January 2004 - What's Up With the Crew of Pelican?

Seattle, Washington, USA

Pretty happy with our work

They were right. All of them. They said: you will get back home and will want to leave again within the month. You will miss the sea.

And they were right.

But, the reality is you have to get money for stuff like dental fillings and cat food and so we’re back to work for a while.

After Pelican arrived in the Everett boatyard, we set to work grinding and sanding like the mad people we are. We ground off her old barrier coat and set her out to dry some more. We sanded her hull for days and rolled on luscious new gleaming hull paint. Gorgeous!

Then after fairing her hull, both of us, plus Sara’s little brother and dad starting early in the morning formed a crazed assembly line of epoxy mixing, rolling, tipping, mixing rolling tipping. Around and around Pelican’s hull we went as six coats of West System epoxy barrier coat were laid on so not a drop of the sea will enter her glass. Two coats of Trinidad bottom paint, a new blue bootstripe, and a fresh name for her transom, Pelican sat gleaming in the boatyard ready for launch.

Back to “real work”, summer quickly coming to a close, we pulled all our sweaters out of storage and switched on our electric heater for the first time in well over a year. The holidays came and went as we continued on little Pelican projects between sitting in traffic and surfing the web at work.

The trouble really began when we visited the Humane Society one evening for heaven’s knows what reason and this little guy cocked his fuzzy head and gave us his sad sweet liquid brown eyed stare:

So, Grizzley picked us out – not knowing he’d have to endure two cats on a small sailboat in rainy Seattle. As is typical, he puked in the car on the way home but all in all he’s pretty happy with us and we’re loving him. The cats are starting to think he’s all right too, but draw the line at anything that resembles play.

The happy furry crew of Pelican

We’re all cozy and happy together, but space is getting a little tight. We’ve got new ideas about which turn to take in our lives every day, but one thing seems to be certain: we are on the sea to stay. Pelican has been an amazing boat and we have had more adventures than we’d ever thought possible on her, but space is getting a bit cramped on board and we’d like to stretch our legs without a cat biting our toes.

Onward to the next adventure – the search begins again for the perfect….ark?

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