General and Miscellaneous

Point Hudson: Caro Babbo is home for the winter

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.

So much has changed in five years… has it?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 changing

Port Townsend, 12-JUN-2023 – I’m changing. I think I’m changing back to whom I was; I am different. I know I feel the same things I used to feel, but I’m different.

Since the stroke, there have been changes in me. In the early days, the days would pass by without really an end to them. They were somehow continuous. Eventually, that stopped, but even now days don’t have the strong breaks that they used to. I seem to sleep heavier.