.hopetownfirerescue.com/ who shares its funds and people with BASRA.

We are very thankful to The Great Navigator upstairs for a wake-up kick in the head. I can’t brag that our new leaf has remained completely turned over. I myself, as some of you know, have never been a poster child for moderation and the cap’n is my worthy counterpart, but be reassured we are trying and will keep on trying. Believe me, it's harder than it looks.

Sorry, The Great Navigator does not have a website...

So go on up to high power now, if you feel like it, and keep us in your prayers