When the hell will winter end?

CB 2 April, 2009
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I for one don’t care. While the first part of this winter really sucked (Snowboarding wise), the last half has really picked up some steam. It’s been dumping in the mountains, and the snow keeps piling up. So I keep heading up.

Last weekend Tawn and I got up early and met Danno at Steven’s Pass ski resort. Actually, he met us, since he over slept a little. Normally we’d all drive up in one car, but he had to be back to work on Monday and Tawn and I decided we were going to go snowshoeing and stay the night in a NSF (National Forest Service) ranger cabin for a few days. We had never done this before and it sounded pretty cool.

Snowboarding on Sunday was great. As you can plainly see by this awesome action photo of me flying through the air on my board:

Tawn couldn’t go cause she tweaked her back at work a few weeks earlier. So she went snowshoeing instead. Sunday afternoon, instead of heading back to Seattle and home, we headed east and down in to the little town of Leavenworth, Wa. (Towns website) As you’ll gather from their website, it’s a cheesy little tourist town that models it’self after a little German Alpine village.

A few days before Tawn had found this site: www.recreation.gov and further in she found this Ranger cabin  and we reserved a night to stay there.

We woke up Monday morning and started heading towards the cabin. It was only 50 some miles way to drive so we got there about 11am. Parked at the trailhead and unloaded the packs and snowshoes from the Jeep. The trail to the cabin was actual pretty well packed down. So we did not even need to put on the snowshoes, even though the snow was probably 2-3 feet deep.

The hike to the cabin was only 2.5 miles and we got there in about an hour or a little more. Here are a few pictures of the outside of the little cabin:

And of course a few pictures of the inside for balance and closure….if you need that sort of thing:

As you can see we had to hang our packs up off the floor as there were a couple very industrious mice that lived in the cabin. They worked there little ass off all night trying to get into everything. Tawn kept throwing boots at them during the night as they rattled around in the kitchen trying to get into the pots on the stove.

That little stove may not look like much, but we got a little over zealous in the loading of the firewood and got the tempature in the cabin up to 90 degrees F. We had to go outside and stand in the snow to cool off and open the windows a few times. :)

We mostly sat around, read some books or took a few hikes, oh and tawn found a small piece of an old sleeping pad or something under one of the bunks, so she decided to climb up the hill behind the cabin and slide down on her new found ‘booger’. And as luck would have it, I had the camera with me, and turned on:

On tuesday we were going to do some more hiking and try to find a few Geocaches that were in the area, but when we woke up. It had snowed 6 inches over night and was still dumping. So we decided to just cook some breakfast and head out. We did not want to get stuck on the East side of the Pass if they closed it due to avalance danger.

This is a picture of Tawn getting ready to leave, wearing her Snoopy hat that she has had since she was 5 years old. Her head is still the same size!! WTF :)

And one last shot of Tawn, Me and the cabin……Thanks cabin!

My hat is not that old and my head size is steadily increasing in size….! WTF indeed.

Posted in Adventures, CB, snowboarding, Tawn, videos | Leave a comment

A little work around the house.

CB 27 October, 2008
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Nobody likes house work (no normal person anyway). And even fewer people like watching videos of house work being done. But I thought this one was pretty cool.

I’m not going to go into all the details of why a boat has zinc plates on them. It’s part magic and part science as far as I know. But basically, the zinc is a weak sauce metal that corrodes faster than the other more expensive more important metals on the boat, like the prop shaft, prop or through hulls. So as with most things in nature corrosion takes the path of least resistance and corrodes the zinc plates first before attacking the other stuff. This of course mean that from time to time, usually about once a year, we have to replace our old worn out zincs. They are cheap, $20 buck or so each, but it has to be done.

In order to be effective they have to be under water. The easiest, driest way to change them is to do it while the boat is out of the water. But since that only happens maybe once every 4 years, the other options is to pay someone to SCUBA dive down and do it for you or, if you have your own SCUBA gear, do it yourself.

Since we have our own SCUBA gear, we did it ourselfs. I did it last time and this time was Tawn’s turn.

So with nothing to do while she worked, I grabbed the camera, stuck it underwater and filmed her as she replace the old prop zinc with a new one.

Posted in Adventures, CB, Dock, Palarran, Scuba, Tawn, videos | 1 Comment

Big trip to Canada. Day 31

CB 26 October, 2008
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Sunday-Monday August 10th-11th:

This is it, the last post of the long ass vacation posts.

This morning we had a choice to make. Actually we had a couple, but after the breakfast and coffee choices were made we were down to one biggie. We did not have to be back to work until Wednesday, and it was only Sunday. We could head all the way back to seattle from Port Townsend (about 35 miles) or we could half the distance and stay in Port Ludlow and head home on Monday or Tuesday. We decided we did’nt want the vacation to end just yet, so we headed to Port Ludlow for the night and would go back to Seattle on Monday. This would give us a day to get the boat unpacked and easy back into city life…..whatever that means.

Port Ludlow is not a bad place, some people love it. Mostly old people it seems. But to me, it’s the last stop of our last two cruises. So it makes it even more crappy.

Ghost followed us down and we had one last dinner aboard Palarran.

I do have to mention that people on boats are wierd when it comes to anchoring. I don’t know if it is their insecurity about their skills at anchoring their boat. Or maybe its their herd mentality. Or maybe they just assume that because your already anchored, you must know something that they do not and want to follow your lead. But more times than not, when your anchored somewhere in a large bay, with tons of room. Someone will come along and drop anchor as close to you as possible. This happened in Port Ludlow, amoung other places.

I understand it if the anchorage is small, I understand it if the anchorage is crowded. I understand it if there are some spots in the anchorage with poor holding. But in this case the anchorage had exactly 4 boats in it. We were one of them. Ghost was another and anchored about 200 yards way. Another boat was behind us another 200 yards way and a fourth boat Waaaaaay over on the other side of the anchorage.

And just so you don’t think I”m over reacting and to let you know just how big this anchorage is, I measured it with google maps. And being very conservitive with the area I would consider anchorable, I came up with 116 acres. Thats a big area. Depending on wind and weather this number could grow or shrink, but it’s a fair number.

So with 116 acres of water to choose from the SS ‘No Personal Space’ comes in and drops anchor right in front of us. His stern was 50 feet from our bow. 50 feet!! 116 acres of room to anchor and 3 other boats to fuck with and he drops anchor 50 from us. Why?? It’s the equivient of going to a movie in a empty theater and having the only other person in the theater coming in and sitting right next to you.

No harm no foul guess and it’s not illegal, I just don’t know why people do it.

Anyway, after raising anchor the next morning we headed south for home. No wind at all so it was alot of motoring.

As we rounded Point No Point the Seattle Skyline came in to view. BOOOOOO! It was over. The vacation was done. We had a blast, did’nt break too much stuff and saw some freakin AWESOME sights. And learned alot about our little boat and what she can handle, and what we can handle as well.

The pictures I posted in all these updates are only a fraction of the pictures we took. Follow the links below for more pics, vids and the map of the trip.

THE END!

Next up, Underwater boat maintenance.

Posted in Adventures, Big trips, Canada Trip, CB, Maps, Palarran | 2 Comments

Big trip to Canada. Day 28-30

CB 26 October, 2008
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Friday-Sunday August 8th-10th:

As the crow flies it was over 30+ miles from Reid Harbor to Port Townsend, so the fleet was up and heading south by 5:30am. The fleet consisted of Palarran, Ghost, Pearl, two other boats in the harbor and another boat that joined us as we were passing Roche Harbor. We were all headed to Port Townsend to attend the Lats & Atts Northwest cruisers party for the weekend.

The wind was up and blowing pretty good, unfortunatly it was out of the Southeast, which was the direction we needed to go. At first we thought we would just motor into it and just get to Port Townsend, but the waves were getting pretty big and it was getting old slamming into them all morning. So we raised the sails and did what sail boats do……sail. We had a pretty good sail and some fun with a little tacking duel between us, Pearl and that last boat to join the fleet. Ghost and the other boat motored on without us.

Just as we were passing Lime Kiln Point on the southern end of San Juan Island, Pearl and the other boat took a tack out. We stayed on our tack to hug the coast of the island. Since it was taking pretty close to our rhumbline. This turned out to be the wrong thing to do. About 20 minutes later, the tide turned and the wind dropped a little and shifted and we got slowed way down and could not seem to make very good progress.

Just as the other boats sailed away from us,  a big pod of Orcas showed up. So we watched them for a bit and continued our sail south. The sun came out, the wind died around noon as we passed Smith Island, so we lowered the sails and motored for a couple more hours. We got a little more wind about an hour or so from Port Townsend so we sailed right up to the entrance of Port Hudson Marina, where the party was.

Ghost and Pearl were already there and tied up.

For what ever reason, we did not take one picture for the rest of the trip.

My buddy Dan drove up from seattle and hung out with us for the weekend, the party was a good time and we caught up with some boating friend that we only see at the party every year or only every few months.

Sunday morning was the end of the weekend and everyone was either headed home or headed north for thier summer cruise to the islands or Canada.

We finally kicked Dan’s ass off the boat and sent him on his way:

What the hell is up with that hobo looking backpack thing??

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