Sit or Sail?

Ko Olina Marina, Kapolei, HI, 5-MAY-2020 – The Clash song, should I stay or should I go, always echoes in my head at times like this. We’re vacillating between leaving the boat here and sailing to Alaska. Dutch Harbor by the edge of the Aleutians to be exact. It’s potentially a bunch of weeks at sea in a weather window.*

The major question is, would we be welcome and could we sail from place to place? The answers are all over the place, changing from day to day. The kicker is how might answers change while we’re at sea for three or four weeks?

This afternoon, while mulling this over, I started to wonder about the ethics of arriving there uninvited. We know we won’t have the virus, but who would trust a stranger arriving uninvited. If we travel from place to place, could we pick the virus up and transport it?
Would we be a drain on their limited resources?

Between this morning and this afternoon, Washington State has announced they are opening parts of the personal service industry. I hope that the changing state of things will make our deliberations moot, or at least easier.

Right now we are prepping to leave in the first week in June.

If we do leave in June, we would return to Seattle in October. Or, we would leave the boat somewhere in Alaska. Our friend Wayne Haight has friends cruising in the Aleutians, so we will speak with them to learn more.

Things move forward here in Ko Olina Marina.

I spliced the tail on a new main halyard yesterday. The halyard lines came from Fisheries via Priority Mail in three days, leap frogging the box, which should be on a barge somewhere. In doing the splice, I realized that though the appearance of the splice in the original halyard was ugly, it was not serious and could have been taken care of by trimming the filaments that were being exposed as the halyard came out of the mast. I cut apart the halyard I am replacing to redo the splices. But, because the lines were used, the weaves tightened and there was not enough slack in the weaves pull the lines one inside the other to make the splice, hence, all new lines.

The days at Caro Babbo proceed quietly. I’m trying to shake them up, somehow. I need to take on and start projects. Is this a look ahead to shore-based retirement?

I am hesitant to start projects that require tearing things apart. I should have no fear, we’re not going anywhere for weeks, and yet the fear is there.

Reading still doesn’t make it as an accomplishment.

I am desperate for that box from Fisheries Supply to show up. At the end of this week, if the package has not shown up, I will reorder the few critical things I need in the order and get the single major project done: Reorganize the wires and hoses running through the bilge along with the new inlet fitting for the manual bilge pump.

Those are really the only must-do things.

Other large projects I have been hesitant to start:

• Writing – I have outlined a few boating books I should start.

What others are there that are not dependent on the Fisheries box?

• A website, I would like to start, called, Who we are? Friends from high school are coalescing on Facebook. We’re at a time in our lives where we have accomplished many things and become who we are. I correspond openly with some and stay away from politics with many others – adolescent egocentricism still yields a shock when I find not all those people share my world view. Perhaps their worldview shifted and mine did not. I like to think my beliefs and politics never really changed.

Aside from pictures of cats and kids, I know nothing about what these friends have done since highschool: their professions, their successes and what they are proud of.

• Polishing up the boat. I have a commercial buffer on board. The compounds are in the aforementioned Fisheries box.

We might start renting a car more and go places on the island now that parks are open.

Looking at the chart, the distance from here to Dutch Harbor is sobering.** For me, it is very much like climbing a mast: it isn’t how high I have climbed, it is distance yet to climb. I know we can sail there. We are prepared, we have the experience, the knowledge and the boat. It is just a matter of provisioning and getting started. And now, knowing we can move about once we get there.

We’ve started some of the prep: I’ve turned on the fee-based routing from Predict Wind. Keryn, Marleen and the rest of the crew there, together with their amazing software makes much of what we do as safe as it is.

We need to turn on a SIM for the Iridium Go. Satellite Communications is a resellers’ game of rape and pillage with outrageous contracts and crazy fees. The people at Predict Wind resell Iridium (the only real company out there with the coverage that sailors need) at reasonable prices with common sense agreements. You can’t help falling in love with these people.

I once asked the support people at Predict Wind a question about how many devices can I connect to the Iridium Go when used as a router, and whose firmware was in the device? I received a reply from Jon at Predict Wind telling me that the Iridium Go was not a router and couldn’t be used that way. I apologized and wrote that I didn’t know what to say, we have been using it as a router with seven devices connected. I expected the more American response telling me I was either wrong (i.e. I didn’t know what I was talking about), or hewing the corporate/contractual line. Instead, John asked me if I would write an article on what I am doing and the set up. I never did, and I apologize, but getting that sort of credence is so very nice.

Yes, an article on Caro Babbo’s electronics, would be a good thing to write. It is something I am often asked for and should supply.

By afternoon, we had decided to just make a decision to leave the boat here and be done with it. Early in the evening, we learned that the state of Alaska was starting to open things up, like Washington State. We’ll continue to make preparations to leave.

No prep is wasted.

Whenever we leave Hawaii, the boat needs to be prepped and little of it needs to be redone if the boat sits.

What’s happening where you are?

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*If we were to leave now, Predictwind says we’d make in two weeks.

**Actually, the same distance to Seattle.