Poop deck?
Yes, the birds seemed to have pooped all over Red Ranger's deck. Sigh. CA took a picture of a bloody fish-head on Liquid Therapy's swim-platform. It appears that otters use swim platforms as picnic tables.
Also, it snowed on Jackson Creek .
You can see traces of snow on the lawns on the far side of the creek.
The question of "winterizing" is one with which we've pestered everyone.
The official, by-the-book answers (e.g., Nigel Calder's Boatowner's Mechanical and Electrical Manual: How to Maintain, Repair, and Improve Your Boat's Essential Systems) is a fairly long list of steps designed for a long, cold winter layup with a hard freeze. Here's a good blog post, "Winterizing Your Diesel Engine: Cooling System", with the relevant bits of engine cleaning.
The local knowledge, however, is a little more laid-back.
The Flukester, berthed on D-dock with us, says we can safely do nothing for the winter. The creek doesn't freeze hard, so why bother?
Liquid Therapy, also berthed on D-dock, varies. Some winters, nothing. Some winters they pour some pink propylene glycol through the various fresh-water systems. But they don't do that until January when it gets really cold.
Since half the slips are empty, a great many folks opt for haul out for the winter. Presumably there's some engine winterizing going on there, since it's colder on the hard than in the water.
Other folks appear to leave their heaters running. We can see that reverse-cycle heat-pumps are running in a few of the boats over on C-dock. This will keep the interior warm and free of condensation. It will prevent the freshwater systems from freezing, too.
The possible downside of this is a scenario where the outlet hose ("somehow") jumps off the fitting (in spite of double hose clamps) and pumps the boat full of water. The heat pump raw-water pump will eventually defeat the bilge pumps because the bilge pumps are on battery where the heat pump is on shore power.
What To Do?
We're siding with the heat pump folks. We're confident in our hose clamps.
Further, we're hoping to get our fuel filters replaced, so we're expecting that some boatyard folks will be tramping around inside the boat. They can confirm that the bilge isn't filling with water.
And we plan to be back most weekends to continue to do chores. There's a big-old hole in the aft cabin sole that needs to be filled with teak.
I'm sure we can find other indoor projects to do. There's a ton of sewing—curtains mostly—that needs to get done. There's a ton of cleaning. There's some anchor rode splicing that might be a good idea. The forward water tank leaks.
