Sticky Docks, Stripped Screws

Lee’s Landing, Lake Union, Seattle, Wa, 7-Aug-2019 – We haven’t left on our shakedown and won’t until next week, it seems. We may instead sail around Puget sound for a bunch of days until we’re confident everything is good and then take off without coming back to the Lee’s.

Yesterday, while I worked on trim in the cabin, Harrison installed the ‘‘zinc’’ on the propeller shaft*. When he came up, he said that one of the screws that holds in the propeller shaft bearing (cutlass bearing), was hanging from the wire that keeps the screws from loosening.

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Short Update while Jennifer sleeps

Lee’s Landing, Seattle Ship Canal, 1-Aug-2019 – Jennifer is asleep; Seattle’s traffic volume across the ‘‘99’’ bridge above me rises. The sky is clear, and there are two hurricanes, Erick and Flossie headed to Hawaii.†

Sometimes it seems better to write about a task beforehand rather than during the throes of frustration during the task. Today, we install the windows.

Tasks have been going very well, all-in-all.

We finished painting the hull above the rub rail so Caro Babbo no longer has her distinctive blue livery (more about that in the footnotes*).

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Better in the living

More than a week has passed since I wrote this. Jennifer has returned to Seattle, and I have been head down working on what needs to be done before we leave and what I’d like to be done before we leave.

DL1077 ATL-SEA twenty minutes outside of Atlanta, 20-JUL-2019 – As an adult, I’ve always lived a double life, or more. A life in one city, a second or third in another. It has been a life out of a movie sometimes: I worked at a movie studio, fell for a Russian I met there and followed her to Paris; I was profiled in a magazine and worked in dozens of countries; I owned that same model sports car that James Bond drove, but it was always a life better in the telling than the living. Long distance relationships seem to be more about pain and heartbreak than anything else, life on the road is exciting and tiring and forbids other parts of life.

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I’m your (almost) Captain. Goings on ashore.

Port Townsend, Wa, 18-May-2019 – Call me Almost Captain. I’ve passed all the tests, taken a Red Cross-approved first aid course, had a physical. There is only getting a TWIC card (background security check), getting a drug test and assembling 720 days of sea time, and then, with the addition of another few hundred dollars I will have a 25-ton master’s license for near coastal. Oh yeah, I also will have sailing, and assistance-towing endorsements.

This will allow me to captain, for money, power vessels up to 25 tons gross vessel weight based on volume (not displacement); the vessels will weigh, empty, much less than 25 tons. I can also master a sailing vessel of unlimited weight and get paid for towing boats that need assistance. In the US, it seems I can do all of this on non-commercial vessels, for no pay, without any license. (In other parts of the world this isn’t true: one must actually have training before doing these things.)

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We’re going home…soon.

Decatur, GA, 7-MAR-2019 – With the Edgemont house listed, there is time to get back to life and Caro Babbo. Jennifer and I have been celebrating by seeing friends in the afternoons. Yesterday, we went to Marlay’s in Decatur and drank beer.

Lastnight, I registered for a Captain’s license course that I will start later this month. There is an irony. The course was offered in Port Townsend, while I was here in Atlanta, and now that I will be back in Port Townsend, I will take the course in Seattle, 2½ hours away. Keeping Caro Babbo on Lake Union proves itself once again, as I will be able to stay in Seattle the evenings after the class. I can also tele-attend via an internet connection from Port Townsend.

In short, it’s time to get back to the fun stuff.

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Stuck in the ATL

Decatur, GA, 23-NOV-2018 – There is no joy working on these houses. We won’t get the first two done before we head north for Christmas. Jennifer won’t be going to Berlin.

We might get one house done, the second underway, and the third, perhaps, contracted to completion before we return to Atlanta in January.

Our, well, at least my life revolves around Caro Babbo.

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The reckoning: what did we spend?

We were gone for 171 days, and spent $9400, for an average of $55 per day.

Where did the money go?

Decatur, GA, 31-OCT-2018 – For 2018, we decided to take six months for our sail to Alaska. Why? Because we could.

The trip, in my eyes, wasn’t really a trip. Looking backwards, it was just living on-the-go for six months. I’m not sure at what point something moves from being a trip into being how one is living.

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What went wrong this year?

Decatur GA, 21-OCT-2018 – A friend from Oregon told us that the only real shakedown for 3000 mile cruise is a 3000 mile cruise.* Our trip in 2016 proved his point; the list of things that broke ran three pages and almost everything on the list was my own fault.

Two years and 6000 miles later we came home from this year’s trip with no serious issues to report.

  1. 2018 was the year of leaks: there were four minor water leaks, three freshwater, one salt:
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Racor

Khutze Inlet, 27-AUG-2018 – While Jennifer sleeps, I research and fret over what to do about he junk that has accumulated in the bowl of our Racor fuel filter.

Kutze Inlet is a beautiful, big place, surrounded by mountains, with snow-cover peaks glimpsed around closer mounts. The water is flat and two water falls provide a constant aural accompaniment to the sights. Continue reading “Racor”

Water where it’s not supposed to be

Bag Harbour, Haida Gwaii, 6-JUN-2018 – It’s been raining in Haida Gwaii. As far as I can tell that’s all it does. The wind is variable: it might be good sailing wind, or 40-50 knots, which sends us and every other boat to find a safe harbor and hunker down. While in the safe harbor we use the dinghy when there are breaks in the wind.

When we first bought Caro Babbo I hadn’t considered a water maker. All the books and long-distance sailors I’d read talked about two things: a mister for rinsing after washing in salt water (everyone washed in their cockpits after stripping off their shorts or bathing suits – they don’t sail the waters we sail in*), and collecting rain water.

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