Port Townsend, WA, 15-OCT-2024 – We’re home, Jennifer, me, and Caro Babbo. Caro Babbo is floating higher on her waterline and will for the next bunch of months.
The rest of the trip was a lovely, slow trip north. The weather wasn’t bad and we got to sail on two days. In fact, it was summer (for us) with highs in the 60s every day, and occasionally reaching the seventies. Skies were often clear with light, sailable, winds.
After returning with Flora and Chris to Olympia, Jennifer and I spent the rest of the day wandering around Olympia’s antique shops, where I added to my collection of Rover Boy books… and I learned all about the author of the Nancy Drew Series. The Rover Boys, like the Hardy Boys, were written by a fictional author whose name was owned by the publisher, as was Nancy Drew. But the first 20 Nancy Drew Books were written by the same woman, Mildred Wirt Benson, who went on to write many, many YA books and worked as a reporter until the day she died, quite literally at age 97.
We made the decision to keep Caro Babbo in Olympia from fall 2025 through fall 2026, and perhaps beyond.
The return trip up was mostly motoring, following the currents northward at a reduced engine speed. We retraced our steps picking up a buoy on the west side, this time, of Eagle Island. The next night, we took a dock at Blake Island, where met Henry, a retired petroleum engineer who spends his summers and winters sailing around Puget Sound. I expect we’ll see him this winter.*
We motored out of Blake Island Marina and put up sails. The wind was directly out of the north so we beat north to Kingston. There were half a dozen or so sailboats near us across the day – a few heading north. I have no idea whether we were faster but it was a lovely sail: the wind was stable most of the day and we made near 90-degree tacks. It took a few hours longer to get to Kingston under sail, but we didn’t have anywhere to go. We filled up with fuel and ate in a restaurant with great food and a bar manager who had lived on a T-bird like Jennifer and I did.†
Jennifer commented that the best sailing is always in Puget Sound, which it generally is, but more about that in the next post.
We motored from Kingston and dropped an anchor south of the cut into Port Townsend Bay to wait for the current to change. The wind was blowing through the cut at 10-20 knots. The place Jennifer chose to anchor had very good holding. The problem was bringing up the anchor: I used my back instead of my legs and suffered the results for the next week. Sometimes I’m such an idiot.
With the anchor up, we motored through the cut and into still air. We stopped to pump out the head at the float immediately inside the harbor and then motored into our berth.
We took the next six days to mostly empty†† the boat with one very full Subaru station wagon load per day. Caro Babbo rose two inches on her water line and there are still some tools and two full water bladders in the hull, and the dinghy is on the deck. I wonder how she’ll sail when so light?
The harbor has a good number of boats but isn’t full. Most of the boats are liveaboards doing what Jennifer and I did this summer: traveling. The people I’ve met so far are predominantly young and retired(!), going to school at the wooden boat school or working in Boat Haven. There are older liveaboards, but I’ve only met one. With that single exception, the older people I’ve tried to meet haven’t been very friendly.
This past weekend the owner of the other Maxi 95 in Seattle came to spend the weekend. We didn’t go sailing, but Claire and I spent time discussing what she is doing on her boat and plans on doing. It was a great weekend.
Yesterday, I started working on Caro Babbo.
The great part about doing work this year is how close the boat is and the joy of having the boat in your own town. As I get into better shape, I’ll start riding my bike there, and it will only take fifteen minutes, as opposed to the 75 minutes it took when we lived on Mercer Island and the boat was in Lee’s Landing.
I don’t know if I’ll ever make Sunday breakfast here.
After cleaning the boat (first pass, a bunch more are needed), I installed better lighting in the basement and started in the starboard cockpit locker. The work was easy, though I find if I lay flat on my back I get vertigo. I have learned if I reverse the process of laying back, tilt my chin to my chest, and stay there for a few minutes the vertigo will pass. Life can suck.
Next, I’ll start revarnishing. I wanted to do the stove burners first, but the compressed air I ordered hasn’t arrived yet. I’ll do one piece at a time and start with the cockpit table. The stripping is easy, the elapsed time to varnish is a nuisance, but I have many boat and non-boat things to do.
I keep telling myself I’ll take a day off and do nothing, but I never make it through the day. I remember taking days off in my early twenties, but I had so much of life ahead of me then, enough to waste. I remember taking an entire Sunday off. It was so luxuriant.
While preparing large pieces to varnish, there are also many scratches and wear on doors and bulkheads that need repair and touch-up but not wholesale stripping. That is the most fun because the varnish blends and no one can tell it had ever been damaged – it also doesn’t require dismantled the boat.
Two tasks will take work: they don’t really scare me though I describe them that way. The biggest is repairing the headliner. I tend to dive in and buy what I need as I go along. But this time I want to buy the headliner material and adhesive before I start, which means that the water tank and hoses will come first.
The big news is that the bilge pump running is because of the freshwater tank. With an empty tank, the bilge pump doesn’t run. Hurray… I’ve slept poorly this summer dreaming about how I was going to solve a leaking dripless seal with the boat in the water. Now I need to get electricity for a heat gun while I remove the above-the-water-line through hull so I can remove the tank. I didn’t pay for power for Caro Babbo across the winter. I expect it is the hoses, which are original to the boat. I need to use a heat gun to get the through hull apart. And, I need to empty the port cockpit locker… I must remember to bring boxes and tape.
One last thing: I listen to books on tape, alone and with Jennifer. I’ve started the Vinyl Detective series, which teaches about early vinyl records and the recording companies. It’s fun stuff. Because of this book I’ve started listening to a pianist named Elmo Hope. He’s worth listening to.
* Henry came to PT this past weekend and took pictures in Point Hudson of a vessel for sale. If he’d moved the shot a little to the left he would have included Caro Babbo, with Jennifer and John aboard.
† Have the Cioppino, which was wonderful. Jennifer disagrees, she thought the Salmon was better but then she has terrible taste in men and seafood.
†† It will take three more days to get it completely empty. I’ll empty the rest as I need to work in those cabins and lockers.
