Comet Watch

This weekend was projected to be another time with temps in the low 90s an heat indices in the 100s, so we got lazy and decided to stay home Friday night and the most of Saturday.  We ended up going to the boat Saturday evening with the intent of heading out for a quick early morning sail on Sunday morning.

News reports said Comet Neowise was in the sky - passing a bit below the big dipper.  Remembering my old astronomy training from my time in the late 90s as a NJAA qualified observer, I decided to go out and hunt for the comet.  I knew it was below the big dipper in the NW sky... but boy my eyes have aged... it was much harder to see the stars.  Eventually I found the right spot in the sky and took a couple of photos to find the comet.  Only after knowing exactly where to look, I was able to catch it briefly using averted vision.  I then went over to the connector between A&B docks and captured the photo above (center of the photo, just above the one sailboat's jib).


Sunday was soooooo hot when we woke up that we decided to stay at the dock.  That turned out to be fortuitous as Vicky had a large number of calls from China (getting ready for a big presentation Sunday night).  While she worked on her presentation with her staff, I worked on boat chores including...

- Replacing the pelican clip that was donated to Poseidon
- Topping off the batteries with distilled water
- Blowing out the propane locker vent (water collected in the vent tube).
- Blowing out the water vent to improve water pressure.
- Checking and cleaning the AC raw water filter (again).
     - Which in turn required me to clean bilge scum off my iPhone.
- Cleaning and testing the bilge pumps
- Defrosting the refrigerator

It was a pleasantly busy morning... I finished just as the folks in China finally decided to go to bed.