Our Salish Aire: June 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.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Ground Transportation

When we moved to Salish Aire we kept two means of ground transportation, our Volkswagen TDI diesel Sportwagen (up to 45 mpg!) and my 400 cc scooter. The scooter spent the winter in our storage locker and I knew it needed a going through which would likely require about $1500 in parts and a garage to work in. It seemed like maybe it was time to let it go after 7 years and about 25000 miles.

That left us with one vehicle. This system works well about 95% of the time as Clarice works from home most days. On the days she is off work and wants to do errands or needs to make a run in to her real office it can be a bit of a hassle.

We have had nice full size bicycles on the boat but our marina doesn't let us store them on the dock next to the boat and I didn't feel comfortable leaving them in the bike racks near the very busy parking lot which meant that they had to be lifted with the crane up to/from the top deck every time we wanted to use them. Seeing how I a) work up at the top of a very steep hill from the marina, and b) don't include much time in the morning for things like getting a bike off of the roof, I just wasn't riding.

We finally broke down and bought electric assist folding bicycles. They are the first ones we have found that are sturdy enough that my large size is stable on them. So far we are finding them a lot of fun and I can get to work in the same door to door time as with the car (I can park the bike in my office rather than a block away as I had to with the car). The electric assist makes it fun to ride and I don't smell like I came from the gym when I get to work and yet requires enough effort from me that I am getting significant exercise.

The only problem so far occurred a couple of days ago when I had Jarvis in a basket on the front of the bike. He does really well there IF he is tired. In this case I hadn't run him enough and he decided to exit the basket while we were in motion going down a hill. Long story short is that I had my first experience going directly over the handlebars and my chin ended up with road rash. Outcome: Bike - bell handle broken and minor scratches, dog - "gee that was fun Dad, can we do it again!", me - very sore hand and bloody chin.

Happy Anniversary!!

I just checked; We moved aboard Salish Aire on June 21, 2014 and today is June 23, 2015. Happy First Anniversary as Live-Aboards!!!

As we get ready to take Salish Aire on our first long trip (well 3 weeks!) it might be a good time to look back to all we have done to bring her up to her current stage of readiness. (When we bought the boat she was truly seaworthy but at 18 she was ready to have a good makeover.)

new LED lighting throughout the boat
new stove/oven
new bilge pump
new carpet
new forward battery bank
aft battery bank moved to make more room in lazarette
main, wing, and generator engines oil and filters changed
all diesel filters changed
engine room floors changed out and painted
sea water screens cleaned, changed and new hoses as needed
black water tanks cleaned (yuck!)
engine room exhaust fans replaced and re-ducted
engine room blower fan rebuilt
main engine harmonic balancer replaced
main and wing engine coolant replaced
bottom painted
keel cooler cleaned and re-o ringed
seals replaced in hydraulic stabilizers
diesel furnace rebuild/repaired
hull polished and waxed
solar cells rewired where corroded
navigation systems reworked
pilot house roof painted
dingy motor replaced
dingy oar blades replaced
dock lines made from 3 strand nylon that came with the boat
air conditioning system controls replaced
washer/dryer replaced
head sink sump pump replaced (probably over powered but I was tired of cleaning the little original style pump every couple of weeks)
AIS installed
anchor chain cleaned, remarked and swapped end for end
Name added on stern and sides
hot water circulation for heating systems coolant replaced
leaking heater replaced (old unit repaired and put in stand by inventory)
gang plank added
plastic windows added around cockpit
mast winch / boom system reworked in preparation for using paravanes
adjusted valves on main engine

And finally the systems we still have not touched:

Wing engine needs a good going over
need to go through generator engine
haven't even tried to start up water make yet (maybe on our upcoming trip)
haven't tried to deploy paravanes yet (again, maybe on our upcoming trip)
refinish brightwork that needs it

All I can say is that the year has gone quickly and brought us one year closer to retirement and the dream of weighing anchor for good.

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