Our Salish Aire: April 2015

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.

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

First Haul Out

I plan to write up a full description but suffice it to say that we survived our first haul out experience (remember that all of our previous boats were on trailers). Salish Aire weighed in at 60,000 lbs. The guy we had contracted to do the bottom was caught a bit off guard by our underwater profile and ran out to get an additional gallon of paint as he kept muttering, "that's a really big boat!" . We took the keel cooler off ourselves and took it apart at C's parents where we had access to a wire brush wheel and were able to use their tractor bucket as a basin for a mild acid wash (the factory suggested dilute muriatic acid which worked wonders on the thick coat of calcium deposits for years of marine growth. It went together with a new set of seals, new zincs, and some new bolts and looks great back in place. The only problem was that when the stabilizer fin seals were removed the port side had what looked like 90 wt oil rather than grease behind it suggesting water intrusion. The repair guy recommended about $5000 worth of parts and labor and only agreed to reassemble them with only new seals after I made it clear that I am mechanically inclined enough to understand the implications (worst case is probably seized bearings - I would not expect significant leakage). We believe that since we plan primarily inland water use of the boat for the next couple of years that the stress on the bearings will be minimal while we take time to plan ahead for a proper repair.

We tried to be extra thrifty by 1) hauling during the off season which ended the week after we re-launched, 2) doing some of the work ourselves after work each day, and 3) staying in Clarice's parents' camper van in my employer's parking lot at night rather than paying for a hotel.

In any case we were very, very happy to get back in the water and sleeping in our own bed (the marina initially told us that we could not stay aboard while in the yard - later they changed their tune a bit but we were settled in the van by then). Jarvis was also clearly ready to get back home after living in the van (he loves camping but this just didn't make him happy).

Prior to being hauled we had started changing our batter banks around - that in itself is another story. Oh- and be sure to read the story titled "the drip" - a classic tale of a "simple" repair job on a boat.