Outfitting - Chartplotter

You probably figured out already from the autopilot post that we're pretty much doing all Raymarine, all the time on this boat. The chartplotter and radar are no exceptions; we went with the Raymarine C80 plotter and 2Kw radome combination, with the Raystar 125 GPS antenna for GPS integration.

Installation of the chartplotter component was a breeze. I went against conventional wisdom and installed it on the cabin-top beneath the dodger rather than at the helm station, based partly on a desire to have it relatively central to the batteries and subordinate components and partly on my reading of some of the design philosophies espoused by Beth Leonard and Evans Starzinger. We don't have a hard dodger, of course, but it is notably less fatiguing to keep watch under our dodger instead of out in the weather at the helm. Also, the distance from wheel to cabin-top is sufficiently short that the plotter can still be read from the helm position. Due to the integration of autopilot and plotter, you can effectively steer the boat from the protection of the dodger simply by inputting waypoint orders right on the chart.

For ease of use, then, I mounted the plotter on a "lazy susan" type of arrangement screwed into an empty winch hardpoint on the cabin top, so it can be swiveled to face either the helm, or someone sitting under the protection of the dodger. Originally I made this out of plywood until we decided that it would work out alright, and since have replaced it with sturdier starboard. I'll also thru-bolt rather than screw it down; didn't have time last weekend but it was on my list and I'll definitely do so before we risk the swells in the Strait.

I punched a hole in the cabintop just forward of the mount and ran all the necessary cabling down through that. Although it's under the dodger and out of the weather, I'll probably seal it somehow before we leave. I had no trouble at all tying in to the existing SeaTalk data network already running with the autopilot and depth-sounder. I did not, however, like the odd little cable connectors Raymarine supplied for the raw wire ends... they are difficult to use and strike me as unreliable. I'll probably go back and crimp everything off properly with heat-shrink butt connectors at some point.

We mounted the mushroom-shaped GPS antenna at the port grab rail just forward of the dodger. It's unlikely to get stepped on there, it's close to the plotter for a short wire run, and it's somewhat protected by the dodger. Initially we just strapped it to the rail, again making sure that it would work properly before making a more permanent fixture, but have since mounted it on a short post glued to the deck and further strapped to the rail. That's actually not all that permanent either; I guess I am still considering moving it either under the dodger or up onto the frame somehow.

Of course the first run out after we installed the chartplotter, we ran into heavy fog almost all the way up and back to Port Townsend. Now that we have completed the radar installation, I'm sure we'll never see another whisp. Nonetheless, the plotter was very useful keeping us on course and out of trouble in the weather, and the autopilot integration was terrific; people often complain that autopilots lead to people booming around at full speed not paying any attention to where they are going, but we found that it actually gave us a lot more freedom to keep a good watch, as we had to pay less attention to steering and navigating.

Autopilot Problems

Our S1 Wheelpilot autopilot went on the fritz on the way up from Seattle to Port Hadlock, as noted here previously. The compass wouldn't track as the boat heading changed, an issue which manifested itself in gradual course changes off the designated heading, followed by sudden corrections in the wrong direction at odd times. It wasn't a big deal to hand steer and we had other things going on so I didn't mess with it on that leg of the trip, but I decided to look at it Friday morning as we were taking the boat over to Port Townsend for the haul-out. I had checked Raymarine's support website before we left, and found an advanced diagnostic for the sort of issues we were having.

I pulled out the multi-meter and checked the wire pairs for the impedance values specified in the diagnostic document, and sure enough, on one of them the measurement was four ohms above tolerance--probably a short. I re-swung the compass anyway, just to give it a shot, but when we tried the AP on the way to the boat yard it had the same issues.

I called Raymarine tech support while we were waiting for the lift. The guy listened to my explanation and the results, then told me to take the compass itself apart and measure the impedance values internally; if they were still high, the compass was probably bad and should be returned, otherwise it was a wiring problem.

So I took the compass head apart and measured the values on the wire pair again and got a reading not described anywhere or by anyone. I called Raymarine back, got another tech who told me the values were whacky and I should probably send the thing back in. This was not exactly music to my ears, since their turnaround time probably wouldn't get us the component back before we were due to leave. I had absolutely no excitement about hand-steering both ways to Alaska and back (Mandy didn't seem to mind, though... I think she hasn't had to do it enough).

But I thought about it a bit after I hung up with the tech, and the readings started to make sense--they were lower than the spec, but that made sense because I was measuring inside the compass, not across the wire. So for the heck of it, I went back and measured at the wire ends to the computer again... and the value now was dead-on what it was supposed to be.

All I had done was take apart the compass head, but apparently that did it. I'm still a little worried there is a short in it somewhere but it will be hard to tell unless it has problems again. After we got it back in the water and headed back to Hadlock, I tried it again. On the first try, it gave me the disturbing message "NO RUDDER" but I was pretty sure that I did have a rudder, since we were able to steer and all. I was worried the rudder sensor had somehow been damaged, but then realized it was more likely that I had disturbed the sensor wiring at the computer when I was messing around with the compass wires. I cycled the system off, checked the connections, turned it back on and got a good AUTO function when I tried it next. After that, it held a course all the way down the bay, no problem.

And also the girls...

Oops... I see that among her other thank-you notes, Mandy has inadvertently excluded "the girls," Ed and Terry's pugs Thelma and Louise. While they provided little assistance either at the boat, or at the house, or in fact anywhere at all, they did quite reliably provide us with various amusing vignettes such as this:

...on quite a regular basis. For which we must thank and appreciate them as well as our two-legged helpers.

Special thanks to the Graebels, Mrs. Moon, Mr. Frye, Matt, Lindsay, and Luke

We wanted to give a special call-out to those who helped so much this weekend up in Port Townsend.

Thanks to Scott and Linda for graciously allowing us all to raid your house, even though you weren't there. We certainly missed you both. It seemed almost mean to be at the Port of Port Townsend when Scott was out of town! Thanks also for getting the bouy in the water so we could leave the boat up there until we leave in May.

Mr. Frye, thanks for getting there at the precise moment necessary to grab a paint roller and start working upside down so I (Mandy) didn't have to. After sanding the hull, I was happy to be right-side up. Thanks also for helping with the portlights (yes, Scott finished the caulking around the screws). And thanks for hoisting Scott's butt up the mast. Lord knows I couldn't have done it. And my weak little fingers couldn't have gotten the rivets in either, so the Raydome couldn't have gotten finished without you and Matt.

Mrs. Moon, I think it was knowing that you were going to be there cooking that got the rest of us excited to go! We all always love the food, but I am especially grateful that your magic got that rope out of the bottom of the mast so we could run the electrical wires up it. Yay for the girls!

Matt, thanks for your willingness to do whatever we asked you to, for always lightening the mood, for also getting Scott's butt up the mast, and for coming back to the Graebel's on the boat with Scott once the boat was back in the water. And seriously, the portlight was already cracked before you were pulling it out, so stop worrying about it already.

Lindsay, thanks for driving around Port Townsend looking for a new portlight for us. That saved us a lot of time for sure! And thanks for bringing Luke up and spending the weekend with us all. Your company is always enjoyed, and I am always inspired by you.

And, of course, Luke. Thanks for your fascinating linguistic capabilities and for just being a great little two-year-old. I was entranced with how many different ways you could come up with to say, "Scott". You're a lucky kid to have such great parents, and they are lucky parents to have such a great kid. Scott and I are lucky to know all of you.

We probably won't have many chances to write mushy sentiments like this, so I wanted to make sure I took this opportunity to express our gratitude. Thank you so much, all of you!

Outfitting - A Boat Out of Water - Part Two

The long, hard weekend haul-out is done and we are back home for two weeks while the boat sits on the buoy up north, bottom freshly painted and pristine.

There were no major problems and parts of the weekend were actually kind of fun, but we're wicked tired tonight.

We were scheduled to have the boat lifted at the Port of Port Townsend's Shipyard at 12:30PM on Friday. We had to motor up from the south end of the bay, and I wanted to spend a little time troubleshooting some ugly autopilot problems which had reared their head on the way up from Seattle, so we left a little early... around 8:30AM. After messing about with the autopilot (another post on that later), we headed to the Boat Haven at the north end of the bay.

We tied up at the lift staging area and checked in at the yard office. Since we were early, they offered to pick us as soon as they were ready next--almost an hour early. We jumped at the chance for more time on the hard: the yard costs for your first and last day are waived, so we had booked back to back lift and drop days to save money. Every extra minute out of the water had value.

The yard staff were great. They asked a bit about our hull configuration, looked at some pictures we had from the inspection haul-out (and shook their heads--apparently it was done extremely poorly by the yard in Seattle, which made sense to me when they explained why), and then went and got their travel-lift. They waved us forward into the U-shaped dock the lift sits over and jockeyed us into position over the straps quickly and competently. We were up and out of the water in no time and after a quick pause at dock level so we could hop off, the boat was trundling through the yard in the slings.

We got a half-hour (more like forty-five minutes; it was their lunch break) in the washdown facility and we used the pressure sprayers to blast a couple years worth of Lake Union slime off the hull. I was a little worried as we did; it was nice to get the thing clean, but the sprayers were taking off paint down to the glass in some places... not a good sign. But all the slime came off, and the lift moved the boat over to our tarps and the yard crew blocked it up. They eyeball everything but they've done it so often that, although playful, the operation is safe and the result solid as a rock. They put wood blocks under the keel and fore and aft, and then adjustable pads to either side to steady the whole thing. When it's all done, it's sturdy enough to walk on. We walked over to Sea J's for some lunch while they were finished up.

When the yard crew was done, we (only Mandy and I at that point; all our help was coming up later in the day) immediately started sanding. Something to watch for on fiberglass hulls is something called blistering--water intrusion into the gelcoat and fiberglass laminate which comprise the hull. Although most glass boats experience this to some degree and in many cases it's a strictly cosmetic issue, at worst it can dramatically delaminate the hull and hurt the structural integrity of the vessel. The surveyor had pointed some of this out when the boat was hauled out for the pre-purchase inspection and so I looked for it now. Fortunately, there was nothing worse visible now than then. We were only sanding enough to rough up the surface for the next coat, not to take it all the way down, so it went quickly.

Something we did find that was a problem was a long crack at the front of the keel, where the lead meets the fiberglass hull. This sort of thing is not unheard of on older boats (it's so common on a certain era of Catalina 30's that it's known as the "Catalina Smile") and although it seemed to indicate that the keel was falling off, I wasn't actually too worried--I check the keel bolts regularly and there's been no sign of movement, and the keel didn't budge when pushed, so it seemed mostly to be an issue with the paint cracking off. I decided to patch it with some epoxy and shredded fiberglass and then paint it again (you can see the patch job to the right on this photo).

Mandy actually ended up doing most of the sanding, since I had to run over to West Marine for some rags and resin. We were able to start painting within a couple hours of the haul-out, much better than we had expected, and important to give the paint some good drying time.

It doesn't really take all that long to paint a boat. Other than some tricky bits around thru-hulls and the prop shaft, it's all long, unobstructed surface. The paint is some nasty stuff--we used Pettit Unepoxy, a hard bottom paint (hard meaning it stays on--some marine bottom paints are ablative, designed to flake off as crap attaches to keep the bottom smooth) and it's a bear to mix properly. The stuff has heavy metals in it as the active ingredient to prevent marine life from taking up residence, so you have to re-stir it frequently as you work. We used rollers to put it on and it went on thick and fast.

Our work crew showed up when we were about half done--Ed and Terry took off work early and showed up around 4:00PM. Ed took over painting and Terry gave me a lift back to my parent's place so I could pick up our truck with the additional supplies in it. As it happened, we didn't need most of what I brought... the painting was pretty much done when I got back. We finished up and called it a night.

Matt, Lindsay, and Luke showed up later in the evening and Terry fed us a fabulous dinner.

We headed back to the yard early on Saturday and did some touch up work on the paint and some other random bottom work (cleaning the knot log impeller, replacing the propeller shaft zinc) but the big focus of the day was getting the radome mounted and other topside work done. It's much easier, we've found, to work up the mast when the boat isn't wobbling around below. Actually, even on solid ground it's a little wobbly up there, but it's better than doing it on the water. Mandy and I took turns getting hoisted up and riveting the mount on, bolting the radome to it, and hooking everything together. Below, we had Matt and Ed working on caulking, while Terry made provisioning runs, and Luke and Lindsay went hunting for a new portlight (the old one having been snapped in two during caulking operations).

I'll put another post up dealing with the radome mounting, since it was a project in and of itself, but we finished it up about an hour before we were scheduled to get picked up again.

After the yard crew brought the travel lift over and hoisted us off the blocks, we made a hurried round of sanding and touch-ups to get the bottom of the keel and areas covered up by the blocking. It didn't get a lot of dry time but they were small patches so hopefully it was enough.

They put us back in the water with no problems. The crane operator asked me right after I went back in if I wanted to check my bilge, if I'd done any thru-hull work or similar, before the slings came off--apparently it's not all that uncommon that people will have taken apart thru-hulls and reassembled them improperly and find a geyser down below as soon as they get back in the water. I hadn't messed with any of the holes in the bottom, however, so I just backed out and tied up at the staging float so we could load all our food and gear. Matt and I hauled it all down to the float and onto the boat (minus one can of corn, which "sleeps with the fishes" now). I also filled the water tank up, cleared the deck up as best I could, and then we headed south for the mooring while Mandy drove the truck back.

Terry made another great dinner and we all went to bed early and exhausted.

I spent the day today organizing and stowing all the food and junk we loaded aboard, and got probably 90% of it done. All things considered, we got less done than I had hoped, but all the important stuff is out of the way. Still, we'll probably need a day or so to take care of other odd jobs before I'll be comfortable taking her across the Strait.

We really want to thank Ed and Terry, and Matt and Lindsay for taking the time to come all the way up this weekend; we never would have got through everything that we did without them, and even if we had, it wouldn't have been nearly as much fun. Thanks!

On the ball in Hadlock

Well, we made it to Port Hadlock in one piece after a couple of rather trying days. The boat is on the bouy out in front of my folk's place; Port Townsend is the hill across the bay, and the crane at center right is Naval Magazine Indian Island. There's a designated foul weather explosives anchorage just off the piers there... there are frequent jokes in the family about the likelihood of being on the receiving end of various terrorist and/or missile threats as a result, but in fact the base is a pretty sleepy place.

We had a heck of a time getting out of the marina on Tuesday. I replaced both our fuel filters, bled the engine, and started it up to warm up... whereupon it promptly quit after about two minutes. I bled it again, blew out the injectors, checked the fuel flow, etc, etc, to no effect. Finally, Bobby, one of our helpful neighbors (and former diesel mechanic), came over and took a look. He said it looked like air in the lines to him, so we kept cranking and bleeding, and sure enough, it fired up eventually. It bothers me that I can't always tell what the problem is. Marine diesels are simple things, but after bleeding it and changing the filters multiple times (expensive filters!) I would have sworn that it was something other than air in the system. But Bobby immediately ruled out compression problems just by listening, and bled it out differently that I had, and that took care of it. One more technique for the toolbox, I guess.

I got a lot more intimate with the engine after we tied up at Shilshole for the night. While Mandy went to work, I went into preventive maintenance mode, changing the transmission fluid out, replacing the engine zincs, and replacing the impeller. The zincs and impeller were all in bad shape, so I'm glad I got to them. I had a whole other list of things to do but ran out of time... maybe this weekend.

I was a little sad to leave Lake Union for probably the last time; Commercial Marina is conveniently located and chock full of friendly people and knowledgeable sailors. We've learned a lot from them and have always felt safe with the boat there. We're on the list for a slip at Shilshole, though, and hopefully it will be open by the time we get back (was supposed to be open in March! popular place). We're sick of having to get through two bridges and the locks every time we want to sail someplace, though. I have always waved at the bridge tenders as we've gone through before, on the theory that they would be more inclined to open fast for us the next time if we were friendly; this time, the last time, I had to suppress and impulse to flip them all off as we passed by. Bridge tenders in Seattle have been a mixed bag; Fremont is usually friendly and fast, Ballard slow and obnoxious, and the railroad bridge... well, they are a bit of a mystery there. Anyway, I'm happy to be done with them, and the locks as well. I don't mind locking through so much, but in the summer it's a drag, and it's always fraught with potential for problems--odd currents, other boats in close proximity, and a lot of eyes on you increase tension considerably.

After all that, we had quite a nice sail up to Port Hadlock. We had south and east winds the whole way and a nice ebb tide to ride and made good time--about eight hours. The autopilot went goofy on us after about the first hour--I think the fluxgate compass needs to be recalibrated, or the connections are loose, or it's shot--but steering was easy in 5-10 knot winds. During the last reach south of Marrowstone Island, the wind kicked up to about 20-25 knots and we almost got to make the rare passage of the Port Townsend canal under sail. Rare because you need a brisk wind out of the north or south, a favorable turn of the tide, and some luck to have room to manuever. The channel is narrow and the currents strong, but we had a good strong southerly behind us and had a shot. The current, however, was such that we made it about to the south breakwater and ended up basically stalled out--our five knots under main alone (I had furled the genoa as it was just being masked anyway) held us about steady in the channel, but couldn't put us under the bridge. We fell off, dropped the main, and motored through as usual. Maybe next time.

A different kind of cruising

Had this bad boy tied up behind us at Shilshole when we spent the night there the other night. I hadn't really noticed it much until after dark... then the neon logo lit up and you couldn't help but notice.

She also had more wireless access points aboard than I have in my home. All secured, more power to 'em. Still... the whole thing represents a cruising experience utterly foreign to ours. I go aboard these yachts at the boat show and it's like being in a mansion. I can't tell if I would like that more or less than our cramped little diesel-smelling 33 footer. Luxury is nice, sure, but I wonder sometimes if the lack of it is more the point on some sorts of trips.

Freaking out? Who is?

Scott says I'm freaking out too much to write a blog entry. Actually, I'm just not very good at it, so I don't really like to do it. But, since I have Internet tonight from here at work, and he doesn't from where he is (Shilshole Bay Marina), I thought I'd send a quick post. After a couple of hours of engine difficulties today, we pulled out of the slip that had been Insegrevious's home for the past 3 years and motored her (Scott says for the last time EVER) under the Fremont Bridge, then under the Ballard Bridge, then through the locks, then under the train bridge (yes, we need to open all of the bridges, or rather, wait for all of them to open) and out into the Puget Sound salt water.

Tomorrow we will sail to Port Hadlock and anchor at the Graebel's until the Friday haul-out for the hull painting.

And I can safely say that Scott is considerably more freaked out than I am. He just doesn't show it in writing. It's part of his charm.

For those of you wondering what the engine difficulties were, it seems there was again air hiding in the depths of the fuel lines, somewhere beyond the bleeder bolts. Former neighbor Bobbie knew some advanced-level diesel maintenance tricks (meaning something more than our meager knowledge) to remove the air and make her start right up again. I'm gonna miss those neighbors! Good people, all of them.

For all of you DYING to know how I installed the new holding tank, I promise an annotated blog entry will boringly detail it in the future. Oh, but we did try pumping some (clean) water from the toilet to the holding tank today, at it seemed to work exactly as it was supposed to. Thank God that project is finished!

The Log

I suppose it's a little grandiose to call a logbook for a 33 foot sailboat a "Ship's Log" but we need a little puffery to have enough confidence to go out and dodge freighters, ferries, and crazed sportsfishermen.

Mandy designed a custom passage log format for us and had it printed and bound. We just got it today and it looks good. She's too freaked out right now to write anything for the blog, but maybe she'll talk about how she did it at some point.

Keeping a log is one of those finer points of seamanship which seems to find little agreement in the sailing community. Some sailors keep logs religiously; others not at all. There is no legal requirement to do so on small, non-commercial vessels, and with the advent of chartplotters and other modern devices there seems less and less practical reason to do so. Anyone can look and see what the weather was at practically any position for any time and date from recent years. Memories of trips are increasingly to be found in home videos or digital photos.

Indeed, opinions vary widely on what should be kept in a ship's log even if one is kept. Some people simply log their mileage or engine hours, or jot a note or two indicating where they've been on a day sail and who was along. Others follow a more traditional format with hourly notations of position, wind and sea state, course, speed, and the like. There are also different sorts of logs; the above comprises a sailing log, but it's equally valuable to keep a log of maintenance activities, fueling, or stores.

It may be that I am among those predisposed to keep a log by my childhood exposure to my grandfather's meticulous record-keeping for his automobiles. At every fuel stop, he'd get back in the truck or camper and carefully note his mileage, the amount of fuel taken on, and miles used per gallon since the last fill-up.

So I have kept a combined logbook since we have had the boat, tracking both our sailing and maintenance activities. It has been somewhat unsatisfactory, however, in that it is difficult to find items of either category when one wishes to refer back to them.

So now that I have this fancy sailing log, with a page for each day and a line for each hour, I'll be able to track our passages in it and save my "Captain's" log for maintenance and other items of interest.

Obligatory Costco shot

Doesn't look like much, does it? But I stopped buying stuff when it looked like we might run out of room. We basically filled up a regular-size shopping cart. That doesn't seem like much for two months, and it isn't; we'll have to reprovision along the way, which was always the plan for fresh items anyway.

We came in a bit under budget, which was nice, but on the other hand we didn't get everything that was on the list (or at least not in the quantities planned). On the other other hand, we got a number of things to sate our painting crew this weekend which weren't originally on the list, and for them we got the good stuff. So on the whole I would say that we did pretty well.

Time slipping

It's been a moderately eventful weekend here as we realized, probably sometime Friday, that there is still quite an awful lot of stuff to do and not enough time to do it in before we depart for Port Townsend next week.

Friday was off to a bad start; we'd planned to work on the boat all day but I was called away early to deal with a problem for a client. When I got to the boat, the stove was out of service again and Mandy wasn't able to get the head bolted back together and things were a bit of a mess. Rather than working on the wiring that I had planned on, and getting ready to complete the radome installation, we ended up working on everything else that had gotten out of order.

Saturday, when we had planned to finish the radome, there were thundershowers in the forecast, and I wasn't putting anyone up the mast with the possibility of lightning around. Then, Mandy started feeling sick, so I went by myself and did the wiring, at least.

Today we went shopping and got most of the hardware purchases out of the way. Monday is likely going to be devoted to work. Tuesday we have to take the boat as far as Shilshole, so we can get a 6AM start and catch a favorable ebb up the Sound. The forecast, at least, has turned in our favor (sort of): from a relatively benign forecast of sun and north winds, a low is supposed to be coming up from Oregon. While this may bring in more rain and bluster than we would have liked, it will also provide a nice brisk tailwind, which will be a lot faster for us than beating up the Strait, and much less likely to raise the sort of rough seas in the Inlet that a north/northwest wind often does on the ebb.

I doubt at this point we'll get the radar working before we go to Port Townsend, but we will have some more hands available up there which might make it go faster anyway. There are a host of other small tasks which I also hope to leverage our workforce on next weekend beyond just painting, since after that we'll be in Seattle and the boat in Port Townsend and there will be no further opportunity to tinker on it for an afternoon.

And although Mandy has to work Tuesday night, I'll have the day to work on it out at Shilshole; I planned to use the opportunity, with the engine warmed up, to change the impeller, the transmission fluid, and the zincs, but that shouldn't take all day so I can get a few other things crossed off the list as well.

On the whole, however, I'm feeling very poorly prepared to make the move. I'm hoping that week or two without the boat around will make it easier to get the rest of life in order to be gone for a couple of months.

Superstition

Mandy wants to put the new mainsail on for our trip up to Port Townsend next week. I told her I didn't want to; the last time we went up Admiralty Inlet we blew out our headsail and had to get a new one. I told her that through the immutable laws of the sea, we owed the Inlet a shredded mainsail now as well, and if we had to pay that price, I'd prefer not to do it with a new one, or at least not until we're on our way back, not our way up.

She asked me where exactly that law was written and I told her I thought it was in Chapman's somewhere and if she didn't remember coming across it, then it was only because she hadn't been doing her homework.

Sails and charts showed up today

Our new mainsail and the remaining charts for our route showed up today. I hardly even noticed; I was working in my basement office when an e-mail popped up, claiming that the chart order I had put in last week had been delivered at 2:37PM.

"What nonsense," I thought, "I''ve been right here the whole time." But I wandered upstairs and looked on the front porch, and there they were, with the sail sitting beside them as an added bonus.

One of the great mysteries of the universe is why it is that you can never, once having unpacked a new, professionaly packed sail, get it back in the bag in the same compact shape that it came in. I'm always amazed when they show up in a box that is smaller than some of my electronic items come in.

We should have had the sail a month ago--I ordered it in late March from The Sailwarehouse, who we have had good luck with in the past. It didn't show up, didn't show up, and I thought, well, of course it isn't here as fast as the last one, dummy, you ordered that one in the fall when everyone is putting things away for the winter and this one in the spring when everyone is getting ready to go sailing again, they're probably slammed. But even so... I gave them a call Tuesday and it turned out they had the sail there and ready, but somehow my name hadn't been attached to the order, so it had never shipped. Doh! They were very apologetic and overnighted it at their own expense. We don't really need it until we leave in mid-May but I was hoping to have it before we head to Port Townsend next week.

The charts are heavy; Mandy is going to have to reinforce the chartholder she made for me, or I'm going to have to stow some of them elsewhere, or both! It's nice to have a bundle of them which I don't have to correct, though!

Provisioning

I never realized how much two people eat in two months. Or even how much one person eats at a given meal.

Through the sort of gross stereotyping common to cruising couples, Mandy has ended up doing all the meal planning and food procurement research. She's got quite a spreadsheet going and a good baseline of costs built up from a trip to Costco a couple months ago, and with that information and sufficient lead time, she's been able to keep her eyes open and spot some good deals elsewhere. We just raided Thriftway last week, for example, and came away with sixty cans of corn and beans. That's a lot of cans.

We're looking at:

• (2) cases of ramen
• (6) cases of corn
• (2) cases of chili
• (2) cases of soup
• (2) cases of refried beans
• (1) case of spam
• (1) package of rice
• (1) case of oatmeal

...and various cases of Pepsi, hot chocolate, and whatever else looks good on the shelves as I start to panic about how much food we're taking. We'll pick up fresh items along the way as available; it's not as if we're headed to the Congo, after all, there are plenty of well-provisioned ports along the way. We're probably more restricted by the availability of ice for the icebox than anything.

Of course, all this is nothing compared to what we see fishing boat crews loading up regularly at Costco, or even to fellow cruiser's lists such as Beth Leonard's. But it seems a lot to us.

The big Costco trip is coming up this Friday. We're complicating things a bit in that we're taking the boat up to Port Townsend a few weeks before our actual departure, and since we're going to be hauling out there, I don't want to load it up first. So we're going to have to buy all the stuff now while we have time, but hang on to it until after the haul-out and load it later.

Chart corrections

So I mentioned in passing that I picked up a good set of charts this weekend at the annual Fisheries Supply swap meet. This is all well and good, but when you get used charts, you have to make sure that they are up to date, or plan on using that money you saved to patch the hull after you run into that new shallow wreck that isn't shown on them.

Although they were all in excellent condition, none of the charts I picked up had been corrected by their previous owners and the earliest among them was printed back in the late nineties. That is a lot of years of corrections to go through, for a pretty sizeable patch of Canadian waters! I'm a bit bug-eyed today after have gone through almost all of them over the weekend.

If you haven't done this before (and you probably haven't, based on what I saw from most of those both selling and buying charts at the swap meet), you'll find that the relevant agencies (the Canadian Coast Guard for Canadian waters and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for US waters) make it very easy to do so. All updates are handled in both countries through their respective Notices to Mariners (NTM). The links above go directly to the archives of all NTMs, searchable by chart and date.

First, you have to find when the chart was issued and/or last corrected. Although most private sellers don't correct their charts, registered chart agents, as a matter of law, do. In the lower left corner of the chart you'll find the date of the current edition, previous editions, and a line which says "Notices to Mariners." Adjacent to the Notices to Mariners line you may or may not see a number of dates (see photo above). These indicate the dates to which the chart has been manually corrected. Chart agents, at least until the advent of print-on-demand charts, would carry a stock of charts. Obviously some of these become outmoded sitting on the shelves; rather than throw them out, the agents correct them to a current NTM date and sell them. So, your job becomes easier the more recently the chart was sold by a reputable chart agent--you find the most current date of NTM corrections, and only pull up NTMs subsequent to that to correct from.

You may have further difficulties if you have purchased charts from a third-party chartmaker. There's no such thing in Canada, but a number of US companies produce reliable charts directly from NOAA's free digital chart products. These charts don't always correspond directly to particular NOAA chart numbers, which can be good--the layouts often are far better matched to actual cruising routes and you don't end up navigating at the edges of charts so much. But since they are made of an amalgamation of NOAA charts, you have to find NTMs for each of them, some of which will be on the portion used for the private chart, and some of which will not. It's a drag; we use Maptech's excellent waterproof chartbooks for the Puget Sound and San Juan islands and I went through and updated them at the same time. Although they are far more recent (only 1 year of corrections to go through) it took me as long to do them as all the Canadian ones.

After that, it becomes laborious. Anything can be a candidate for correction, from the text of the Advisory notes to depths to changed navaids. Obviously these are of varying importance. Personally, I'm not going to change all the French text on a Canadian chart regarding the horizontal datum. At the other extreme, I damn sure am going to note a channel buoy that has been removed. I did learn to read through all the NTMs before making any changes, though; frequently, a note regarding a disabled navaid will subsequently be repealed by a later NTM when the problem has been fixed. No sense crossing something out and having to add it in again later.

Making the actual corrections on the chart varies from easy to quite difficult. The location of each correction is provided in latitude and longitude, so you simply locate the point with standard navigational tools and add or subtract whatever the correction calls for. For a navaid which has had the horn removed, for example, a simple black line through the Horn indication is no problem. Adding in a marker for a new buoy is a little harder; I'm not much at freehand drawing and some of the symbols from Chart 1 aren't particularly easy to draw, particularly if they need to be inserted (as buoys often do) in locations which are already very tight on space. I also found it difficult to add in area markers--all additions and subtractions are provided with lat/long coordinates, but when you have a circular area that has been designated Spoil ground, it's not that easy to get it in properly. Same with new breakwaters, dolphins, and the like.

Once you get your charts up to current, it's fairly easy to keep up (provided you have a fairly consistent set of cruising grounds--if you range around the world, you're always going to be running into something new, it seems). You should probably be regularly checking local NTMs anyway, and it's not that difficult to make a few corrections when you happen to notice something important mentioned in them.

If you have electronic charts, you're mostly out of luck when it comes to NTM updates. Some manufacturers offer trade-in programs where you can exchange older chart versions for newer, but the one I have looked at (Navionics) still charges an arm and a leg just for the update. So, one more reason to stick with paper on board.

To the obnoxious guy at the Fisheries swap meet yesterday also going up the Inside Passage

I just wanted you to know that, after you monopolized the pile of charts and kept anyone else from looking at them saying "I might buy all of these" and spent a half hour looking through them (even though I was there first and had simply stepped aside to ask the lady selling them a question), and after you mistakenly discarded a couple which you thought were for "the outside" (they weren't) and picked up most of the rest for $150... I wandered across the lot and picked up a complete set covering the same route for $50.  And I hope I don't run into you again on the way north... what a jerk.

The Double-safety-redundancy trip up the mast

Scott kept saying I'd be sent up the mast. He's been talking about this radar mount since before the boat show in January. So, I suppose it was bound to happen. We couldn't have planned it for a better day. Spring has been slow coming in Seattle this year. The dreary cold seemed to have lasted longer than usual. But today was perfect, probably 70 degrees, little wind, and sunshine.

But before today, I have to admit I had put NO thought into what it meant to "go up the mast." This lack of attention has probably silently driven Scott crazy. So, after class today, I go to the boat and ask how this works, exactly. I inspect the radar mount, and take a look at these rivet things I need to attach. We'd stopped at Home Depot earlier today to buy the rivet gun, but even then I hadn't looked at it. I don't have a clue how a rivet works.

Luckily, there was a lot of commotion at the marina this morning. A new house boat was moving in and it was a laborious morning for its owner and the marina manager to get it into place. Since everyone was out and about, I asked my former neighbor, Jack, how a rivet gun works. Jack is one of those salty fellas who's been around boats for decades, but not so many decades that he isn't up to date on stuff. Every marina needs a Jack.

Jack kindly comes to our boat and explains the riveter in his way that makes it all understandable. Scott and I then went to lunch and when we returned found another riveter (Jack's) laying in the cockpit. The longer handles of his would be easier for me to get leverage on while swinging from a rope. He easily foresaw the difficulties I'd be having.

We also enlist the help of Scott's "most trusted rope handler friend," Dave, to make sure my body stays at the correct elevation. Then we start hooking things to me. First I step into Scott's old rock climbing harness, then he ties Halyard 1 to me with a nifty double figure eight knot. Halyard 2 gets attached to my harness with a carabiner. Then I get a webbing to haul up with me to secure around the mast above the spreaders, and then to myself. Dave gets Halyard 2 and some other belaying rock climbing gear as the safety guy. Scott takes the Halyard 1 and starts winching me up, up, up. I don't know what to do on the way up. Hang on? Help by trying to climb? I end up just getting a feel for the balance of the thing.

I get to the height I'm supposed to be (about 30 feet up) and call down for Scott to stop winching. He ties his end off, Dave keep holding his halyard and I hug the mast and shake in my shoes. I take an uneasy look around. I can see the Fremont Bridge, Mount Rainier, some building of downtown, and most of the boats on the lake. After a few breaths I start my first task, attaching myself to the mast. This is when I realize that I'll need to let go of the mast so I can use my hands. What happened to one hand for the boat? The webbing is wrapped around the mast and carabinered to my harness. The harness is getting pretty full of stuff attached to it now.

Scott sends up a bucket with one of the spare halyards with everything I may need in it. A drill, drill bits, the riveter, the rivets, something to drink, a pencil, my camera, and some tape. The drill and Jack's rivet gun have small rope tied to them so if I drop them they don't go crashing down to the people holding me up.

Then I need to carabiner the bucket to my mesh and send the halyard down again. This again proves to me that I'm rather freaked out up here. But I get it, then down goes the halyard to now hoist the radar mount so I can pattern where to drill holes.

Again, I take a look around. I try leaning back and propping myself against the mast for leverage. But, except for the meshing holding me close to the mast, I'm just a long pendulum up here, with the top of the mast about 20 feet still above my head. But, I start getting comfortable just as the radar mount makes it to my reach.

From below Scott eyeballs the alignment and I dig for the pencil in the bucket. With all the other crap in there, it isn't easy to find. I mark the first drill hole then send the radar mount back down to get disassembled so I only have to attach one small (light) piece at a time. I untangle the rope holding the drill and try my first real life use-it-on-the-boat bowline. I get confused. Scott has been drilling me on this damn knot for weeks. I make a hole, I have a rabbit, and a tree, but I also have a mast that I need to make a part of the equation. In the process I start to realize the impact fear can have on something that has become routine and you CAN do with your eyes closed. I went braindead about the bowline. After a few tries, I have the drill attached to the mast. I send a secret "thank you" down to Scott for making me tie the stupid knot so many hundred times in our living room. I begin drilling the hard aluminum. I start to notice my left leg go numb.

It is slow going. I have difficulty tapping the hole because I have no leverage. I try maneuvering my legs to hold me still, but I now have to manually put my numb left leg where I want it with my arms, and, of course, it won't stay there. The drill wants to walk across the mast instead of dig into it. But I am determined, and eventually a hole begins. Then I drill and drill and drill, holding the drill in my left hand and pulling myself into the mast with the right arm. When my left arm gets sore, I switch. Then I switch back. I hate being a wimp on a boat. It is very inconvenient.

Finally the first of 12 holes is drilled. I take the small piece of the radar mount and tape it in place, making things much easier than if I had been just trying to hold it. I untangle the riveter, put the rivet in it, put it in the hole I just drilled, and... nothing. There is no tension on the riveter at all. I can very easily open and close it. I try a different angle, but, since there is now no feeling at all in my leg, it keeps bumping into the spreaders and pushing me around, making holding myself in one spot even more difficult.

Finally, I give up. Jack even dropped off two spare rivets so I could practice using them while on my feet on the boat. I know how it is supposed to work. It just isn't. I reattach the bucket to a halyard and it gets lowered down, followed by me.

Once I hit the boat, my leg starts to wake up and send spikes through it. But down here the riveter works fine. So, up I go again. This time, when the bucket comes up, it had only the necessities for the exact next step and nothing more. I get back into place, reattach my webbing, get the riveter sent up, tie it to the mast, and try again. This time I have tension. Two squeezes on the thing and I have found success with the first rivet. Yay. But now I need to drill more holes. Down goes the riveter, up comes the drill.

I didn't want my legs to go numb again, so I try laying back in the harness, and that helps tremendously. I get halfway through the next hole and need to lower the bucket and get another battery sent up. Then, with a fresh battery, I get two more holes drilled, for a total of three. The riveting goes rather well, too. I start to get the hang of the balance of hanging by the halyards and use my body for leverage in any way possible.

By this time I am wearing out, though. Drilling the holes was pretty hard work for a wimp like me, and I knew I'd need a break before doing any more. And the drill seemed pretty hot and it seemed like a good idea to give it a little longer break, too. I didn't know that after I went down I wouldn't get hauled up again. Apparently winching me up wasn't such an easy task either.

But three rivets in didn't seem like too bad of progress, especially when I didn't know what a rivet was just a few hours earlier. Maiden voyage up the mast complete.

Outfitting - A Boat Out of Water - Part One

So, we chose the Port of Port Townsend over many boatyards closer to home for our pre-trip inspection and painting. Partly this was a matter of cost; the rates are cheaper the further you get from the city. In the case of Port Townsend, however, this doesn't imply any lower level of service or competence; on the contrary, PT is a major boating center for the Pacific Northwest and has many experts and facilities. That's a winning combination for us.

Besides that, my parents live nearby and have a buoy available where we can moor when we're not physically in the yard. Having the house available for accommodations is also a plus (and a must, if we're to have any hope of attracting friends and family to help us with painting the hull! Transit time for our work force is the downside of the location). Although my folks are traveling and will be away from town while we're there, they have a lot of friends in the area, and as my stepfather is an alumnus of the highly respected Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding and a member of the local Coast Guard Auxiliary, he has good contacts in the marine community there and invaluable knowledge of reputable local tradesmen. We're hoping to do everything required ourselves, but it's nice to have a good fallback.

The location also gives us a jump start on the trip and gets some of the potentially icky bits out of the way early. Although some might say that there are far greater threats further north, Admiralty Inlet is no place to get caught on a bad day, and if we can avoid having to deal with it on Day One so much the better... once you are into it there are few places to duck out for cover, and the funnel effect for wind and waves can make for very nasty seas.

So we'll depart Lake Union mid-day on the 22nd to clear the bridges and locks before they stop opening during rush hour, and either hole up at Shilshole overnight or cruise across and moor at the marine park on the north end of Bainbridge Island. That's a pretty exposed mooring and if there is any weather at all it can be too bouncy to sleep much, so we'll have to play it by ear. Either way, we need to head out around 6AM the 23rd to catch the ebb tide, which should make for a pretty quick trip up to Hadlock.

I was pretty nervous about scheduling the haul-out; we've never done it before and it seemed like another great opportunity to either spend a lot of extra money or break something or both. But the yard was great when I talked with them and it eased my mind considerably. Of course, we could still find all sorts of problems once she's out, but I'm not going to sweat that until we actually see it.

About the name...

We've already had to explain it, ad nauseum, to friends and family, so I forgot that anyone just happening across the blog might require some additional information about the name of our boat, the Insegrevious. It seems unfair, really, since we didn't name her, but we're still stuck explaining it.

I had no idea what it meant when we first looked at the boat and didn't think to ask the previous owner, since he had also inherited the name at several owners removed from the original. So, like many of you, I turned to the Internet:

Insegrevious: (in-suh-GREE-vee-us), adj. having to do with apples and death.

Most people immediately think of Snow White but I'll remind you that she didn't actually technically die.

When I first looked the term up a few years ago, that was the only definition available. I run a search today, and I find half a dozen different mentions of the word, none of them in any agreement about who originally invented it or when. All I can say, for those of you laboring under the misapprehension that it was coined by a talk show host in the mid-eighties sometime, is that I have it printed right here on an FCC ship's station license from 1978, and a commissioning ceremony invitation from Ken Duckworth, the original plank holder dated November 8, 1977. In one particularly bizarre coincidence, our friend Matt told us that his father used to use the word when he was a child and was convinced that he had originally made it up. Popular phonetic combination, apparently. There are a variety of spellings, and the most popular alternative, even to the extent of appearing in places on some official documentation that we have, seems to be "Insegrievious." I don't know who mis-spelled it where first, but we stick with what's actually on the transom, even if someone accidentally left out an "I."

It turns out that I still pronounce it wrong about half the time, inserting an extra long e into the end. I'm not sure it matters, no one understands what you've said the first time you tell them the name anyway. I dread radio calls, which inevitably result in a response of: "Uh... Vessel calling... uh...." I'm sure that I mis-spell it phonetically half the time when I'm asked to repeat, but on the other hand, we never get lost in the crowd of "Wind_" or "Sea _" names which all blur together out there.

Despite all this, I kind of like the name. It's a sure fire conversation starter when we're pulling into a marina or going through the locks, and it's original equipment. I hate breaking tradition, and this is the name the boat was launched with an it seems fit to keep it as long as she's afloat.

For a long time, Mandy loathed the name and insisted repeatedly that she was going to change it, but she never got around to it and now it seems to have grown on her as well. So Insegrevious she shall be.

Outfitting - Autopilot

We actually installed this some months ago, but a spate of recent posts on HunterOwners.com has convinced me there aren't enough step by step install guides for either this autopilot or these boats, so I'm putting this up as a public service. It's not exactly a step by step guide, either, since we did it long enough ago I don't remember it all very neatly, but hopefully it fills in some gaps for someone.

Both based on pricing and in order to stay consistent across our electronics suite, we elected to purchase a Raymarine S1 Wheelpilot (I see that this has about to be superseded by the new MX-5... so goes the marine electronics industry). We wanted something that would interface seamlessly with our chartplotter and not require a terribly complicated installation and the S1 fit the bill. The Raymarine wheel pilots have received mixed reviews going back several generations, with some reports of wheel slippage, inaccuracy, excessive wear and breakage, but they are quite widespread so we decided to give it a try. Then, too, there is relatively little selection available for wheel pilots on the market. The alternatives beyond that are complex below-deck ram hydraulic units, which are overkill on a boat our size, and which are just as prone to breakage but more complicated to repair.

The Raymarine installation instructions left something to be desired. On the face of them, they look extremely comprehensive and accurate, but as you go through them you find that they seem to be missing the bits of guidance which would be most helpful (or at least helpful to someone who has never installed an autopilot before). So I started with the easy part; the Smartpilot ST 6002 module installation.

The brain of the system, this has to be positioned somewhere without excessive electro-magnetic interference (EMI), which can be difficult on a small boat. It also isn't very amenable to liquid, so it pretty much has to be somewhere in the cabin proper. As it happened I had a suitable patch of open bulkhead over the chart table, which had the added advantage of being convenient to the battery panel and fairly close to the cockpit. I slapped it up and ran the spaghetti mess of wiring right down through the table into the engine compartment and wired it up. (Ignore the wiring on the overhead there; it goes somewhere else and just hasn't been secured yet.) The little snap connectors took a little practice to jam the wires into just right; I'm still not sure I have a lot of faith in their holding power but there shouldn't be a lot of strain, either. I used an awl or screwdriver to hold them open, much easier on the fingers.

After I got the Smartpilot installed, I had to put up the fluxgate compass. This was also pretty straightforward; they want it as close as possible to midships and centerline (you know, every piece of electronic equipment seems to want to be there--boat builders should just center a massive server rack or something in the middle of the cabin for all this junk [except then that would violate the other ubiquitous stricture to not place any of it anywhere near any other of it... easy enough to follow if you are installing things on the Queen Mary, I suppose]). I found a nice spot forward of the head and snaked the wire down and around to the corepack without any issue.

The actual wheel and motor weren't terrible to install, either. The wheel clamps on to the spokes of your existing wheel and the motor fits into a slot on the back of it. The only iffy bit is mounting the motor bracket properly on the binnacle. You can see it in the photo at right (covered in a plastic baggy, starboard side of the binnacle just where it curves inward). I let Mandy handle that part--she measure more often and more accurately. Also, I loathe the binnacle and anything to do with it.

Part of the reason I hate it is also the reason we didn't do the tidy thing and run the power cable up through it for the motor: it's jammed full as it is and absolutely inaccessible. The binnacle is an Edson and they have a good reputation but I'm not thrilled with this one. The interior layout is bizarre and unwieldy, and we had enough trouble snaking a tiny new transmission cable down it a couple years ago to warn me off even attempting to route the fat power cable through it. Also, the bottom is glassed in pretty good and clearance for the cable to come out would have been minimal (without drilling--but I like the thick glass there and don't want to go punching holes in it). Anyway, our less elegant solution is to run the power cable out the engine control panel and under the cockpit grating, and secure it on the outside of the binnacle and into the motor.

We mounted the control panel next to the engine control panel for convenience to the helm. We had to put a hole in the boat for this (horrors!) but it is a tightly sealed one and looks good (Mandy did it).

That left the rudder position sensor. This doohickey measures the rudder angle directly and allows the pilot to steer more efficiently rather than simply yanking the wheel back and forth and waiting to see what the compass winds up at. This was also the most complicated bit of the installation. The sensor is spring-loaded, so it's difficult to keep it in a neutral position while working on it. It has to be attached with a metal rod directly to the steering quadrant, so your install locations are limited to those within reach of the rod. The quadrant itself is not horizontal, but the sensor has to be in a plane with the movement range, so it has to be intentionally mounted at an angle as well. Finally, you are doing the whole thing jammed up in the narrow bit of the stern, upside down.

It's possible to mount the sensor itself upside down and calibrate for it, but that seemed complicated and fraught with potential problems. Our solution was to build a platform for the thing and attach it to an L-shaped bracket mounted to the underside of the deck. Here are the results:

The angles are all correct and everything is hooked up right, but only after a lot of measuring (by Mandy) and swearing (by me). Recently, I ran across a number of other photos of sensor installations and by far the most common way of doing it is to glass a platform to the hull and build a post or something up to rest the sensor on. This allows a much simpler platform for fiddling with angles, attaching the rod, etc, etc, and is probably the way to go. You'll notice from the photo that we simply used wood rather than starboard or metal for the mount, and this is why: I'm always considering how to install things in a way which will leave my options open to reinstalling things differently. None of the wiring got cut, we didn't thru-bolt or glue in anything, it's all sturdy enough but still easily disassembled. I figure I can go back and glass it up, rebuild it with starboard, whatever; but I want to give it a trial run before I make it permanent. So we may redo it with the hull-mounted platform. Then again, maybe not--I like having the space beneath it available to shove stuff in. We'll see how it goes.

After all that, we took the boat out on the Sound to commission it (not a lot of swinging room on Lake Union, certainly not uninterrupted). For some reason, perhaps as a private joke, Raymarine insists you circle the boat in 360s for long periods of time as part of the commissioning process. You do this until the autopilot tells you to stop. My impression is that it does so only after it has had a good laugh at your expense and senses that you are about to give up, because it gave me the nod bare seconds before I was going to pack it in anyway.

After all that, I incorrectly specified that it was calibrated on a true heading rather than magnetic. As it happened, this hasn't made much difference since I just plug in the adjusted value, and the pilot shows a "T" after it and the chartplotter an "M" but as long as the number is the same they are both happy. I imagine that happy state of affairs won't continue once we start to change declinations, however, so I'll have to re-calibrate it again before we go.

So far it has worked great, but we have yet to have it out and on while under sail, which is probably the real test. We'll have to be much better about balancing the boat properly. Under power, however, it's terrific. Holds a good course, doesn't use much juice or make excessive corrections, and has an excellent interface with the chartplotter. Indeed, we can simply set up camp under the dodger and give commands to the autopilot from there, without ever having to touch the pilot control panel. It follows waypoints or headings as you request.

Obsessions

There are indeed some people who are obsessed with sailing but I have never thought of myself as one of them. I enjoy it and I'm looking forward to the trip quite a lot, but lately I am starting to worry myself. I don't want to burn myself out on it before we even leave but I feel as though if I am not actually obsessed that I at least must appear to be so to the casual observer.

In fact I find that I am thinking about the boat or the trip or something related pretty much all the time these days. And the reason that I say I don't think I am actually obsessed with sailing is because it doesn't seem as if these thoughts are driven so much by desire as by necessity: there is just so damn much to think about. A thousand details, a hundred possible consequences ranging from having a less than pleasant outing to killing us both. It just seems as though it demands a lot of attention, particularly from someone who hasn't actually done it before, who can't temper the wonder of the unknown with the fire of experience.

At any rate, I feel like it is turning me into a conversational bore, someone who can only talk about one thing and who can't muster up any thought or interest in anything else. Being in the profession that I am, I deal with people like this all the time; the mild Aspergers sufferers and run of the mill geeks who gravitate to IT and lack the interest or the social graces to pretend politely to be interested in anything other than what they genuinely are interested in. I guess it's not so much that I don't have other interests as that I can't seem to be bothered sparing time to think about them lately. Between matters nautical and technical, I'm pretty much tapped out.

So in part to defend against being the single-minded bore I feel like I probably am, I've been almost actively hiding the trip and preparations from many friends and acquintances, and trying to avoid talking about it to those who don't pry pretty hard with questions of their own. I know that this is probably a little odd in itself, but at least it probably doesn't look as weird from the outside as it would if I went the other direction.

Still, I catch myself, and even worse, Mandy and myself, rattling on about one thing and one thing only at times, and this evening at dinner with Ed and Terry was one of those. I couldn't think of anything to talk about beyond work and trip. And not even so much work. Mandy was even worse, I think, since I had forbidden her from talking about work before we even got there.

My biggest worry is that by thinking about all of this so much right now, I'll be bored with it by the time we're actually ready to leave.

Itinerary

I'm getting scared to look at the calendar; there isn't very much longer to get things done before we have to start going places. I've only just worked out our itinerary for the near future. I'm not even going to try to figure out the whole trip, other than sketching in some broad outlines... we're just too dependent on wind and tide. But the closer we get to our mid-May departure the more certain I can be about the days leading up to that point, at least.

We have a few drop-dead dates that are driving the first month or so of the trip. First, I've finally scheduled a haul-out date with the boatyard in Port Townsend (more on that later) for April 25th, so we absolutely have to have the boat up there by then. So we'll probably leave town temporarily on the 22nd or 23rd to sail up there, and do some complicated ferrying around to get one of our vehicles up here so we can get back to town afterward for the next important date: my sister's wedding.

The wedding is actually in Las Vegas the second weekend in May, so we'll fly down for that the second week of May. Right afterward, we'll fly back, drive back up to Port Townsend, and head north.

I still haven't worked out exactly what route we'll take into Canada and it may very well depend on the weather at the time. All that I do know is that I intend to move north pretty fast to start off with. Partly this was something I had decided ahead of time; we'll have years and years ahead when we'll be able to get away for a couple of weeks and explore the Gulf Islands and Desolation Sound, so it seems to make sense not to dawdle there now but instead get north quickly and spend our leisure time in parts we may not get back to anytime soon. The other reason is that Mandy just found out that she has landed a contract with a major local company to teach a class in late May and early June. So we have to make pretty good time to get to our first destination (Princess Louisa Inlet) and have some time to spend there before getting back out and getting her to some major transportation hub for a lift back to Seattle by May 24th.

Then I'll have to figure out what to do with myself for nine or ten days while she's away. I'm going to see if any of my friends want to come up and putter around; it would be nice to make a little more progress during that time, but on the other hand I can't realistically go north of Port Hardy and still have Mandy be able to get back to the boat easily or cheaply. So I'll have a little time to kill either way. I'd rather not spend it just sitting around but we'll have to see.

Shut up, Wrong-Splice Girl

Spring has finally returned to Seattle, and we spent today on the boat, prepping for the trip. We are now down to about 6 weeks until departure, and only 3 weeks until the boat will move to Port Townsend for a haul-out and bottom painting. I learned a few days ago that I'll be doing the trip in two stints. I got a contract for another teaching gig two weeks after we leave. So I'll be returning to Seattle from Vancouver Island, Canada, via bus or ferry or float plane or jet or train for 9 days, then catching back up with Scott again after the job is done. So I was a little bummed yesterday on account of that. But it is hard to turn down a job that could easily equal a full quarter of my meager annual salary.

My main task in trip prep has been to install a sewage holding tank. That's the kind of job you get stuck with when you aren't the list maker (thanks, Scott). But I generally like plumbing. You can't electrocute yourself. If you aren't adding any holes to the hull, you don't really increase the possibility of sinking the boat. And there are not really any expensive components to break. So, aside from dealing with feces, it isn't a bad or risky job to have.

Granted, I've been working on this dumb tank for over 2 months now. First, it is tricky to figure out what size tank will fit in the odd shaped space I have to put it. I finally decided that I could fit a 9-gallon tank if I made a new shelf for it to set on inside the head cabinet space. We lose a drawer in the process, but 9 gallons of extra sewage space outweighed a cubic foot of drawer space. Then I needed to figure out how to tie the tank in with the existing head (toilet, for you land-lubbers). I went with the simplest set-up I could. I added a Guzzler 500h pump to manually pump sewage from the head to the tank. Then I plugged the new tank into the existing pump-out line with new 1 ½" hose. But since the new tank gets shoehorned into the space beside the head sink, it needed to all be installed in the right order, as it cannot easily come in and out of the space. The inflexible sewage hoses all run through a bulkhead into the starboard cockpit lazerette to keep the head area neat and clean and so the hoses don't have to make any sharp corners.

I thought, since I redid the fresh water hoses when I first moved on the boat, that I knew the various hoses of the entire vessel. It really isn't all that complicated. There are only three kinds of hose, and they all look quite different from one another. The fresh water hose is the smallest and is smooth. The bilge hoses (there is one for the shower bilge and one for the main bilge) are a bit bigger and are corrugated. And the sewage hose is smooth and quite large in diameter. Oh, and there is an existing head-vent hose, which is identical to the bilge hoses.

So, to get this tank in place, I first tied the new vent into the existing vent (I thought), then added the tank intake hose so I could measure its length from the new pump to the tank, then cut that hose to the correct length and used the remainder to fit into the existing pump-out tee from the bottom of the new tank. I did that all a few weeks ago. At the time, I thought all I had left to do was add the shelf to stabilize the tank in its new home and attach the hoses, which were pretty much all in place. (All the wrestling I did to just get the hoses in the right spot left me with no energy to fight the barbed fittings on the same day, so I left it for the next work day.)

I saw an interesting news article a while ago that showed an MRI brain scan of a sleeping person. It showed how the brain was reworking the same problems the person faced when they were awake. "Sleeping on it," the scientists said, was an effective way to solve problems because our brains were still working, even when we are asleep. Apparently, our brains work out problems while we are asleep that we don't even know we have yet.

About 2 weeks ago, one Sunday morning, I woke up at about 6:30 am for no good reason whatsoever. And I started thinking about the holding tank on the boat. Suddenly it dawns on me… I wake Scott up. "The main bilge hose is the most forward hose, isn't it? Then the shower bilge hose is next, and the toilet vent hose is aft of the bulkhead." His sleepy reply didn't offer a definitive answer. But my inkling was that I didn't tie the holding tank vent hose into the existing head vent. I tied it into the existing shower bilge hose. The next time we would happen to turn on the shower bilge, it would empty into the new holding tank…

At first glance today, my screw up was obvious. But now, since the holding tank is all set in place with the hoses threaded through the bulkhead, it cannot easily come in and out anymore. Now, what was a perfectly good bilge hose will require a splice, and I will need to replace the vent hose with a new, longer hose to reach to the head vent further aft, and I will need to do the whole thing in an inaccessible space.

I had worked that dang holding tank setup in my head a dozen times. I drew diagrams. I measured and re-measured. I still did it wrong. Certainly it could have been worse. Scott and I easily could have missed the screw up for weeks and not noticed that the tank was filling extra fast. By then we would have been far from a supply store for new hose and splicing fittings.

Now I need to drill another hole through the bulkhead to get to the head vent, which is on the other side of the bulkhead from the tank (and the reason I tied into the wrong one). But we don't have the right drill bit for that sized hose, so the stupid project still isn't complete. I put the holding tank project aside and went to work on a new grab rail that we will place on the overhead just inside the companionway. Meanwhile, Scott tried another approach to removing a broken bolt from the new latch he added to the anchor locker. As he shared with me that another "titanium" bit had broken when he tried drilling the bolt out I added apathetically, "Golly, I can't say how to solve that ordeal, then."

"Shut up, Wrong-Splice Girl," was his response. Not much I could say there. So I silently, indignantly, went back to my grab rail. As I filed away in the teak to shape it to the ceiling angles, I remembered the day my dad worked with my on the boat 3 years ago. He was helping me straighten out the mess of wiring and instructed me to remove a wire that was no longer attached to anything on the other end from a tube of heat-shrink. I carefully cut the heat shrink off and removed the useless wire. When I told him I had removed the wire, I realized at the same time that I had unnecessarily cut away a protective wrapping for the remaining wire. At the same time, we broke into laughter at my ridiculous mistake. Today, I thought, if here were here, we'd have had another laugh at my expense.