Just in case I did not quite paint a clear enough picture with my writing last month, I’ll put a couple pictures here to let you see just exactly what a boat looks like out of the water.
Here are two pictures taken after we finished all the work and got the bottom paint on:
Sorry, I neglected to take any pictures of the restroom. And as usual, there are a few more pictures here.
CB…
You know that feeling, when the wind picks up a little bit and you can hear it humming through the rigging, your boat sways just a little bit then settles back down? No? Yeah me either, or at least I’ve almost forgotten how it feels. The reason is for the last month we have had Palarran out of the water and up on stands in a boat yard. For you land lubbers, ‘yard’ does not mean a lovely lush grass covered piece of land. I means, paint and diesel stained asphalt lot.
Every 15 years or so you dirt dwellers have to put a new roof on your house, well, us water dwellers have to pull our boats out of the water every 3-4 years and get a new paint job done on the hull to keep junk from growing on it. We are doing the work ourselves, so it is taking a little longer than it would if we had paid someone to do it.
It’s not all that bad, but there are a few things that, after a month have gotten pretty annoying.
Number one being the elevation of our companionway (front door). It is now 15 feet in the air and only accessible by ladder.
Number two is we cannot use the head (bathroom) on the boat. I imagine right now your saying….”Dang, CB. That seems like it would be number one on the list!” Well, your wrong and I’ll tell you why, if you’ll stop interupting me. You see everytime someone has to use the bathroom, they have to climb down the ladder and walk across the yard to the crappy bathroom in the shop. Now, I’m not a gentle flower, but imagine if you will, a bathroom that is maintained and used by boat yard workers and diesel mechanics! Ennui!!!
Third annoyance is not being able to cook at home. Technically we could, but that would result in dirty dishes, and that means one of two options. Washing them in the sink, but since the sink drains overboard and into the yard that option is not an option. So the second and only option is to grab all the dishes and soap, toss them into a bag. Climb down the number one annoyance, walk across the yard and into the bathroom, the cleanliness of which would not be too out of place in a mexican prison, wash them, walk back across the yard and climb back up the number one annoyance…….fuck it! We just eat out, which gets old after 4 weeks, believe me.
And the forth annoyance, the gawd damn boat is not level. In the water the boat is level, it moves but it’s level. On the hard and in the stands, it is about 3 degrees out of level from front to back. Which is just enough to make me slowly slide feet first out of bed everynight.
Over the course of this month I’ve done a little study and have discovered that on a thermorest mattress with cotton sheets at a 3 degree angle it takes about 3 to 3.5 hours to slide 21 inches. As it turns out, the distance from my foot to my knee is 21 inches and since I go to bed about midnight at 3 or 3:30am, my knees reach the end of the bed and hang over. Causing much discomfort and I wake up, crawl back up the slope and go back to sleep. At 6:30 am (3 hours & 21 inches later) my knees are again at the end of the bed and it’s time to get up for work.
I’m sure there are a few people reading this that might state that a crappy nights sleep should be ranked higher that number 4 on this list. I’m now going to explain why I rank it lower as it does have one redeming quality.
When I get home from work, I drop my stuff (much to the displeasure of Tawn) in the order of how likely I’m going to need them for the rest of the night. Keys, wallet, cell phone? I’m at home. Don’t need them, so they are first to be dropped, usually right at the Nav station (desk). Shoes, socks? Kicked off next, right by the galley (Kitchen) sink. I’m now in front of the TV/Xbox360, might as well loose the pants. By the time midnight rolls around, I”m down to boxers and a t-shirt. Time for beddy-bye. (Begin annoyance number 4 sequence)
I’m not a morning person. I hate them, and as such, I tend to run on auto pilot for a solid 30 minutes after waking up. So as it turns out having the companionway (front door) 3 degrees downhill from the bed in this one instance is a good thing.
Assisted by gravity, I slowly stumble down the 3 degree slope grabbing clothes, shoes, cell phone, keys…etc, and whatever else I need for the day. All of which as I explained in the paragraph above has been ingenously (Tawn has another word for it) laid out the night before for me on my way to the compainionway. I’ve now got a slight bit of momentum built up from the stumble downhill, which carries me up the steps to the cockpit, then down the number one annoyance, across the yard to the number two annoyance, which coincidentally and comedically typically results in another form of number 2 :P and on to work, which technically could be considered the real number 1 annoyance, but won’t be for the sake of this story.
But if all goes as planned, we should be back in the water and back to “normal” tuesday of next week.
To pick up where we left off in the last post, we had left Poulsbo on Sunday morning around 8:30am. This would get us through Agate Passage with a following tide and that tide should carry us most of the way to Port Townsend. The original plan was to continue all the way up to Garrision Bay on San Juan Island in one long day. But there was no wind and the tides worked against us a little, so we decided to stop in Port Townsend on Sunday night. We stayed in Boat Haven Marina and walked into town for a pizza. (Guess, what Cleve likes Olives now!)
This is the Port Townsend Water front:
We got up early the next morning and continued the trek north. About half way across the straights of Jaun De Fuca we spotted a friends boat “Gaucho”, he did not see us until I phoned him and got his attention.
Being that it is August there is typically no wind in the San Juans. Today be no exception. We motored almost the entire way. A little sailing early in the AM and a few miles in the Afternoon. We gave up sailing just south of Lime Kiln Point and motored the rest of the way to Garrison bay and dropped anchor. The anchorage was a little more crowded that I thougth it would be, but not too bad.
Hiked around on shore and checked out Britsh Camp, site of famous or not so famous “Pig War”. Which arose way back in the day (1859) between the US and Britian over a border dispute. It got started by an american farmer shooting a british farmers pig on the island. Read all about here if you’d like: Pig War on WikiPedia
We also dinghied over to Roche Harbor for a stroll around and to stretch our legs, and to prove it, Tawn took a picture of me and Cleve walking. The columns in the picture are of some old ass millionaire idea of a picnic area or something?? It’s called The Mousolium…whatever:
The next day found us on Stuart Island, on a mooring ball in Ried Harbor. The main attraction of Stuart Island is the Turn Point Light house. It’s a 2 or 3 mile hike from the anchorage. We made Cleve do it anyway. :) So much for tough wanna be Marine! :P
We left Stuart island and headed for Tawn’s favorite anchorage in the San Juans. Blind Bay, which is on Shaw Island. This is the site of the famous A.R.E, in which Me, Scotty, Dave and Rich dove to retrieve Scotty’s stuck anchor from last years trip. Me and Tawn also did a dive on the same boat this time as well:
We also took some picutres underwater as well, but have not gotten those developed yet.
Blind bay is also the site of me and Tawn’s favorite vacation tradition. Sitting at the mouth of the bay is a small island, Blind Island. The tradition is simple enough but fun. First you have to have set out the crab traps and have caught a crab or two. Once the crab is caught, we dinghy ashore with booze and the makings for a Low country Boil and a large pot to cook it all in.
Eat your crab and enjoy the sunset:
We spent the next night tied to one of the Mooring balls at Rosario resort. This was pretty fun. The resort is an old school resort, it totally reminds me of the resort in Dirty Dancing. I kept expecting to see Patrick Swayze and Baby practicing somewhere. Never did though, and remember “NOBODY puts Baby in a corner!”. We made good use of the Swimming pools, hottubs and bar while we where there.
Here is a really bad picture of the resort:
The next 2 days we spent at Sucia Island. This is in our opinion the best spot in all of the San Juans. It’s remote, no one around. Cool hiking, camping and fishing. We did lose one of our crabpots though. That sorta sucked. We hiked all over the island and caught some rock fish for dinner one night. Actually, Cleve caught them. I did’nt catch anything.
We decided to give Cleve a break and head back to Friday harbor for some civilization. We tied up in front of the customs dock and they let us stay there for the night. We checked out the town, at some chinese food, and went to a movie. The next day was an early one, due to the long trip we had planned and we wanted to time the tides right.
With absolutly on wind we left Friday harbor around 7am and motored all they way back to Port Ludlow where we anchored for the night. Port Ludlow is boring! Very boring…not sure why everyone always raves about it? Not that I don’t mind a nice chilled out anchorage, but I’ve always heard from my boating friends that Port Ludlow is a great place to go and lots to do there. It was very scenic, except for all the apartment complexes on shore, but there was nothing on shore to do, maybe we missed something? Not sure, probably won’t go back to find out. Of course, I say the same thing about Mackaye Harbor on Lopez Island as well. It’s a nice place but nothing to do and I won’t go back. When in reality, both of these harbors are actually pretty cool places, but both have the unfortunate honor of being the last place we stopped on our last night of vacation. This seems to leave a stink on a place for me.
Anyway, as we were on the last leg home and only a few miles from the marina, I spotted our friends Bob, Sheri and thier girls (and Tabor). They had been using our slip for the last couple weeks and were headed north for a month on their own vacation. We bobbed in the middle of the sound for a few minutes and caught up, then they headed north and us south to home.
BOO! The End.
Oh and as usual, i’ve include a crappy little map of the trip.
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:
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:
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!
“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.
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