Another Ship Finished!

 My return to an old hobby of building model wooden ships has been a wonderful thing during this long COVID season.  I recently finished another ship model and have already laid the keel for its successor.

The ship that I finished is a fifteenth century Iberian Caravel.  This is the most dominant ship of Spanish and Portuguese sailors for nearly three hundred years.

This was the type ship used by explorers like Bartolemo Diaz and Vasco da Gama.  Also, the Pinta and Nina of Columbus were Caravels like this one.

The ship would have been fifty feet long and carried a crew of about twenty-four.  

The Caravel could be rigged in two different ways.  I built this one rigged with Lateen sails.  These triangular sails could go against the wind and also made the ship very maneuverable in sailing along coastlines and in and out of ports for trading.  It could, however, also be rigged with square sails.  This was not as maneuverable but produced more speed for long travel.  The Columbus ships were square sailed.

One of the things you don’t see with the finished model is that it is double-planked on the hull.  There is an under layer of planking that gives the hull shape and strength and then the outer planking that is the finished hull.  You also cannot see some of the things below deck that disappear as the ship is finished.

Building these ships as we live on the island reminds us of the history of where we live.

Living in Birdland

 One of the nice things about living on a barrier island is that we are home to two totally different kinds of bird populations.  In our yard and at our bird feeders we have a variety of songbirds: cardinals, doves, mockingbirds, various finches and others.

In addition, since we are by the ocean, we have a large variety of shore birds. These range from great blue herons to brown pelicans to a variety of different gulls.

This week we looked down the street and saw a large number of medium sized white birds that seemed to be feeding.  We had had a lot of rain and there was standing water in a large grassy lot that has no house in it.  We slipped quietly down there and discovered fifteen American White Ibises searching for food through the shallow water.

Sometimes we see one of these birds at a time, but we had never seen fifteen at one time at one place and that being our own little street.

They live from Virginia south and eat insects and small things like fish and crayfish.  They we feeling through the shallow water for insects and they paid no attention to us. We stood and watched then for quite a while and when we left they were still there. 

The individual birds weigh from two to three pounds and have pink legs and orange-pink down-curved beaks.  They cannot see their food but feel for it with these specialized beaks.  We feel lucky to live in a place that is so rich with healthy birds.

Vaccination!

 We were in Florida when the first Moderna vaccine arrived on the island, so I missed out on the initial round of shots.  But, just when we got home, there was a new call from Mandy at the Ocracoke Health Center.

“We are getting ten more doses on vaccine on Wednesday or Thursday, so, I will call you when the vaccine is actually here and make an appointment for your shot.”

On Thursday the call came and all of the appointments for those ten doses were being lined up on the following Monday.

My appointment was set for 1:45 on Monday.  The instructions were to drive up to the clinic parking lot and wait in the car.  

As soon as Trish and I arrived in the parking lot, Lucy O’Neal, one of our RNs, came out to the car gloved and masked and carrying all of her needed equipment.  I rolled down the window and signed the paperwork, then got the Moderna shot.  Lucy then gave us a walkie-talkie and told us to wait for fifteen minutes in the car.  If I had any adverse reactions, we were simply to call them on the walkie-talkie.  In fifteen minutes she returned, reclaimed the little device, and we headed home.

I had no reaction to the shot that day or the following day.  The day after that I felt a little punky all day (may have been because it had been raining for days) but the following day all seemed normal.  My second dose is scheduled for March 8.

We are so very fortunate on the island to have the Health Center.  The staff is led by Dr. Erin Baker, who is an absolutely thorough and caregiving primary care physician.  She is backed up by two RN’s, a phlebotomist, and additional clinic staff. 

Almost all of our needs are handled here.  In case of more dire needs, we can be sent by ambulance to the Outer Banks Hospital or by helicopter to Pitt Memorial in Greenville, home of the East Carolina Medical School.  The clinic here is about one-fourth mile from our house.