Helga is rail...er, lifeline meat
6.3.10
Blue sky
10 knot air
1 foot waves
No other boats
13 miles out and back at 60º
45º N 087º W —Connie and I motored downriver passing more offloaded wind turbine bases to port and, to starboard, some people from Rhinelander who were somewhere in the wetland near the river’s mouth. They work for Sand Creek Consultants, an environmental consulting firm hired to help Tyco's clean-up of that wetland.
Sand Creek is using the intriguing organic remediation method, developed by EPA in the 1990s, of planting hybrid popple trees that are really thirsty, grow really fast, and have really big root systems. The popples drink the water and the bad stuff in it, then digest the bad stuff, as in, their leaves aspirate oxygen.
Amazing!
Since I'd heard some folks from the company would be there I told those in the office I'd be sure to blow the air horn at them, but I didn't.
The bridge attendant opened the bridge wide for us—Thank You!—then we were on the bay and Helga was sailing.
"Helga's Adventures" is her travelogue written by those who check her out of the library and I learned that Helga has ridden a train at the National Railroad Museum in Green Bay, and that 
she attended the Loggers Conference and John Deere Convention in Moline, Illinois.
Filmed with the
Olympus Stylus camera, the video gives the impression it being jerky out there,
but that's me. The boat was moving smoothly at 4 knots. It was just lovely,
this first sail of the season, and everybody's spirits were high—even the Cap'n
lightened up after the filming ended and I began tossing her chunks of summer sausage.
Back in the slip Connie and I sat
on the boat enjoying a dinner of pasta salad, crackers with horseradish cheese, sausage, cherries, chocolates, and special iced tea while watching the great blue herons fly up-and
downstream, the gulls swooping, and the ducks paddling—Hey! No Wake!—and, for a few moments over the river's center, a bald eagle circling. 