Our Salish Aire: December 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.

Thursday, December 29, 2016

Christmas 2016

December 2016 has been a pretty busy month as we prepared for Christmas including the arrival of our daughter and her family along with church choir practices and the "usual" other stuff with family and friends.

This is the first year we have had a real tree on the boat. This was nice for me as Clarice banned real trees from our home several years ago when it became apparent that tree + Norman's allergies = annual sinus infection. The 3 ft tall noble fir fit nicely on our cockpit table and provided just enough scent as I walked by to make it enjoyable but not so much that my allergies were triggered. We were very basic with our outside decorations with a star on the top of the mast and lights trailing down from it with icicle lights around the top deck. Even though it was very basic it really stood out visually from the cliff above the waterfront and was very visible from the hospital where Norman works so he could show folks where he lives from the windows. Clarice decorated the inside of the boat, as she has in past years, with a garland decorated with ornaments we have collected over the years which have special memories attached to them (including the partridge in a pear tree Hallmark ornament from our first Christmas 40 years ago).

Our "basis" outside decorations turned out to be very visible from the hillside above the waterfront.

The garland around the salon. The ornament from our first Christmas is on the far left.

Our credit card company was very happy with us this year as I decided to purchase a very expensive stabilized binocular just prior to an unexpected expense with our salon heat pump. We use the heat pump (referred to as A/C by warm water boaters who are often unaware that you can make it work as a heating furnace) as our primary means of heating the boat when we are at the dock as it is very economical and works well (with the diesel hydronic furnace as our other option). The unit had gotten noisier over time and was driving Clarice nuts while Norman was fine as long as his hearing aids were out. Finally the high pitched noise got bad enough that both decided that action needed to be taken. Step one was to isolate the noise using the old screwdriver to temple stethoscope trick. The bad news was the noise was clearly from the compressor. We then held a cell phone up to the compressor so a friend in the refrigeration business could listen to it. His evaluation was that the compressor would die sometime within the next hour to 5 years but that it was definitely not sounding healthy. Long story short (and about 3 "boat units" later) we ended up replacing the whole unit and upgrading the ducting when we realized that the original compressor had a manufacture date of 1996 when the boat was built. Now we only have one original unit left and we are hoping that with the parts we scrounged we can keep it going.

Grandson H tests out the new stabilized binoculars.

Our shiny new heat pump / air conditioning unit under the salon seat.

Christmas Day was very slow at work so I took time to read the old blogs from when Salish Aire was Duet ( http://mvduet.homestead.com/index.html ) . It was fun to look at the old photos and see the changes that had been made over the years. I was also able to get some clarity as to when repairs and upgrades had been done the last time. When Salish Aire was known as Duet she was owned and lovingly cared for by the Goldbergs whom we are still in contact with. Ron Goldberg loved to add expensive toys to his boat and we are the happy recipients of many of his choices which tended to be very high quality and are still enhancing the boat today. The Duet blog also mentioned the name of the original owner several times and indicated that they lived in Florida. With the help of Google I managed to find an email address and sent off a note asking if I had the right person. Mrs. Lynn phoned me later in the day very excited to hear about "her favorite boat". It turns out that Rapture (Salish Aire's first name) was purchased at a the Newport Boat Show when they walked on board and fell in love with her. Mrs. Lynn also talked about how she remembered Ron Goldberg "jumping up and down he was so excited when he took ownership of her". The Goldberg's have also told us about their many fond memories of Duet (they now are in Mexico on their Nordhavn 50 also known as Duet http://www.mvduet.com/ ). Clearly she is a very special boat that has an effect on everyone who travels on her.

We realized that we have some interior photos of Salish Aire but not a lot on this blog. Norman decided to try his hand at making a video and came up with this: December 2016 video tour of Salish Aire.

And finally the photos of our daughter's family enjoying Christmas with us.

C takes the wheel as we head out the river (yes, he really is steering the boat).

A short walk from the boat is a submarine factory. The owner was very accommodating with the only request that we not touch the view port as it had taken 300 hours to polish

A new Christmas Dragon "Stuffy" (AKA stuffed animal) keeps C safe in his sleep.

The kids check out the scenery before watching the Pacific Northwest Ballet version of the Nutcracker.

A visit to a local camp's lights of Christmas was a big hit.

V enjoyed her pony ride at the Lights of Christmas.

H shares his puzzle book with his Great Grandmother at the Gregory family Christmas gathering.

Finally; Santa did make it down Salish Aire's stack to fill the stockings on Christmas Eve.

Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Winter 2016-17 arrives

Today we had the first real blast of cold weather in the Puget Sound lowlands. The weather folks have been predicting a cold winter for us and the mountain ski areas have been open since Thanksgiving weekend (the definition of an "early start" around here).

A little weather wisdom for this area: Our typical snow pattern is a cold high develops at the end of a typically rainy pattern leading to snow followed by clear and cold weather. Or a water filled low comes as the cold high leaves the area giving us snow followed by rain. We expected snow at the beginning of this cold snap but it didn't arrive in time for the high to develop so instead today was a clear day (after a morning of freezing frost) and snow is expected later in the week with a quick turn to rain. (The only time we get a longer period of snow is when the Canadians leave some water in the wind that the high brings down from the north but usually they dry it out first.)

View from the Portuguese bridge (we have fresh river water on top of the salt water so we do see skim ice at times)

Looking across the marina before the fog lifted

The white is from the freezing fog. Mt Baker in the distance after the fog lifted.

We drove up to Snoqualamie Pass where there was real snow.

Jarvis frolicked in the snow but seem a bit confounded about where he could sit and not get a cold tush.

Road to Alpental ski area.

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