Our Salish Aire: May 2014

What's in her name?

What's in her name (Salish Aire)?

Salish from her new home the Salish Sea

Aire as in a melody of song.

Salish + Aire = The melody of the Salish Sea.

Salish Sea:
In the late 1700's Captain George Vancouver wandered around the waters of what are now known as British Columbia, Canada and Washington State, USA. He did the usual 1700's explorer thing and put names he chose on everything he saw. The names stuck and are recognized and used to this day.

New lines were added to Captain Vancouver's charts in 1872 (after a near war with Great Britain over a pig) which made waters on one side of the line Canadian and those on the other side of the line American.

It wasn't until 1988 (officiated in 2009) that someone finally realized that fish and various critters, (to say nothing of the water itself) were never involved in the boundary treaties and really ignored them completely. (This is best illustrated by the problems that Homeland Security has with Canadian Canada Geese and American Canadian Geese - it seems they refuse to carry passports and have been known to poop on the head of any border patrol person who tries to challenge their right to cross the border when and where they choose!) In reality the waters from Olympia to the well up the East side of Vancouver Island are pretty much one ecosystem.

The Coast Salish are the indigenous peoples who live in southwest British Columbia and northwest Washington state along the Salish Sea and share a common linguistic and cultural origin. The Salish Sea is named in honor of the earliest recorded peoples who plied her waters and learned to live in harmony with her.

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Progress Report

We have just learned that the AAL Dalian carrying Salish Aire has arrived at the Atlantic end of the Panama Canal. We use an AIS tracking program that allows us to monitor the progress of the ship whenever it is within range of a tracking station.

Since making the decision to buy a boat from the Atlantic side of the country was a big deal, I think we will both feel like a major milestone has been crossed when the ship reaches the Pacific.

The current best guess schedule puts the Dalian into Victoria, BC on June 5 with unloading of Salish Aire planned for June 6. We have never started and operated the boat on our own so we are working with our broker and another local Nordhavn owner to see if we can get some "experts" with us when the boat is handed over to our care.

Norman and Clarice

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Her trip West Begins

We decided to go camping in Eastern Washington since everything was set up for a Saturday loading of Salish Aire onto her freighter transport. Never is such a thing so simple - 1) the hired captain for Salish Aire only understood we needed to get her in the marina near the ship .... wrong, OK he would stay the night and move her Saturday to ship side but it would cost us more (kaching) 2) the freighter captain decided he wanted to load Sunday not Saturday - more kaching. (We did end up having a really nice camping trip despite having to make a run to a more cellular friendly hilltop away from the campground to get messages exchanged. We came back over the North Cascades Cross-State Highway that was cleared of snow last week for its summer opening and it was beautiful!!!)

We did get photos today showing that Salish Aire is securely nested inside of a hold of the freighter (this is good as she will be much more protected than riding on deck as we had expected). We now plan to watch the freighter's AIS feed and see how she progresses.

Norman and Clarice

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

WOW - We have joined a comunity and other changes in the past couple days.

We keep feeling like we have a moment to rest and then a new email comes with word of another step coming sooner than we expected. Today we were "casually" lining up a captain to move the boat from her current berth to ship-side with the expectation that she would need to be moved sometime next week. The captain's cell phone dropped the call and before I could get back to him I got an email from the shipping company that Salish Aire needs to be ready to sling aboard the freighter on Saturday. Back to high gear to get customs brokers lined up, the captain paid, fuel in the boat, final payment to the shipper, etc, etc..

I did take a minute to think about our new "family" today. We knew that there was a strong sense of community among Nordhavn owners but the reality is beginning to sink in. We had some in's to start with. The owner of the house we are borrowing is a long time friend who owned one of the first Ranger Tug 25s. Since our Rosborough was a similar design and we have similar interests we joined the early Ranger Tug rendezvous here in Puget Sound. Our friend and his wife had been primary organizers of one rendezvous and introduced us to the owners of a Ranger 29. Those folks have now moved up and own Nordhavn "Salish Rover". Then our friends decided to move up to a Ranger 29 themselves and bought their current boat from the owners of N40 "Hayden Bay" who we met at the Seattle Boat show.

From this beginning we have added an amazing number of folks who have contacted us after our announcement on the Nordhavn Dreamers and Owners sites that we are now owners (including the past two owners of Salish Aire) with kind words and offers of help wherever we happen to be in need of advice, good conversation, or help.

We also want to express our deepest appreciation for all of the time, words of encouragement, and just plain kindness of our broker Don Kohlmann. He has really gone above and beyond to help us make this a reality and we look forward to having him as a friend rather than a business associate.

Norman and Clarice

Friday, May 2, 2014

Owners, finally!!

The money wires were all sent out this morning. We now consider ourselves the owners of Salish Aire (paperwork yet to be completed). We learned last night that she has a spot on a freighter leaving Florida on (or about) May 12 (only 10 days away)!!

On my way home tonight I stopped by the marina office to update them - they informed me that they hadn't had a chance to call and ask if we were ready to move from the waiting list to a slip opening on June 1 (we had expected to park in a temporary location elsewhere in the marina) - talk about timing!

The interesting challenge was trying to change our driver's license addresses on line. No problem for the vehicles but apparently Washington State Driver's license system doesn't recognize the marina as a legitimate residence location or a marine store as having PO boxes.

Our Boating History

One day, half asleep on the deck of a friend's boat, after working a night shift, I offered that I would be willing to provide storage and maintenance for a sailboat in exchange for being able to use it whenever we chose to. The boat was an ugly 23 foot sailboat we nicknamed the "Glass Geoduck" (for those who don't know, a Geoduck (pronounced "gooey duck") is a huge, very ugly clam - so the name meant it was a very ugly sea creature made of fiberglass). (AND a Geoduck is the mascot of The Evergreen State College, which my son and I consider to be our true alma matter). The good news was it was built like a tank and none of our learning "challenges" seemed to bother it in the least.

We were about a quarter mile from the dock on our first trip on the Geoduck and Clarice asked if I had ever sailed a boat before, to which I replied honestly; "I sailed 8' prams when I was a camp counselor, and the concepts are the same." After hanging on with white knuckles for the first few trips, Clarice learned to love sailing and we have often joked that the "sails of our boats belong to Clarice and the motors to Norman".

At some point we realized that we were pouring a lot of money into the Geoduck for a boat we didn't really own. We parted ways with her when we could not negotiate an acceptable price with her owner. In the mean time Clarice had been doing her homework and decided we would do well to find a MacGregor Venture sailboat. The one we found was in need of a lot of rehab but the "Azure Moon" (it had an azure blue hull) carried us and our two children to many an adventure.

We started to build a cabin on an island and decided that a power boat could get us to and from the building site much faster. We purchased an 18 ft runabout with an 8 cylinder inboard/outboard and learned how fast fuel can be sucked into an engine. We also learned that owning and maintaining 2 boats is a pain in the tush. At a boat show we found the answer in a new design of a water ballasted 26 ft sailboat from MacGregor that could plane with a 50 Hp outboard. We purchased hull number 69 of this very successful series of boats and named her Cassiopeia. She would eventually take Clarice and I up the Inside Passage from Vancouver BC to Skagway, Alaska. It may have been on that trip when the dream of eventually moving onto a boat was planted.

Inside Passage blog part 1
Inside Passage blog part 2

Our last small boat was a Rosborough RF246 named Sea Meadow. She was made in Nova Scotia for the North Atlantic and proved to be an ideal boat for the Salish Sea. Her trawler style and comfort convinced us that this is the style of boat that will best serve our needs in the foreseeable future. We started "noticing" trawlers when we were wandering on docks and one day we looked at a Nordhavn N40 and thought it just might make a good home (we have since decided it is a bit smaller than we would like). Investigating further we learned that Nordhavns are designed with the purpose in mind of being recreational boats that can comfortably and safely challenge any ocean on Earth. We also learned that the classic of the line is the N46 which fit our personal style best. We then set out to find the "right" N46 and after several false starts ended up purchasing N46 hull #50 known at the time as "Phantom".

People also ask about our comfort with out-of-country travel. Our comfort level increased dramatically when we lived in the country of Belize in Central America for the calendar year of 2004. We volunteered there under the auspices of Catholic Medical Missions Board in Hillside Healthcare Clinic in Toldedo District in the southern part of the country. While there I wrote a blog that was later collected into a memory book by a close friend.

Belize Mission Memory Book
Belize Mission Memory Book Photos