Port Townsend – Caro Babbo

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.

The Last Leg

Port Townsend, 2-SEP-2024 – There was heavy dew on the windows and a grey sky. I opened the companionway door to a whiteout: Cotton Candy.

I could hear women’s voices speaking, ‘‘I keep hitting the front stop and that’s never happened,’’ the voice said. I turned and looked at the water level and could see sixty yards to an eight-person rowing shell sitting, the crew talking amongst themselves. Looking toward town, there was no town, I could just make out the ferry terminal, the large boat nearest me, and the Hawaiian Chieftain at her dock. A sailboat outboard of us had her mast top anchor light lit without a boat below. The two sailboats with no anchor lights were a mystery. The fog horn of the ferry said she was in the bay on her way to the dock. After a few moments, I could see her at a right angle to me.

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.

Allegro, non-troppo

Written before the excitement, which does nothing to change the larger directions we are all chasing.

Port Townsend, 3-MAY-2023 – It’s been a heck of a year since we returned from Caro Babbo last fall.

I’m back from almost 3 weeks of bouncing around Europe seeing old true and good friends. Just before I left I started to feel the pressure of tasks to be accomplished before Caro Babbo can go in the water. I set all of that aside, other than to book my flight, then jetted around Western Europe seeing friends. It wasn’t a return to an old life, we’ve all more or less left that life. Franz, with another 10 years before he wants to call it quits, has decided he’s had enough of the newspaper industry and being a CEO. He starting a new venture with a new love and exploiting an untapped Italian market for which there are government monies looking for a place to go.

Ann is still in Paris having left Dublin 40 years ago. She’s called it quits and lives the Parisian life of leisure and magazines. Elena flew down from Moscow, she’s a travel writer, we traveled for a week around Milan and Lake Garda: travel if you can with a travel writer. I don’t need to say more.

Caro Babbo sleeps, John has nightmares

Port Townsend, WA – 14-NOV-2022 – Traveling from Homer to Port Townsend was uneventful. We’ve been flying more and more the last few years, nothing like we did before I left the workforce, but we’re probably doing over 30,000 miles a year, each.

While Homer is seeing more and more private jets as the very affluent find the next place to colonize, for Jennifer and me traveling between Homer and the lower 48 involves multi-hour layovers in Anchorage. This time we got pretty lucky. Our flight left Homer at 10:15 PM arriving in Anchorage at 11 PM with a 1 AM connection to Seattle.

Ravn Air, Dash-8, is ubiquitous these days. We fly between Anchorage and Homer on these.

We took mass transit from SeaTac to Bainbridge Island and were in Port Townsend mid-day, Labor Day Monday.

Caro Babbo now has an inverted ‘‘V’’ on her skeg, which was not there when she went in the water.

When Caro Babbo came out of the water the aft lifting strap slipped further aft. Aaron, the man running the hoist, saw this and seemed to think it was okay. He has much more experience with this than I do, and I deferred to him. This may have been a mistake, as Caro Babbo now has two lines in an inverted ‘‘V’’ on her skeg, which, when we compare photographs, we see that they were not there when she went in the water.

Count down to Homer

Port Townsend, WA, 23-Jun-2021 – In 22 days I will board a Delta Flight from SeaTac airport to Homer, Alaska changing in Anchorage. Rental cars are scarce; I will pay $125 per day for a three days rental car in Homer. In Anchorage, there are none – Jennifer and I paid $13 per day for a rental last September.

I am flying to Caro Babbo. The surge of returning has taken a long time to build in me. I once saw an interview with Norman Mailer describing the effects of using a testosterone gel. He said he hadn’t felt that way in years. Norman is long dead, but returning to Caro Babbo sharpens my senses and gives me purpose.

There is never the return to her that doesn’t have some apprehension. It is the not the uncertainty in the back of one’s mind when seeing a lover after an absence: Have things changed? Will I still be loved?

No, returning to a boat, our boat, is the apprehension of returning to a house that has been shut up: Will everything still be there? Will there be damage?

Maybe it is closer to returning to a loved exotic car. All of the above for a house, plus will it start? Can I get parts for the repairs I must make?

Unique to a boat: once I get it running, will it sink somewhere with me aboard? Will the rigging fail and Caro Babbo become dismasted?

Back in Port Towsend, so much has changed in the US

Port Townsend, WA, 1-OCT-2020 — We spent a few days sleeping aboard, winterizing Caro Babbo, then drove our rental car† back to Anchorage airport and flew to Seattle’s SEATAC.

I can’t sleep well since we have been back: anxiety dreams. Recent dreams have been about missing meetings and other things from my business life. These dreams are, instead, generally about Caro Babbo being on the hard and improperly winterized.

But, I know it is also withdrawal and the social pressures I feel being around people.

A look at bottoms: A walk through the Boat Haven yard

Boat Haven Boatyard, Port Townsend, WA, 23-JAN-2020 – Winter time in PT is quiet. The tourists haven’t arrived, the harbor at Fort Hudson is full of boats wintering over, and the Boat Haven boat yard is full of boats being worked on.

Much of the conversation we had with other sailors about our crossing contained questions about whether, and oftentimes the assumption that, we were a full keel vessel.

I’m your (almost) Captain. Goings on ashore.

Port Townsend, Wa, 18-May-2019 – Call me Almost Captain. I’ve passed all the tests, taken a Red Cross-approved first aid course, had a physical. There is only getting a TWIC card (background security check), getting a drug test and assembling 720 days of sea time, and then, with the addition of another few hundred dollars I will have a 25-ton master’s license for near coastal. Oh yeah, I also will have sailing, and assistance-towing endorsements.

This will allow me to captain, for money, power vessels up to 25 tons gross vessel weight based on volume (not displacement); the vessels will weigh, empty, much less than 25 tons. I can also master a sailing vessel of unlimited weight and get paid for towing boats that need assistance. In the US, it seems I can do all of this on non-commercial vessels, for no pay, without any license. (In other parts of the world this isn’t true: one must actually have training before doing these things.)

Back in the PNW

Back in Port Townsend, after an overnight on Caro Babbo, we return to a water leak at the PT house.

Port Townsend, WA, 30-DEC-2018 – It’s 4 am. I haven’t made the complete transition to west coast time.

It is a fitting morning to be in Port Townsend. The wind howls and buffets Jennifer’s house here, while Caro Babbo sleeps 30 miles away, across Puget Sound, safe in her slip on Lake Union