Happy Halloween!

I'm up early. Gale force winds have been blowing most of the night, pushing us into the dock and causing the fenders to squeal and the boat to rock back and forth, which Mandy observed a couple hours ago was "scary." And also that "the wind is trying to blow us to Canada." These are the sorts of things I get out of her when she's still asleep.

Anyway, I had to get up and go to the bathroom anyway, and when I did, I realized she's right: it is scary. The wind is shrieking through the rigging of a hundred boats, a full moon hovers in the bright mists above a dark and forbidding cloud bank off over the Sound, and it's Halloween! It's supposed to be scary!

I could have wandered over and knocked on our nearest neighbor's hull and yelled "Trick or Treat" but that might not have gone over well. Frankly, I hope that there is not a strong trick-or-treating tradition down here, because we have no candy to speak of. They'd have to get granola bars, which would surely lead to a trick... TP in the stays, or some such. There aren't many kids that live here, but it's the sort of place where it would be pretty safe to go trick-or-treating even in the city, for those who have gate keys.

Project Gemini: Success

And, as predicted, Boeing will be opening up the new 787 assembly line in South Carolina rather than Everett, according to the Times.

Everett doesn't stand a chance

I don't want to get too far afield from nautical matters, but Everett has a port, right? Anyway, if you live in the area you are no doubt already familiar with the great debate over whether or not Boeing will site its second 787 assembly line at the existing assembly facility in Everett, or if it will instead build a new assembly plant near another Boeing facility in South Carolina that already builds some parts for the plane. With 787 sales already doing quite well, even in the downturn, and despite some notable problems getting the plane off the ground, the decision is of no small consequence to the economy here, and the primary sticking point for putting the second line in Everett is the historic bad blood between the company and the machinist's union. Much has already been made over the union's apparently ill-timed decision to strike over pay increases last year even as the economy was plummeting and order cancellations piling up. Though the strike ended with a victory for the union, it may prove to have been a Pyrrhic one, having convinced the company to seriously consider a permanent relocation of facilities to non-union territories.

Charleston is one of those places, located in a right-to-work state, with a labor force that has already demonstrated a willingness to discard union representation. Though any such large-scale move threatens to disrupt an already shaky 787 program, something I ran across in the paper this morning pretty well convinces me that the game is over for the Everett machinists.

Meanwhile, in South Carolina, the state Department of Commerce is preparing its confidential proposal to Boeing under the code name Project Gemini.

"Confidential proposal?" "Project Gemini?" Whoa! Is that the Department of Commerce, or the CIA? I'd say that indicates a degree of motivation that just isn't going to be matched here in Washington, where Boeing has long been taken for granted. Add the fact that the Charleston labor force, wracked by unemployment, is hungry for even moderately well-paying jobs while the IAM workers in Washington seem to loathe their employer with a seething wrath typically reserved for direct-to-video martial-arts revenge fantasy movies, and it's hard to see what incentive Boeing might have to stay. Reporters keep pointing out that it's a lot of effort to get one of these things up and running in a new place, and that Boeing has already invested a lot here in Washington. As someone who has recently moved, I can certainly understand that moving is a pain in the ass, and I suppose it's even harder if it's not just your house, but a massive and complex aircraft final assembly facility, but if you've got no prospects for future improvement in one place, it doesn't matter much what your sunk costs are, it's time to make a change and go somewhere else. You're just throwing good money after bad at that point if you stick around.

If the IAM doesn't come up with a secret proposal and a cool project name of their own soon, I'd say they are in a world of hurt!

Paging the white sailboat on R dock

Your lights are on... and have been for more than a week now.
I'm only just now starting to realize that it's not Venus or a particularly low airliner approaching when I catch sight of this out the companionway hatch early in the morning or late at night.

Is it just me, or is it raining a lot?

When I woke up this morning to the now familiar deluge splattering the hatch over my head, I began to think that perhaps my perception that it has been dumping a godawful amount of rain on us lately was simply a matter of proximity... when it rains a lot and I'm in a house, I don't notice so much, since the roof is a long way away and the sounds muted even out the windows (since instead of splashing into more water it's falling softly into grass and leaves and such). Also, I didn't used to get showered on between my bedroom and the shower before. That's sure to draw your attention. Maybe it's not so bad, I thought, I'm just more exposed than before. It's probably no worse than usual, I am just not used to hearing it like this.

That was before I got up to drive to a client's office this morning. The massive lakes forming in the roads all over town were not typical. Having to run the wipers at full bore to maintain a minimal vision of the road is not par for the course. This is the third time this month already I have noticed such heavy downpour and when I checked the weather service totals just now it turns out that I'm not just imagining things; we received half the typical monthly average of rainfall for October this morning. We're already double the typical monthly average, and there is the rest of the week yet to come. Then we get into the rainiest month of the year, November. Fun.

Ballard makes good (sort of)

Ballard has had a hard time impressing me with much of anything recently. After the novelty of the Locks wears off and the quaintness of Old Ballard starts to just look a little shabby, the traffic and parking (Almost Live was dead-on with the old Ballard Driving Academy sketch... 7 is as fast as anyone goes here in Ballard. Actually, taken as a whole, their compendium Ballard sketches comprise a pretty fair tourist guide to the neighborhood. Here's a bonus one with Bill Nye before he was the Science Guy.) and unfortunate location really start to grate on ones nerves.

But I had a half-hour or so to kick around at the Ballard Farmer's market today, and if there is anything to recommend the neighborhood, that would probably be it. In addition to being a real farmer's market, with actual farmers and actual fresh farm products available in quantities exceeding those of the half-baked craft goods that most farmer's markets try to pass off as authentic country goodness, the two or so blocks of Old Ballard that are blocked off and decked out for the event every Sunday ooze character. Looking for a crusty old guy walking around with a parrot on his shoulder? Got that. Pink Floyd covered by a two man accordion band? Got that. A hastily penned folk song chronicling the recent adventures of Balloon Boy? You better believe they've got that. And if the prices at some of the booths haven't managed to avoid gentrifying along with the rest of the neighborhood (fresh food at Yuppie, rather than country, rates) at least the quality of the goods are solid and the selection broad. Produce, meat, eggs and cheese, all available from multiple suppliers, right there in the same block.

There are deals to be had, however. Like most markets, you can dicker, if that's your thing. And there are just some genuinely good prices on some things. I managed to snag a half dozen mini donuts at the bargain rate of $1.75. And there is the constant possibility there, as at any non-systematized, casual marketplace, of teller error... error which may well be in favor of the consumer. I, for instance, received seven donuts in my half-dozen batch, a small counting error worth nearly 30 cents and one extra ration of yumminess in my belly when all was said and done. I shall commend the mini-donut both very favorably to friends and family in the future, so in the long run they will no doubt find it was a mistake well worth making.

A ghastly day

It's an absolutely ghastly day out today, rain whipping sideways and the wind shrieking through the rigging overhead. Halyards can't even beat out a decent rhythm in this stuff... it's bong bong bong ding ding shreeeeek and then on to something else. West Point says that it's only 25 gusting to 28 but the variance seems greater here in the marina. It's good to be inside, even if it's inside of something that is bobbing around quite a bit even in dock.

I expect I am noticing it more because I just got back from a job this morning. When I left, before the sun was entirely up, it was just raining. There is less rain now but the wind took me by surprise. I stopped at the dumpster to pitch some garbage on my way down from the truck, and the wind caught the lid and whipped it right up and over the top. I couldn't get enough leverage to get it closed again. Fortunately it's pretty much empty so trash isn't getting vacuumed out and blasted around the neighborhood.

I'm super glad I got the dinghy deflated and stowed yesterday, though. I wanted to give it some time to dry out first, a couple of good sunny days, and I never got them, so I settled for a couple not quite as wet as usual days and decided yesterday it was as dry as it was going to get. Good thing... if I'd left it out last night I would be starting all over again as of today. And the forecast is not promising with respect to aridity.


Fortunately, now that I am back for the day, I have something to mess with inside the boat: a new Mac Mini.

Since moving aboard, I have been needing something with enough horsepower to handle the development environment I run to build Mandy's website stuff for her; I develop in Windows because it's Playskool easy but I run it in a virtualized environment to handle the different machines necessary and to ensure that it's portable. Previously, for example, I ran it all on a home-built Linux machine.

My antique PowerBook had a processor to old to run it all, though, and I'm not in a position to replace it right now. A dedicated Windows machine would have been an option, but a very limited one, and probably would have needed to be custom built to get the form factor small enough, making it as expensive as a Mac anyway. I decided on the Mini as a compromise; it could handle all the development stuff and serve other purposes as well, such as video and sound editing, and function as a boat-sized server when at dock. It's small enough to fit easily into our computer dry box, and portable enough for us to easily take house-sitting. The keyboard, mouse, and monitor are the bulkiest items.

I figured all this out a month or so ago, but rumor had it the Minis were due for a mid-life upgrade sometime soon, and I didn't want to buy one when a better one could be had for the same price in a matter of weeks. So I had been sitting on my thumbs, stewing and not getting much done, until last Tuesday, when Apple finally announced the new version. I was so excited I got up and drove to the Apple Store at University Village, only to find that they hadn't gotten any in yet. I went home and ordered online; it showed up yesterday (free shipping!) and today it's all assembled and running back at the nav station.

I'm having trouble concentrating on code, though, so mostly I am fiddling around getting it set up to serve movies to all the other devices here and getting the virtual machines updated to take advantage of the increased processing power. What with all the racket outside, I doubt I will actually accomplish much on it today. But tonight, when it gets quite, or very early in the morning, when I can't sleep, it will be sitting back there ready and I'll sink into the lethargic fugu of programmers everywhere and hopefully crank out stuff to start catching up with what we want the website to be able to do right now.

Scary noises

Mandy was all freaking out last night because of "scary noises." These amounted to our fenders squeaking and lines shifting in some heavy winds, accompanying the usual rocking and bobbing boat motion that happens in such situations. I made fun of her; after all, we've heard all those noises a hundred times, and frankly I find them somewhat reassuring... it means everything is where it should be, doing what it is supposed to do.

It's calm and quiet this morning, and I got up to go up to the bathroom. For a change of pace (exciting life I lead here) I walked down to the bathrooms at the head of the R/S docks. Along the way, I heard a seal barking out near the breakwater. The sounds echoed off the high bluff to shoreward in the morning gloom. It was spooky. Halloween is almost here.

Sailing home in the rain

If we thought it was a bit damp getting up to Kingston, that was nothing compared to the drenching we got on the way home from there! Yesterday was wet and chilly out on the water; yet despite that, we had a nice, fun sail down to Shilshole, where we are now tucked away again, safe and warm.

Mandy actually sailed most of the way. We pulled out around 1100 with the rain and winds both relatively light in Appletree Cove, so we motored out into clear air beyond the southern point (query: the point forming the southern tip of Appletree Cove isn't named on my chart... does it have a name? or does the cove extend technically all the way out to President's Point further south?) and picked up a nice 10 knot breeze from the southeast to raise sail in.

After that it was just a matter of beating south, which was not terribly onerous as the wind remained moderate and from a favorable direction. We took some pains to stay out of the shipping lanes as the intermittent showers hampered visibility somewhat, but there weren't many other vessels out on the water. Not a great day for it according to conventional thinking; but it was kind of a fun little trip for us. The wind kicked up as we got closer to Shilshole and we made the trip in about three hours.

We also took some advantage of the rain to go pump out our holding tank. For those unfamiliar with the process, consider again something I have mentioned here before: there is nowhere "down" in a boat for anything to fall or trickle out of. Everything that comes into the hull stays there unless removed, settling to the lowest point physically possible and cluttering or messing the place up in the meantime. This, of course, includes sewage.

We have a small chemical toilet installed by a previous owner, rather than a more conventional marine head, but we improved the installation a couple years ago with the addition of a holding tank that we can empty the toilet into while we are out and about. This extends our cruising range in the no-dumping environment of Washington State (BC, with fewer pump-out stations and laxer environmental regulations, is simply a very large and diluted open sewer) considerably. But eventually, one must pay the piper, and when we do so by visiting the conveniently located pump out station provided at the marina fuel dock, we prefer to do so in the rain... Nature's hose, constantly directed over our shoulder to flush away any gruesome bits of evil stew that somehow escape the massive vacuum system that sucks the tank empty.

Because of our unusual setup, flushing the system is more complicated than it is on other vessels. We have a two-stage process, where sewage is pumped from toilet to tank, and then sucked out of the tank. To flush everything out, we go through that process a couple of times, which involves a lot of getting on and off the boat, turning the vacuum on and off, turning the flushing hose on and off, and crawling into the cockpit to work the pump. Mandy hates everything to do with the head. Still, I am not sure she wouldn't hate a conventional marine head even worse, with its greater complexity and propensity for breakage. I am pretty happy with what we have. A different setup would necessitate a much larger holding tank to serve for the same period, which would eat into already limited storage space.

But the tank is emptied and we're here where we can use the marina facilities now. We're hunkered down with the heater on full blast, drying out foulies, waiting out what looks like a week or so of pretty miserable weather coming on. Our timing isn't usually all that great, but I have to say we timed this trip just about right. We probably enjoyed about the last week of continuous decent weather this year, and finished up just as things are getting worse. I'm not sure how often or where else we might go this winter, but trips will probably be considerably less frequent. We will probably be kitty-sitting for much of the winter, as my folks take their RV and head south for sunshine. There is probably at least one sailing trip up to Port Townsend in the cards sometime in November or December for a haul-out; the hull needs re-painted and our rudder stuffing box needs repacked. Apart from that, I think I may be content to sit in a marina and wait for spring!

Go Bucs!

There's quite a nice little park/commons area adjacent to the marina and below the KCYC clubhouse (available for rent!) here in Kingston, and when we went out for our daily constitutional this morning we saw folks out setting up tents and hay bales and propane heaters, which piqued our curiosity. From the colors of the decor and other banners we saw up all over town, we quickly deduced the function for which the preparations were intended: Kingston High School Homecoming Week!

So about 1800 we hear the parade processional arriving, accompanied by the high school marching band. I was just getting out of the shower (free showers at Port of Kingston! Up to this point, I have been referring to good showers as "Buck fifty showers" since that's about what it might cost to have one at Shilshole, but from here on out I will simply call them "Kingston showers") and Mandy was in the middle of fixing dinner, but I was thrown into a paroxysm of excitement at the prospects of free entertainment, so I dried off and forced her to finish quickly so we could shovel it down and get up to the party.

The park was full of screaming teenagers chasing one another around with cream pies; the big attraction of the event, other than the hot dogs, was apparently the opportunity to splatter other people with cream pies, sometimes in an organized and carefully measured manner, sometimes simply opportunistically. I got caught in a drive-by and caught some over-splatter on my back but it was merely a flesh wound. I threatened to put Mandy's name on the list for those being drug off to the target booth, but probably no one would have been very excited about throwing pies at her. She seemed confused by the whole thing... her high school apparently had pretty sedate homecoming events. I don't even remember what they were like at my high school, but the whole thing reminded me quite a bit of the hubbub surrounding homecoming at the high school in the small town where I lived when I was younger, Lake Roosevelt High School. The similarity was no doubt enhanced by the similarity of the mascots; the Kingston Buccaneers and the Lake Roosevelt Raiders (who are a fairly typical 0-5 so far this season, I see; they might have a shot against Brewster in a couple of weeks, the winner avoiding the ignominy of coming in dead last in the Caribou Trail league). I don't have any really distinct memories but the whole thing seemed vaguely nostalgic for that reason.

Anyway, we didn't stick around long but I'm still enjoying the band playing from down here on the boat.

Go Bucs!

The wet way to Kingston

It didn't really get super-wet until we got here, actually... our timing was nearly impeccable in that respect. But it's sure pouring out now! We're thrilled to be tucked up in one of the two reciprocal mooring slips kept by the Kingston Cove Yacht Club at the Port of Kingston, with the electric heater blasting and the hatches dogged down tight. I am doubly glad I finished caulking the toe-rail at the bow a few weeks ago, too; persistent, nagging leaks in the v-berth have all but stopped, even in the heaviest weather.

We pulled out of Eagle Harbor this morning just after the showers stopped there and right as the sun started to put in an appearance. The clouds and rain were still low and swirling off to our east, folding Seattle in an amorphous blanket of glowing gloom. Sunlight reflected through the swirls off the top of Qwest Field and some of the taller office towers poked out through, but with the sun coming from behind the cloud banks, the city was mostly erased from view. We raised sail just inside the #2 buoy and headed north in about 8 knots of wind out of the southeast.

The sun stayed with us most of the way and the winds were fairly light and of course on a rainy Wednesday there was no traffic to speak of outside the ferry and shipping lanes. It stayed that way until I went off-watch three hours later; as soon as Mandy got on deck the sun disappeared, the rain started, and the wind kicked up. We were just off Jefferson Point by then, though, and the additional burst of speed put us into Appletree Cove in no time. We got the sail down and tucked in to the marina with no trouble, happy to see that a reciprocal slip was open. KCYC maintains two here, and although there probably was never much likelihood of finding anyone in them this time of year in the middle of the week, my fear was that we would, and would then either have to pay for a regular slip or have to look elsewhere. We've been itching to use our WSYC membership to stay cheap or free at a another club, and with a series of storms coming in, this seemed like a perfect opportunity. There isn't really a particularly safe anchorage here, so the marina is the only good option.

So now we're drying out and catching up on work. We'll stay for a couple of days, and most likely head back to Shilshole after that. Our ambitions to visit the south Sound may be quashed until spring. But we'll have an opportunity to explore Kingston, previously a place that has simply been another quaint town to pass by on the way to a ferry terminal.

I can't get away from Bainbridge Island

Actually, it was my vote to stay in the first place... we had planned to head out today, but I thought Mandy would like to hang around and see lovely downtown Winslow. That was before it started to rain. Anyway, we're tucked away warm and dry at the local library for the moment. And we got to walk around a bit before it started raining, so hopefully she got her fill of quaint cottages and parks. We'll grab lunch somewhere in town on the way back to the waterfront.

Tomorrow I am not sure where we will go. The original plan had been to check out the south sound on this trip. That was the same plan as last time, of course, but this time we simply missed our window... Mandy wanted to stay close to town for Monday, and now the wind has shifted so it's out of the south, and since we're doing this for fun and not simply to say we did it, a six or seven hour tacking marathon to get down to Gig Harbor just isn't in the cards. But we don't really want to hit our old haunts up north, either. There are fewer options in the mid-sound region, at least if you discount Poulsbo/Bainbridge and the Port Orchard area, which is where we have spent the past week already. I'm inclined toward Kingston or Everett at the moment, but we'll see what the weather is like in the morning. The West Point weather station showed wind out of the northwest this morning, which put me in for a bit of confusion... another instance of too much information being a bad thing. I thought for a bit we might get to Gig Harbor after all, but the reading seemed anomalous and at odds with the forecast so I dithered, and here we sat instead.

But it's not a bad place to sit and Mandy is picking out places for lunch right now, which beats a peanut butter sandwich on the boat, and might even make up for the damp seats in the dinghy we'll have to deal with on the way back out.

I can't get away from herons

Herbert, Herman, whatever he is called these days, has apparently followed us across the sound and taken up a perch astern of us on the linear mooring system here in Eagle Harbor. I really hope it wasn't he who pooed upon the starboard cockpit bench last night. I shall be severely disappointed.

Mandy is over in the City (as they call it here) working today and I have had to wander about Winslow on Bainbridge Island all by my lonesome. Actually I quite like the place, despite a paucity of coffee shops in the immediate harbor area.

Mandy was saying the other day that it doesn't feel like fall yet, but it sure did to me this morning as I walked around in the cool mist, with the trees starting to turn and Halloween decorations everywhere. I was just looking for a Starbucks (there isn't one) but I quite liked my little tour of downtown Winslow. Unlike so many well-to-do towns that have sprung up in the middle of quaint villages, the architecture here pretty much all seems to match. Modern condos, cottages, and townhomes all blend in well with the older houses and cottages, and a fine patina of vegetation tends to mask what differences there are. I didn't see many mega-mansions, although certainly those abound along the waterfront all around the island; in Winslow, the homes are small and tidy, making excellent use of space.

The commercial areas are tidy and well-considered also. The buildings are mostly newer, but again the new fits well with the old. I've never seen so many doctors, spas, yoga studios, and gyms... the islanders must be some of the fittest and healthiest people on earth. But then, since it seems most of them walk or ride their bikes down to the ferry every day and then to whatever points their business takes them in Seattle, they probably get plenty of exercise anyway.

They are dying the slow death of frogs in a pot of water being brought slowly to a boil, though, as a series of "citizen" initiatives has led to decreased transportation funding and increasing ferry fares these past few years. Indeed, another just took effect; traditionally, to cope with the summer tourist season, Washington State Ferries levies an additional charge during the summer months, removing it to the relief of locals in the fall. This year, they are taking away the summer surcharge, but simultaneously adding in a rate hike so most people will actually pay more than they did this summer.

It's hard to say what effect this will ultimately have; certainly it will press hard against the less well-to-do commuters, who may find the economics of the situation dictates a move back to the mainland. Will Bainbridge become an even more exclusive enclave? A sleepy retirement community? Or will the wealthy depart too when the low funding levels result in almost inevitable service cuts, such as those that have already done away with passenger-only ferry service?

One of the benefits of having our own floating transportation is that the outcome won't really affect us either way. But it would be sad to see this lovely little place dwindle.

Water ballet

I'm waiting for the ferry at the Seattle-Bainbridge terminal right now and watching an intricate ballet unfold off the Seattle waterfront. An OSCO container ship is coming in to the east waterway, with tugs in attendance, as the Kaleetan sits at Coleman dock offloading and Wenatchee manuevers around to the north to come in to the dock to unload as well. In the background, the Adventuress beats southward nearer Bainbridge Island and a Coast Guard cutter heads north. The winds are out of the south at ten to fifteen knots. I shudder to think what sort of windage the ferries and cargo ships present; on the other hand, their vast bulk must also have an intrinsically damping effect on any such motion.

You don't have to be on the water regularly, or at all, to appreciate these things; but I find I notice them more now.

I see there is another ferry in the dry dock over at Todd Shipyards on Harbor Island. Looks like one of the super-Jumbos, but I hadn't heard that any of them were being taken out of service. I wonder too if the cutter is heading out for a reason; on the way over earlier today, I saw a smaller fast-response boat with its lights on heading the same direction. A single large incident happening? Or completely unrelated? Nautical matters are under-reported, or if they are not, I at least haven't found a good real-time or near-real-time source of them yet. I have come to realize that I've been spoiled by the past few years in West Seattle with the West Seattle Blog to refer to as the the information source of first resort in almost every instance. With more of our time spent in Ballard now, we've taken to checking out MyBallard.com, which is often mentioned in the same breath with WSB, Fremont Universe, and CHS as frontrunners of the new hyper-local news scene. But MyBallard is a pale, feeble imitation of WSB... updates are old, infrequent, and incomplete. Mandy read something the other day which was comparing the post volume of the various local hyper-local (did I coin that?) websites, and WSB was far and away the most prolific.

It certainly shows in the quality and utility of the site. Do you hear sirens in West Seattle? Check WSB... they already know what's going on. Traffic backed up? Check WSB, they know why, and what your best alternate routes are. Looking for something to do this weekend? WSB has all the events, no matter how small, happening in the neighborhood, and hey, if you missed one, they usually have reports afterward of what happened and how it was. One day, Mandy heard a strange beeping noise outside in our neighborhood. It was irregular but kept coming back. Finally, we checked WSB. Turns out someone had gone out of town and their house alarm had malfunctioned several blocks north of us. WSB had the story, had followed up with the police, and checked with the alarm company to see what the timeline might be for getting the thing fixed, all before we even thought to check the site.

This sort of in-depth, up-to-the-minute information beats anything that traditional news sources can provide, even those with websites, and the success that WSB has had in delivering such information feeds on itself. At least half of the secret to their success is that almost everyone in West Seattle, should anything even remotely newsworthy occur in their presence, will quickly tip them via e-mail, cell-phone, or Twitter. They've effectively tapped into the local population, because those people all know that what they contribute will be reported and be useful to their neighbors. And because everyone checks the site when things are actually in progress, you get a wider variety of information sources than if a whole army of reporters had been sent to cover the event. The comments are often as useful as the story, and the editors frequently make use of information gathered there as well.

The other half of the secret seems to be that they are dedicated, old-school reporters... up half the night listening to the scanner, in the car in an instant to check out a scoop, cell phone always on. Fast footwork and good sources make for great reporting. And of course none if it would work if Tracy and Patrick weren't extremely professional in tone and conduct. They have journalism backgrounds, and it shows; but unlike their more staid compatriots in the "real" newsrooms, they also have figured out how to leverage modern technology to get useful information to people in a short timeframe.

In the summer, Captain Richard Rodriguez's Bitter End fills much of this gap for the San Juan Islands, although that isn't his goal and consequently there are many gaps in the coverage. Puget Sound Maritime fills a position as an aggregator of nautical news published elsewhere, but it's neither timely nor complete. Three Sheets Northwest has excellent, well-researched and well-written feature articles, but it's geared almost entirely in that direction and lacks immediacy and completeness as a nautical news source. The Coast Guard's District 13 public information site is an excellent resource for Coast Guard activities, but generally well after the fact (and rightly so; they have more pressing business).

In short, I am probably asking for too much... spoiled, as I said. I suppose there is too little sense of community on the water; few people live here, after all, it's a weekend getaway for most. For those who work on the Sound daily, I imagine the grapevine fills much of the need for news. There are times I turn on the VHF just to listen in much the same way I used to habitually click over to CNN when I didn't have anything better to watch (although their ridiculous antics of late pretty much cured me of that even before I got rid of the television).

Well, I hadn't planned on writing about all this when I started out, but there you go. If anyone knows of a better source of local maritime news, let me know!

The Wrong Side of Poulsbo

That's where we're anchored, a consequence of my failure to do more in-depth research prior to departing the home dock. Depth, indeed, was my undoing, as was time, working together to cause me, when we arrived just after dark Thursday night, to pull in short of the vast, gleaming Port of Poulsbo marina, taking up with the tawdry ranks of powerboats in the mooring field between the marina and the yacht club. Oh, there is depth all right, and we put the anchor down perhaps fifteen minutes earlier than we might have, and goodness knows it's well-protected, well-provided with Internet service, and as possessed of lovely, teasing views of Mount Rainier, the Olympics, and the charming Scandinavian homes surrounding Liberty Bay as a person might wish... but it is, alas, on the far side of the marina from the dinghy dock.

And I neglected to purchase the 2.5 horse Tohatsu we saw at Second Wave on Thursday that was going for a song. A song, I tell you!

It's just as well things aren't too convenient here, as otherwise it might be hard to come up with sufficient reasons to leave. That's easy to say, I suppose, with the sun shining, the boat warm, and our electricity as yet unsapped. Sometime in the coming weeks when the lights began to dim and the rain to fall unyielding from the heavens, I suppose I wouldn't need much more pursuading to weigh anchor. But at the moment, I'm quite content to sit out here and bobble gently at the end of the rode, watching everyone else go by.

We're trying to work out a plan for early next week, which will require Mandy's first extended adventure in getting back to town from somewhere (possibly here) in the Puget Sound region for the students she has on Monday. It would all be quite simple but for her insistence on leaving on Sunday to get there, and returning on Tuesday... two days amongst the least convenient for transit from the hinterlands here. Or Sunday is, anyway, Tuesday is no worse than any other day. But it does mean I have to sit someplace an extra day or so, and that brings me back to being here, on the wrong side of Poulsbo from the dinghy dock. Kill an extra day at the Kitsap Regional Library? Perhaps after finding a wayward maple bar with my name on it at the excellent bakery near the waterfront? No problem. But row an extra half mile each way to get there? That, I am not so excited about.

Will keep you posted on the alternatives. Right now I'm looking at (blech) Bremerton instead.

Two-wheeling it

We finally got our bike rack up last week. It's actually a dinghy rack, but a lot of people use them for bikes as well, since bike storage is otherwise somewhat problematic here at Shilshole. There are plenty of bike racks, but they are all labeled "Day Use Only" (this somewhat incomprehensible dictate has led a fellow tenant to start locking his or her bike to the railing at the entrance to our dock instead of the perfectly good, and empty, bike rack six feet away, where it would be much less in everyone's way), and there are some small bike sheds which seemed expensive and awkward and quite possibly all taken, and then there is some sort of bike graveyard behind a chain link fence, where the bikes of absent cruisers go to die.

Since we are cheapskates and actually want to use our bikes regularly, we did what a lot of people do (and which the marina allows and apparently approves) which is to pay the extra $5 a month for the two vertically mounted steel tubes that go with fittings behind our dock box and buy a six foot pressure treated 4x4 to lash up between them and hang our bikes from.

The only real challenge was finding bike hooks for our purposes; we have two to hang, and need to have some separation so they are easy enough for Mandy to get down without tangling them together. We found a couple of fold-down tool racks at Lowe's that were just about perfect. I only noticed after we got them back that they have mount points that are closer to six inches apart than four... not enough room to put a screw in both holes when putting them up on a 4x4. The screws were sturdy enough that one would hold a bike pretty easily, though. I'll go back and screw a chunk of 2x4 in to the bottom of the 4x4 sometime later and secure them both top and bottom.

After getting the hooks mounted, it was just a matter of holding the 4x4 in place and trying to talk Mandy through some half-remembered Boy Scout campsite lashing techniques. In the end we got it secured pretty well, I think. At least, neither the bikes nor the rack have come crashing down yet (although out of paranoia I continue to attach the bikes directly to the crossbeam with their locks... if they do get dislodged they should wedge and hang there instead of turning into seafloor features beneath the slip). And Ballard, which is just a bit too far to walk easily or enjoyable, is now begrudgingly accessible.

Kinetic Kaos

We took off last Thursday to see where the wind would take us, and since it was blowing from the south when we left, we decided to go north. We'd never been to Port Ludlow, at least from the water, and so decided to anchor there for a few days and see what we had been missing.

Ludlow is a somewhat unusual community and equally unusual as an anchorage. Ashore, the community is composed largely of retirees (although you will find the locals as you get higher up into the hills off the water) and doesn't look anything like a conventional small town. It's built around a resort and golf course; there are a few nice restaurants, mostly associated with the resort, but the closest thing to a grocery store is the local mini-mart, and as far as other services go, if the resort doesn't do it, it pretty much isn't available. In recent years, the place has garnered a reputation as a quiet destination for the rich and famous, and it's certainly well-designed to cater to the affluent recluse... houses are tucked into the trees, the resort is quietly classy, and the views are classicly beautiful. I can't comment on the golf course since I'm not a golfer, but isn't 27 more holes than usual? The excesses of the wealthy!

The bay is well-sheltered, particularly the further in you go, where the high hillsides draw close and block the winds (although a pair of underwater cables can make anchoring problematic). If that's not enough for you, though, the inner bay, accessed through a shallow channel near the base of the main waterway, is almost entirely enclosed. Although anchoring depths in the inner port are acceptable for a boat our size, two to three fathoms, I didn't feel like braving the entrance, with a least depth that is pretty close to our nearly one fathom draft. It would be fine at high tide, but then you are limited in when you can leave. I didn't have any premonition that I would have some pressing need to leave, but still... I decided to drop the hook in the outer bay.

We had a day of rain and I came down with a wicked cold, but our diesel cabin heater decided to work more often than not so we had a couple of pretty nice, quiet days working and reading. Unlike many anchorages, Ludlow doesn't see a lot of traffic. We had only a single companion at anchor (and I didn't see anyone on deck the whole time we were there) and I can't recall rolling at the hands of an errant wake even once.

Ludlow is only about six miles from Port Hadlock, where my parents' mooring buoy is at, and we thought that while we were so close we might swing past and pick up a generator that I had stored up there... Mandy was jonesing for more power and sunlight is bound to be in short supply in the coming months here. When I e-mailed Mom to see if they would be around for us to come get the thing, she mentioned something I had completely forgotten: it was the first weekend in October, time for the Kinetic Skulpture Race in Port Townsend!

We seem to end up going to the race by happenstance more often than by design, which happily fits in well with the event's general theme of merry unpredictability. Since we were so close, it seemed like fate was once again calling us to the race.

As it happened, we had to be back in Seattle by Sunday afternoon, and wouldn't be able to watch the main event on that day, but we hauled anchor Saturday morning and beat the tide through the cut (the Port Townsend Canal, between the mainland and Indian Island) and got to town in time to watch the always exciting outcomes of the mandatory pre-race Brake and Float Test. The skulptures are created with varying degrees of inspiration and workmanship and there are inevitably some contestants who fail one or the other.

The wind had shifted to the north and was whipping down at Hadlock in the south end of the bay but it was pretty nice in town next to Hudson's Point where the Float Test happens. We were late and didn't have a great view but various degrees of dampness witnessed among those coming back up the ramp attested to a number of flotation-related issues among the contestants.

As is typical, I forgot my camera, which is a pity this year particularly as some of the costumes were particularly good. There was a Alice in Wonderland theme and frozen in my mind's eye is the sight of the White Rabbit throwing a few back on the other side of the window at the iconic Town Tavern (which is unfortunately no longer the Town Tavern... but to fans of "An Officer and a Gentleman" it will live on in its former glory!) after the Float Test.

We had a great dinner with my folks and their friends Pete and Nancy and Brent and Janet. Brent (the same gentleman who did the delicious ribs we served at our wedding) and Janet cooked and it was as excellent a meal as we have come to expect from them. I got a good night's sleep and a hot shower and then it was time to head back south.

The wind, in addition to switching direction, had also upped its intensity, and was bombing down at twenty to twenty-five knots from the north. We only inflated our little six foot raft, since the dinghy is a pain to assemble for such a short stop, and I paid for it by taking several cold North Pacific waves in my lap on the way back out to the boat. Once aboard, though, we raised sail and took off like a banshee going south. We only put up the main (except to manuever into the cut) but kept hull speed or close to it for most of the trip. We made it in a little over four hours, a thrilling down-hill sleigh ride under blue skies and sunshine.

We weren't the only ones out, either, and not everyone was quite ready for the ride. We overheard pan-pan calls for four different capsize incidents resulting in persons in the water, two engine overheat/fires on board, and what sounded like it might have been a collision between the Vessel Assist Everett boat and someone else. We were busy trying to wrestle our main down and negotiate the flurry of kite-surfers and sailboarders whipping around the north breakwater at Shilshole by then so I'm not sure what exactly happened. But the Seattle Vessel Assist boat was absent from its slip at the base of our dock when we got in and I have no doubt they were having a busy day.