I don’t feel 40??

CB 6 July, 2007
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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.

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Do you smell smoke?

CB 14 June, 2007
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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.

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Sorry for the lack of updates lately.

CB 6 June, 2007
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I’ve not been all that extra busy at work, but I have been taking a couple classes for the last month or so and that is sorta taking up alot of free time. I have 8 weeks of these classes left and have a couple good stories that I would like to put up here. So hopefully, i”ll get off my but and write them down one of these days.

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Shitters fixed. Lets go sailing! (CB)

CB 2 May, 2007
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I’ll spare you the details of our head (toilet) repair. Just know that it is now fixed and working as it should, things go in….and stay in! Yeeaaahh!

So to celebrate we decided to get away from the dock and go for a sail. Not a big trip, just a quick trip north to Kingston. We had’nt been up there in close to a year, and it is only about 10 miles away. But since we are in the Puget Sound that ended up taking us 3+ hours. We did’nt want to turn on the engine at all, but the wind absolutly died and we had no other choice.

We were going to anchor out, but the word it that the holding in Apple Tree Cove is not so good and it very exposed. Plus the fact that we did not tow the dinghy with us, helped us make the decision that we would just go into the marina and grab a slip.

Took a quick walk into town and grabbed a burger and a beer or two at a bar called “The Filling Station”. The food was actually really good. We had never gone into this place before, for what ever reason.

We got up late the next morning hoping we would get a downwind run with the Spinnacker home, but the wind had shifted over night and was now blowing out of the southeast….Shilshole marina is exactly southeast of Kingston……Grrrr. Oh well, still had a good sail home, only had to tack 4 times. The winds were really light though.

Map there and back.

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