Good neighbors in deed, indeed

     
  

     



One of my first interactions when I moved here made me feel welcomed among good neighbors. I needed to put up a new locking mailbox instead of the previous owner's rusting-away one. I purchased the mailbox online and the day before the Post Office was going to switch over my address, I went  up to the parking lot to take off the old one and attach my new one to the long board where the individual moorage mailboxes are lined up.

I knew that the old one was attached by rusted nails and I hadn't yet unpacked or found my crowbar, so I took a hammer and some screwdrivers with me. After probably a half hour of banging and twisting away at the mailbox, I hadn't done anything to remove it. This was November, it was a cool, rainy day and I was wearing old work clothes and surely looking bedraggled.

I decided I needed to find that crowbar, whatever it took. Before I got to my house, the fellow pictured above, whom I'd never seen, was going into another tenderhouse. He looked at me and asked if I needed help. "You wouldn't happen to be able to put your hands on a crowbar, would you?" I asked. Certainly. He came out of the tenderhouse with a long, maybe 3-foot, crowbar. Wow. Then he asked, "Do you need more help?"

Usually I would be Miss-I-can-take-of-things-myself but I was too weary and admitted that yes, I could use more help. This fellow, who introduced himself as Tom Hekker, Jr., oldest son of my neighbors Tom and Claire Hekker, came up to the parking lot with that crowbar and in a wink had the old mailbox removed.

I truly lucked out. It turns out their family has a metal roofing business and Tom's truck was in the parking lot. He got out a drill but couldn't get an angle to drill holes to attach my new mailbox because the ones on either side were too close. He said, "I think I need to make tabs." He went back to his truck, got a piece of sheet metal and crimpers, cut out four tabs, riveted them to the mailbox, and then drilled straight down to attach it. All this took maybe less than 10 minutes.

He refused to be paid or take anything from me. "Look out for my mother" was all he asked in return. I did get him a pair of my favorite kind of work gloves as a gift. His folks have a reputation for helping others on the moorage and when I asked about getting him something as a gift, I was regaled with creative ideas that people had thought up to thank them.

Below: Tom and Claire Hekker with

two of their nine children, Joyce

and Tom, Jr.

         

                                        

Anniversary of the Electrical Surge

February 27, 2013 was the one-year anniversary of a spectacular electrical surge I experienced on the houseboat. Some friends were visiting and just after it got dark the dining room chandelier started flashing dark and faint, we heard a crackle and smelled smoke coming from my office. They stayed while I called Portland General Electric, our utility.

They sent out a crew of three who came and redid the connectors outside by the walkway. The surge blew out the main circuit board of the hot tub, two surge protectors, light bulbs, the digital control on my stove, and caused my computer to continually shut itself off and reboot.

Some of my neighbors said it couldn't have been a surge because it would have gone down all the moorage wiring and blown out everyone's, but once they fixed the wires outside everything else worked fine. It took months to get everything repaired. The utilitily ultimately did take responsibility and I invited their tech guy out to talk to the moorage folks about additional things we can do to protect ourselves and electronics  -- because after all, we do live on an island with a lot of trees that regularly fall on the wires and poles and cause our electricity to go out.

I ended up buying more expensive surge protectors as well as a "Cyber Power" 890 joules Battery Backup that my computer and printer are plugged into that has a 30 minute guaranteed backup. Now that I'm writing this I realize that I was also going to install a Surge Arrester at the fusebox that grounds things before a surge travels through the house and have not done that. My computer was repaired but still is quirky.

It was pretty scary and I was worried that the electrical system throughout the house had problems but fortunately that has not been the case and all has been well. 

 Burn holes in rug








Connectors replaced outside

Half mast today. godspeed, Purple Martin Man

A sad, sad day today. I received a phone call early this afternoon letting me know that Dave Fouts -- aka The Purple Martin Man -- passed away on Saturday. His sister Judith phoned with the bad news. He had a sudden heart attack and didn't recover. Less than a half hour before that I had added Dave's name to a list of people to invite to our Greenspaces 25th Anniversary celebration event.

She is planning to set up a memorial event for him on Sunday, April 7th at Howell Territorial Park. Dave loved the island and leaves a legacy of purple martin gourds and houses that he found or built and maintained over decades. He single-handedly helped to bring back the purple martin, a designated sensitive species in Oregon.

Last summer he built a purple martin gourd setup for me (see earlier post). Today I went out and lowered it to half mast, and tied a black sweater on it as a memorial "flag."

He had just called me last week and we were talking about how it was getting to be time to clean out the gourds from last year's nesting. I did that today, and below is the material that was in the two gourds where birds nested.

godspeed, Dave. I miss you already.

My Wildlife Valentine

Honestly, I gasped when I saw it. A male wood duck, floating just a few feet away outside my window. Wood ducks are the most colorful bird we see on or around the island -- with its green, blue, gold, orange, red, brown, black coloring and distinctive white lines. This is the first one I've seen from the houseboat and probably the closest I've ever seen one. I first spotted it around 9:30 in the morning. I got the camera and that spooked it and it scooted off. It seemed to be hanging around a "regular" mallard pair, and eventually floated back. I started taking photos from inside.

I took probably a dozen photos, most of them blurry. A half hour later I still couldn't take my eyes off it. Often when people visit they look out the huge windows at all the goings-on and say "How do you get any work done?" I'm used to glancing up and down up and down as I work, but today I really felt like How am I going to get any work done with this beautiful bird here for a rare visit -- an extra Valentine's Day gift from the river. At one point the two resident white domestic geese landed and tried to scare it off, and it backed up a bit but stood its ground (or water spot, as it were) -- by stretching up and spreading its wings. It ignored the Canada geese that came floating by.

Eventually it floated downriver, although I spotted it with binocs around 11:30 amid three mallard pairs outside the next houseboat, but it's 12:30ish now and the wood duck is gone again.

I am very lucky to have a place where there is a huge window, a tiny strip of deck and then the water. It allows birds to come just a few feet away from me for excellent views. Yesterday I saw a coot here for the first time, also passing close by.

It's 1:29 p.m. and the wood duck is back in sight, swimming alongside a cormorant. A large boat towing a Zodiac passes near the other side of the channel and the wood duck veers closer to my houseboat, then floats downstream.

It's 2:15 and the wood duck is floating with two mallards in front of the houseboat next door downriver.

Nearly 3, and the wood duck was just outside my window but moved quickly away as I moved to take a photo.

3:14 -- oh, wait. This isn't the first wood duck I've seen at the moorage. I spotted one in the backwater near the ramp a month or so ago. I looked in my notebook and don't see that I wrote it down.

It's 4:48 and here's the wood duck, again swimming in front of my deck with the mallard pair. Maybe it will return another day ...



1,000 page views

Today this blog reached a milestone -- 1,000 page reads.

I have been watching the stats with amusement since I began, fascinated with wondering who is reading my posts -- connecting my lovely spot with the rest of the world. I have kept diaries (as a girl, with lock and key) and journals throughout my life. This has been a new writing and sharing adventure.

Here's where the page reads have come from:

Alaska

Argentina

Australia

Brazil

Canada

China

France

Germany

Italy

Malaysia

Norway

Russia

South Korea

Taiwan

Ukraine

United Kingdom

United States

Venezuela

Not many people have written comments, so I don't know how they found these stories, why they're reading them or how they relate to them. No matter, from here it's all been fun.

An eyrar of swans, a coterie of cormorants

Friday morning I looked outside and saw lots of cormorants floating in the channel. What is that clump of cormorants doing out there? I thought to myself as I got the camera to take a photo. (Yes, you have to look closely to see them; that's just what the scene looked like then. I think there are about 15.) Then I thought, why did I instinctively use the word "clump" to describe that gathering? That led me to hunt through my shelves for An Exaltation of Larks, the delightful book that has names for groupings of birds and animals, to see if there was a noun like "exaltation" for cormorants. I couldn't find my book anywhere.

I searched the web, where I came across Alexander Boldizar's "Bucket of Venary." http://www.boldizar.com/blog/2009/01/bucket-of-venary/ Venary are words that originally came out of "Olde England" language to indicate collections of birds and animals. Boldizar has been collecting these charming and poetic words. Here are my favorites of the venary terms he's found that describe groupings of birds I've seen from the houseboat:

A nadger of ducks (flying)
A dopping of ducks (diving)
A raft of ducks
A convocation of eagles
A turandot of finches
A nide of geese
A siege of herons
A charm of hummingbirds
A lute of mallards
A richness of martens
A parliament of owls (hoots only)
A ubiquity of sparrows
An eyrar of swans
A pump of wildfowl

Alas, nothing for cormorants. I decided rather than a clump I shall declare them a coterie of cormorants, since they seem to be socializing, and maybe someday that will become their official term of venary.

Well, well, whatever could this be?

                                         Diagram that says "West Side"

                                         Diagram that says "East Side"

Mystery flotsam.

I found this Sunday, at my favorite flotsam discovery locale, which shall remain secret since I always find something interesting there.

It is a two-sided laminated diagram, 11" x 17"

One side says "East Side" It has an empty box in the middle, surrounded by a total of 141 E-BEAMS.

Some of these E-Beams are identified as E-BEAM x 11'-0" and some are 13' and some are 9'. Lengthwise, they are divided into three columns and widthwise into three sections. Each section of beams appears to have two long bars holding them together. There are a number of small orange squares and a note pointing to one of them says "Drill 5/8" Hole a designated locations. Total: 64 EA."

The "West Side" looks pretty much like the "East Side" except that there's no blank box in the middle. This side has a total of 132 beams of the same dimensions. This one has the same drilling instructions but someone has corrected the spelling to "at" with a red marker.

Nobody who's seen it can guess what it is. At first glance, it looks like a structure that is covered with a lot of wooden pallets. Maybe that's what it is -- a pallet-type of platform that would go on a ship and cargo would go on top.

If anyone reading this can solve the mystery, do let me know.

A nutria kind of day

When I saw the third nutria, I got out my camera. I had seen only one before in a year of paddling.

The first one flew mid-air in front of me and startled me. It had leaped from a hole above and to my left in the steep bank. It dove and although I stopped and looked around, I never saw it surface.

The second one swam out of a small inlet and passed in front of me. The third one did the same, and then I got out my camera. This photo below is the only one of these that I took; the others here are from different sources.

Nutria are an introduced species in Oregon, and also known as "river rats." I always think they look more like beavers than rats, and I enjoy seeing their fat furry bodies swimming by.

Along the stretch of river I paddle along the island dike is eroded in many places and there are lots and lots of holes. Some perhaps, are just where rocks washed out, but as I kept on going I looked for holes that might be the size of a nutria burrow.

Downwaterers

Downwinders are people who were downwind of atomic blasts conducted by the Atomic Energy Commission and were exposed to airborne radioactive fallout.

We are downwaterers.

The lead story in this morning's Oregonian newspaper features the 11-mile-long river Superfund Site that we are downwater of. It's a heavily industrialized stretch of harbor and Oregon's biggest cleanup project. If you could put an "x marks the spot" on the map above, we would just to the top left. This map did not copy that well, but you get the idea -- the dots represent sites with high levels of contaminants, particularly noting PCBs, Dioxins/Furans, PAHs and DDT.

It says "The harbor's pollution is the product of a century of industrial production, from World War II shipyards and electrical transformer shops that spilled toxic PCBs to chemical plants leaking the pesticide DDT to natural gas production that generated toxic tar" and there are "114 responsible parties," and cleanup could run to more than $1.7 billion. $100 million dollars has already been spent sampling sediments and preparing the Superfund documents.

The gist of today's story is that the EPA says the "Lower Willamette Working Group" made up of the city, some agencies and industry, wrote a plan that "overestimates the payoff from low-cost 'natural' recovery" and underestimates the effectiveness of higher-cost options like dredging -- so EPA plans to rewrite it.

http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2013/01/portland_harbor_superfund_opti.html

While the City of Portland has some of the best drinking water in the world, coming fresh from the pristine Bull Run watershed, we on the island are drinking well water which we hope is naturally filtered by the soil to be rid of these Superfund toxins.

No wonder moorage folks tell friends who come by for a swim on hot summer days to keep their mouths closed. I look outside and think about the wildlife who live in and eat what's in the water and make this stretch of downwater their home.



Close-knit community

When I was growing up, I had 25 first cousins within five years of my age -- postwar Baby Boomers -- and tons of neighborhood kids living within the range of a few blocks. We all played and birthday-partied together. Our moms had a Wednesday night Card Club and everyone knew each other and was there for each other. One thing I didn't expect moving to the moorage was to find a lot of that same closeness and sense of community, which I really have come to value and appreciate.

Our moorage has 17 houseboats, small enough so that everyone knows each other. We joke that you have to allow 15 extra minutes when you're coming or going because you're likely to end up stopping and talking to one or more people. We look out for each offer, offer advice and lend a helping hand without hesistation.

For New Years Eve this year, one of the neighbors had a fairly impromtu gathering that we were invited to the day before. A lot of us already had plans elsewhere earlier in the evening -- I'd gone to hear the fabulous David Grisman play the mandolin at the Alberta Rose Theater -- but came back to celebrate ringing in the new year with the neighbors.

It's also nice that you can shuffle on over to a neighbor's at a moment's notice or at times when one wouldn't necessarily want to be going and driving anywhere -- like wrapping up in a blanket and watching an eclipse of the moon at 3:00 a.m. Some people gather together to watch episodes of Downton Abbey and rehash the storyline afterwards. I invited people to come over and watch the presidential inauguration at 8:00 a.m. and we had a brunch of fresh-baked goods, tea and coffee.

I love the mysteries we try to collectively solve -- why are mergansers all of a sudden swimming so close to our houseboats, when will the sea lions returns, why are foghorns blaring at some times and not others? Many of us are creative and you can see the examples of our artistic endeavors walking past, making pleasant all the hauling back and forth.

There's a feeling of security of having houses so close-by, and there is something about the quirkiness of living on the water that draws us together. I'd lived on the island 23 years and have lots of friends, but you don't see them every day, in fact, you have to make an effort to get together with a lot of them, so these ecounters feel like a richness of community added to my daily life.

Foghorn nights and days

Listen to the foghorn:
2:32 a.m.
2:33 a.m.
2:34 a.m.
2:35 a.m.
2:36 a.m.
2:37 a.m.
2:38 a.m.
2:39 a.m.
2:40 a.m.
2:41 a.m.
2:42 a.m.
2:43 a.m.
2:44 a.m.
2:45 a.m.
2:46 a.m.
2:47 a.m.
2:48 a.m.
2:49 a.m.
2:50 a.m.
2:51 a.m.
2:52 a.m.
2:53 a.m.
2:54 a.m.
2:55 a.m.
2:56 a.m.
2:57 a.m.
2:38 a.m.
2:59 a.m.
3:00 a.m.
Okay, I quit notating in my journal so I could try and get back to sleep. That was the morning of Sunday, January 20th. We had been in a pea soup fog for days. The weather reports showed fog burning off to sun. That happened in town, but not here on the river. Thursday night when I drove home late I could barely see more than a few feet in front of me on the road, which then gets coated in a thin film of ice.

We often hear foghorns here. I used to hear them from my forest house, haunting in the distance, from the Columbia River. I love the sound. It takes me right back to an overnight ferry ride in fog in 1983, the last leg of a summer trip bicycling through Europe, heading from Denmark back to England for the flight home. The foghorn blew all night and I was in a contented state, from the exciting summer and the anticipation of soon being home.

On Saturday, we heard foghorns as we usually do -- intermittently throughout the day and evening. I couldn't figure out, though, why they were more frequent. The sound seemed to be coming from the mainsteam Willamette River three miles away, but certainly there wasn't that much ship traffic. When I went to bed, there were still a lot of foghorn blasts and I wondered if I would get to sleep. I did, but woke up around 2 a.m. to a non-stop series of that distant blaring. Curious to keep a record and see what I could make of it, I got out my cell phone to show the time in the dark, and a journal and pen to keep track. Every minute, the foghorn blew. Finally I gave up and was able to go back to sleep.

I tried to look up what are the "rules of engagement" for foghorns and couldn't find anything. I will do more research and pursue that. Oh, I think I'll go to "Ask the Librarian" on the county library site.

Sunday morning I put in around 11:00 a.m. for a paddle in the deep fog. It was curious that I didn't hear a single foghorn for the first 1-1/2 hours. I wondered if the fog had lifted that far upriver and that's why, but it was still foggy there. As I turned to head back downriver the sun was starting to peek out. I was thinking that I hadn't seen another boat that whole time, then looked up and saw a boat headed directly toward me. I moved aside, then recognized it was the Coast Guard. A guy came out on the back deck as they pulled close to me. I asked if he was wanting to see if I had an Invasive Species Permit (I did, or of course I wouldn't have asked) but he said they were just checking on me to see if I was okay. Did I have a cell phone with me? (yes, I did) Then he cautioned, "It's low visibility today. It's a good idea to keep close to the shore." By the time I paddled all the way back to my houseboat, the fog was completely burned off and it was brilliantly sunny.

Below: Photo by my neighbor Courtney Frisse of the same view at the very top of this post. It was published in our weekly island enews Newslink in the section, "Why we live here." She's a professional fine art/craft photographer (www.courtneyfrisse.com) and when I asked her if I could post this on my blog, she said yes and added, "I have dozens of  mist photos, but this particular morning was really amazing. Lasted about 2 minutes, then got totally socked in."

January 27
Here's the response from "Ask the Librarian"
Thank you for your question regarding rules for foghorns. The United States Coast Guard has posted their navigation rules online and these may be of interest to you. Here is an excerpt of the information available on their site:

NAVIGATION RULES ONLINE
PART D - SOUND AND LIGHT SIGNALS
Rule 32 - Definitions
Rule 33 - Equipment for Sound Signals
Rule 34 - Maneuvering and Warning Signals
Rule 35 - Sound Signals in Restricted Visibility
Rule 36 - Signals to Attract Attention
Rule 37 - Distress Signalshttp://www.navcen.uscg.gov/?pageName=navRulesContent#Annexes

It may be that the horns you were hearing were coming from a buoy and not from a ship. To determine this, you may wish to contact the United States Coast Guard directly. Here is the contact information for their Buoy Tenders:
BUOY TENDERS
USCGC BLUEBELL (WLI-313)
6767 North Basin Avenue
Portland, OR 97217-3992
Tel: (503) 240-9362
_______________________
Here is an example of the many rules given under Rule 35:

Rule 35 - Sound Signals in Restricted Visibility

In or near an area of restricted visibility, whether by day or night the signals prescribed in this Rule shall be used as follows:
(a) A power-driven vessel making way through the water shall sound at intervals of not more than 2 minutes one prolonged blast.

Walkin' in my YakTrax

It gets treacherously icy here. The moisture in the air from being on the river, combined with below-freezing temperatures, make for a life with a bit more caution. Since most of our water pipes are exposed beneath the houseboats, we have to leave water dripping from the faucet at night -- and if one is forgetful like me, a sign posted at the kitchen sink as a reminder. I'm told that the former owner forgot once and her water pipes froze and burst.

During the day, for the most part, the iciness is gone. But in the mornings and after dark the walkways are coated with a film of ice that makes for difficult walking. Shortly after I moved here in November 2011, there was a cold spell and a neighbor advised me to get YakTrax, which are like snow tire chains for your shoes. By the time I bought them (REI sells them; about $18/pair) there wasn't a problem.

This year, though, it started to get icy in mid-December and my YakTrax have been put to good use since then. I also discovered, since I walk with a cane, that I had to put a woolen sock over it lest it skid on the ice. So below is my rigging. One neighbor walks in felt slippers, another neighbors swears by putting women's nylon stockings over your shoes, and I have a pair of fat wool socks I keep in the car in case I'm ever stuck up in the parking lot without the YakTrax.

We used to have a neighbor who went up to the parking lot every morning and brought back The Oregonian newspaper for three of us from the bins up there where the delivery person leaves them. He moved away in December -- oh, how I miss him! -- and I tend to be the one of three of us now who share the task to trudge up there early morning. I throw a long raincoat over my pjs, a scarf around my neck, a big hat on my head and my YakTrax on my knee-high boots. One of my neighbors keeps telling me I look like a Russian cossack. I get the coffee started before I walk up and never appreciated so much sitting there eating breakfast and reading the newspaper after my brisk YakTrax stroll.



 



Morning sky for a few minutes

I was not anticipating rousing myself out of bed at 7:32 this morning when I opened my eyes to check the time. After all, it's still holiday vacation and I was up till 2 a.m. reading Alexander McCall Smith's "The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party" from The No.1. Ladies' Detective Agency series.

But I happened to notice the gorgeous tangerine clouds and dragged myself up and outside to take these photos. By the time I was done shutting down the camera, the colors were gone.

Heron envy

Photo: Mary Forst

I have lived here more than a year and have not seen a single heron on my deck. My neighbor Mary sees them all the time on hers, and on the log of her next-door neighbor. Once I saw one on the float deck of the houseboat to the left of me, and that's the closest I've seen.

Land here, herons!

Photo: Mary Forst

Ultimate Flotsam: Oslo's Hoegh Marlin life preserver

After I declared myself the "Flotsam Queen," named for my newfound hobby of collecting interesting flotsam from my paddles, Dave Fouts (see previous Purple Martin posts) said that he had something he wanted to give me, and one day he brought it over.

It's a life preserver that he found on the Columbia River side of the island in the early 1980s and has kept at his house since then. Ever since I'd seen a life preserver hanging up on my neighbor's houseboat I was thinking it would be a good idea to have one on hand, and now I do. It needs a little repair work and Dave thought I could get the "tape" to patch the covering at West Marine.

Fascinated, I googled the Hoegh Marlin from Oslo to see what I could find out. On a "shipspotting" website, I found this photo from 2011, so this ship may still be cruising the Columbia River. It says this vessel was built in 1966 in Osaka, Japan.

http://www.shipspotting.com/gallery/photo.php?lid=1326080

 HOEGH MARLIN - IMO 6616540

Another web site gives additional information:

http://www.cimorelli.com/cgi-bin/magellanscripts/ship_dates_volume.asp?ShipName=Hoegh+Marlin+(bulk+Carrier)

 

Hoegh Marlin (bulk Carrier)

The Sudbury II played a major role in another salvage operation about three months later, when the 22,000-ton Norwegian bulk carrier Hoegh Marlin stranded in Active Pass. Hoegh Marlin, partially laden with woodpulp bales, fell victim to the powerful tide races of Active Pass in the early morning hours of May 4 and ran hard aground on a reef off Collinson Point, suffering considerable hull damage. The resources of Island Tug were summoned and Sudbury II, (3,800-horsepower), Island Monarch (1,800 horsepower) and Island Warrior (1,600 horsepower) were dispatched to the scene. An effort was made to refloat the 586-foot motor vessel on the next high tide, but it was several feet lower than the previous high and the effort was unavailing. The 2,400-horsepower Island Sovereign was summoned, augmenting the aggregate horsepower of the tugs to 10,000, and the Hoegh Marlin was successfully refloated on the following tide. After undergoing hull repairs she loaded the remainder of her pulp cargo and proceeded to Oslo. Citation: Tacoma Public Library

It's quite exciting to have a piece of history. It's certainly the biggest flotsam in my growing collection and I doubt that I'll ever find anything from a larger source. 

Second year bald eagle

                                         copyright Wildlight Images/used with permission


On December 19th, I was at my desk and heard a loud screeching. I looked out and saw two large birds across the channel, at each other in the air. Both landed in trees; one flew off, and one, I could see, was perched. It was a big bird, and seemed like some sort of hawk. I looked with the binoculars and then with the spotting scope. It had an unusual mottled brown pattern on the wings, and the rest of the body and tail looked almost black. It didn't have a tail like a hawk. I got out my Nat'l Geo "Field Guide to Birds of North America" but couldn't find it.

Next I emailed a neighbor who's an excellent birder to see if she was around and could see this bird and if she knew what it was.

Then I got out my journal and drew an image of it, that was quite wretched. Then I went and got out Sibley's bird guide and there I was able to identify it -- a second year bald eagle. I'd never seen one before.

In the meantime, my neighbor had written back: "Sounds like an immature eagle-- could be last summer's chick as there was a nest behind there. I can't see it but I've seen immatures as well as some adults flying up and down the channel in the last week and they make sounds like that.  They are over at the Nude Beach, too, circling around and complaining."

Yesterday I went for a paddle and spotted an eagle's in a tree on the mainland side next to the confluence of the channel and the Willamette. Farther downriver I saw an adult bald eagle in a tree. My cousins live in Savannah along a waterway and have talked about watching out for alligators. I was thinking that I much preferred living in eagle-dom.

 

                                                                           copyright Wildlight Images/used with permission

Christmas Ships Parade

There's not much that's more magical than Portland's Christmas Ships Parade, and there's no better place to see the boats than our decks. They come right past, and we get to see both fleets, the Columbia River fleet and the Willamette River fleet. The boat owners are volunteers who bring this treat to the world. All up and down the channel (and the rivers) people gather to watch the boats float by. We ooh and ahh, delight at ones we've seen before and go ga-ga over new ones, singing Christmas carols all the while. Along the moorage, most people have parties and you see the silhouettes of people on the decks on either side.

When I moved to the houseboat last year, I'd only been here a few weeks when it was time for the Christmas Ships. My place was a construction zone and boxes were piled high everywhere. I decided I would just go to Mary's party, where I've been going for years. This year I decided I would still go to Mary's party. It turns out that I know the people who are moving into the houseboat two doors away, but they won't be closing on it till later this week -- so I invited their family to have their first moorage houseboat party at my place. It worked out great and I came home to sweet thank-you notes from them all.