Our Salish Aire: March 2017

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.

Monday, March 20, 2017

A dive trip to the Caribbean island of Bonaire

We returned home yesterday to Salish Aire after flying to the island of Bonaire north of Venezuela (it's the "B" of the ABC islands - Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao). We believe this is our fourth trip there as it is one of our very favorite dive destinations. The weather was wonderful with the air temperature in the low 80s (F) and the water a consistent 78 degrees (F).

We understand that while we were gone it rained "buckets" here in the PNW and our daughter (whom we had invited to come down!) got to "enjoy" 20 cm of snow in Ontario.

We will let the photos tell the story:

We stayed, as always, at the Carib Inn where Bruce and Co. made sure we had a great time ( https://www.caribinn.com/ )

The view looking North from the Carib Inn dock.


Bonaire still has a major salt industry.

Slave huts remind us that collecting salt was not always done by machine.

I'm a big fan of flamingos that hang out in the national park at the north end of the island.

Diving the windward side of the island is supposed to be spectacular but only done when the trade winds are quiet. Maybe next time.

Finally - Norman loves gadgets and Norman loves fresh orange juice. We ran into this machine in the local supermarket and Norman had to get a video to share:

Thursday, March 2, 2017

Getting the final preparation projects done

We've had a list of final-year-projects (stuff we want to do before we retire and leave the dock) only now it is a final-few-months project list.

We've been checking into health insurance. Today Norman was issued an Alaska RN license in case we need / want some extra income or (more likely) he gets cabin (boat) fever and needs to be active by periodically doing the work he has done for many years. We won't need to buy any more car tabs as our son plans to buy our only vehicle before the tabs expire but we will need to pay for our state and federal yearly fees on the boat. Both employers have been given verbal notice that we plan to leave (since Clarice works in a department of 5 people - they will need to plan for the loss of 20% of their trained labor force and 100% of their RN staff). Norman's loss will be felt (he keeps telling people he would rather be missed than his departure cheered) but not as acutely. We still need to arrange for mail handling and making sure our elderly parents can reach us if they need to. And so the list goes on.

Yesterday we took our life raft in to get serviced. It is often recommended that folks go along and see what is in the raft when it is opened up before it gets used in an emergency. Rollie at Westpac Marine in Tacoma made sure we knew how to launch the raft and what to expect once it was in the water, how to right it if it inflated upside down, etc..

This is a "6 person" raft - We hope we don't even have to use it for 2 persons.


We thought Nancy had left graffiti - turns out the company builds the rafts to order and writes the new owners name so they can track the orders while they are built.

Clarice had also wanted to have our water-maker checked by a professional and I wanted to learn if there was anything more I needed to be doing to/for it. The boat next to us was getting a new water-maker and the installer offered to come and look at ours. He gave it a clean bill of health and explained some of things we should watch for and do to maintain it. Since getting to the water-maker meant pulling all of the spare parts out from under the Owner's Berth in the bow of the boat it motivated me to continue with my project of changing out older hoses and fittings. I had dreaded this section of the boat as a lot of the plumbing was in the bilge under the floor under the bed. This also meant that the plumbing was hard to check visually and even harder to maintain and the neglect showed. It took about 1 1/2 days but in the end I feel much more secure that the plumbing below the water line is less likely to fail and the common failure parts are now above the floor so they are easier to maintain.

Standing on the floor under the bed looking down into the bilge access prior to starting the re-plumbing.

Under the Owner's Berth after re-plumbing - notice that the sea strainer and hoses are now above the floor

Finally - we still take time to enjoy living on the water. Jarvis and I took a walk around Smith Island and I took this photo.

Snohomish River from Smith Island Trail

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