Still adorable! They’re 20 months now ~ walking, running, talking (in their special twin language mostly).

Little Jamie came and climbed right up in my lap, no shyness at all. Such dolls! It’s always amazing to see this little family I had such a huge part in creating. Being a surrogate mom was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done.

She’s been a “bit of a dog” around the docks ever since I’ve had her – her handling more than a little sluggish and slow to respond. We’ve pieced together some of the reasons why and no, nowhere on the list is the phrase “Bill Garden is an idiot.” He designed the boat as she should have been in 1952. One rudder, given the sailing rig. One rudder, big enough to catch the wash from the large 33″ x 34″ propellers.

Ah, but wait, my astute readers! Remember that refit she had a few years ago? The one where they put new engines onboard? When they changed the prop size to 20″ x 22″? But somehow neglected to foresee the part where none of the wash from the faster, smaller props was actually reaching the rudder anymore?

Enter my Magic Brock, and the Uber-Talented Welding Twins, Dean and Joe. Some sheet metal, a good old wire feed welder, little bit o’ time and *POOF*!

An extended, articulated, hinged, mechanical fin that now catches the prop wash!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERtrPUjjAsE]

I’ve seen it built, in action, and throughout the whole process. I *still* don’t get quite how it works.

To a very high degree, as my daughter would point out. She’s fond of noting Mama’s quirks and peculiarities.

And yet I can’t help but think that my darling Katherine Jane prefers her bath water WARM. She seems…happier…when I scrub her down with nice, toasty water to cleanse all of that coarse, gritty salt off of her.

Brock is off at a meeting tonight and I’m caring for our girl in all the ways she needs after being out and about, playing in the salty, cold water of the Sound. It’s past dark, but that in no way negates the need to get that grating debris rinsed off right away. And so I was out there, communing with my beloved wooden boat. Just the two of us. And the warm water from the hose.

From a logical perspective, I’m quite certain that I must be correct. Salt dissolves more quickly in warm water than cold, right?

Solubility is function of temperature of solvent.

The solubility of a given solute in a given solvent typically depends on temperature. For many solids dissolved in liquid water, the solubility increases with temperature up to 100 °C.

Consensus seems to be that at a simple level, yes, warm water dissolves salt mo’ bettah than cold water (and it gets non-simple in a hurry:

• Biopharmaceutics Classification System
• Solubility equilibrium
• Raoult’s law
• Dühring’s rule
• Hot water extraction
• Flexible SPC water model
• Hydrotrope)

But the basic thing that I noticed?

KJ really likes her warm baths. And I like it when she’s happy.

Of an incredible weekend:

It’s tough to take good wildlife photos with a point and shoot, but here’s my best attempt for the day.

We got into the middle of a pod of orcas this evening. It was absolutely incredible. We were crossing the traffic lanes when we saw them breaching to the south. I saw one come completely out of the water – that was a first for me. Earlier, the radio was chattering about them being just north of Blake Island, so we knew they were in the area.

We got outside of the shipping lanes and waited for them to pass us. They were spread out all across the water and there was no way to avoid their path, so we cut the engines and floated as they came closer. At one point, a group of 8 came within 20 feet of the stern of the boat, in a row. I’ll have to find out more about behavior – they were shoulder-to-shoulder (or whatever one would call that ) and swimming in perfect unison. Hunting, perhaps? No words to describe it ~ we are so lucky to live here in the Northwest. My dad is visiting from Ohio in a few weeks & we will take him to the San Juans. Hopefully, we will find the pods there as well.