Leaving for the San Juan’s 2007

CB 15 September, 2007
[0] comments

We’ve been back almost a month, so I thought I should actually get off my butt and put something up here about the trip.

Last year Tawn’s parents came with us on the trip, this year one of my nephews, Cleveland, came out from Pennsylvania to visit and go on the trip with us. He got here on August 9th and we showed him the sights around Seattle.

This is Cleve:

Cleveland

We spent the day on Friday running last minute errands and getting the boat ready to go, so the second Tawn got home from work we could take off. Which is exactly what we did. The engine was running and all but two dock lines were untied when she came walking down the dock from work.

We took a number of pictures on the trip, all of which can be found here: www.flickr.com/chickenbone

The first destination of the trip was a short 12 mile hop west thru Agate Passage to Poulsbo for the annual Lats and Atts party. We’ve been going to this party every August for the last four years and most of our friends have as well. So it’s usually a pretty good time. This year was no exception.

Not a lot of wind and since we got such a late start we wanted to get there as quickly as we could so we motored the entire way. Tawn slept…..

I’ve mentioned this before, and if you’ve ever driven a boat yourself you know first hand that the hardest part of boat handling is docking and/or manuevering the boat in a tight space. It’s not at all like parking a car. It’s not impossible and for the most part everyone, myself included, does a pretty good job of it. There are alot of things at play that can make it difficult, but the three biggest factors, in my book at least, that make docking(parking) a boat alot harder are:

  • Wind
  • Current
  • Witnesses

On a perfectly calm day, with no current and no one standing around on the docks watching you. It is practically impossible to fuck up a docking procedure. Add a little wind and things get a little harder, but with time and practice, it is easily mastered. The same goes with current. Combined those two and the problems are doubled but again, easily overcome with practice and confidence. Add in that third factor (Witnesses) and everything seems to go out the window. It’s just like anything else, if you screw something up, there is always someone there to see you do it. :)

Now I’m not setting this up to tell you a story of me screwing up docking the boat. I simply wanted to put that info out there so I could describe the scene at the dock at the Poulsbo Marina when we got there on Friday evening for the Lats and Atts Party. As we were motoring in to Liberty Bay, we called my buddy Scotty, who was gonna try and save us a spot on the docks. The reason being, the party was expected to have over 100 boats show up and we wanted to make sure we could get in.

Scotty tells us that they have a spot for us, right on the end of the dock, tieing up along side another friend of ours boat.

“Cool” I think to myself. End of the dock means, no tight space maneuvering required. Just line it up and slide along side the other boat and stop. Easy cheesy!

As we approach the marina I can hear music and see all the flags flying….looks like another big party!

Party dock

“Oh look!” Says Tawn, “Music man Dave is playing on the deck of the that big Catamaran!”

And of course if Dave is playing, then of there is gonna be a crowd watching. But I can’t be bothered with that right now. I need to find Lorien (The boat we are supposed to be trying up to). So I scan the dock ends, looking for Lorien…….shit!….I see her. Right there, tied up directly in front of the Catamaran that the Band is playing on. Which is right in front of 50+ people (witnesses) watching the band play on the catamaran, directly behind the boat I am supposed to tie up too.

Luckily for me, there is no wind, no current. So with the exception of 50+ witnesses this should be easy. Standing on the deck of Lorien ready to catch our lines is Rich, Dave, Rhonda & Echo. This will be easy. I do a quick circle to get the boat lined up better and slowed down, ready to dock.

Friends are waving, calling out to say hi. Dave is playing a Jimmy Buffett song, everyone is watching him play as I slowly glide up to the dock. I half hear the song, but my full attention is on the task at hand. “Please, don’t screw up” I tell myself. Just then, just as I’m on final approach the song ends, and so, with nothing else to do, the crowd stops watching Dave and turns their attention to my boat. No Pressure….NO PRESSURE!!

I stuck the landing, perfect 10! But damn, I was sweating a little bit. :) hehehe, sorry for the tease.

Anyway, the party was great and we had an awesome time. We got up early on Sunday and headed north towards the San Juan Islands.

I’ll post again with the details of the trip later.

Posted in Adventures, Big trips, Maps, Palarran | Leave a comment

Weekend trip to Lake Washington.

CB 4 August, 2007
[0] comments

Last Monday morning (30 July) we decided take the boat over into Lake Washington, the largest lake in Washington State. Fresh, warm water! We could go swimming! The only thing standing between us and that lake was the Ballard Locks and 6 bridges, 4 of which would need to be raised in order for us to make it through.

The Ballard Locks move boats from the saltwater of Puget Sound up 20 feet to the fresh water of Lake Union and Lake Washington. Think of a mini version of the Panama Canal….very mini. And the 4 bridges are draw bridges that have to be raised if your boat is taller than 42-45 feet off the water. Palarran is 60 feet from the top of the mast to the water. The bridges are always down so car traffic can drive over them. In order to get them to lift you have to drive your boat up to it and then blast a certain signal with an air horn. The signal is one long blast and one short. The bridge operator will either signal back the same, which mean he will stop traffic (which people hate) or he will give you 5 short blast, which means you have to wait 5 or 10 minutes and then he will stop traffic to raise the bridge (Which people hate).

The first Bridge is the “Train Bridge”(which we failed to take a picture of). This one is actually left up most of the time unless there is a train coming. Today however, it was down. So we gave the signal and waited……and waited……and w..a..i..t..ed… Finally after who knows how long the bridge finally went up and we went under and waited for the locks to signal as to which lock we would go into. You have two choices. Either the big locks or the little locks. The little locks are much easier to negotiate and tie up in. Of course, We got the big locks along with a gigantic tugboat and a few other boats. After the tugboat got in and tied up there was two other boats ahead of us, neither one seemed to anxious to go in. I didn’t want to butt in line, but they were just sitting there. Finally one of the went ahead and we got in line behind them. The other boat just sat there, we would find out later why.

Here are a few pics take from inside the locks:

Inside the Ballard locks Another inside the Ballard locks

As we followed the speed boat in, we watched him lose control and hit the wall a couple times before finally getting tied up. Once we tied up, the other boat came in and was directed by the lock personnel to tie up to us. This is when we figured out why they hung back. It is MUCH easier to tie to another boat than it is to tie to the wall. Cause if your tied to the wall, when they close the lock doors and start pumping in the water to raise you to the lake level, you have to constantly adjust your lines to keep you in place. So they slide up to us and tie off and as old people do, went below and ate lunch!! What the fuck? Here we are in a tight place that looks like it was built to hold King Kong and about to be raised 15-20 feet from sea-level buy pumping millions of gallons of water in to said Kong hole and these goofy old bastards disapper to eat lunch, leaving me and Tawn to not only tend to the lines that is holding not only our boat in place, but theirs as well. And to make sure that the fenders are staying in place so both of our boats don’t get tore up. Gawd damn! I did let my disapproval show a bit and called them “Old Bastards” more than loud enough for them to hear.

Anyway, millions of gallons of water and 20 feet later we are up at lake level and ready to leave the locks, which we did with no incidents or scratches on anyone’s boat. No thanks to the crew of the S.S. Geriatric.

Ballard Bridge

On to the Ballard Bridge, which opened right away for us. Going under this, after driving over it for so many years is pretty cool. In between here and the next bridge is where the fishing fleet keeps their boats and if you’ve ever seen that TV show “Deadliest Catch” on Discovery, the crab boats that are on that show are parked in this area.

After a mile or so through the water way called the canal, The next bridge is the Fremont bridge.

Canal to Fremont Bridge

Fremont bridge

No matter how high they raise it, it never seems like it’s gonna be high enough when you actually go under it.

Open bridge

After that bridge is Lake Union, this Lake is right in Downtown Seattle, so we sailed around here for a bit and dodged sea planes taking off and landing.

University bridge

The third bridge is the University bridge and then past that is the last bridge, The Montlake Bridge.(no pictures of the montlake bridge, I figure your tired of seeing bridge pictures).

We actually got lucky in getting through this last one. Not because it was hard to get through or anything, but because we were unaware that they stop raising the bridge at 3:30pm until 7pm each weekday due to rush hour traffic. We got there just in time to signal them and get it to open. Whew! Otherwise we would have been stuck between bridges, with no place to tie up or anyway to get to shore for 3 hours.

Once through the Montlake cut and under the bridge we were finally out and on to Lake Washington. The wind picked up and we sailed along the 520 bridge looking at all the commuters stuck in traffic…hahhahhah suckers.

We sailed directly to the Kirkland Marina and tied up to the outside of the dock. Took a stroll along the park and called our friends Dave and Rhonda, who live nearby and invited them over for dinner and drinks. After they left for the night (suckers had to go to work the next day) we headed into town for a nightcap.

Kirkland Marina

The next day we got up late, and went for a swim and scraped the barnacles of the prop. The wind picked up very nicely and we sailed back across the lake and started the whole bridge/lock process over again. I will let you know that it is alot easier going out through the locks than it is going in. I’m not sure why, but it is.

As always, I’ve drawn up a little map for your veiwing pleasure so you following along on the not so exciting adventures of Palarran and crew. Be sure to click on all the items, I added a few more pictures on the map than I put here in this writeup. Click here for the Map.

Posted in Adventures, CB, Palarran, Weekend trips | Leave a comment

I don’t feel 40??

CB 6 July, 2007
[0] comments

I’m probably not the first person in the world to say this, but I never thought I would be a 40 year old. I don’t feel old, or like a person that I picture a 40 year old to be. What ever, just thought I’d start this post off that way.

As you can probably guess by now, I just recently turned 40 years old. As recently as 3 days ago on July 4th in fact. Having a birthday on the fourth of July has provided me with (to date) 39 really fun birthdays. I say 39 instead of 40 because on the day before my 20th birthday I bit through my tongue and had to get 6 stiches (IN my freakin tongue). Needless to say, the next day and many days after…really sucked.

This year however did not.

Both me and Tawn had to work on saturday, but that gave us sunday, monday, tuesday & wednesday off. So we loaded up the boat with food and booze and took off in search of fun and adventure.

As usual, you can follow the trip here via this crappy little map.

Saturday evening found us tied up behind our old friends (Scott and Angie) on Ghost, on the west side of Blake Island. We had a great fire on the beach and made s’mores…oh and some beer. Getting tied up to the mooring as we first arrived ended up with a slighting miscalculation on the amount of current on my part which resulted in our boat hitting Ghost. The damage was minor on both boats. Nothing a little sanding of the teak won’t fix. And as Scotty said “Luckily you hit a friend and not some random asshole”. Whether or not he really meant it, it made me feel better at the time. :) Thanks Scotty!

It still sucks to flub up a landing like that, but moving that slow in current in a full keeled boat can get tricky. This time I missed, but I did learn from it.

We left Blake island the next morning (Sunday, July 1st) and headed to Manzanita Bay on Bainbridge Island. There was absolutly no wind, so we motored the entire way there. Once there we did AB-SOLUT-LY nothing, which on occasion is one of my favorite things todo. Especially at anchor. I did take a dinghy ride up a small river as far as I could after a power nap in the hammock. But other than that, nothing.

The next morning (Monday, July 2nd) we got up and headed for Liberty Bay to meet up with Scott and Angie on Ghost. The wind was up and we sailed all the way to the raft up…..almost. Dave and Rhonda 0n Scepter were there and rafted up. So we tied off to them. The wind continued to build and after a small anchor dragging, we decided it would be prudent to set out a second anchor. Liberty Bay is a large bay, but on the 3rd of july it fills up and there is little room to move. So we dropped our anchor to give ourselves a little piece of mind.

Poulsbo is a small town that sets at the head of Liberty Bay. Every year on the 3rd of July they put on a fireworks show. Which is why we and about 200 other boats ended up there all at once. We spent the next 2 days hanging out and meeting up with our boating friends or just eating and drinking and watching the fireworks on the 3rd. I also got a very cool telescope from the crew of Ghost for my B-day, with our boat name engraved on the side. Very cool, every pirate ship needs one of these.

My buddy Dan showed up on his boat, the Blue Monkey II, later on the 3rd and another friend Mike showed up on his boat and they both tied up to our raft and the party was officially on. After the fireworks we stayed up late into the night drinking and singing, complete with guitar and harmonica accompaniment. None of which was really any good, but we were told, that what it lacked in quality, we more that made up for in loudness. Oh well, it sounded good to us at the time.

Wednesday brought with it abit of a hangover and a wake up call that was earlier than we really wanted but everyone wanted to get get back to Seattle fairly early. Ghost and Scepter broke of the raft up first and headed for home. After some coffee on shore, we cast Mike and Dan adrift we head for home ourselves. We motored all the way through Agate Passage until we go into Port Madison, but after bobbing around with no wind we motored out until we were out into the wind and had an awesome sail the rest of the way home.

Tawn had to run an errand (pick up Cheese cake for my bday party), so me and Dan jumped in the dinghy and headed through the locks and on in to Lake Union, grabbing more beer along the way, so we could meet up with Tawn at our friends Rich and Echo’s new boat for a fourth of July BBQ….and cheese cake. :)

The fireworks were awesome! A bunch of friends showed up. Rich and Echo’s new boat is awesome and I got some pretty cool gifts from Rich and Echo and Dave and Rhonda.

All in all a great bday weekend.

Posted in Adventures, CB, Maps, Palarran, Weekend trips | Leave a comment

Do you smell smoke?

CB 14 June, 2007
[0] comments

A couple weeks ago me and Tawn were gonna sail north to Port Ludlow, which is a small town in a well protected harbor about 25 miles north of us. We took off on a Sunday morning with a little wind directly out of the direction we needed to go, but no matter, we had plenty of time. I did want to get there before 6pm due to tide. Anytime after 6 and we would not have been able to get in the the inner harbor and anchor, the tide would have been to low to get in there.

We tacked back and forth for a few hours until we reached Apple Tree Cove, where the wind died completely. No bother, we just turned on the engine and started motoring there, with the intension to sail if the wind decided to pickup again.

Click here for a map if you care to follow along

About an hour later, just as we were approaching Point No Point, Tawn ducked down below to check on the battery charger gauge, (We had been having some trouble with the charger lately). When she got down there, she yelled back up that the gauge was reading 17+ volts!!! AcK! Not good. She quickly started shutting things down, so the batteries did not get ruined by overcharging them. As I was shutting down the engine, she yelled back up again that she smelled smoke and saw some coming from the engine compartment. Second only to a hole in your boat, a fire is the worst thing.

After getting everything shut down and the boat pointed and drifting in a safe direction. We started checking systems. The smoke turned out to not be a “real” fire, but an electrical wire that burnt up. Which is what that particular wire is designed to do in certain situations to prevent the altenator from burning up. But why did this happen?

We were a little over halfway to where we were going and did not exactly know what the issue was, so we decided to turn around and head home. We did not know the problem, so we could only sail home without the engine. Luckily for us, the wind pickedup and we had an awesome spinnacker run home. Along the way we called some other boating friends and they helped me diagnos the issue. And come up with a work around so we could use the engine to get back into the dock.

The next day, we figured out that our regulator had died on us, which resulted in the altenator overcharging the batteries. The ‘fire’ was a result of the batteries being shut off before the engine was. But that was why that wire burnt up, it is there to handle accidents like that. So there was no damage done and all is fixed and working now. Granted, fixed and working means $500 less in the bank account for a new regulator and other misc. parts, but that is just the way it is.

Posted in Adventures, CB, Palarran, Tawn, Weekend trips | Leave a comment