People – Page 2 – Caro Babbo

Ketchikan, 2024

Ketchikan Yacht Club, Ketchikan, AK, 07-AUG-2024 – The world has changed since we’ve last been here. StarLink is the major yachting change and the cities quest for more tourists is the other.

Here in Ketchikan, we’ve started speaking to the boats we’ve seen along the way. Everyone stops in Ketchikan. There are the groups that travel together, either from a yacht club, or a tour led by a manufacturer. These seem to be the normal number moving back and forth.

The power boats are oftentimes aging sailors who sold their sailboats and opted for a power boat. They seem to enjoy them. Other power boats are working people, who in years gone by could never have come here, but now with StarLink and no need to go to the office, are here. During this summer Ketchikan harbor became completely full with no slips available.

Thirteen days in Seward

Puffin Cove, 60º 11’ N 148º 20 W, 27-JUN-2024 – Tom, who so nicely pulled our mast, told me not to rush things, I’ll be in Seward for three or more weeks and he hates guys who have a date in their mind and work hard to make it. Tom was very nice loaning his building jack to raise the deck, using his bucket truck to remove the mast, and bringing me the blank RectTube to build the new compression post, but I always have a date and I work hard to make my dates.

Three weeks in a Homer Boatyard

13-MAY-2024, Northern Enterprises Boat Yard, Homer, AK – This is day nine here. Wednesday or perhaps Thursday will be two weeks.

Things are going well. Projects are being completed, or abandoned as not feasible, others defiantly refusing to behave as they have. The many packages continue to show up… some early.

30ºF -1ºC

11-MAY-2024, Northern Enterprises boat yard, Homer AK – It was thirty degrees Fahrenheit last night. The coldest it’s been since I arrived nine days ago.

I’ve been getting good, steady work done and finally decided to make a few phone calls to friends outside of Homer and one inside.

Christmas is near, Jennifer is leaving, friends are coming and I start to think about boats and boating.

Port Townsend, 8-Dec-2023 — Tuesday, I’ll go down to Gig Harbor and install two additional solar panels on John Riley’s boat, this will give 320 watts, which is roughly what I have on Caro Babbo. Instead of two one hundreds, he’ll have four fifties to aim as he wants, in addition to the 130 on the dodger. It’s cold here and cloudy, there hasn’t been any sun in a few days and his house battery has died. I’ll buy him a new deep-cycle house battery for Christmas.

It is Christmas, at least for me. I’ve started shopping…on line… and figuring out money. I’ve spent a lot more this year than I had intended. I’ve helped friends, and have family to attend to. Jennifer is off to Berlin and Flora may come to visit for a day or two (or perhaps a week or two). My stepdaughter Samantha arrives on the 21^st, with all the attendant flurry that accompanies her, as well as her boyfriend.

I’m still here

Port Townsend, WA 16-NOV-2023 – I’ve lost my sense of time: the unique feeling of how many days passed, or when something happened in the past, has left me. I attribute it to the stroke, but who knows? Like Billy Pilgrim, I’m adrift in time.

Last Week

Homer, AK, 12-Aug-2023 — lt’s dark here, it’s not night, the weather has changed, it’s blowing in Homer harbor. We’ve been up here four summers, and it’s difficult to say what typical Homer summer weather is.

The first year, 2020 was the lovely year, the year we based everything on. The next year we went to Prince William Sound, and the weather wasn’t bad, occasional storms blowing through. Year three was terrible, we sat and hid half the time. Year four we find we are tired of this: the weather hasn’t been bad, very little wind, but we find were just tired of being here.

Today it’s blowing, may be 20 in the harbor. It’s not bad. We don’t have a car this year, so we’re sort of stuck here, which isn’t bad, Jennifer and I like being together.

Allegro, non-troppo

Written before the excitement, which does nothing to change the larger directions we are all chasing.

Port Townsend, 3-MAY-2023 – It’s been a heck of a year since we returned from Caro Babbo last fall.

I’m back from almost 3 weeks of bouncing around Europe seeing old true and good friends. Just before I left I started to feel the pressure of tasks to be accomplished before Caro Babbo can go in the water. I set all of that aside, other than to book my flight, then jetted around Western Europe seeing friends. It wasn’t a return to an old life, we’ve all more or less left that life. Franz, with another 10 years before he wants to call it quits, has decided he’s had enough of the newspaper industry and being a CEO. He starting a new venture with a new love and exploiting an untapped Italian market for which there are government monies looking for a place to go.

Ann is still in Paris having left Dublin 40 years ago. She’s called it quits and lives the Parisian life of leisure and magazines. Elena flew down from Moscow, she’s a travel writer, we traveled for a week around Milan and Lake Garda: travel if you can with a travel writer. I don’t need to say more.

Fame: ‘‘Dennis and Me saw this boat on the back page of Wooden Boat Magazine…’’

After a few minutes of repeated mentions of Dennis, I asked, ‘‘Who is Dennis?’’

‘‘Dennis Conner, everyone loves Dennis.’’

I responded, ‘‘I lived in San Diego when he lost it.’’

He parried, ‘‘Won four, lost two.’’

Port Townsend, WA 14-MAR-2023 – What was unsaid, of course, was that Dennis Conner was the first American to lose the America’s Cup. It was said that the head of the first skipper to lose the Americ’s Cup Trophy would take its place at the New York Yacht Club.

A quick post, as in ‘‘Where the hell have you guys been?’’

We’re traveling by car in Baja California Sur, Mexico. I travel alone and get stuck in sand while Jennifer travels on Steve and Liz’s Amel, Aloha

Loreto, BCS, Mexico, 20-FEB-2023 – Okay, let me answer a few questions and defer any answer about why I haven’t been posting as I said I would. Well, I’ll address that here: We’ve been having a good and exciting time.

To catch everyone up: