Home Bay, AK, 27-AUG-2021 — [Flora embroiders, Jennifer reads and I write. The solar panels are producing as much power as I have seen from them. Friends text us through the Iridium-satellite soda straw. Leonard Cohen plays on a pink metallic Macbook.]
Jennifer is much more cautious about weather than in years past. The reasons may be many. This year we are coastal sailing along the rough Kenai Peninsula with less frequent and less secure hiding places. This year Jennifer’s daughter is with us; no matter the age of the child the need to protect never leaves. It has been the longest we have been off Caro Babbo and perhaps Jennifer is more timid because of that. Perhaps because we are both getting older. I wonder, if it is because of the better, more accurate and more scary weather data available: there is generally always one model that predicts doom and gloom, which is why we sit and wait for weather to pass. The models are in agreement that forty-knot winds will come by late this afternoon or tonight. There is some disagreement about whether the winds will pass over us or just south of us, but with forty knots agreed upon, I am quite happy to wait until they pass by.
In the closing days of a trip, I enjoy staying put for few days to savor dwindling time aboard, to decompress and forestall getting off the boat. Jennifer has a need to keep moving, to see and be some place new. Waiting for weather fills both our wants.
Flora, on the other hand, is someone for whom once the return journey has started, the trip is over and it is time to be home. On a five week trip, with two and half weeks out, you can guess how many weeks it takes to get back. We are taking a more direct route to leave us with a bunch of days in reserve to wait out weather or to be in anchorages close to Homer.
Flora wants to be on a dock in Homer, so she can go out and be, the truth be told, away from me.
So I am waiting, happily in a beautiful protected cove, delaying against the return home and being off the boat; Jennifer is waiting for weather to pass, and Flora can’t wait to get to a dock.
In a conversation, Flora asked, when did she say she would come for five weeks? She remembers saying she would come for a few weeks, probably leaving us in Whittier. When was that abandoned? When did she agree to five weeks? She doesn’t remember doing so, but as an idle thought, recounted how she got to where she is now. A parent wants to spend as much time with a child as she can is the answer. Leaving travel arrangements to the parent delivers a wonderful time learning so much about an adult child that no other setting can yield.
We stopped in Home Bay, where we are, on the way out. It is now a known anchorage to us with good protection from most wind and waves, especially from the north where the predicted forty knots should come.
Jennifer will read, I will write and do maintenance and reflect and make notes on changes to systems on Caro Babbo.
I’ve wanted a closed room that can be assembled over the cockpit. Not something that is up when we are underway: something that can be easily assembled for when we are at a dock or anchorage for multiple days. I have done some preliminary designs and investigated some technology, planning to build this myself. This past winter, while daydreaming* and visualizing, I realizing that it would be years before Caro Babbo would be in a place where I could do this, with the attendant trial and error, I decided would hire the construction out. (Don’t ask what this will cost.)
Morgan and Douglas, two blue water sailors we met through the community, recommended Josh in Homer, who I will use. In most situations, I completely defer to the expert I am contracting. In this instance, I have decided to be a larger part of the design and implemetation planning. We’ll see how this goes down with Josh.
Josh is recommending folding hoops on tracks that will slide in such a way they will follow the inside contour of the cockpit when the room is not assembled. It is clever and for coastal sailing will work well. It will not work for a passage. We also need to get a handle on how much space the materials will take: we need to find a place to store the room and whether the hoops can be disassembled.
I have found that I like the fibreglass tension poles that were (and possibly still are) used in tents. They are light, strong and fold into a very small space. I bought some years ago when I took my first pass at this project; they have traveled with us on board ever since. We used them in Hawaii when we set up a shade cover over the cockpit.
The mechanicals on Caro Babbo continue work without problem. The shipboard communications part of the Vesper AIS continues to vex us.
The new arrangement of the diaphram bilge pump has a wrinkle. The pumps kicks on when about 16oz (500ml) of water enters the bilge. Now, because of the changes I made, something close to that flows back when the pump stops, meaning only a small amount of additional water kicks on the pump. I deal with this currently by using the override switch to completely empty the bilge and suck air into the bilge pump hoses (Self-priming pumps have some advantages). I will reluctantly add a check valve**, if I have one on board (it may be in PT), or can find one in Homer. Otherwise, it will wait until next spring.
The list of detailed maintenance becomes more interesting as the years of owning the same boat add up. I plan to replace the bearing in the steering wheel, which is sloppy. I now have enough machine-shop experience to realize that a bearing can be replaced, generally: the difference between a software engineer (me) who learned this after retirement and a hardware engineer, my friend Erwin, for example, who has known this since high school.
Once Caro Babbo is on the hard, Jennifer and I plan to fly to Berlin for a wedding and then onto Amsterdam for a few days. Flora’s father has just canceled a european trip because of the COVID resurgence. If they will let us into the EU, Jennifer and I will go. We’ll see what happens.
Stay tuned.
Our friends, Thomas and Anja, aboard Robusta just arrived in PT. You should be able to see them AIS on the web. Please say hi if you are near by; contact them through their website, sy-robusta.ch
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* Daydreaming is one of the most important activities a human being can engage in: fact not opinion 😉
**Check valves are discouraged in bilge pumps settings: the likelihood of the valve jamming must be weighed against the badness of the water back flowing. A diaphragm pump is much less tolerant of debris than an impeller pump, so this pump has a screen to keep debris from fouling the pump (A diaphragm pump uses reed valves, which clog easily). The check valve will be between the screen and the pump, hopefully reducing the chance the the check valve can be jammed closed by debris.
The Rule-brand impeller pump higher up in the bilge has an integral joker-style check valve. Joker valves handle debris easily, which is why they are used in marine toilets. They also wear and collect salt etc, requiring their frequent replacement. Whether this is any better than a flapper-type check valve, I don’t know.
Sent from Iridium Mail & Web.
