Covid-19. A heads up.

[DesertAlbin736]

Get my news from Seth Myers & John Oliver

I'm with you there, brah. Throw in a little Randy Rainbow, Bill Maher when he comes back with new shows, and for a little twisted comic relief now and then Monty Python's Holy Grail ("bring out your dead!"), Life of Brian, and Meaning of Life.

[Tree]

. If you’re going boating, what else will you be doing prior to that? Trips to the grocery store for that day out. Potentially mixing with other people at the car parks and boat ramps?

Thx for the advice, but no trips to the grocery store, no mixing with people in the car park and no boat ramps.
No trips offshore either, strictly inland canals and rivers, if my engine stops working, anchor down, call the tug, no personal contact, no risk to First Providers, all pre-paid towing insurance, tow me home to my personal dock.
In other words, very low risk to us and everybody else, and big time social separation. We take it very seriously..

And the guy that throws you the rope has it. You handle the rope without thinking and rub your eye or scratch your nose......

[DCatSea]

"He's a VERY NAUGHTY Boy!"

Oh, and one more task achieved - Checked the ditch bag contents: Found 2 packs of anti-bacterial wipes (still good), a pack of venison jerky (with a couple of months life left); 2 not too old granola-type protein bars; a well-equipped First aid bag with 4 N95 masks, 2 ACR strobe lights and an orange kite.

Speaking of good programming for lock-downs "Norsemen" on HBO; "Vikings" with a twist. I'm about to start binging on Spaghetti Westerns and films that feature the music of Ennio Morricone.

[Norseman]

. And the guy that throws you the rope has it. You handle the rope without thinking and rub your eye or scratch your nose......

Got gloves on anytime I handle something from other folks, don’t touch my face until gloves are off and hands washed.
Take this very seriously and wish everyone else did.

[DesertAlbin736]

Today's "make myself useful in this crisis" task: Get out the old sewing machine & make some face masks. Found what looks like a good pattern & instructions here:

https://members.sewitonline.com/wp-cont ... ctions.pdf

Digging around in the Admiral's sewing box found that she has a whole bag full of fabric elastic strips of various widths from skinny 1/8" to wide 3/4". I think the 1/4" width would work the best.

Now in the video below he makes tie strips out of cloth instead of using elastics, but I can use elastic instead, which should work just as well if not better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcQ69_ANsRA

And I have some nice clean white cotton 9x16 paint & cleaning rags from Lowes left over from previous projects.

paint rags.jpg

The process looks a bit labor intensive, so one can imagine how hard it would be to crank out thousands of these on short notice, unlike the mass produced 3M industrial N95 dust masks like these pictured below. I had a small package of those from last year's deck painting project but only one unused one left. Haven't looked in the store lately, but wouldn't be surprised if they were sold out & ought to go to hospitals for front line health care workers anyway. Note that the US govt just came out yesterday with voluntary recommendation for everyone to wear face masks. It's gettin' ugly folks!

n95 mask.jpg

And the guy that throws you the rope has it. You handle the rope without thinking and rub your eye or scratch your nose......

Last time we went out with the boat, which may bet the last time for a while since we're now approaching the time when it'll be too warm for comfort (cabin gets to 10 to 15 or more deg F higher inside than outside temps, so when outside is pushing 90 deg F, inside is 100 to 105) For UK & Canadians that's 38 to 40 C. Even in normal times we end our local winter/spring boating season after our club's "Cinco De Mayo" raft up on or around May 5th. After that temps are close to or topping 100 and only gets hotter from then on until October. This year Cinco was canceled along with everything else the sailing club does. Anyway, we handled our own lines which was only at the ramp dock since we stayed completely away from the marina and other boats and anchored out. As if there'd be marina staff on hand to toss lines. Ha ha! That's a good one!

20170505_152723_resized.jpg

[DCatSea]

Do you remember “Smacksman”, a fellow Brit who made his own A27 Bimini and side curtains while cruising the ICW. If I’m not mistaken he used Walmart shower curtains and a Craigslist sewing machine. Cruising to the Nth degree.

Smacksman, where are you?

BTW - I’m taking “it” very seriously but not letting “it” rule my life.

[DesertAlbin736]

UPDATE: Spent the afternoon making a face mask to the pattern referenced above. Came out OK, but the rag material is hard to sew with (slippery) & the design is a bit overly complicated (at least for my skill level). So next I'm going to try a more basic design as shown on this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tBg0Os ... e=emb_logo

Then I had a brainstorm: What about those infamous "ShamWow!" things? Yes we got suckered into buying a box of those aptly named (key word 'sham') "As Seen on TV" pieces of crap they were hawking a few years ago (remember that guy?). Hey, they were Made in Germany! The synthetic faux chamois material is practically worthless as a "shammy" for the car, and being loath to throw anything out I still have some unused pieces sitting around in the rag box. As my late hoarder Daddy used to say, you never know when you might need it. Yeah, right, if you can find it in the piles of stuff. The material is not that much different in thickness & texture than the hardware store N95 dust masks. And I think one layer would be sufficient rather than two. We'll see!

Of course life wasn't too kind to the ShamWow pitchman. He went from this:

shamwowguy1.jpg

To this:

shamwowguymugshot.jpg

What goes around, comes around. Ain't karma a beyotch!

PS, I got my machine off CL

00e0e_6PkOzXOfeKv_600x450.jpg

[Nancy]

Re: using synthetic fabric for face masks, I read that tightly woven cotton is the best. Synthetics may let the virus live longer.

[DesertAlbin736]

This may work, 2 layers of micro fiber weave cotton paint/polish cloth.

20200404_175729.jpg

Simple rectangle, sew two pieces together, add elastic straps, turn inside out (hide seams), add tucks on the sides. They recommend 3 tucks but I only did one due to thicker material. Actually the cloth is 2 layers of thin material, so really four layers.

[WillieC]

The Starfleet Commander has a pattern that utilizes HEPA vac filters. Now if we could just get some of those...

[DesertAlbin736]

HEPA vac filters? Hmmm. We have a Kirby vac with (expensive) filter bags.

[hetek]

Heard yesterday on the radio (the "wireless", for those that prefer that term) that all the local town and village marinas are closed and will be until further notice. You are only allowed to visit your boat to maintain it, if you're in the water already.

My co-worker has a 34' Sea Ray that's all dressed up and no where to go.

Me? Well, I can always make do with our 15' Boston Whaler, kept on the mooring in our creek. And I can keep working on my A25 in the side yard. Still plenty to do there.

[jleonard]

7BA68CEC-0AAD-4E7C-B3EA-423EBD514404.jpeg

This is the sign at the entrance to my summer slip marina “Gwenmor marina” in Mystic, Ct.

[DesertAlbin736]

Update from Arizona, star date April 14:

Looking back on a reply I made to this thread on March 22nd there were then 152 COVID cases in AZ on that date 23 days ago. As of today there are now 3,539 confirmed cases & 115 fatalities in Arizona. The vast majority of those cases, 2,020, are in Maricopa County which comprises the greater metro Phoenix area. That's an increase of 2,228% in less than a month.

When the going gets tough, the tough go boating I quipped then. A humorous idea I suppose. Well, even that's not an option anymore. We were planning to head to the lake tomorrow to raft up with some friends for a couple nights while maintaining our social distancing by keeping to our own boats. Well, that's out the window now. Just found out our local Lake Pleasant is closing from 6 pm to 8 am, no boats allowed to anchor overnight, to be enforced by sheriff patrols. Overnight stays at the two marinas are limited to full time liveaboards (there are a number of houseboats docked at the marinas). We could go out for the day, but since we trailer our boat out from town to launch and retrieve from the ramp it's hardly worth the effort if we can't anchor out overnight. So we're doing our bit by mostly staying home, only going out for infrequent runs to the supermarket (one or the other of us, not both at once), and wearing face masks & all that. Shelves are still far from being as fully stocked as they were in "the before time", but meat & bread aisles are a bit better than they were. However the paper goods shelves, TP & paper towels, are still empty. Oddly, I stopped by an RV supply store to pick up some holding tank chems in anticipation of going out on the boat & found they still had a good stock of RV/marine type toilet paper. Go figure! I guess most folks wouldn't think to look there.

[Tree]

We are just on three weeks of lockdown. 3 weeks to go until some possible restriction lifts. My wife will have been working from home with the children for six weeks by then despite her being a key worker. I’m still just about keeping the company open and employing all my staff but considering furlough in the weeks to come. Likely be another 4-5 weeks before they open the harbour allowing users like myself to sea - I’ll be on the hard standing refitting which will be the quickest refit of all time!

Like I said at the creation of this thread, this was a heads up of what to expect and what’s to come. We are still a few weeks ahead of you guys in terms of the curve and your losses will echo ours in terms of capita per head. There have been some good comments in this thread and some of ignorance.

Life as we all know it has changed and it won’t go back to what we are used to for months, even years.