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Lagoon 380: A freezer Gets Filled

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 5 Comments

Part of getting ready to set sail every year includes filling the freezer with meats – unless you’re a vegetarian, of course – and then you can fill the freezer with other yummy foods.

Our freezer sits underneath the cockpit bench and is easily accessible from just outside the galley. It’s an Engel and runs off both 12 volt and AC current. We run off the battery when we are underway and run off shore power at the dock. There is a small freezer inside our galley refrigerator, but it’s not big enough for the quantity we like to bring with us.

DSC 1664

I’ve learned a thing or two about getting the maximum use out of the space that I’d like to share.

By not freezing the meat prior to storage, the meat uses up less space.  If the meat is frozen first, then you can’t manipulate the shape to pack more in. We store the meat raw while Mattina is plugged in at the dock. This little machine hums away until the meats are frozen solid.

DSC 1665

Warning: layer your  meats so that each row has a choice. Don’t put all the steak at the bottom, for instance.  The freezer has now become a jig saw puzzle and it’s amazing how hard it is to fit a frozen package back in once the pieces have been disturbed. After a while this doesn’t matter, but at first, if you can pick off the top layer without disturbing lower layers, life is much easier.

We also vacuum seal the meat so freezer burn doesn’t ruin the meat.

Now to get to the Bahamas so we can light up the barbecue.

Thanks for reading  . . .

Farley’s Friday: Toys For A Wheaten Terrier

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 9 Comments

Farley here.

Kristina and Matt are getting ready to leave the country for months on end, and there seems to be an endless supply of presents for me.

A delivery person arrives almost daily and gives me a box.

I can hear him coming, step by step, along the dock . . . I can tell by the smell it’s him.

“He’s here. He’s here,” I bark.

Kristina opens the door for me and let’s me greet him. The guy comes so often he knows my name.

He hands over my present. “Thanks,” I bark.

Kristina always takes out whatever is in the box, like I care. But then . . . I get to rip the box apart, making a mess, shredding cardboard. The sound is so satisfying.

Farley and the Box

Once I’m done, I just have to wait until he comes back with my next box. Who knows why I keep getting presents, but Kristina says it’s something about no stores where we are going and we have to get prepared.

Woof Woof.

Farley and box 2

Lagoon 380 Helm Station

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 2 Comments

Mattina is a lovely boat that needs protection from the sun. Even though we have a bimini shading the cockpit, we feel more is needed.

As we sail we have direct access to our depth sounder, wind speed and direction indicator, knot metre and a chart plotter with radar screen. Our helm station uncovered, looks like this:

MAttina Helm Instruments

The first part in protecting the instruments from the sun is the instrument covers. These get put on as soon as we are settled in an anchorage or at a dock.

Mattina Helm Instruments cover

The second part of protecting the instruments is our custom-made helm cover. The cover is made of sunbrella that matches the rest of the canvas on Mattina.

Mattina Helm Cover

You can see from the second photo, there are more items than just the instruments that need covering, including the steering wheel.

Thanks for reading . .

As If Subordinating Conjunctions Can Be Confusing

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 6 Comments

Did you know if you want to spend a lifetime learning something, punctuation and grammar can give you the opportunity.

This week while proofreading my  novel, I noticed I wasn’t using ‘as if’ consistently. Sometimes I put a comma before the words and sometimes I didn’t.

I noticed this while I was reading on my Kindle. Last week I blogged about How To Avoid Errors In E-books, and here is one more instance where the new addition to my process helped me. As if!

I looked up ‘as if’ and found out it’s a subordinating conjunction. I knew this but had forgotten. Now I know the rules for comma use with ‘if’, another subordinating conjunction, so all I had to do was apply the rule to sentence containing ‘as if.’

The rule, you ask?

A subordinating conjunction joins two clauses of unequal importance. If the clause containing the subordination conjunction comes before the main clause then follow the clause with a comma. If it doesn’t, don’t.

  • As if he could stop the bleeding with his eyes, he stared at the knife impaling his calf. (subordinating conjunction before main clause)
  • He stared at the knife impaling his calf as if he could stop the bleeding with his eyes. (subordinating conjunction after main clause)

Attention to detail is a must when writing a novel, but how can you do that if you don’t know the rules? This brings me back to the lifetime of studying idea.

Keep on the look out for areas in your writing where you’re not consistent and you might find areas where you don’t know the rules. Grammar: How to Learn What You Don’t Know gives another idea on learning grammar.

How do you figure out what you don’t know?

Thanks for reading . . .

Farley’s Friday: A Wheaten Terrier And His Dinghy

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 2 Comments

Farley here.

I almost missed the maiden voyage of Allura: our dinghy.

Matt thinks he’s so smart. He uses our dinghy hoist to quietly lower the boat off the stern of Mattina. I hear the splash.

“Wait,” I bark from below. I know what he’s doing.

Then I hear it. One pull and the engine starts. Matt is smiling because it’s the first pull of the season.

I jump up the three stairs from the port hull, that’s my side by the way, and rush to the stern.

“Wait for me!” I bark.

Kristina is passing Matt a life jacket and I nudge her (gently) out of the way. I bound from the top step to the dinghy in one leap. I haven’t forgotten how to do this and am proud of myself. Once I jumped, current took the dinghy, and I went swimming. I try not to do that anymore.

Farley in Dingy

Purr goes the engine (and no it’s not a cat), yippee goes Matt, and woof woof go I.

We head out to the Intracoastal Waterway for my first dinghy ride of the season. I love my little boat.

Woof Woof.

 

 

Lagoon 380 Folding Props

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 5 Comments

As many of you know, Mattina, our Lagoon 380 S2 is already in the water, but I thought I’d back up a bit and show off our Radiche props.

Mattina has folding propellers. The propellers fold back when not in use, as shown below, to reduce drag while we are sailing.

Folding Prop closed
Mattina Props Folded Sep 2013

And they  open when we are under power.

Folding Props
Mattina props open: Sep 2013

Every year Matt paints the props with anti fouling paint and puts on new sacrificial zincs. Looking pretty nice for something that won’t be seen.  Not that it matters, because the whole point is for Mattina to sail faster when the propellers are folded back than she would with fixed propellers.

Now I can’t wait to get out on the ocean, head for the Bahamas, and do some sailing. What are you waiting for, you ask? The end of hurricane season.

Happy Sailing and Thanks for reading . . .

How To Avoid Errors In E-Books

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 9 Comments

Have you ever noticed typos in an e-book?

Maybe it’s not a big deal, but I’ve been reading reviews on Amazon lately and have found reviews where readers enjoyed the story but won’t buy another book by the author because of typos, grammatical errors, or bad formatting. That can’t be good.

If you’ve published electronically, you don’t want this to happen to you. But how do you avoid it?

After you’ve proofread, and proofread and proofread again, then had your novel proofread by someone other than yourself, there is another task you can perform to ensure high quality work.

I use Scrivener to write and recently found the feature that exports a manuscript into e-book formatting. I tried this and then sent my novel to my Kindle. I used to just send a word document to my Kindle and read my novel that way, but how could I know if the formatting was off?

Now with this feature, my novel is formatted as a reader would see it on their electronic device. Scrivener will export to epub (.epub), Kindle ebook (.mobi) or iBooks Author Chapters (.docx). I’m sure there are other writing programs that have the same function.

It’s interesting reading my novel for the first time in this format. I caught several errors in formatting; such as, no space after one scene and before the next. This might seem like an inconsequential error, but what if I’d confused a reader by not indicating when one scene ended and a new scene started?

As an added bonus, reading on the kindle makes my novel seem real.

Do you have ways to check your novel for formatting errors or typos?

See Proofreading/Copyediting  if you’re interested in my in-depth process.

Thanks for reading . . .

Farley’s Friday: A Wheaten Terrier At An Irish Pub

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 4 Comments

Farley Here,

I gotta tell ya, I’m loving Flagler Country in Florida with its dog friendly beaches and dog friendly restaurants.

Farley’s is an Irish Pub that allows dogs. Just to prove it to you, I had the server take my photo with Kristina and Matt.

Farley at Farley s

Amazing that I can go out and have dinner. I didn’t get to eat anything, and Kristina expects me to sit quietly underneath the table and not disturb anyone. I’m not even allowed to talk to other dogs. Kristina explained that I have to have good table manners or I’d have to stay at home.

I’d rather go out and behave then stay alone waiting for my humans to come home. I get a little lonely if I’m alone to long, but then who doesn’t? Why oh why don’t all restaurants allow dogs? Then I’d never have to stay home just because my humans feel like having dinner out.

A dog can dream, can’t he?

Woof Woof

Lagoon 380 Helm Seat

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 12 Comments

As we continue to get Mattina ready for the upcoming season, I’ll share the improvements we make; such as, Mattina gets a new helm seat.

Who says sailing can’t be comfortable?

After searching through my photos I found this one of Matt and Farley at the helm station (I forgot to take the before picture I’m so fond of prior to installing the new seat.)

Can you see the shape of the back rest? That’s the original back rest that came outfitted on the boat. It’s circular and a roll in the back is not exactly comfortable. You also get a glimpse of our full enclosure for those rainy days. We must have been expecting rain that day or maybe the wind was cold and we were keeping warm.

Squrrel 2009 10 21

We had a new back rest designed and made for comfort.

Mattina New Helm Seat

Now we can sit together at the helm for long periods of time and feel comfortable.

Thanks for reading . . .

Tips For Ordering Scenes In A Novel

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 2 Comments

Have you ever had trouble deciding the best order to put your scenes in?

Once you have a first draft written do you try different combinations to see what works best?

If you’ve been reading my blog, you might have guessed I’ve added a new row to my spreadsheet. I call it Scene Dependency.

First, I was just using it to list what scenes had to come before the scene I was reviewing. Then I discovered something even better.

Was it possible to link the end of one scene to the beginning of the next?

You bet. There are different ways to achieve this. For example:

  • Have one character end a scene. Have the next scene start with another character thinking of the previous character.
  • Put an object important to the story at the end of one scene and beginning of the next.
  • Use the same location at the end of one scene and the beginning of the next.
  • End a scene at night, start the next scene the following morning.
  • Reference the same weather in both scenes.
  • Reference the same sight. Maybe the moon setting or an avalanche at the end of one scene and the beginning of the next.
  • Use emotions to link the scenes.

In the end, have it all listed in your spreadsheet. You might be surprised how it changes the order of your scenes and gives you a fluid motion throughout your novel. The reader will feel more connected to your story if one scene links to the next even if the scenes are about different events.

Can you add to this list? Do you have any tips to ordering scenes? I’d love to hear them.

Thanks for reading . . .