The Wind Weeps | wordsfromanneli

It’s that time of year again when the troller needs to be given a facelift and the whole nine yards of a spa treatment. The “spa” is a marine ways near Campbell River. After you make the nail-biting trip up the river a little way, you steer into a passageway that has most likely been dredged out just to make sure you don’t hit bottom.

On either side of this passageway, are walkways heavily reinforced to hold the weight of a travel lift carrying a boat weighing many tons.

The Work:

Here is the travel lift that lifted the troller Eden Lake out of the water about ten days ago. While the boat sat on the parking lot, propped up on either side with braces, the Captain slaved to power wash the boat’s hull, and cooling pipes. He replaced the bars of zinc as they have been “eaten” by electrolysis. Fresh bars are put on each year to divert the electrolysis from destroying the metal cooling pipes and the propeller.

The top of the hull is sanded and repainted. The gum wood (trim and railings, etc.) is coated with Cetol. The bottom of the hull is painted with anti-fouling paint to make the wood unpalatable to any marine life that wants to make its home there.

When the boat is all clean and shiny, it’s ready to be put back in the water. The travel lift puts the belts under the boat and carries it back to the water. It drives along the two walkways until the boat is suspended over the water and then it is gradually lowered back down where it belongs.

And off it goes, all tiddled up.

The Play:

Sometimes the boat skippers hire help for this grueling work. Even women can do this job (rather well, I might add). If you want to read about a good-looking woman who found romance after working on a troller — and no, I’m not talking about Yours Truly — why not download the free novel “The Wind Weeps”? If you enjoy it and would like to read the sequel, it would cost you a big $2.99 to buy Reckoning Tide. The books are available on all amazon sites, as well as on smashwords.com (for those who have e-readers other than Kindle). Why not give these books a try? You might like them a lot.

You can just click on the book covers at the side of this blog post to find out more about them.

Or go to my website: www.anneli-purchase.com

The wild winds weep

And the night is a-cold

Come hither, Sleep,

And my griefs unfold.

I wish I could claim this poem as my own creation, but I can’t. It is from a poem called “Mad Song,” by William Blake.

I was quite taken by this poem when I wrote my first novel of a coastal drama in which the wild weather played a significant role. That is why I used “The Wind Weeps” as my title.

I’m not trying to persuade you to click on the book cover image at the side for the free download of that book, but if you do, remember book two, “Reckoning Tide.”

It’s just that today the weather is so wild. The wind is crying out there, whipping up the waves, just as it is in parts of my book.

Driving past Point Holmes on my way home from shopping, I stopped to take a few pictures. I had to hang onto the car door tightly so it wouldn’t rip off. A torn rotator cuff on a person is painful, but on a car door it would be expensive – so, also painful in a way.

It takes a good stiff wind to give these waves foaming, frothy tops. In the photo below you can see a smooth line near the bottom of the picture. That is the paved boat launch ramp. No one is using it today for obvious reasons. No way I’d want to be tossing around in a small boat out there.

Even the little songbirds were looking for shelter. They swarmed in small clouds to and from the beach. Some flew in to land on the rocks and logs, but my photo doesn’t show the tiny birds well. I enlarged the photo to have a look (as you may be able to do by clicking on it), and I counted at least twelve small birds. It’s a tough time for them.

Those mountains in the distance should be clear and sharp. It is only around noon, but the sky is dark and full of raindrops flying sideways so the far shore is fuzzy and the mountains just a haze.