Weekend with the yacht club

While our daughter is still getting snow several times a week (she really doesn't like snow by the way) in Welland Ontario we have been enjoying near record high temperatures here in the Seattle area.  The spring flowers are going strong including the tulips in the Skagit Valley.

This weekend we went on a "cruise" with our yacht club ( http://www.mukilteoyachtclub.com/ ) to Bell Street Marina along the Seattle water front. 

Our initial reason for joining a yacht club was to save money on moorage especially during the winter months when we prefer to stay at a dock rather than use the dingy to get to shore in the rain. We pay about $175/year for the yacht club dues and save an average of $50 every time we tie up at a reciprocal club's dock.  In the long run we have found the group to be the type folks we enjoy hanging around with and so we have gotten into the social functions as well.

While talking to another couple in the group we learned that they have been in our private "fan club" for a number of years.  It seems that back in 2000 when we took our MacGregor 26X sailboat up the inside passage they also owned a MacGregor 26X and followed us the whole time on the blog we wrote as we headed north. They told us that there was quite a discussion going with the naysayers back home letting everyone know that there was no way we would make it to Skagway (we did - you can read the old blog if you click the link on the port side of this blog included in the Our Boating History section).  Later they attended a session where we spoke about the trip and were pleased to see us in "real life".

My other excitement of the past month has been getting my technician followed shortly by my general amateur radio (AKA: ham) license (KI7CKD).  There is not a lot of chatter up in this part of the world on the marine SSB frequencies and I wanted to get comfortable with the high frequency (HF) radio that I had installed and make sure it was functioning correctly, by getting the ham license I can legally talk to other amateur operators.  So far my most distant contact has been in southern California.

On the flip side my electronic frustration has been with backup cameras.  I installed a camera on the mast and the boat came with one in the cockpit.  My hope is that we can monitor traffic behind us visually as well as on radar without walking outside or to the back of the boat. So far my pictures range from good to flickery to frequently cutting out. Hmmmmmmmm, back connections? Too cheap of cameras for the environment???  I'll keep working on it but it is so typical of boat projects where nothing works the first time and if it does it makes me highly suspicious.

On a similar note, I think I have finally gotten the final gremlin out of the wing (auxiliary) engine.  After doing a fair amount of work on it a few months back we have gotten it to run smoothly once it gets past periodic hard starting and surging at startup.  I have been convinced for some time that the issue was air in the fuel line just before it entered the engine but haven't been able to find the source.  In my experience with gasoline engines when a diaphragm type fuel pump fails it is pretty much an all or none scenario. I think in this case that a tiny leak through the diaphragm was allowing air to enter the line (and diesel to drain into the oil sump) while the engine sat.  In any case, after going to a new diesel lift pump the engine started yesterday on the first turn over and "purred like a kitten".  Yay!! (I hope)

Updates and History

Life has been a bit wild since the first of 2016.  For her Christmas present, I gave Clarice tickets to go see our daughter and grandchildren in Ontario.  I had planned to enjoy New Years with our yacht club here at home while she was gone but the weather was incredible and so I talked a friend into joining me for a run to Seattle on New Years Eve.  Jarvis and I ended up getting a rare open slip in the Bell Street Marina right on the Seattle waterfront.  I had a great view of the fireworks shot from the Space Needle before going to bed.  New Years Morning was perfect for being on the water and so I decided to try single handing the boat for my first time and took her to Tacoma.  Shortly before I arrived I heard that my father looked worse and since he was in a nursing home in Tacoma at the time, I caught a ride up to check on him.  It was good that my home had moved to Tacoma as I needed to call the family together and be at his side until he died on January 4th.  My father had been ailing for several years so in a way his passing was a blessing but I do miss him.  The church where we had the memorial service was overflowing as my father was a very quiet person but always passed a sense of caring and love to everyone who knew him.

Once funerals were past, my immune system let down its guard and I ended up with a respiratory ailment that knocked me over for more than a week.  Having mild asthma does not mix well with inflamed lungs and I had a good look at what COPD patients must feel like.

Recently we saw an interview with the Goldbergs posted on the Nordhaven Dreamers listserve.  As the Goldbergs were the second owners of our boat when she was known as Duet we read the interview with great personal interest.  The interview included a lot of history and photos of "The 46" as they often refer to Salish Aire now that they live on "The 50" also named Duet.  Here is a link to the interview: http://www.pendanablog.com/guest-interviews/2016/02/28/Ron-and-Nancy-Goldberg--MV-Duet-N50 .  We continue to be insanely jealous of their travels but hang in there with the belief that our day is coming!

A big change for me will be a new position in 2 days.  Clarice and I are both Registered Nurses.  For nearly a decade I have worked in Patient Safety and Risk Management.  While the work is rewarding and very interesting in its own way, it does get depressing always knowing who is mad at my employer, who is trying to take my employer to court, and when we have injured a patient.  Since the company is opening a brand-new, very lovely, inpatient Hospice unit in the same building where I now work, I decided to apply with the idea that I became a nurse to care for people.  I am looking forward to getting back to the bedside which has always been my first love.

I also gained a title this morning, I am now an Armature Radio Operator (AKA: "Ham") at the Technician level (currently waiting for my call sign to be posted).  I periodically try to understand our High Frequency (HF) radio and have discovered that it is NOT a plug and play piece of equipment but rather requires a fair amount of understanding to get the most out of it.  Since it can function both as a Marine SSB radio and a Ham radio (with advantages to both modes), I decided to go ahead and get the Ham license so I could experiment with its full capabilities.  Anyway, currently radio parts are spread around the pilot house (AKA: "Clarice's office") while I try to understand how to get it to function as it is designed to.

Our other update project that was recently finished was adding 3/8 inch acrylic storm windows to both sides of the saloon.  We have heard that having them up, even though we are not currently at sea, will help keep the boat warmer and they do seem to help.  The biggest challenge was making a second set of stainless mounting pucks.  The boat came with a set for one side (commonly the boats only have the storm windows on the less protected port side) but we wanted to do both sides.  In the end I had a neighbor cut the blanks with a water jet NC machine and then I further finished them with proper sized holes and threads.

For those who ask for Jarvis updates:  He is currently in one of his usual spots at the top of the pilot house stairs watching my every move hoping that I will sit back on the settee so he can jump up and rest his head on my legs.

Christmas Eve

I'm embarrassed to see that I haven't posted anything since July when we returned from Canada.  We are alive and all is well.  We are currently in the middle of the Pacific Northwest Winter as it is Christmas Eve and even though the solstice has passed we still have pretty short days with about 8 1/2 hours of daylight. We have continued to work on long term maintenance items and upgrades on the boat.  I finally finished getting hoses, belts, pump impellers and so forth done on all of the diesel engines when I completed work on the generator last week.  The wing engine has gone from being somewhat hard starting with lots of vibration to easy starting and smooth running now that I've cleaned its injectors and reset the valve gaps.  Jarvis continues to be a happy boat dog as long as we don't turn the boat around - we have a gang plank on the starboard side that makes it easier for him to get aboard and he is used to it.  When we had the boat turned around so that the port side was next to the dock (we do this when we need to work on that side) he misjudged the gap at least twice and ended up in the water.  We have procrastinated all summer about sanding and varnishing the teak on the bow (the rest of the boat looks good).  We finally did the job late fall and it really went quickly and was not a big deal.  The only issue was that our dry weather window closed and our final layer of varnish on one side got rained on before it had set.  Clarice has read up and learned that it should provide protection for the wood over the winter and then in the spring we should just need to do a light sanding and redo one layer of varnish.  My latest project was to put a real defrost system in for the pilot house windows.  It uses heat from the hot water circulation system and should be a real asset on moist mornings.  Our fun for the season was winning the Port of Everett decoration contest by turning Salish Aire into Rudolf the Red Nosed Nordhavn.   Clarice again decorated the inside of the boat by putting a lighted garland around the salon and hanging our ornament collection from it.  I talked her into letting me purchase a very nautical oil lamp to go over the table to finish our old fashioned boat look.  We have weathered a couple of significant wind storms already this year in our slip and have been hit by rain storm after rain storm so that the Snohomish River where our marina is located has been running near or over flood stage for several weeks (we are more affected by the tide than the river flow where we are moored).   In an interesting turn of events - our very close friends of many years, John and Laurie, returned from 9 months doing the American Great Loop in a Ranger 29 only to return to their house and realize that they didn't need all of that room.  They have sold the Ranger 29 and moved onto a Kady Krogen 39 and are moored directly off our bow across the fairway from us. Tonight we (I) am hoping for the chance of snow to turn into a very very rare Puget Sound lowlands White Christmas.

Back home

We have been back home in Everett for a week now and are trying to settle back into our work routines. The last half of our trip to the West Coast of Vancouver Island is now posted at http://ncgregory.larper.com/Chapter-Pages/First%20Big%20Trip%20part%202.pdf .

First part of our first big trip

We are still out on our 3 week adventure to the West Coast of Vancouver Island.  A travelog is at http://ncgregory.larper.com/Chapter-Pages/First%20Big%20Trip.pdf .

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.