Wow! Featured blog on the Nordhavn August newsletter.

I was noticing that we had a huge uptick in our readership today.  A bit of sleuthing took us to the August edition of the Nordhavn newsletter and discovering that we are the featured blog of the month.  Considering the quality of the blogs done by other Nordhavn owners, we consider this to be quite the honor.  Thank you Nordhavn!!

Welcome to all new readers! If you have any thoughts or questions then please email us at salishaire_gmail.com (we are trying to outsmart the internet troll bots > change the _ to an @ sign to create the proper address).

Sincerely,
Norman and Clarice Gregory

Mid West Family Summer Visit Entry #1

If you get tired of proud parents/grandparents going on and on about their perfect children and grandchildren then you should probably skip this blog entry.

Our daughter Erin lives in Welland Ontario just north of Niagara Falls with her family, Paul our wonderful son-in-law, 11 year old Calm Big Brother C, 7 1/2 year old Curious and Precocious H, and turned 6 last week Princess Can-Take-Care-of-Herself V.  Also when Erin was in college she lived in my cousin's basement and babysat her children including Julia who is now on summer break from the University of Illinois and came to join us for a few days.

Clarice's knee scooter was an immediate attraction to the grandkids.

H went to work adding to the marina's chalk art collection by making sure Jarvis was immortalized (at least until the next time it rains).

Clarice has mastered the art of going up and down the ramp at all but the most extreme low tides.  She decided to show off by taking a passenger with her.

Grandma getting started on getting her H fix.

V modeled her new swimsuit

C experimented with Aqua Glide

The younger kids checked out the hammocks on the front deck.

Erin and the kids arrived first followed by Paul and Julia.  We had long planned for an outing to the San Juan Islands when everyone was here and with the broken footed Admiral directing the very green deck crew we headed north for 4 days.

Paul learns how to prep the boat for landing.

Beaches to explore.

Sea life to photograph from the dock.

A new anchorage a new adventure.

V goes swimming and PFD testing.

H explores the sea caves.

C learns to paddle the kayak.

Forts must be evaluated for their usefulness in case of a seagull attach.

Julia checks out the galley supplies.

Paul learns to operate an outboard motor.

Everyone likes to eat.

Finally the sun sets over the Sucia Island anchorage with Mt Baker in the distance.

The children sleep very very soundly and don't awaken until the sun is already up in the sky.

After a great 4 days we had to head home to get Julia back to the airport for her flight home. More to follow as the kids are here for some time yet and this evening 13 y/o grandson ET arrives from Portland by train.

Finally we need to re-provision ..... again (7 people seem to eat more than 2!!), and:

Now fully trained, Captain H, Makes sure that Grandpa empties the holding tank correctly.

Marina Life and a Broken Foot

Living in a boat in a marina has its ups and downs.  We have the daily things to watch living in a basically industrial setting like tugboats towing barges full of shavings down the river (I believe they end up at the paper mill in Port Townsend), rail cars taking a rest on their route from the coal mines of Colorado to the loading dock in Tsawwassen British Columbia (where I expect the coal is shipped to China), oil cars bringing raw crude from the middle of the country to the refinery in Anacortes, and more and more work as the Port of Everett works to change much of the shoreline into a people friendly place after decades of being the industrial hub of the city.  Early this month as part of their project the Port of Everett moved the historic Weyerhaeuser Headquarters Building from out on the main street to its (hopefully) final location (after 2 previous moves) in a park directly across from our slip.

We get gorgeous sunrises and sunsets.

And we get the challenges of living in a non-standard living location. 

Clarice was going down one of the sets of steps on the boat and lost her concentration while calling the dog to bed.  She lost track of where she was and missed a step with the result being two fractured metatarsal bones in her foot.  She has been told NO ("and that means NO!") weight bearing on that foot for at least 6 weeks.  

To make it worse, this happened about 4 days before our daughter and her 3 children were scheduled to make their annual pilgrimage back to the Pacific Northwest from Ontario, Canada.  Whereas Clarice normally looks forward to having "Grandma Time" with the kids playing games, cooking, playing in boats, and playing on the beach but she instead is finding that she needs rest times when she has the children by herself as moving around the boat on knees and crutches is exhausting before adding the challenges of 3 energetic little ones.

On the positive side we have once again been reminded that floating friends are really really good friends.  A quick walk around the dock the evening before I had to go to a 12 hour shift the next day ended up with several promises (which were kept) from fellow boaters that they would entertain the kids while she rested.  I ran into a woman from our yacht club at the local marine hardware who offered to help with housework and / or shopping (Clarice took her up on the shopping offer when we were running out of fruit and milk with 3 hungry kids running around). Today a neighbor stopped in and asked if she needed anything while she was at the store and a loaf of sandwich bread appeared.  

More to come as we are expecting our son -in-law and a niece to arrive the day after tomorrow with a 4  day cruise to the San Juan Islands planned for next week.  One day at a time.

Petersburg Alaska

We are just returning home from spending a few days in Petersburg Alaska with the largest gathering of Nordhavn boats in the history of the brand. This has been a great get-together and we are sorry to see it end.

We couldn't get the time off to attend by boat so we flew up via the Alaska Airlines "Milk Run".  We flew from Seattle to Ketchican  (1 1/2 hr) then on to Wrangle (20 minutes) and finally on to Petersburg (14 minutes) before the plane continued on to Juneau and Anchorage.  The run from Wrangle to Petersburg is so short that the 737 had to fly between the mountains as he followed Wrangle Narrows.  I swear we could have seen a squirrel on the mountain tops at the peak of our flight and were looking up at them as we came in for our landing.

Looking north across the marina towards the Sons of Norway Hall where we met

The North 2 AK rendezvous started as a "gee let's see if a couple of boats want to meet up in Alaska idea" a couple of years ago with the belief that "maybe 4 - 6 boats will show up" according to the organizers.  Once the word got out the interest grew until 30 boats showed up and a number of fly-ins like us bringing the total head count to about 100.  The town of Petersburg reported that this was the biggest thing to hit their tiny borough for some time.  With luck the fishing season opened up in time for the fishing fleet to exit so there was plenty of dock space left for Nordhavns and the sun came out and it was great!

The opening presentation was by Dan Streech, one of the founding fathers of Pacific Asian Enterprises (PAE) that designs and builds Nordhavns.  It was clear from Dan's presentation that he really loves boats and especially Nordhavns.  He talked about how ground breaking it was when hull #001 of the N46 line of boats was launched as the idea of ocean crossing recreational trawlers was still very much in its infancy (and he was very excited to hear that hull #001 was in the marina).

UUB V (Pronounced WB 5, his previous boats were named Water Boy 1-4) - Nordhavn 46 hull #001 that started the line of now 500 boats

 

I did an impromptu presentation on repairing Hurricane Heaters which I will try to spruce up and post on-line. There was a presentation on radar which gave us some great pointers and suggested a way that I could tie my electronic displays together to make them more useful. I also found the presentation on AC current leakage to be very helpful.  Clarice visited the women only session and a presentation on docking that helped her better visualize what happens during this critical time of most boat outings. We spent a lot of time visiting other model N46s to get ideas for our boat (we are hull #50 of 81 that were built before the mold was retired making this by far the most successful of the Nordhavn models).  I enjoyed just yaking with Bob Senter of Lugger / Northern Lights company and other gear heads. I think Clarice (AKA the keeper of the boat's appearance) has decided that our Teak will go nude before the summer is out as the boats with no coatings looked good and cut costs and maintenance a bunch.

We were fed and entertained by the local folk in the true Norwegian traditions of smorgasbord (with Clarice's favorite - pickled herring) and folk dancing.

Clarice trying to learn a folk dance from the local kids.

We walked the trails around town and saw eagles and more eagles, deer, a whale, seals, and ravens (who have a vocabulary of sounds which far outdoes anything I've heard from their cousins the crows).  The terrain ranged from muskeg bogs to temperate rain forest and always the scent of local money (AKA fishing industry boats and canneries).

Muskeg bogs cover much of the island. This was across the street from the airport.

North end of Wrangle Narrows just past town.

An eagle on an old shed along Wrangle Narrows (notice the bouy - one of many that must be watched carefully when navigating this very crooked channel.

Salmon Berries

Can anyone identify this flower for us?

Devils Club with very pretty berries (wild blueberries in the background).

Finally the boats were all asked to leave together to provide a photo-op and room for the returning commercial fishing fleet.  Those who could joined together for one last night in a local cove / anchorage while we flew back to Seattle.