Chapin Bay, AK 29-JUL-2024 – We spent the last two days in Baranof Warm Springs. We’ve been there before. The town is the same, but feels spiffier, better kept and more prosperous. We knew that people generally leave the dock around 11, so we should be there around 11 to 11:30. We spent the previous night about six miles north.
Continue reading “So much has changed in five years… has it?”Blogging
Valdez/Cordova
Cordova,AK, 14-JUL-2024 – We’re still above 60º. We still haven’t officially left Prince William Sound. We’ve had a wonderful week or so in the many places in PWS. There was no wind and we didn’t even put up the mainsail to keep us from rocking: the water was generally like glass.
We motored a few hours each day, after our initial 10-hour day, when we left Valdez, and then anchor, read, sometimes row in our dinghy and do the same thing the next day.
Valdez was a very nice town. Quiet. We spent one night, went out to eat, drank beer. We arrived around noon and left the next afternoon about 2pm. OpenCPN and Navionics disagree on the tidal currents by hours. We found that it doesn’t matter, the water flows south from Port of Valdez all the time. We looked for back eddies, anything to explain it. It just does or did so on the two days we were there.
Continue reading “Valdez/Cordova”Granite Bay
Granite Bay, Prince William Sound, 29-Jun-2024 – It’s ten after eight in the evening. The sun is at 35-degrees, and the temperature is in the 70s. I’m wearing a black T-shirt, a pair of Carharts without Long Johns, and no socks. I’m sitting in the cockpit writing, while Jennifer sits across from me navigating.
For the past few years, Jennifer has taken us into places that were horizontally skinny. This year they will be vertically skinny. This means that we need to arrive within a specific time window. Tomorrow is easy, we can leave anytime and still be good leaving Granite Bay; we must arrive within a specific time window. Not too tough.
The next day we must leave within a specific time window and enter the next site also within a time window. I trust Jennifer: she counts on her fingers, but has gotten quite good at it.
Continue reading “Granite Bay”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.
Continue reading “Thirteen days in Seward”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.
Continue reading “Never say, ‘‘All is Done.’’”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.
Continue reading “Everything is done, really done. Tomorrow is Sunday.”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.
Continue reading “30ºF -1ºC”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 21st, with all the attendant flurry that accompanies her, as well as her boyfriend.
Continue reading “Christmas is near, Jennifer is leaving, friends are coming and I start to think about boats and boating.”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.
Continue reading “I’m still here”