It was only a matter of time before Old Man Winter arrived in earnest.  After reveling over our Christmas Day sail on Lake Michigan, we knew we would be seeing a bit of cold, wind and snow regardless of autumn’s refusal to part ways.  The Great Lakes saw almost no ice cover this year so when the arctic air arrived, the frigid wind blowing over the relatively warm water made for some respectable lake effect snow showers.  Last week, we got close to 20 inches of snow and temps that stayed low enough to get out for a bit of cross country skiing.  These lake effect snow showers come in bands and look very much like ripples in the sand when you see them in the sky or view them on radar. They leave sizable amounts of snow in their wake while other areas nearby experience little or no snow.

The Sun going down under Lake Michigan snow bands.

Overlooking Lake Michigan from Oval Beach in Saugatuck, Michigan. If you look closely, there are two people just beyond the dune grass on the right, to give you perspective.

Julia on her vintage pair of wooden skis. Check out that amazing Norwegian sweater.

Wood is good!

Yesterday, the wind was coming from the South, clocking to Southwest, blowing gales to 45 knots with gusts to 60 knots on Lake Michigan.  Reverie is tucked behind a building sheltering her from the brunt of the gale but still, I wondered about the  tarp holding out in these conditions.  I wondered about the towering oak tree with the 10 foot girth leaning over the tiny cottage we were in last year.  Did it make it through the gale?  Are the people that now live there  o.k.?

“Great emergencies certainly inspire us with the feelings they demand; and many a man has braved a storm on the wide wild oceans, who would have shrunk from its voice as it pealed down the chimney”

-Charles Maturin. Chapter XI,  Melmoth the Wanderer 1820

What a difference a day makes; especially when you’re talking about Great Lakes weather.  Today, it’s sunny, 50°F and the wind has settled down to 17 mph,  blowing from the West.  The snow has melted except for the big piles left by the plows.  It feels very springlike. I may not be convinced that spring has arrived but I’m sure it’s on it’s way and those little projects I had set aside on the winter “to do” list  need to be addressed before I see the first bluebird of the season.

The “to do”  list wasn’t terribly long this year.  I made sure to leave plenty of time for Julia, reading and painting.   It’s been good.  Along with the usual, copious amounts of nonfiction, I have also been revisiting Moby Dick for the fifth time in my life. The first two times were in my youth when I was grounded at our summer cottage (I got grounded a lot).  We had this massive, worn copy of Moby Dick that had the front cover torn loose.  It’s long gone now, as is the cottage, but I still remember the illustration of Queequeg entering the darkened room of the Spouter Inn with a lamp and shrunken head!   I would lie there on one of the antique pull-out beds that lined the front room and read away while everyone else swam and played within earshot.  It may be that, “damp drizzly November in my soul”, that earned me so much down time but it was in those pages I found a take on the human condition I could agree with.  I’ve read Don Quixote as many times and am going to give it another read when I’m done with Melville.  Maybe I’ll  follow that up with The Count of Monte Cristo. It’s like meeting up with old friends you haven’t seen in a while and catching up.  Good stuff.

Since the beginning of the new year, I’ve completed 7 paintings and have sketches prepared for 7 more.  On the nuts and bolts side, I’ve also been cutting mat and making custom frames out of flame maple.    I need to have 20 ready for a show and still have a few more to make.  It’s good to have the skills to be able to do my own framing as it’s rather expensive even when you do it yourself.

In From The Fog

Lake Effect Snow on 112th Avenue

Snow Bands Over New Holland

Round Barn and Teasel

Iceboats on Lake Macatawa

Ice, Wind and Speed

Fallasburg Covered Bridge

The projects I had to finish for the season are coming along nicely, as well.  The biggest time consumer was disassembling and cleaning our binoculars.  We have one pair of cheap West Marine binoculars I got as a backup for a pair of WWII M-16 binoculars that I eventually sold as they deserved to be in the hands of a collector who would appreciate them rather than living on the sailboat and getting beaten up.  I did find a decent pair of 50-60 year old 7 x 50 post-war Japanese binoculars at an estate sale that I thought would serve well as the primary boat binocs.  The optics were good and they seemed to be of a quality rivaling the M-16s.  I checked on the internet and found there was a Japanese trade guild that had very stringent quality control standards and this happened to be one of that make.  They are marked with symbols and numbers that allow you to find exactly who made them. This list is on the internet should you wish to try your hand at refurbishing a pair of vintage binoculars on the cheap.

Julia and I were at a thrift store a few weeks ago and found another pair of Japanese 7 x 35 binocs. They were really beaten up and dirty but I recognized the guild mark and we picked them up for 4 bucks.  These were to be my test pair in order to acquaint myself with the cleaning procedure and not ruin the pair that were to go on the boat.   I found this site that is maintained by an astronomy enthusiast which gave a nudge in the right direction:

http://www.orion-xt10.com/how-to-restore-old-binoculars.html

Although the binoculars I worked on were not exactly like the ones he describes, I was able to glean enough to proceed with caution.  I do emphasize proceeding with caution.  These old binoculars will come apart but they are like multi-level puzzles that one can easily damage if  patience and care are not exercised. The first pair took quite some time, primarily because they were so filthy.  There were a few steps where I stopped, put them down and revisited them after I had time to consider that my previous thoughts about their assembly were incorrect.  I took them apart just enough to clean the lenses and diopters with repeated careful applications of distilled water and isopropyl alcohol (1 pint 97% alcohol to 1 gallon distilled water) daubed on with a Q-tip and lifted with a clean, soft, lint-free rag.  No pressure or rubbing until they looked clean enough to use a lens cloth on.  The tiniest amount of dust will permanently scratch the lenses.

The 7 x 35’s taken apart.

The 7 x 35’s back in action. We’ll use these for bird watching.

As I said, the binoculars were filthy but I got them in quite serviceable condition.  I’ve always wanted to have this skill after reading Lothar-Günther Buchheim’s descripition of it in Das Boot.  I like the idea that something can be taken apart and put back together.  In this day and age, we have been conditioned by the tenet of consumer culture that tells us to discard something that is no longer new.  Something has been lost, in this modern system.  By giving us an endless supply of consumer goods, it has deprived us of a sense of accomplishment and self-worth that comes from maintaining what we already have.  That “never needs maintenance” philosophy is just another way of saying “you’ll be throwing it out sooner than later”.

With this new found skill, I feel confident getting the 7 x 50’s apart and was even able to get the rattling lens in the West Marine pair take care of.  In doing so, I was not surprised to find many of the parts were no longer machined metal but molded plastic.  I feel fortunate to be living out my life while many of the older products are still available to use and not in museums.

Binocular Overhaul Part II: A pair of 7 x 50’s This pair got a major overhaul that included removing & cleaning the prisms. I didn’t take pics of the prisms because I didn’t want to set them down. Delicate work.

To cap off this Winter’s service projects, I still have to replace the water pump impeller on Prudence’s outboard motor.  I bought the impeller last Fall and somehow managed to dodge that task knowing I had already greased up the old one.  It looked fine but once I got the new one, I realized how much the old one needed replacing.  It’s on the list.