We’re going!

Port Townsend, WA, 19-JUN-2023 –We met with my cardiologist yesterday… Yes, I’ve said it, my cardiologist. I now have a cardiologist for the rest of my life, and who knows what other doctors, but that’s the way it is. It’s better than the reverse.

…We met with my cardiologist yesterday who told me everything is fine as far as going on the boat, and getting away from things. I do have Afib, and I seem to be constantly in Afib.

I’m asymptomatic, which means I never feel the irregular heartbeat. They made me wear a heart monitor; it was quite a surprise when I got two calls from the practitioner’s office telling me I was in some sort of emergency state. I doubled up my medicine, and all seems to be fine now, as far as emergencies. Apparently, I’m on a very low dose of metoprolol, which will keep me fine. From the charts that the doctor looked at with Jennifer and me, it seems that I am in Afib constantly, with brief moments of correct rhythm. I suspect those good rhythms may disappear.

If I want to have the electronic treatment that kills whatever nerves cause this to happen I need to have it soon, but in today’s world that means probably the end of the year or the beginning of the next. So, there’s no worry about hanging out here.

The doctor feels there is no risk, so we’re going!

We’re not going far, Jennifer wants to stay close to the big cities of Homer and Kodiak. Each of which have small hospitals, and they also have access to air flights should I need to be flown out somewhere.

So, I’ve started buying the things that I had built orders for. However, I’ve only bought small orders because, one, I’m short on cash right now, and two, we’re not going to be gone long enough to really need these things. We’ll do without a second preventer, without a replacement anchor line, and without some expensive circuit breakers to replace fuses.

And, we will be alone once we’re underway. This year, we’re both looking forward to that more than almost anything else. It should be a nice trip.

The topic of the last few days here has been aligning the engine. None of the mounts I bought were necessary, and instead, I will either find some screws which make the adjustment, or I will use some shims to adjust the alignment. That was $660 returned!

We will mostly sail alone. Jennifer’s talking about stopping in various harbors for multiple days, as opposed to the one day we normally do. That will be nice, it will be different. No challenging anchorages, though challenging weather – most likely. No truly distant cities and towns where we will be one of the six or seven sailboats of the year.

This year, I think that will be nice.

One or both of my stepdaughters may come with us, we’ll see. Airfares are frightfully expensive.

A third young woman may also come. It depends on what she does with her sailboats, and she now has a job in a boatyard.

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It will be different this year, Jennifer will be with me from the get-go, as opposed to arriving after a few weeks once I have all the work done. I don’t know what she will do, but she will either be gone or perhaps doing ancillary tasks, meaning things like cleaning and varnishing. Who knows.

We’ll arrive five days after the summer solstice. It will be light from 3 AM to 11 PM. Moose will walk through the yard, which may or may not be full. Tim has just written to me telling me the escapement levels are very low, meaning there are not a lot of fish to catch. He is still in Homer when he’s normally gone multiple months by now. We’ll see.

There will be people to see, and boats sail before we get Caro Babbo in the water, if I do not work full time. I expect to work full-time until it’s done, but like all work to be done on a boat, if it goes well it takes very little time. Will the work go well? I also haven’t brought many of the ropes and fans and other things that I had planned to install, but money is tight this year and so I will not do those.

Summer will be in full swing when we arrive, meaning that not only will everything be in bloom, but the tourists will have arrived. The spit will be full of campers, the harbor will be full of pleasure boats, and we will try to fit in.

Like most places that are touristy, a day’s sail away takes one to places that are not full, like Seldovia. We will travel there, and along the way is Smugglers Cove, where we once hung out for four days. We never even went ashore or left the boat. It was lovely, though the holding was a little loose. We needed to reset the anchor a few times.

It looks like Don did not put his boat in the water this year. This is the second year I’ve known him and the second year it hasn’t gone in, so perhaps he and Brenda will come with us for a day or two. We’ll also be mailing home a lot of the blue water equipment we have with us. These are spares that we traveled with that we won’t need for the short hop sailing will do this year, and probably will not do next year.

There are places to go that are gorgeous: towering mountains sticking out of the water, real volcanoes that are still smoking, beaches with bears walking along them, and Jennifer and I alone, being who we are.