Holidays are here!

The holidays begin each year in earnest on the 23rd of December. That was the day that my son was born. I have always had a pretty relaxed Christmas tradition growing up. the family had things we did but there was little stress around it. These days there are all kinds of things we do and they take place all over the country. After my Julians birthday here in Seattle we are going to a party in Bellevue and then we all get on a plane to go to Louisville. talk about going a long way to see our family. We are scheduled to be in Kentucky on Christmas day. I hope we get there then as there is supposed to be a blizzard in our connection city that day but either way I will be happy Just to see folks.

Our Christmas this year will be chock full of friends and family with Riley being the big reason for our trip. Finally Julian and Riley will be able to hang out in Louisville for the holiday. I am really excited. We have several plans while we are there that I can't talk about yet in case the kids are reading. All of this will culminate in Riley's birthday one the 30th. After that, New years will be a small deal by comparison. I hear there will be roller skating and some kind of pizza or something like that!

We here on the Clarion wish all of you the best for a happy holiday. Spend your time meeting new people and enjoying company no matter where you are and who you are with.

Cheers!

Back home

Well the last time I went to the airport was the best. That was when I got to pick up my wife and our friend Harley and bring her back to the boat. It is interesting to me that there are people for whom the liveaboard life is just natural. It is for me and it is for her. I am so very thankful to have found someone that could get me thinking about doing this so easily. It has been a life change that is most welcome.

Now that carrie is back with us on the Clarion, it seems that things are "Back to normal." It feels like the boat is breathing easily again. Good feeling.

A day at Deception Pass

I created this piece as another test of the D300s but also because the day was just too beautiful at the park. This contains the full length song "I love the rain the most" by Joe Purdy. A great song for a beautiful day as the summer gave way to fall.

At the dock

At the dock from Thor Radford on Vimeo.

Here is a new video testing out the Nikon D300s that I shot yesterday. I rather like the way the camera shoots but I need a lot more time to get used to it to make good video. I figure it goes here since I shot all of the footage on dock 4 where the Clarion is moored. It is all about the place around my home.

The video of Carrie's and my trip to Japan for the eclipse of the century. This is nothing more than a glorified "How I spent me summer vacation" thing but enjoy nonetheless.

Yesterday on Lake Washington

Richard, Garth Bonnie and I got out on the lake again yesterday and had a fantastic day of sailing. Great day and great company. If only Carrie had been here it would have been perfect. Enjoy the short video. I sure enjoyed making it.

Brightwork starts anew...

It is August. A time when most sane people are using their boats and running all around the lakes and sound on them. I am not doing that. Well, OK I am, but I also have to do the dirty work that comes with being a boat owner. That means brightwork. Those who are unfamiliar with the term be warned it is not the most fun thing to do in the mid summer heat. Taping. Sanding. Varnishing. Not fun at all.

The boat has her ways of telling you that she needs you though, and ours did so yesterday when I looked down at the grab rails I finished just a few short months ago to find that they were starting to rub clean of the varnish I so lovingly applied. No time to lose! I had to get going. So now I am out there in the afternoons working on the woodwork when I could be swimming... Oh well, that's the life of a sailor.

And that is fine with me.

Parting is such sweet sorrow...

It was time for me to let the girls go this morning. I know that Riley has been very excited to get bak to her dads house in Louisville and I understand that but I also know there will be a really big, girl-shaped hole in a lot of people's lives here in Seattle with her leaving. I miss her already.

Carrie is also away for a fairly long time. She will be off the boat for a month and a half staying with Riley and getting her ready for the coming school year. I know that I am not the only one who will miss her too.

For now I have the chance to do some projects that I couldn't do with the family here but those jobs are little comfort when compared to the hours of quiet that used to be filled with the fun times with Carrie and Riley.

Family is what you make it

This has been a great summer on the SV Clarion. We have been treated to the company of many friends and family onboard. Many of those that Carrie and I are now counting as our family did not start out that way but have in a short time graduated to that lofty status. We had a great time this year with our next door (boat) neighbor, Richard as well as the rather recently found friend Alan "Harley." These, along with the host of friends who have already been afforded family status like the illustrious Sam from Louisville, have rewritten what we thought we knew about what and who family was.

Last night as the girls were preparing to get on todays plane and fly back to Louisville we had an impromptu family reunion to say goodbye. Richard was there (He's actually ALWAYS there but it was more than that at the time) and we were also joined by Harley. It turned out to be a great night. If it weren't for the fact that Carrie and I had to leave to get her finicky iPhone synced in an hourlong marathon session on my computer at work I think we would have all been singing "Kumbaya" by the end of the evening. As it went the boys took watch over the sleeping Riley (whom they claim as their own anyway) and we got to do the update on our own schedule.

I know that I have talked about some of these new family members at some length in this blog but I think it is remarkable the degree to which they have become so nicely woven into the life Carrie and I have on the boat and in the rest of it all too.

I feel that I have seriously gotten the big piece of chicken with these folks. From Sam, the fierce and amazing friend to Harley who can do anything and has, to Richard who, among other things is a dyn-o-mite skating rink king, they are all people who will and have changed our lives for the better.

Onward!

Riley goes into the swimming biz

One of the things that we usually try to avoid here in the pacific northwest is going into the water. This year however, there is this strange orb in the sky that is drying things out and making things very warm. This orb has made it very hot and uncomfortable to be on deck. Riley decided that she had had enough and escaped into the water! Look at her go!

A Duck!

So there are now a bevy of new faces around the marina. They are young, spry, and full of energy. I am talking about ducks. The new crop is in and they are very cute. Carrie and I were eating on the back deck when she spied one of these wandering hoards and started tossing small tidbits in their direction. Soon the whole mob was on us. In the video below you can see the little tykes. I am very fond of ducks, having grown up with them always in the yard. It was almost like living on a farm. I loved growing up with them and I found that I still love having them around.

Dishes etc.

Sometimes it is the little things that can tell you the most about how you will react to living aboard a boat. Carrie is used to it. Tiny spaces are like old home to her. She thrives there. I am happy in them but my use of them is not as natural. Case in point. Dishes.

Both Carrie and I do the dishes on the SV Clarion. I do them when I am in the galley, She does them often when I cook, which is often.

When I do the dishes I do them in a way that is familiar to me from having a bigger space. I put everything in the sinks and clean in small batches to clear space in the drying sink for the clean items. When there is a lot of stuff to clean, I can get pretty buried.

Carrie, on the other hand, uses all of the space in the galley. The companionway steps included. I would never have thought of this. It keeps the counters clean for drying excess and allows more storage of the dirty stuff. her way is clearly better.

These are the differences that make a job easier on a boat. They are small but they are powerful.

I am happy to have such a good teacher.

Here are some videos to make you feel like you've been here

Yes. Nothing tells a story about something like moving pictures. Here are a few I have shot from my new phone. They give you a small idea of what it is like aboard the Clarion. We are indeed very lucky to be here.

This first is the belowdecks area:



This is the video of the abovedecks area:



And finally here is the neighborhood we live in:



Hope you like them!

Getting an incomplete...

This time it is not me that is getting an incomplete on my homework, it is my contractors.

I currently have two jobs that are in the operational phases of the process and have been for weeks and weeks. I started the canvas project and the furnace repair projects on nearly the same day just after Carrie left for 7 weeks. Now, not only is she BACK but she has been for two weeks and there is still no progress on either of these. I have nearly given up on the canvas guy and I think the boatyard (Lake Union Yacht Center) has totally given up on me. I don't think I can recommend either of these outfits for future work based on this current timeline. If you are thinking about hiring these guys I would say don't bother.

Updates from the last month or so

It has been brought to my attention that there are some people who are actively encouraging me to blog more. I like this. It means that there are more than one of us who likes to hear me talk. I thought I was the only one! Finding that there are others is like discovering a gold bearing oil field in your back yard. (As I have no back yard, that analogy still doesn't quite work for me but you get the gist...) Anyhow. Onwards!

There has actually been a ton of stuff going on aboard the SV Clarion over the past few months. I will try to sum up as well as I can remember all of the projects.

Furnace is being repaired.

It is always being repaired so this is not news. The fact that it broke down when it was not actually needed is. Actually, the people at the yard came and took away the furnace the day before my last post. They said it would take a week. It has been nearly two months. I have heard nothing. I will pay nothing till I find out what they did. (if anything) The fact that I have to call the yard to get anything done on the time scale that they promised is also not news. Sadly that seems to be the way of things with my yard. Perhaps I will try to find another yard...

The canvas came off and is all being replaced!

This is not being done by me but it is going to make the boat look and feel like new and I can't wait for it to be done. The guy who is handling it is Mike Straub from Freestyle Canvas. He is very inexpensive and the quality is great the only downsides are his odd hours and the fact that we are now around 3 weeks overdue for a job that was expected to be over in less than a week. As the old adage goes: you can have it cheap, good, and fast. Pick two. Cheap and good I like. Fast is a "nice to have."

The brightwork is nearly all stripped and revarnished!

I cannot tell you how much of a difference that makes on a boat with such a tiny amount of wood showing. It looks fantastic. This I did do myself. It took a pretty good amount of time even though there was not too much of it, mostly due to the weather. I had to wait to get through the rainy parts of April and early May. Looks like a million bucks now though. Captains Spar FTW!

New deck hardware for the halyards!

I spent the late part of last evening at the marine store (WARNING! WARNING!!!) looking for and eventually buying a new deck organizer and two new blocks for the base of the mast to run the halyards. It was quite an installation, but now that it's done, I feel that the running rigging is in good enough shape to go for a good while longer. I was running into end-of-life issues with the older blocks. We had one explode on us while we were attempting to lower the mainsail a few weeks ago and I have since looked over the replaced blocks and found that they are nearly all near failure. Whew!

Now, there's girls on the boat!

Yes after all of my boat bachelorhood, my honey has returned. This time she brought along our little girl to boot! I am thrilled to have a little bit more girly-ness on the boat these days. It just seems a bit more like home than it did with nothing but smelly guys on board. Riley and Carrie have been loving the boat as well and adding to the overall shipshape quality of the belowdecks. It looks fantastic down there! Riley is a deck swabbie from the old school. She is never as happy as when she is scrubbing the decks of the boat. I don't even have to suggest it. She ASKS to do it! What more can a skipper want?

I still have a few things to get done above before we start to get some rain this year. There are a few dings that need filling so we don't get de-lamination of the glass, but these are things that may be very easy especially with the help of our next door (boat) neighbor, Richard. He is a guy who seems to know how to do everything having to do in any way with boats. I am always thankful for his assistance in my various projects.

That brings me to this... Richard may be shipping out to Alaska to work on a charter fishing boat for the summer! Alas! I am in many ways hoping he does not go as he has definitely become a very big part of the family but on the other hand I wish him well up there if he does go, as he will be able to pay off the small debts he has to the marina and still come out way ahead. He would be missed if he goes. Both Carrie and I are conflicted about his leaving, but wish him well whatever.

So that's it. Update made. Hope you all are having a great late spring. Enjoy the weather and just remember that you can always contact me if you want to come sailing. Comment here and we can set something up!

Brightwork season...

It is now starting to warm up and you know what that means. Yes, it is the beginning of the brightwork season! The time of year that seafaring folk break out the sandpaper, steel wool, turpentine and varnish and go to town on the wooden bits of their boats that are left in the weather all year long.

Luckily for us the SV Clarion has very little in the way of exposed wood, but I still have to do all of the requisite things to be sure that she looks like a well cared for boat. To that end I have begun taping off sections of the hand rails and rubrails on the cabin top. I have applied eco friendly stripping product and will soon be applying a very large amount of elbow grease to get the stubborn varnish of years of use off the rails so I can sand and apply more and newer varnishes to them. It is a labor of love that is, still, in essence, labor.

Since the first day I had my first boat at ten years old, the need to keep it up has been my (grudging) responsibility. My dad told me in no uncertain terms that if I ever wanted to get out on the water in that cool boat I had first to remove and sand every wooden bit by hand, varnish them well, reassemble them and have them checked out by his expert eye. Needless to say I was not hot on the idea. Not much has changed. I still would rather do nearly anything than sand rubrails but duty calls and I can't have my boat looking shabby so off I go.

In a little while I will post some of the pics I have taken of the ongoing project. The taping is first and probably the most important part followed by stripping and sanding which is going on now. Next I will have to bleach out some of the wooden rails that have darkened too much from the weather, and finally I get to begin recoating the wood to bring out the old fire and make it look like new. I am looking forward to seeing the results. I have been looking at the blackened and scruffy looking wood for a while now and want it to look better. I want to learn magic to do it, however.

If anyone out there knows of a simple way to get the job done that does not involve giving lots of money to a boatyard to do it for you let me know. I may not have a lot of wood but I still want it to look great.

Curry and sailing

Long ago, when I was a little boy, my dad was a big believer in curry. He loved it and every once in a while my mother would make him curry dishes. "Eeeeww!" would be my reaction. I couldn't understand what the fuss was about. To me it tasted like too many spices all put together. It was foul.

During those times, my dad was sailing a lot with his friends. He was a racer and loved to have the curry's spicy goodness when he would come home from a cold day of sailing on the sound or the lake near our house.

Today I am beginning to understand. I have been having cravings for that that I used to find so offensive. To be sure, my tastes had changed many years ago as I was introduced to East Indian cuisine but recent developments have really given me a great appreciation for the art of fine curry.

The biggest development was moving next door to the "Bad Haggis," a vessel owned by my liveaboard next door (boat) neighbor Richard. He has some serious chops in the galley and his tastes lean heavily to curries. He has been making, and inspiring me to make some truly great curry dishes recently. There are lentils and chicken, potatoes and carrots and other fantastic combinations of vegetables all mixed with great quantities of coriander and cardamom. It is a very welcome set of flavors after a great day of sailing. Something seems to be a nice balance between the two. Something like history.

Lately the weather has been warming and the boaters are returning to the docks. I know that soon the curry will be flowing out of our respective galleys. I can't wait to try all of the new creations we are making. There is even a thought toward a curry cookoff around the dock as we have discovered that nearly everyone there is a fan. Nothing like a great community meal to get things going.

I can't wait.

THATS your problem, right there!

The last two times I have been out driving the boat (both of those times has been with the next door (boat) neighbor, Richard) I have run into a distressing problem where the engine has run very hot. On the first voyage there was an alarm and I had to drop the RPMs very quickly to keep the heat from seriously damaging the engine. After I did, it came back to normal and I was able to get home (however slowly to keep the heat down.)

The second time out we just had gone to the fuel dock "across the street" but I decided to test the cooling system and drove around the lake for a few minutes. Needless to say, It ran toward overheating fairly soon and we turned back early for home.

In talking with Richard, a life long sailor, he suggested that there were a few issues that would lead to this problem. The leading possibility was that the impeller for the sea water pump was faulty. Well, he was RIGHT!

The photo above is what was left of the impeller when I got the pump housing open. Nasty! It so happened that there were several replacements aboard that the previous owner had graciously left for me. I was able to replace the faulty one with a new version and the engine is running smooth as you could ever ask for.

THis is my first foray into small engine repair. As I see it this is a total success and I feel empowered to take on other projects. So far the whole boat ownership and liveaboard thing has been a fun bunch of challenges. I have felt that I could deal with most if not all of them. I feel like I am becoming a sailor in small steps. It is a good feeling.

Cool Runnings...

The rain on the cabin top.

There is a sincerely amazing quality to being on boats in the rain. The way the sounds are carried through the hull. The slap of the waves driven by the breeze. The heavy pounding or the lightest drip on the roof. It all creates a feeling of being so close to the water. That there is a single environment. A place of refuge from the storm. In Hawaii they have a name for that o'hana. For us who live here it is a very welcoming place indeed. I am blessed to be able to do this.

Feels like flying...

Last Sunday my next door (boat) neighbor Richard and I took the boat out to fuel it up and what would you know there was WIND! Never one to let that pass we decided to sail. I had the camera and Richard was at the helm and we made this little video of the sojourn.

Windy. Cold. Rainy. Fun.

In the home of a master

Carrie is taking a class in letterpress and has a complicated project coming up that will require the creation of a hand cut linoleum illustration. She has, in this regard, what can been seen as a true gift. Her sense of composition and detail is lyrical and I know that her execution will be great. There was only one problem...

There were no tools to be had and there was no linoleum to use for the work to be carved from. This was a real poser. She went everywhere. She called everyone. She ordered from the internets. She would have to wait till tuesday. She does not wait well.

She called her guest lecturer, Carl Montford. Carl is a master woodcarver and letterpressman. He would know what to do. Perhaps he could help. It turned out he could.

Carl told her to come over, that he had things that she could borrow plates that she could use and return after the class. He would be happy to let her use his gouges and vee chisels, the linoleum block and the other tools needed to complete the project. Yes, she could come right over and pick them up.

She looked at me." You need to go too," She said. "You are going to really want to see this." I was not so sure. Well, I was sure that she was right, but I didn't know if I really wanted to leave the boat. I was feeling like being a homebody and having thoughts of a book and a blanket and some wine and some solitude. Still... a fine woodcarving expert and his letterpress shop did sound like a very nice diversion... I said "Okay." She said "I'll drive."

She drove.

We arrived and were met by two smallish fuzzy dogs who seemed like they were either trying to eat the glass between us or were really trying to rip our throats out in the nicest way possible. I wasn't too sure.

Carl showed up. There was no mistaking him. He could be seen as an artist, as a patient soul, as a craftsman. You could see it in his walk. The clothes he wore. His hands. He led us in and down to a room the with the footprint of the whole house. With giant full floor to ceiling windows along one whole side, and absolutely crammed with the most beautiful things I had seen in a long time.

There were presses, not just one or two, but ten, twenty maybe, of all different sizes and makes. There were cases and cases of type. Wooden type, metal type, mixed fonts and letters. Beautiful ornaments and decorative edges, leading and typesticks and furnature and, of course, there were woodcuts. The woodcuts were epic. Amazing illustrations of incredible precision and deft hand. They sopke to you from within frames and under glass. They peeked out around the corners and under the stacks of paper on which were printed messages and jokes. A riot of type and imaging from a time long before digital imaging and Adobe Garamond Pro. This was the land that time forgot. A playground for anachronism.


We played and talked and asked all the questions. He answered and showed and talked and laughed. He told us of his craft, gave us tips and told her she was going to do great. He talked about his great loves. His wife, the presses, the type, the fine lines of the wood as they are peeled from the blocks, the english boxwood that he uses to make the intricate carvings that make up his work. He was a most gracious accidental host. We were very happy to have come.

We said our goodbyes and took the tools he leant Carrie. We talked on the way home of the things we saw. We talked of how I would have never forgiven her if she had not insisted I come. How she would use the block and the tools to create the piece. we drove back to the boat to work...

There are many people that I have met in many ways in my life and they are always interesting but this was a good night.

Followers...

I looked over on the side of the blog today and Lo, and Behold! there were people over there! Sarah and Mark have joined the blog as followers! Welcome. I am so glad to see you both here. Sarah I know, as a great friend of the family and a noted shipwreck researcher. (who must be getting it from all sides this week as the HMS Victory was just found!)

Mark I have just discovered as a local photographer who seems tied to the natural world around us with special links to water and the mountains. I look forward to seeing what he shoots in the future...

Which brings me to this. Please guys! Please enable the "Follow this Blog" widget on your own blogs so we can all follow each other! There are instructions to do that if you click the link on my page. It is pretty easy, too.

So once again, welcome. There will be lots more to come.

Electrical part deux

I have been to Fisheries Supply twice. (Actually a record for hardware store runs during a project) and I have bought some wire, some connectors and some assorted other bits and bobs and I have added a new leg off the mains to the 25 amp bank of switches... and... IT WORKS!

I would like to think the Academy, my mother and father, my wife who put up with all of this crazyness over all of these years... Oh you know the drill...

Anyway, the newly assembled controll panel looks the same as it did with one more wire instead of many less. I was thinking of rewiring the whole thing to make the plan simpler and therefore much easier to figure out faults but I will have to wait and do that another day. One thing I did find out is that marine electrical parts are expensive. They are, in fact VERY expensive. I really don't want to be spending too much more money fixing things for a while.

As I live on a boat this is a very funny joke I like to tell myself. Things on boats are either broken or just about to break. There is no other state. They ever enjoy years of trouble free service, never last beyond their warranty (well actually, they last a month after it ends..) and they never can be seen as permanent. This assures me that I will have projects aplenty for all of my days. I am very happy with this scenario...

Such is my curse and my joy.

Electrical mess

Today Ben from Lake Union Yacht Center came by to look over my electrical panel and showed me what was going on. There are lots of things that look dodgy on the current panel and I am going to have to rewire a fairly important section of it. This, in earlier years, may have been met with thoughts of seppuku, but now I am thinking that this may just be something I could tackle myself.

I am going out to Fisheries Supply this afternoon to get some wire and I am going to wade into the world of low volt electrical myself. I have now seen how it is wired and I have been shown how it should be, and armed with this knowledge I am going to attempt it. The fact that Ben said he would help me out in the event of me getting myself in a jam was not lost on me either.

I will blog later to let you know how things are going but as of now it seems that the path should be pretty straight forward. I am sure that there will be a few curses thrown at the panel and more than a few problems will arise, but you will have to check back to see what happened.

Keep checking in!

AirHead mid term update!

So, we are now going on the second week with the newly installed AirHead toilet and I can say that so far SO GOOD! It is far less difficult or finicky than the old marine head and there is no smell at all! It is as if the head were replaced by nothing except that you still can use it and it is if anything a lot easier to deal with.

We have all gotten into the act and are using it for the "full range" of headlike duties.

SO far we have been very pleased. The liquids need emptying about once every two days but it looks like the solids will be ok for a pretty long while. I will let everyone here know how things are going as we go along, but so far the "harvest" seems a long way off.

All in all I am still bullish on this product. I love the simplicity, the green aspect and the fact that there is no smell.

Learning to dock a boat...

Once there was a guy who had boating in his blood. It was like the milk of memory flowing through his viens and it was thick as history. He was destined to be the man who sailed the seas and brought back tales to tell with great deeds and fine adventures aplenty. That was then...

Here I am. I have been out of the game, out of the sea, away from neverland for so long that I have forgotten everything. It all went away. I had to begin again. It was awful. Of course, I still had the old confidence. I still thought I knew how to bring a boat into port. But I did not.

On the date of delivery, I had to have a captain take my boat with me on it from Shilshole to Gasworks Park. A journey of no more than 2 miles, because I had forgotten how to drive and bring a vessel to the dock. It was bad.

Beyond that, I was determined to bring back my old days of mooring boats (mostly small) along side great and small piers. I was determined to recall the ways in which that happened. I tried at times to take the family out on the lake. I tried to get the boat to obey me. It would not. I was frustrated. I was losing confidence. I was losing face with the wife (who holds a captain's license let's not forget!). She was afraid to let me go out in the boat. What could I do?

Two weeks ago I told her I wanted to get out on the water and sail. I told her I wanted to take her. I wanted to ride the wind. it would be a very good day for it and she would love it.

She acquiesced.

I had been thinking. Remembering the ways of boats. Remembering how they move. How they turn. The way they move under power. I was thinking in equations, differential calculus. Creating the image of the perfect exit from the slip. The perfect landing at the dock on the other side of the lake. The triumphant return home. I replayed these thoughts at their appointed times. And so it was.

The outing, a success.

Feeling well, I got the mojo back. A long time had passed between the feel of tiller and the hold of the wheel. The time long ago as a youth, and the now of my older years bringing it all back. The power of a larger vessel in my control. It happened as it had to, and I have the old love of the sea again. With the full acclaim of my wife. The partner of my choosing. The one I could not, with out her will, do this. And it feels like coming home.

New head in and ready to try... Maybe.

Carrie and I have been living on the boat now for the entire time that Obama has been President Elect. We moved aboard on election night and now it is the day after inauguration. The time has come for change. In that vein we decided to have the head changed out for a new AirHead composting toilet. It is now in the boat and ready to go but there is a simple first step that we need to perform before use. We need to hydrate the Coir desiccating agent so it is ready to go. I am hopeful that we will be able to get that done this afternoon before it gets too dark.

The new toilet is much simpler than any other marine head and we are hoping that simpler is better for this type of thing. The head looks similar to other heads but there is literally no plumbing or holding tank other than the composting container and the liquids storage tank. (The liquids tank needs to be emptied about once every two to three days while the solids composter should be good for almost two months or more at the rate that we use it.)

While we were at it we decided to have the Webasto Diesel heater serviced to be sure it would run through the rest of the winter. The yard we are using to do the install and the service has gotten the toilet done but didn't get the heater back to us so we still have to sleep at their dock tonight and use plug-in electric heaters on the boat. It is a mild annoyance but I am hopeful that the heater will be installed and the boat delivered back to the home dock tomorrow. Then we will be ready to enjoy the boat in all of it's complete glory.

It is hard to imagine after many weeks of not using the head "to it's fullest use" to finally be able to do so again. I for one will not miss going up the dock in the middle of the night to do my business. I will be happy to "go at home." Finally.

Great day out!

Finally sailing!

So after a great and slow morning of the more fun Sunday stuff. (The street Market, coffee, a visit to the chocolate factory, more food from the market...) Carrie informed me that, yes, we could take the boat out and go sailing today. I was ecstatic.

When we came home I immediately began stripping off the bimini cover over the cockpit. The walls were taken down. The top was furled. The lines securing us to the dock were simplified to prepare for slipping the moorage. The dock step was removed... I got her ready to go. While I was doing all of the topsides preparation Carrie was busy below getting all of the items that could be tossed around stowed. Both jobs took about the same amount of time.

The next thing that needed to happen was to get the engine going and head out. This first was easy but I was mighty concerned about the exit of the slip. (and the re-entry of the same.) All of that fear was unfounded as the M&M/Clarion slid past the end of the pier and turned majestically in her own length to manage the fairway with plenty of room. After we rounded the corner to the outside fairway we were home free!

The gas dock was crowded, what with the first real sun that boaters in Seattle had seen in months, and we decided to give it a while and go sail first and hit the gas dock on the rebound. We motored away through the cut towards the larger waters of Lake Washington.

In 20 minutes we were there. Not a bad time to get through the cut, I thought. We managed to get both bridges to open as soon as we arrived so there was little standing to and waiting for access. We made great speed.

As soon as we were out of the navigable channel we hoisted sail. There were a few complications. The main has a tendency to hang up on nearly everything. The Lazy Jacks especially, but also the reefing lines as well. After a few attempts, I cleared the hurdles and set sail like a proper sailor and we were off! The stuff aboard this boat is wonderful! I have all self tailing winches and a roller furling genoa. There are many conveniences that I have never had on a sailing vessel before, including having all of the running lines go into the cockpit. It is fantastic. I could easily single hand her if I could manage to leave the dock and return without assistance. Sailing was a breeze and the end came too quickly. Carrie found a Ladybug on my sweater on deck. A harbinger of her mother's spirit on our maiden sail. We took photos and then were joined by our neighbor boat with Greg and Bonnie Riddler aboard. We sailed together for about an hour and then headed for home.

On the way home we stopped for gas "across the street" at the gas dock. I was feeling confident after being under sail and I managed a very slick landing at the dock.

After the gas was aboard we headed in and to the last test of the day: the landing in our slip. Our slip is on the inside of a set of finger piers. The fairway there is slightly wider than my boat is long which makes it tricky, but the real challenge comes from needing to go in stern first due to the need for our shorepower inlet to line up properly, so we have to go "against" the natural propwalk of the boat. This time I had been figuring it for hours in my head and I managed to push the nose up toward the boat forward of our slip and crank her into reverse to get the stern around the finger just right. My next door neighbor Richard said it looked like I knew what I was doing so I felt good about that.

After all was done I settled down to clean up the boat and have a glass of wine while Carrie hung out below and warmed up. we later went out for pizza but that's another story...

Survived the holidays!

This year's holiday season was the first test of having a full compliment of people aboard. During the week between christmas and new years we had 5 full time residents on the boat. It ended up working surprisingly well. The kids were in the aft cabin, we had a guest in the salon and Carrie and I were up in the forward cabin. Accommodations were tight but all in all there was little in the way of banging together.

The resources aboard were strained a bit but it seems to have come through without being too far stretched. We nearly ran out of water as we were making use of a lot more to clean the dishes for five as opposed to two. The head that we were hoping to get set up with the new AirHead didn't happen in time for the new group but the old standard marine head worked, mostly... Having to close the door to keep the fragrance of nature in the head cubicle was a challenge but it worked.

The weather mostly cooperated as well. There was snow and frost this time but not nearly as much as there was in the previous weeks. We had a small power glitch one night during a storm but I fixed the dodgy wire and things seem to have settled down and gotten back to working correctly.

All things considered I feel that the biggest test of the boat to date was a qualified success. I am looking forward to spring and summer aboard and having the ability to get out on the boat away from the dock.

Cheers!