johnjuliano – Page 2

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.

Never say, ‘‘All is Done.’’

Seward, AK 18-JUN-2024 – Monday, or whatever the next day was that we left, things took an immediate left turn when the V-Belt on the water pump disintegrated. The light on the instrument panel for Electric came on. No alarm, but there it was. It would overheat next.

We opened the table to look at the engine. There was the belt completely off and lying there. I had two more belts in a white envelope on the settee, so I opened the package and put the belt on.

I should have foreseen this. The belts I’ve been buying are not metric. The V on the pulley in cross section is deeper than the belt. I need to tighten the belt after a few hours and I did not. I replaced the belt and made a note to check it when we stopped again. Jennifer pointed out I should check the impeller belt as well, even though it should have the correct V. That night I checked and both were loose. I tightened each and all is good.

Everything is done, really done. Tomorrow is Sunday.

Home Cove, Nuka Passage, AK, 9-JUN-2024 – Another Saturday night and I’ve been working on things that don’t work well and I am completely finished. I’ll take tomorrow off, I tell Jennifer. We’ll relax, I’ll cook, we’ll listen to books and watch movies.

It is the sixth Sunday I’ve been in AK and all is finished.

I had thought everything was finished when the boat went in the water, but it overheated on the way to the harbor. There was a nice breeze, so we put up the sails and sailed the five miles. It was a nice sail, the engine cooled and we managed to make it in to the harbor, find a fishing boat to raft up to and then disassemble the exhaust elbow and clean out the clog: a piece of rust in the hole the salt water enters the exhaust elbow. That’s done, we’re done.

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.

You and me riding somewhere, going nowhere….

Port Chatham, AK, 2-aug-2023 – We’re two days from Homer, nine hours sailing to be exact but we’ll stop in Seldovia for a day. There’s unlimited internet there, some restaurants, and a place to stop. We found we haven’t enjoyed this trip as much as others. We’re not entirely sure why, perhaps because we’ve done this part of Alaska for three years now and this is enough.Perhaps it is something to do with my stroke. Jennifer brought me here to get me out of the house to do things that I was familiar with. It was a very nice thing to do and these are things that I am familiar with and that came back to me easily.The weather here has been mostly no wind. The last three days, it is turning into summer weather and perhaps we will now be upset that we returned.

We sailed across the Barren Islands to get from Shuyak Island to the mainland where Port Chatham is. The weather is good for the first time in a while, not blowing hard and not dead calm. It was probably 15 knots in the morning and we sailed as far as the Barren Islands before the wind stopped. Continue reading “You and me riding somewhere, going nowhere….”

The raven calls

Blue Fox Bay, Afognak Island, AK — 18-Jul-2023 — The raven call is deep, dark, and humorous. It is the mad joker. Oftentimes, there are groups of them calling back and forth. Today, in the cherry-fruit of this labyrinth of water we are in, a single Raven calls from the west end over a stand of trees. I can’t see him, just hear him, alone.

We feel like we’re far away from things here. We’re not. Boats pass by outside of our sight, not often but they do. We keep the radio on 24 hours a day to channel 16. Once a day, sometimes less, we hear chatter. Generally, too far away for us to hear all of it, and never both sides of it, just the Coast Guard asking for latitude and longitude and how they will get a vessel to the caller. Rarely, we will hear two vessels passing by calling to each other.

Yesterday, for the first time ever, we downloaded a weather report about the clouds. It has been so dark here that we wanted to learn whether will it stay dark forever? The report is, no, not always, but the light will not lift for an entire day, just whisps of sunlight passing overhead, perhaps with lessened humidity, enough to, perhaps, dry out the boat. Continue reading “The raven calls”