Getting Tanked...

Well the big thaw is on and the folks who run the docks over here have turned the water back on! I am happily filling up the tanks on the boat.

We are preparing to host our daughter Riley and our good friend Carolyn! We are both sprucing up the boat and she now looks both shipshape and holiday festive at the same time. Leave it to Carrie to create a perfect mix of holiday cheer and nautical nicety. I love the way that we have Xmas and still have a very usable boat.

We are going to be heading out in the boat later in the week to take Riley and Carolyn on their fist ride onboard. I am hoping that the weather will cooperate for some of the time at least. I will try to post some pictures of the kids and what we end up doing together as I go.

Julian will also be aboard, so the total number will be 5. It is going to be pretty cozy, but I think that it is going to be great!

Weather schmeather!

I am beginning to feel like Scrooge, but I say you can take your white Christmas and shove it! This weather has been beyond a novelty. It is now the longest staying snow event I have ever witnessed In Seattle. I am beginning to get fed up. My grumpiness is nothing compared to Carrie's. She has had enough. Imam truly afraid of what she will say when she sees the forecasts today. They are predicting this weather to last for another week!

Never thought I'd say that I would rather have the 42 degree sloppy rain than a great Seattle snow, but there has to be a first time for everything! Sheesh! All I want for Christmas is my normal weather pattern back...

Winter weather

Seattle usually has little if any snowfall but this year we have been having a doozey of a spell over the last few days. This is on par to be one of the longes and deepest cold snaps I have ever been through in nearly 40 years. It is beautiful to see and if the lessons we learned from living aboard over the last few weeks are any indication, We can survive the worst the Washington winter can throw at us with little difficulty.

I love coming home to the dock and looking out over the city. The boats all snugged in their winter coats of snow. the cracking of the ice on the dick as you walk. It is truly magical. I guess this is why we live here.

After that... Hello

So after my first ever blog post for the SV Clarion I should introduce us!

We are the Radfords. We live aboard a 36 foot Catalina Sail boat in North Lake Union in Seattle. We are Thor, Carrie, Julian (part time kid #1) and Riley (Part time kid #2) We have been living aboard since November 5th 2008 and this will serve as a type of log and vent for the fun and frustrations of living on and keeping up a vessel like ours.

The SV Clarion is now called the M&M but we intend to rename her appropriately in the summer so I thought I would start the blog with the "proper name" since it is going to be correct soon and since the "log" is not stored on the boat. (There is a big superstition about calling a boat by another name when it has not gone through an official naming and I don't want to tempt fate!)

Anyway we will try to keep you up to date as things go forward, We have many days ahead and we have much we are going to do so stay tuned!

Heaters and the dead of night...

It has been said that if something is going to go wrong it will happen at the least opportune time. That was very true this evening when I found out my Webasto heater was malfunctioning. As you can imagine I tried the few things I knew how to do to get it running wich basically consisted of switching it on and off repeatedly.

No joy.

Then it was time for the heavy lifting. You see the Webasto is built by germans. Angry germans. Germans with very poor copier and drawing reproduction technology... (Interesting for a country that gave us the printing press and most of the advancements in printing and ink since the 1500s) The manual was difficult to say the least to read. Diagrams all looked like blobs of ink with no defined edges or easily observable parts. It was very confusing. I spent the better part of two hours trying to guess where the safety switch might be and then found out that it was bolted to the bottom of the unit between the housing and the mounting plate.

Nope. That's not it.

THe temperature limiter was the answer! All I had to do now was locate that.... It took a bunch of fiddling around but in the end I was able to get the thing lit and heat, glorius heat once again began to flow through the pipes! I had done the improbable. I had fixed it!