Our Salish Aire: Just catching up October 2016

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.

Saturday, October 22, 2016

Just catching up October 2016

Since our last update we moved down the coast of mainland BC and put into Fisherman's Terminal in False Creek on the south side of Vancouver. This is one of our favorite places as it is truly a working boat port (our trawler looks right at home - especially since another Nordhavn 46 moored on the dock across from us) and is just a block away from the tourist fun spot of Grandville Island. There is even a Go Fish restaurant shack in the parking lot (Go Fish is a chain of shipping containers turned into fish and chips shacks that serves lots of good food at a good price - even on rainy days there is a line for lunch and dinner (which is saying a lot as they have NO covered areas for customers)). Vancouver is a very bicycle friendly city with a level trail all along the waterfront that I thoroughly enjoyed and just wished that Clarice could have joined me.

We stayed for a couple of sunny days. I think that if Clarice's foot had allowed her to have more activity then we likely would have stayed longer. We have decided this would be a great place to go and just hang out for a week.

Grandville Island area and Public Market

Inside of the Grandville Island Public Market

Grandville Island marinas - Fisherman's Terminal is to the left

Bike ride around the waterfront - here on the north side of Stanley Park with the Lions Gate Bridge

At the end of our vacation, Clarice was very excited to submit enough miles to the Nordhavn distance pennant program to qualify for out first award (2500 nautical miles). Its taken us 2 + years to get this many miles - hopefully they will add up much faster in the future .

Clarice shows off our 2500 nm pennant from Nordhaven.

We got back to Everett with some time before we had to return to work so we took the time to start a long planned project. We have nursed our Hurricane furnace along for 2 years and it has shown signs of age and slow decline. The problem has been that a marine version of our furnace is not longer made and all of the new models are a few inches bigger. Those few inches simply cant be accommodated without a major remodel of the engine room. After much discussion with the manufacturer they offered to rebuild our current unit. We took the better part of a day getting the furnace out and loaded into the car and then the next morning dropped it off in Vancouver Washington and went on to visit our son and his family in Portland.

While we were on our vacation we noticed a couple of pieces of exhaust flange gaskets lying in the engine room. Question: were these remnants of a historic repair that had worked their way down the stack or something new. Answer: after the heater was removed I cut into the old insulation wrap and immediately found evidence that the flange gasket where the stack enters the false stack had blown out. (Yes this means that exhaust gases were able to get into the engine room but my concern for exposure was low as the vent fans would have quickly pushed them up and out through the false stack.) At every boat show we ooh and aah at the pretty custom made insulation blankets that are available from a marine exhaust specialty company near us. It was clearly time to change the insulation and replace the gasket while the heater was out of the way. Bad news: The new blanket came to $500 - about twice what I had guessed. Good news: the furnace came in $500 less than the estimate.

Lot

Today we are out to test all of the new stuff on a lovely October day. It has been raining and stormy for most of the month so the river is brown and running high but today is the PNW at its finest.