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Floating somewhere between elation and panic

Mar 15th, 2011
by Sara.
10 comments

Joy ride

In a few days, that counter you see on the right-hand side of our site, the one counting down the days until our cast-off from Olympia will be in the double digits. Which means only three months until we are outta here. Oh my.

This sends chills down my spine for two completely separate, distinct reasons. One, I am so freaking excited. I mean, New Years was practically yesterday and that was nearly three months ago. I have a sneaking suspicion that the next three crazy busy months will fly by even faster. Spring officially starts next week and will whiz by until Summer comes sneaking in and then we are off, off and away for two years of bliss and terror. We will at last be off cruising with our children, a dream that truly hatched the last time we were cruising in Mexico when we saw the joy older cruisers were having with their delightfully bright sailing kids. We are so so close and barring any major catastrophes (and it’s got to be a big one) we will be officially cruising in 106 days. Chills.

On the other hand:  that leaves a mere 106 days left to get ready. Oh [insert favorite expletive here]. There’s quite a lot to do and my head swims with all that I must get done in the next months: passports, homeschooling materials, HAM radio license renewal, mailing address change, rigging splicing, another storage unit cleanout and move, first aid kit stocking, clearing out winter clothes and storing summer duds, sunscreen hoarding, car selling, on and on.

Michael has been steadily ticking away on the boat’s List, working on at least one thing daily. Our #1 must-dos are getting checked off one by one and we are truly at the point where we could leave now and get the rest of the items done underway (which is how I suspect a few will be completed anyhow). At this point, we have finally whittled down the big stuff: new lifelines=yes, new refrigerator=later, watermaker=much later. The dinghy we purchased for $400 on clearance at Costco (yes, Costco!) two years ago seems to be hanging in there just fine so it’s the one we are leaving with. We’ll keep the money to replace these items in our cruising kitty for now and replace them when a great deal appears in the future, or as needed.

Most days, I am so entrenched in the regular details of our life (laundry, cooking, grocery shopping, chauffeuring Leah to preschool) that I feel like it’s impossible that I’ll even make a dent in my list and I feel our departure date looming, instead of looking forward to it. But bit by bit it’s getting done. Each week I part with even more stuff that’s been hiding in our storage locker (we are whittling it down to fit in a 5×5 unit), getting things cleared out via ebay and Craigslist. I tuck away books for our endlessly curious students of the sea. I whip the end of a fraying sheet, hoping my fraying nerves will stay in check too. I try not to panic. I know the list will never be all done anyway. It never is, no matter what you’re doing in life.

Besides, I only have 106 more days to worry about “getting ready” anyway. After that, we’ll be cruising. Chills.

Spring Rigging

Feb 10th, 2011
by Sara.
2 comments

Two new headstay wires...check!

Truth be told, spring is still a long ways off (it was 25°F outside last night after all) but the sun did show her lovely face this past weekend for a few hours. Plus, our calendar promises that winter’s end is in sight. One of the top items on our List is to begin replacing our standing rigging. We figure that it is the original wire and fittings that the ship’s notes indicate were installed 20 years ago. Not only is the wire past it’s recommended lifespan, it is also 304 stainless wire which corrodes much faster than 316SS in the tropical environment we’ll be spending the next few years in. In other words, it’s time to replace it all.

Michael drew up a spreadsheet that listed all of the wires that we’d need to replace. It was soon clear we had found one of the disadvantages of maintaining a cutter rigged ketch with a bowsprit: with twice the number of masts of your typical sloop, there really is twice as much wire and rope involved. We have a total of 24 separate stainless steel wires, each with a Norseman swageless fitting at each end for a total of 48 Norsemans (soon to be 54 when we add three insulators to our split backstay for our HAM radio antenna). Thankfully, we had replaced most of Pelican’s (8 wires) standing rigging and all of Rivendell’s (13 wires) ourselves so we’ve had a bit of practice with swageless fittings. But clearly with this much rigging to be updated it was time to get started.

On Thursday, with clear weather forecast for the weekend, we put in an order at Fisheries for the items we’d need to replace our headstay and our staysail stay. We were able to meet the Fisco truck in Tacoma with our new 3/8″ and 1/4″ lengths of 1×19 316SS wire rope and the Norseman cones we’d need to replace when we reassembled the fittings that came with the boat.

On Saturday afternoon, with the smallest child napping and the eldest watching a DVD and munching on a snack, I hoisted Michael up the main mast to release the staysail stay. (We had taken our headsails down a few weeks ago to have the Sunbrella UV covers restitched.) Michael tied a halyard to the top of the stay and took the pin out of the eye to release it. I then lowered him back to the deck and we (along with the excellently timed help of a couple of passing neighbors) lowered the stay and furling unit carefully to the dock. Michael then cut the old wire next to each Norseman fitting, taped the new piece of wire to the old one and pushed it carefully through the furling foils. After lining up the old and new wires and fittings, he cut the new wire to length and unscrewed the Norseman fittings to clean out the old wire and prepare them to be reassembled.

It was here that we first became suspicious of our old rigging. With a variety of wrenches, oils and heatgun at the ready to unlock the sealed Norseman fittings, he was, in fact, simply able to part them by hand. Uh oh. We found that there was no evidence of Loctite being used on the threads as is required. What’s worse, the fittings had not been sealed with any polysulfide to keep the water out but what appeared to be winch grease that had mostly washed away.

With serious concerns about the state of our existing fitting assemblies, we were hardly surprised with what we found the following day. With our staysail stay reassembled (complete with plenty of Loctite and polysulfide goo in them) we hoisted the unit back up, then hoisted Michael up to reattach it. I then cranked him all the way to the top of the mast to release the headstay fitting and we lowered it in the same manner as the smaller stay. When he disassembled the Norseman that had been holding our headstay on, we found again little evidence of sealants used but not only that, the cone was barely hanging onto the wire. It is supposed to be 1.5x the wire diameter down the inside of the wire but this cone was at the very end and the outside wires were splayed out instead of being tucked in, formed around the cone nice and neat.

Bad Norseman

Good Norseman

So, where before we had “replace standing rigging” on our to-do list, now we have REPLACE STANDING RIGGING. Once again, we are reminded that if we have not thoroughly inspected something on our own, we have no idea if it’s ready for sea or not. 4 Norsemans down, 50 to go.

A Field Trip to the Seattle Boat Show

Jan 24th, 2011
by Sara.
1 comment

Look at that concentration! How can the fish say no to these cuties?

Early last Saturday morning we packed everyone up into our perpetually overloaded Subaru wagon and drove north to Seattle, the Northwest’s mecca of boating. “We’re having a field trip today, girls! Get ready for an exciting day at the Seattle Boat Show!” we announced.

“Boat show!” Holly repeated with 2-year-old glee.

“Ugh, the boat show?” Leah moaned, her 5-year-old self channeling her future teenager.

“Yes!” we replied in excitement. “It’s going to be really cool.”

“I don’t want to go to the boat show!” Leah replied. “How boring.”

“There will be fishing there!” I said trying to keep my happy voice on. Thankfully, the promise of spending time trying to hook a river trout in a big smelly tub of water was what did the trick. Leah was on board.

Arriving at the show around 11 am our first stop was, of course, the promised trout pond. The trout keepers must have made an error that morning though and fed the fish a hearty breakfast because after 20 minutes there was nary a bite among the hoards of children surrounding the “pond.” Thankfully, like most fishing fans, our girls were not disappointed and were satisfied with just the challenge of attempting to hook a real fish.

Our dream dinghy, found.

At noon, we filled the girls’ fists with goldfish crackers and string cheese and pointed the bright orange BOB stroller towards the actual marine gear. We admired many lovely things and left our drool marks on a number of dinghies and watermakers. We were particularly fond of the AB UltraLight aluminum bottom RIB; but priced at $3k a new one is definitely on our “dream” list.

After walking around the main floor for about an hour and a half we were ready to rest our legs and meandered over to the Red Stage where John Neal and Amanda Swan Neal were about to give their presentation “South Pacific: Seattle to New Zealand” which we thought could be fairly useful. We settled in the very back of the seminar hall and handed out more snacks to the girls. Of course, they were not hungry at all due to their steady stream of crackers and thought it would be fun to crawl across the freshly abandoned rows of chairs around us. By the fifth slide we started to notice that people were throwing looks in our direction and thought it best to move on.

We sought out the elevator and travelled upstairs, where we’d saved the very best stuff for last: the Real cruising gear. Captain’s Nautical Supply’s booth was the first to greet us and I enjoyed chatting with Janna Cawrse Esarey a bit. She and her husband had cruised Mexico the season after we did, continuing on to the South Pacific, then on to Hong Kong and she wrote an excellent book about it. Ironically, she and Graeme also returned from cruising to have two daughters now the exact same age as ours; they also plan on heading south again in another couple of years.

Our prized boat show purchase...red/white dual color LED bulbs!

We continued our stroll, admiring all of the shiny boat gear: electronics and watermaker and refrigeration systems. We found one of our favorite blogging authors, the hilarious Rich Boren of s/v Third Day at his Cruise RO Watermakers booth. We talked at length about all of the amazing times ahead cruising Mexico with our kids as he has done the past three years; Rich is as funny and friendly in person as in his blog. Next time we’ll have to ask him about his watermakers!

We then found ourselves staring dreamily at all the sparkly LED lights at the Fisheries Supply display. In chatting with one of the Fisheries reps, we discovered brand-new LED marine bulb technology: a replacement disc-type LED bulb that will fit in our existing fixtures that – wait for it – is both red AND white in the same bulb! When you first switch on the bulb it is red, but if you switch it off/on again within three seconds it is white. Very cool! We have been slowly replacing our incandescent bulbs in our old Seadog type fixures with LED bulbs as the power-hogging bulbs blow out. However, all our fixtures are only on/off without a red/white light feature that is so nice when sailing at night. Now with a replacement bulb under $20 we not only have a highly efficient LED light but it’s red and white to boot! We are so excited about this simple purchase that it made the whole show for us.

Lastly, we purchased discounted copies of Shawn and Heather’s stunning “Sea of Cortez” and “Pacific Mexico” guidebooks. Not only that, we got to meet these terrific cruisers and authors and have them sign our new books. Good travels ahead indeed!

All in all, I count this as one of our most exciting and fun field trips ever, and I think I can say that all the crew agrees. We looked at a ton of amazing gear and even brought home a little bit. Our favorite part of all: along with visiting loads of old boating friends, we met many new and interesting boat people at the show which is, after all, what makes this lifestyle the best.

Shopping and Chopping

Jan 14th, 2011
by Sara.
4 comments

We made a trek up to Seattle last week, to make a round at our favorite marine stores and gather some goods for this month’s projects. We had a list of things we actually wanted to buy, a list of things we were thinking of buying, and then a mental list of things we just wanted to look at to plan future projects. As we walked around Fisheries Supply, however, our eyes sort of started glazing over and we just about tripped over our jaws at some of the prices on shiny pretty boat gear. We could have easily dropped several boat bucks (fyi: these come in denominations of $1000) on just items to get a few small projects done.

Now, we have spent a fair number of boat bucks in our sailing lifetimes so I’m not sure why the prices of boat gear continue to shock us every time we go into a marine store needing something more involved than a few screws or a light bulb. I think it’s that prices are really going up steadily on most marine stuff (particularly metal items due to the skyrocketing cost of raw metals) but it also has to do with trying to work with a solidly fixed outfitting kitty.

One item on our list were tiny stainless steel sail track stops. These are basically a 1″ piece of curved stainless steel with a screw through it; they affix to the bottom of the mainsail and mizzen sail tracks to keep the sail slides from falling off of it. These retail for $48 apiece. Being we are a ketch we needed two of them. Thankfully, our account price was about $15 less, but still. (Note to new boat owners: get a business license! You will save thousands of boat bucks.) We stood there for a while, trying to wrap our brains around paying $75 for two tiny shiny pieces of hardware to replace the old, sort of broken ones we found at the second hand marine store last year. It didn’t take us long to come up with a solution: fix the old broken ones we already have by buying better fitting screws (cost: $2).

We then meandered over to the block section. Wondertime currently is outfitted with delightful old wooden blocks. While they certainly look charming, they are as heavy as bricks and need varnishing. Do we have time to varnish blocks? Ha. Sailing gear — the kind that will make the boat easier, more fun, and faster to sail is at the top of our list. Our hulk of an Isuzu Pisces diesel engine slups up something like 0.75 gallon/hour; at $3-5 gallon for diesel anything that helps us sail more will save us money (and stinky hot misery) in the long run. We now have shiny lovely (and surprising quite affordable) stainless Garhauer blocks as the top candidates in replacing our wooden mainsheet, staysail and genoa blocks.

Moving on to the plumbing section, we started adding up all the parts we’d need to install fresh and saltwater foot pumps in the galley, and a freshwater foot pump in the head sink to help save our precious freshwater supply. (You use a lot less water pumping it with your foot rather than just letting the faucet run.) We already have one uninstalled Whale Gusher foot pump on board so we were looking at purchasing two more, plus the spigots and related hosing and miscellaneous fittings. After mentally adding everything up, our heads started to spin a little at all the dollars adding up and in the end we decided to demote the freshwater foot pumps and just install the saltwater pump in the galley which we will use for washing dishes, hands, and cooking.

Our morning continued on in this way; as we worked through our list of project stuff we would either realize that the cost just did not justify the importance, or we’d have a spontaneous brainstorm and come up with another, less expensive way to get the same thing done. With Michael on the job for only 5 more months, our projects are getting cut left and right as our remaining budgeted dollars slip out.

On our way home, we made our last stop at West Marine’s gorgeous new Lake Union store and picked up the #1 item at the top of our list: our new 55 lb. Rocna anchor. As our boat — and lives — depend on staying firmly attached in an anchorage, a big, beautiful strong anchor is non-negotiable.

An Update Via the HF Airwaves

Jan 10th, 2011
by Sara.
Comments are off for this post

If you can read this, then it means that we have successfully updated our blog via the HF airwaves! We are pretty excited to be back on HAM radio after what has essentially been an 8 year hiatus. The installation of our Icom IC-7000 HAM radio and PACTOR modem is pretty much complete, other than permanently mounting our longwire antenna which is currently hoisted up with the main halyard.

It has been a real challenge to hear the nets over all the interference in our marina. We are really looking forward to (among a hundred other reasons) nicer weather so we can leave the dock and actually test out our rig without all the shoreside noise.

73s!
-Sara (KD7ORY) and Michael (N7UDM)

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