s/v Mysticeti

Under a Half Moon in Half Moon Bay

Posted by John

It looks like we’ve been hanging out in Half Moon Bay for more than four weeks so it’s probably time to say something about it. We used up all of our paid internet access, and we’re too far from the free marina Wi-Fi to get a reliable connection, otherwise this post might’ve been made sooner.

As a destination, Half Moon Bay is not much for us to write home about. It was just an easy place to get off the ocean without a lot of screwing around. Simply steering around the rocks near Maverick’s Beach, famous for its annual surfing competition, and then entering Pillar Point Harbor through an opening in the breakwater, and we were suddenly inside a completely protected and uniformly shallow bay within the bay. Behind another breakwater within the harbor is the Pillar Point Marina. In the time we’ve been here, we’ve met people on several other boats heading south from Puget Sound and B.C. At one time, there were at least six boats from the Seattle area all anchored around us in the harbor. We met some in a bar watching the Seahawks on TV, which has kind of become what we do on Sunday afternoons.

We will remember Half Moon Bay as the place where, for the first time in years, we found ourselves without anything we really needed to get up for and do. We’d wake in the morning and lie in bed trying to think what the agenda of the day was, but we wouldn’t be able to come up with much. There was no commute to get up for, no job to go to, no plans to be worked out, no financial details to discuss (how, again, are we going to do this?), no rooms to clean out, flooring to install, tile to lay, animals to feed, possessions to sort, cars to get fixed or items to donate or try to sell. Everything on which we had worked so hard for so long had led up to us getting on our boat and sailing away. And now, some 700 miles later, we realized all those things were behind us. We had, perhaps, achieved the escape that we had previously only wondered if was even possible. When the big event of the day was eating half moon cookies under a half moon in Half Moon Bay (“Hey, look at this!”), we knew life was different.

We are here because we needed to be south of Cape Mendocino before the Seattle summer ended, when the jet stream moves south and starts steering storm systems directly at the Washington and Oregon coasts. We missed it last year, so we made sure to leave early this year. But we can’t go too far south until the hurricane season in Mexico ends in November. So we end up with this dwell time in between to just sort of hang out and try to not get in anybody’s way.

We couldn’t get a temporary slip in the marina, but we were able to rent a mooring buoy in the harbor for a couple of weeks. That got us a key to the marina laundry room and showers, two things we still find easier with actual plumbing. But when we tried to rent the mooring for a month we were told we’d have to apply to the harbor patrol for live-aboard status, and then pay several hundred dollars in live-aboard fees. So we paid for the mooring on a day-to-day basis for a couple of weeks and then moved back to where we’d been anchored by Slainte and dropped the anchor again. We’ll give the key back when we leave.

Half Moon Bay is easy to find. The Air Force radar domes on Pillar Point are visible from miles away.

Pillar Point Harbor, protected by a long breakwater, occupies the north end of the bay. A humpback whale ventured inside the breakwater a few times, and more than once we were surrounded by large porpoises. An intimidating sea lion likes to hang out on the marina fuel dock.

When we arrived, the place was crazy with birds. Elegant terns (?), frantic little squeaky white things, take high speed plunges straight down into the water, then immediately pop back up into the air with a tiny fish. Meanwhile, whole squadrons of pelicans return to the bay in the evenings, coming in low and looking cool and confident skimming the surface. They glide more and flap less than the terns, only losing their coolness when they spot a fish and get all gangly with their feet sticking out and wings at an awkward angle; rolling, diving and crashing into the water with a noisy splash. There are still a lot of birds here, but the numbers seem to be less the last few weeks.

The marina is behind a second breakwater, but is it made of rocks or resting birds? Hint: zoom in, look close, start counting.

Pillar Point Marina is used by both recreational and commercial boats, but the daily activity is dominated by the fishing fleet which comes and goes constantly. Some marinas have a high-end feel, some seem more suited to the average boater, but this one, with the fish trucks and fork lifts, definitely feels industrial.

Many boats sell directly to the public. The weekends also bring lots of people out to sail, kayak, wind surf, paddle board, fish and generally mill about in the marina and the seafood restaurants and the few local shops.

Downtown Half Moon Bay is about a ten minute drive south on the highway. It has a Safeway, a hardware store, banks and other businesses. It would be more convenient if they were within walking distance of the marina, but a regular transit bus runs all day. We rented a car so we could drive to Alameda for a seminar put on by the Baja Ha Ha about cruising in Mexico. The next day we drove around and did some serious shopping, including picking up some parts for our wind generator project from a Silicon Valley electronics store that I used to mail order electronic parts from decades ago. The thought was nostalgic, but the experience really wasn’t.

We can feel homeless and broke one day and back to normal the next. But either way, realizing that we have to get our grocery cart full of food onto a public transit bus (why did we buy so much?), or a rental car trunk-load from Costco into a tiny dinghy (why did we buy so much?), we are constantly being reminded that the logistics of life are different now.

All is not lying around and watching the birds and taking occasional shore excursions, however. Nature abhors a void and will fill it with things for you to do. Since we left home and had to replace an engine impeller while underway on the first day, followed by repairing a broken latch on the bow hatch the next, so many things have broken or otherwise been in need of repair or replacement that I started keeping a list. As of today, we are up to nineteen individual items that needed unplanned attention. That’s about one new problem every other day. It’s been everything from broken sail slides on the mizzen, to a clogged carburetor jet on the outboard. The one thing we haven’t fixed yet is a wind-up ship’s clock that was part of the boat when we bought it. We had it cleaned about ten years ago, but didn’t think to have it cleaned again before we left. It suddenly stopped working a few days ago. I won’t be taking it apart myself to see what I can do, but we can’t imagine going the rest of the trip without it, either. Maybe we’ll meet a friendly watchmaker along the way.

Little to do except handle the daily breakdowns. That’s how Half Moon Bay will be remembered.

Neah Bay to Half Moon Bay

Posted by John

We declared it was time to start cruising in the last post. We had dropped anchor late at night next to our buddy boat, Slainte, on the Port Townsend waterfront. After a couple days there, we moved on, first with two nights anchored inside the Port Angeles harbor, then with one final night in the calm safety of Neah Bay, on the far northwest corner of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State.

The next several days varied from excitement and disbelief that we actually were doing this, to three days of testing our ability to continue to function after very little sleep and the exhaustion of needing to hand steer the boat, 24 hours a day, in rough seas and 20 to 30 knot winds; to hours upon hours of running the engine along a gloomy, gray, nearly windless Northern California coast.

This is the lighthouse at Point Wilson, in Port Townsend. It marks the first of two left turns that take you from the protected waters of Puget Sound, to the far side of the Olympic Mountains (in the background, with snow patches), to sailing southbound in the Pacific Ocean.

We stuck with our buddy boat, s/v Slainte, almost all the way to Port Angeles. We’re motoring beneath Obstruction Ridge (background), in the Olympic National Park. Not long after this photo was taken, our engine alarm panel lit up with an over-temperature warning. This happens sometimes when we push the engine too hard, and backing off the throttle will clear the alarm. Unfortunately, that didn’t solve the problem this time. Only cleaning the raw water intake strainer, followed by a complete remove and replace operation of the burned up pump impeller, done in a rolling and bouncing engine room while Julie and Robyn got a couple sails up to keep the boat in control, solved the problem. We caught up with Slainte in the Port Angeles harbor.

At least one of us might’ve liked to spend a couple nights in the marina behind the wall, but it was not to happen. We anchored in the harbor for two days, organizing the boat. Port Angeles, with the city wedged on a hillside between the sea and mountains, has always been one of my favorite places. Mount Angeles is in the background.

We wanted the moon to light our way all the way to San Francisco, but we were about a week late in getting everything wrapped up at home. We did take advantage of the full moon, however, rising here over Port Angeles, to get us to Neah Bay. We made a 3 AM departure, both for favorable tides, and to get out of the harbor before any morning fog formed, which had been heavy in recent days. Of course, half a night’s sleep eventually added additional cumulative sleep deprivation in the coming days.

Anchored close nearby, we spent one last night in calm, protected water behind the Neah Bay breakwater. We managed to top off our fuel and water tanks, but not much else was possible in the little fishing village. Our dinghy was already packed and stowed away for the ocean. The weather options looked like we could either start out rough at this end, and maybe beat forecasted bad weather in California the following week, or wait for most favorable conditions here, and get the bad weather on the other end. We opted to go for it now, and get the bad weather over with early. We planned for an 8 AM departure.

Little did we know at the time that we would get separated from Slainte by more than two days, and approximately two hundred miles. With no cell phone coverage, and well out of normal marine VHF radio range, we were only able to make contact again, to let them know how far behind them we were, by using ham radio to relay a message via the Pacific Seafarer’s Net through a ham radio operator in Hawaii. At the radio frequencies involved, 200 miles is too far for marine VHF, but was too close for HF ham radio. The HF signal will bounce off the ionosphere and travel thousands of miles across the ocean, but skip over closer receivers. It was my first ever ham radio voice call, but, luckily, successful. I even rattled off the phonetic spelling of Mysticeti like a pro, I think. We would eventually catch up to Slainte in Half Moon Bay.

This is the end of the Earth in the Pacific Northwest. Cape Flattery is to the left, with Tatoosh Island, lighthouse and associated rocks to the right. Even in the photo, you can see the ocean swells.

We are actually sailing on the actual ocean! Cape Flattery is at the base of the hill, with Tatoosh Island to its left. We’ve made the second of the two left turns and are headed south.

What happened over the next 48 hours I have no pictures to illustrate because I only have two hands and I needed them both for other purposes, such as steering the boat and hanging on during violent rolling, pitching and yawing. Let’s just say that a 10 to 20 degree roll of the hull is normal sailing, but a sudden 30 degree roll will knock things that aren’t bolted or strapped down onto the floor; and repeated sudden 40 degree violent rolls will empty closed cabinets that aren’t latched tightly enough. Fun.

With 20 to 35 knot winds and heavy seas, we could not get our Saye’s Rig self-steering system, (nicknamed Isaac) consisting of a small wedge-shaped sail and a long shaft extending to a trim tab attached to the rudder, to balance out in the narrow downwind range of wind direction, following seas and desired direction of travel. We were forced to hand steer 24 hours per day. This was very fatiguing, and we could not keep up the pace, even when trading off every 30 minutes. Heaving-to (slowing the boat to a near stop) a couple of times during the night, so we could get some meaningful sleep, seemed to be our only option.

Having heard many horror stories about Cape Mendocino, we wanted to pass it fairly far offshore. But once we found ourselves in 30 knots and rough seas again, with more benign weather forecasts close-in toward shore, we changed course to get us in to ten or twelve miles, rather than fifty to sixty. However, that eventually resulted in almost zero wind. From too much to too little. We finally rationalized that just because we were on a sailing trip, there was no reason we had to actually sail the whole time. So, engine on it was. With our hydraulic Simrad autopilot (tentatively nicknamed Sinbad) on the job, we could take watches acting more as systems monitors, rather than active boat wrestlers, and drone on toward San Francisco.

With sunglasses at the ready, Julie naps in the cockpit, perhaps dreaming of a warm and sunny California. Wait…this is California.

Having a nearly completely enclosed and protected cockpit, we slept up there, taking turns. If we sat in the right spot we could see everything we needed to see, including the AIS display (small, pale blue screen visible at the nav station inside), which is an invaluable tool when dodging ships at night. It gives the ship’s name and call sign, relative position, speed, direction, bearing, calculated closest point of approach and time of closest point of approach. Likewise, they can get the same information about us. However, we went for two days without seeing another vessel, visually, or on the AIS.

We picked up a hitch hiker somewhere off Point Arena, CA. How he got that far out, we don’t know. We have different opinions on this, but I tend to think he was blown out there and needed a rest, maybe hoping for a lift back to shore.

This is one of the Farallon Islands off of San Francisco. These are the kinds of things you plan carefully to avoid running into at night, when they are impossible to see visually.

We spent our last day navigating around the Farallons, crossing the inbound and outbound shipping lanes, watching whales spout, and getting to Half Moon Bay, the ear-shaped cutout from the land at lower right.

Anchored once again near Slainte, inside the breakwater at Half Moon Bay, CA.

Tracking: We did try out our Spot tracker. We’ve created a “share page” for this blog, but do not have it working yet. In the meantime, this link will show our last position: http://fms.ws/ae_SS/37.49839n/122.48807w. It should update each time we move.

If we are within range of an AIS receiving station linked to the internet, you can also see our current position at www.marinetraffic.com. Search for Mysticeti.

For our memorable little friend, hope you made it safely back to shore.

Cars–What are they Good For?

Posted by John

This post has been difficult to write. Every time I think I have something to say, it changes. Every time I think I’m ready to post it, I have no internet connection. When I do have a connection, I want to change what I’ve written. This is the last planned post before we find our way to San Francisco.

In our story so far, preparing for cruising has gradually relieved us of the daily obligations of our normal life on land. The last thing to go was our cars. One day we had three. Forty-eight hours later we had none. Our transition from land to water was complete.

So many people, including family, friends, neighbors and even people we just met and hardly knew, helped us get through this transition. Often, offering just what we needed at just the right time. Our primary car expired a few weeks too soon. Our backup car was already a big oil loser with several additional problems. When our third, backup to the backup car, gave up and wouldn’t move any more, I really felt that, suddenly, they all were good for absolutely nothing. But then, our favorite mechanic not only said he could fix that car in one day, he offered to buy our nearly 280,000 mile, 24-year old oil loser, “Whenever we were ready.” The primary car made it to the scrap yard under its own power without catching fire, but there was smoke. The mechanic bought the backup car. And the third car, with one promising buyer changing her mind and backing out, went to auction. Finally, our attention could be placed entirely on us and the boat.

With no car, our neighbor loaned us her truck, and we were able to move the last of the boat stuff out of the transitional “safe house” and onto the boat. It is all still a mess, with every conceivable gap of a space getting something squeezed into it, but at least we’re gradually reducing the number of things stacked on the deck. We know we have everything we’ll need somewhere onboard, but finding it will be the problem. I’m sure we’ll have time to organize later.

In spite of the complications caused by the cars, we managed to get away from the Port Ludlow area for a while last month and run up to the San Juan Islands for a few days. (I guess it was a vacation.) We did it as an overnight trip, leaving Port Ludlow on a Saturday night and motoring non-stop to Sucia Island, arriving Sunday morning. We wanted to see how prepared we were for running all night. I’d forgotten how different everything looks when you can’t see it.

While in the San Juans, we spent a night at Blind Island State Park. What appeared to be a baby seal, looking and sounding like you’d think a distressed animal would, tried to climb over the transom of our inflatable dinghy (see last month’s post). Maybe our dinghy smells like seal, and the little one thought it was his mother? Perhaps inflatables are easily confused for seals by other seals? Whatever the reason, the thought is slightly disturbing.

After the San Juan trip we had a final tune of our rig done, which was never completed last year when the boat was re-rigged and we had to have a new bowsprit built. Our SSB/Ham radio antenna is finally installed, but the wind generator we bought a few months ago is not. We did a quick haulout at Port Townsend to touch up the bottom paint, which was thin in places. We took advantage of being on dry land in the boat yard to load more heavy items, including six golf cart batteries we bought from Costco to beef up our energy supply. We hoisted them aboard with one of the new mizzen halyards. In last year’s re-rig project, we put in multiple new halyards, long enough to at least reach the water, if not ground level in the boat yard. The old halyards barely reached the deck. The new batteries are in the boat, but not wired up yet. This is one more thing to do, hopefully before we go. We’re getting used to living on the boat, but living on water is one thing, living on a boat propped up by sticks on land is something else again, unless, of course, you have a tree house fantasy.

We spent a night and a day at Shilshole Marina in Seattle to pick up mail for the last time and say good-bye to family. Our stay there included running power tools and bright lights late into the night. If you were on one of the boats near us, we’re sorry, but we have to take advantage of shore power when we have it.

Thinking we should check our fuel before leaving Shilshole, we were shocked to see the gauge on “E.” Was it broken? No, we’ve just used a lot in recent months and we weren’t keeping track. (The tank gauges are on the tanks themselves, under the floor, and are not easy to keep an eye on.) It was late in the day, but being summer, the fuel dock was fortunately still open on a Sunday evening.

We’ve activated a SPOT satellite tracker to update our current position on a viewable web map once per day. There should be (or will be soon) a link on a new page called something like, “Where are we now?” or “Finding Mysticeti.” But since it may not be posted at the same time as this post, it may not be up yet.

From Shilshole we motored to Port Townsend, arriving after 11 PM. We anchored on the downtown waterfront, within a cluster of barely visible sailboats. We slept in the cockpit in case we had anchored too close and had to move quickly. One of those boats was s/v Slainte. We should be sticking fairly close to them from here to Mexico.

Our preparations for cruising are done. Our journey southward begins now.

Sucia Island; entrance to Echo bay from Johnson Point; a nice hike around the south side of the island.

Snoring Bay, from the trail to Johnson Point.

Just beyond buddy boat Slainte, and the Port Ludlow totem pole, lies an extensive fog bank where we tried the automatic foghorn for the first time.

Early morning at the Port of Port Townsend boatyard, with its always eclectic collection of projects and interesting characters.

I guess it's more of a stilt house than a tree house, but a little odd to have cars and voices below you at night. — I guess it’s more of a stilt house than a tree house, but a little odd to have cars and voices below you at night.

Living on Water (Mostly)

Posted by John

The plan for the first leg of our sailing journey is to leave Puget Sound mid-August, with the first stop in San Francisco. We expect to stay there about a month. Following the Bay Area Westsail rendezvous the weekend of October 1st, we plan to continue to San Diego and join the Baja Ha Ha cruiser’s rally to Cabo San Lucas. It leaves on Halloween. We’ll be doing the rally with s/v Slainte, crewed by Joe and Cathy from Kingston, WA. After that, we’ll probably spend some time exploring the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California) before making detailed plans for the second leg.

We’ve spent every night on the boat since June 7th, mostly at anchor in Port Ludlow Bay. Our re-glued, formerly-leaking inflatable is kept in the water next to us. Almost every night after dark, a seal tries to climb into it. He attempted and failed for several nights, causing a commotion of splashing, and leaving us wondering what just happened. One night he finally made it up onto the thing. It’s not just ours he’s after, but any inflatable tied to any anchored boat in the area seems to be an obsession. So far he hasn’t caused any major problem, just an annoying curiosity.

Having retired in order to do this, and then being delayed a year, non-boat diversions gradually filled more and more of my newly-found free time. One of those diversions was the rediscovery of evening television, and the concept of having favorite shows. Slouched on a couch in a warm and comfortable house watching TV in the evening, thinking that I had worked my whole life to get to this point, including the several years of weekends it took to build the very house I was slouching in, I would wonder why we were working so hard on making this sailing trip happen just so we could leave the house we had just finished building.

Then the next morning I would realize, again, that it wasn’t so much the trip that mattered; it was the entire process of the journey. It was using all of the skills and resources of experience that we had acquired during our lifetimes, in all of our individual endeavors, and combining them to accomplish one, grand, complicated, adventure. What else do you do with everything you think you’ve learned?

At the start, our questions ranged from our ability to sail a boat hundreds, or even thousands, of miles in the open ocean, to our ability to leave our house, family, friends and lifestyle for an extended time, and then return in the future to pick up where we left off, if that is even possible. For our daughter, it meant questioning her decision to break from her friends and delay going to college so she could gamble on having an experience with her parents that she might not otherwise get the opportunity to have until much later in life. Even the one year delay changed that equation and added new factors to consider. These questions have not been easy to find answers to. The process has, at times, been difficult and frustrating.

It is clearer now, at least, as to how we will transition from a lifestyle of living on land to one of living on water. The change is not yet fully complete, but is mostly complete. By sharing a few details, perhaps our experiences so far will help to provide perspective to some of those who come after us, just as we’ve gained insight from those who have gone ahead of us.

The last day in our house was hectic and weird. After breakfast, the coffee maker was carried out and put in the garage. It was an odd feeling knowing that our normal morning routines would never be the same again. We disassembled our bed and carried it outside, too. The house sitters were moving in their own.

It was our last chance to empty what remained of our familiar life at home. Most things with no clear destination were temporarily put into the garage. Some were staged in the yard. We would need to figure them out in the following weeks. Most problematic were the things still in the house that would be going onto the boat, but for whatever reason had not been taken there yet. They kept getting mixed in with the things going elsewhere, and it was hard to visualize how much we were actually planning to take.

We realized, rather suddenly, that we had a staging area we could use in the form of a currently unoccupied nearby mobile home owned by a relative. Since this revelation had not been previously mentioned to anyone, I started thinking about it as a kind of secret safe house (I did watch a lot of TV over the winter, after all) where we could, without outside distraction, deal with boat stuff only. The safe house idea, borrowed from cop shows, completely fit with all the paper shredding and burning we’d been doing, and the whole sense of starting a new life. Having this space to store and sort was a real lifesaver. I’m not sure what we would’ve ended up doing without it.

Finally, we loaded the deflated dinghy into the car and drove down the hill to the beach near the boat, which had been out on its mooring since early April. A dinghy ride was between us and the start of our new life of living on water. But being exhausted from the hectic day, we could not raise the energy to haul, assemble and inflate the dinghy. We spent the night in a motel instead. Being in a ground floor room that looked out to the highway through motel curtains, the feeling of running and hiding from something was quite clear. This step in the process, transitioning from our house to our boat, was not at all like what any of us had imagined.

After resting for a few days on the boat, going back to the safe house and seeing everything we planned to take spread all over the floor produced another round of feeling overwhelmed. How would it all fit? But just as overwhelming was the logistics of getting it to the boat by dinghy trips. Although theoretically possible, a fully loaded, little, patched-up, flat-bottom inflatable like ours is not the easiest thing to launch at low tide when the beach is wide and the water is shallow for some distance out. For that matter, it’s not that easy to launch at any tide. We knew from experience that we couldn’t leave a dinghy, no matter how old and beat up, on that particular beach and expect to find it again after returning with another car load of gear. Deflating the dinghy and carrying it around in the back of the car meant that virtually nothing else would fit at the same time. It didn’t take long for all three of us to agree that the task was too difficult with the boat tied to the mooring. We decided to take Mysticeti back to the Port Ludlow marina and get a slip for a week.

At the end of the week, which seemed to pass exceptionally fast and did not result in everything being loaded onto the boat, we moved out into the bay and anchored. It turns out that it is remarkably pleasant to live on water this time of the year. The only downside is we still have more equipment to load, house (and boat) projects to finish and errands to run with the car. We’re sharing rental of a marina dinghy slip with Joe and Cathy from s/v Slainte, and keeping our car in the marina parking lot. The dinghy slip gives us a secure, dedicated space for the dinghy during the day, while we are off doing other things.

With daily trips to shore, we don’t feel fully detached from land yet. Maybe it’s kind of a trial arrangement for living on water; one more step of the process.

Our ride to and from shore -- so far the glue is holding — Our ride to and from shore — so far the glue is holding

Baja buddy boat s/v Slainte, anchored near us in Port Ludlow

Point of No Return

Posted by John

In April we gave up our marina slip. Now we’ve taken the next step and given up our house. Committed to living on the boat, it is a point of no return.

We put our house under the control of trusted house sitters. In almost every way imaginable, this transition from land to water has been the hardest part, so far, of preparing to cruise. Not so much giving up the comfort and convenience of the house itself, but clearing out enough of our belongings, and ongoing projects, so that someone else could move theirs in.

We built our own house. At the time, it consumed most weekends, vacations and holidays for a period of years. Each major transforming milestone was worthy of celebration. But, like so many do-it-yourself projects, our house was never fully finished. We had no final task after which we could pack up the tools and declare success. There was no project completion celebration. Instead, as the house gradually became our primary residence, the amount of effort we applied to finish the cosmetic details not required for legal occupancy tapered off. We knew it would need to be finished someday, but we also found it easy to start reclaiming our weekends.

By the time we began planning how and when we would do a major cruise, we were so fully moved into our house that the idea of moving everything out again, with no new place to take it, was almost too much to think about. It wasn’t until we found potential long-term house sitters that the process could even be envisioned. But what was envisioned was overwhelming.

We work best under pressure of a deadline. That deadline came into focus when our potential house sitters turned into actual house sitters. They had their own deadline to be out of their current place. Their deadline became our deadline. Their house full of possessions needed to be moved into our house full of possessions. But first, we needed to finish a few things, such as flooring in one room, and bathroom tile in another. Finishing as many house projects as possible, and sorting and moving everything in such a short time, is where the process got difficult.

I suppose we could categorize the things in our house. We could put the things we want to keep forever, old photos and family treasures that have been handed down, as one category, for example. And the useful things that we can’t easily replace again as another. But somewhere on the list must be a category for the tons (I’m almost positive) of everything imaginable that has collected over the decades and now just needs to go. There’s all the old check stubs, bank statements and other papers that were filed away that should’ve been cleaned out and shredded years ago, old magazines that were set aside because of some article we wanted to reference, receipts, books we’ve read in the past, or books we had good intentions of reading but haven’t yet, clothes we no longer wear regularly. But there’s also little unexpected things not previously given any thought, like, for example, unused toothbrushes still in the packaging, given to each of us every time we go to the dentist, that now have multiplied into handfuls sitting in a drawer that needs to be emptied.

In past moves we would dump such drawers into a box, move the box to the new house, and dump it into the new drawer. Sometimes, boxes might get moved and put in the garage and not opened, as new toothbrushes (or whatever) slowly fill a new drawer. But this time there is nowhere for the box to go. We are moving onto a boat that must hold everything we need, or might need, for the next few years. Space is extremely limited, and already spoken for. It seems such a waste to throw out perfectly good, never opened, toothbrushes, which are, in fact, little pieces of plastic that I’ve been told will one day possibly end up floating around in the middle of the ocean.

And so it is with so much of what’s in our house. From the tiniest little memento, yard tool, or left over building material, all the way up to the largest pieces of furniture. We can’t afford to ever replace it all again. We can’t afford to pay to store it. Some must stay. The rest must go somewhere. Do I really need to keep souvenirs of life in 1973? I give myself about three seconds to reminisce, decide, and move on. I wonder why we didn’t complete all of this months ago.

I used to not think twice about giving up such generic things as yard tools, or a desk chair, or a small kitchen appliance. I would figure that I could always get another one when and if I wanted to. But life is different now. I no longer have a steady income. The things we have took a lifetime to acquire. I don’t know what I will do when we are finished with cruising.

When we started preparing for cruising we knew it would be a big, difficult project with many unknowns. But I don’t think we had any idea just how complicated it would become, and where these complications would be the most difficult. A year ago, we were putting all of our energy into refitting the boat. How, exactly, we were going to get out of the house and onto the boat full-time was difficult to comprehend. So we didn’t. We just had a vague idea of some potential options.

Now we know. And now that it’s done, there’s no going back to where we once were. Instead of sitting on the couch watching TV in the evenings, we sit in the cockpit, watch the sunset and talk.

We have become full-time liveaboards. A transformation truly worthy of celebration.

What About That Thing? (More Amp Hours, Part 1)

Posted by John

Part way up the mizzen mast, just below the spreaders, is a curious “L” bracket thing. It was on the boat when we bought it.

No one has ever questioned it, but I can imagine somebody wondering what it is. It’s a mount for a wind generator, and we’re finally putting one up there to supplement the electrical power produced by the solar panels.

To me, when someone mentions wind generator, I immediately think of a small, wind-powered turbine used to generate electricity. I probably first became aware of such a device in the 1970’s when I noticed ads for them appearing in certain magazines. I had a friend at the time who looked at the picture and the price, and said he could build one for nothing from junk he had laying around. I told him I bet he couldn’t. We moved on to the next thing, but I’ve remembered the exchange ever since.

More recently, I’ve learned that not everyone conjures up the same image. If you mention the term “Wind Generator” to some people, and then point out the bracket located behind the mainsail, they might, without a lot of thought, jump immediately to the conclusion that it is a device that somehow fills in for the natural wind in its absence. Like a fan—a wind maker—aimed at the sail to push the boat along. I can see why they might make that assumption even though something about it doesn’t seem quite right. Newton even made up a law about it.

Our main source of day-to-day electrical power is the solar panels mounted over the cockpit. When we use the boat for a week or two on summer vacation, whatever power we use onboard at night is usually easily replaced the next day by the solar panels. I suppose it helps that summer nights are short, and we usually sleep through the dark part. But soon we will be moving onto the boat full time, and power demand will increase. The thought of sailing down the coast at night, potentially in fog, with lights, radio, radar and whatever else turned on, concerns me with the unrealistic demand that might put on the solar panels the following day. I’d rather not have to rely solely on the engine’s alternator when the solar panels aren’t enough. With that in mind, we put a wind turbine generator on the wish list. Installation should be easy because the mount is already there.

When we bought our boat it also had a tow generator mounted on the stern rail. The concept is similar to a wind generator, except that in place of turbine blades attached to the generator’s rotating shaft, there is a long rope with a propeller on the other end. While underway, the rope and propeller are dragged behind the boat, it all winds up and turns the shaft of the generator. As long as the boat is moving at normal cruising speed, and a large fish doesn’t mistake the towed propeller for food, it will produce power day and night. We never found the propeller that was supposedly on the boat somewhere, and the actual generator was so corroded and frozen up, I gave up trying to salvage it.

I personally like the idea of a prop shaft generator. I’ve seen pictures of them on cruising boats, but never talked to anyone who actually uses one. It’s a lot like the tow generator except that instead of dragging a propeller on a rope, you use the one you already have in the boat. An alternator is driven by belt from the freely spinning propeller shaft when the boat is moving under sail (doesn’t work with feathering props). When I hear our shaft turning, I can’t help but think of free energy going to waste. We have enough space in the bilge. I know it’s been done on a Westsail 42 before.

When I asked a marine installer if he’d ever seen a shaft generator, he said he couldn’t recommend it, saying that keeping the necessary tension on the belt puts sideways stress on the shaft coupling and transmission, and can cause excessive wear and misalignment. Last year, when we replaced our stuffing box and cutlass bearing, I momentarily considered putting it all back together with a pulley and belt around the shaft, just in case we decided to try a shaft generator in the future. But I didn’t do it, and we’re not planning to pull the shaft out again anytime soon.

Looking around online, I’ve seen many variations on the towing or shaft generator idea for getting electrical power from boat motion. But in actuality, we spend a lot more time with the boat not moving, than when it is. We want power when anchored, too. Just because the wind isn’t being used to push us along doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be working for us in the form of generating electricity. A wind generator installed on the existing unused mount was therefore the choice for a means to supplement the solar panels. However, the decision was not made without consideration for noise, vibration, and wildly spinning blades snagging lines and ripping sails.

Our first close look at the "L" bracket — Our first close look at the “L” bracket

Last year, with the boat in the yard and the masts off for nine weeks, we got our first close-up look at the mizzen mount bracket. For ten years we’d gazed up at it, studied it from afar, but never went up to look because we only had one halyard on the mizzen and nobody wanted to be hauled up there without a safety line. When the masts came down, we took the mounting bracket home and cleaned it up and repainted it. After making measurements and comparing online images, we determined that of all the wind generator models we had previously considered, there was only one that would fit the existing bracket. It was the Ampair 100, made in England.

Due to size and shape, any other model of generator would require a different bracket, possibly even in a different location. That would require much more work, time and rethinking of the whole thing.

On the last weekend in June, with the boat scheduled to go back into the water the next week, and the masts going back on a day or so after that, we scrambled to finish up everything that needed doing before launching. This included getting the new wind generator wiring in now, while it was easy. It would be much more difficult if we waited until later, after mast reinstallation.

Running the wires was harder than we thought, and would’ve been nearly impossible with the mast stepped on the boat. For a small mast (32 ft), it has a lot of wires crammed into a PVC conduit inside it. The conduit was already jammed with wiring for the radar, AIS antenna, a cockpit floodlight and mast-top emergency strobe. To that, we were adding wiring for another light, a loudhailer, and the future wind generator.

The masts and the boat were in two different boatyards in Port Townsend, at opposite ends of town. Time could be dedicated to either the mast or the boat, but we couldn’t work on both at the same time without packing up our tools and getting in the car. We spent most of a very hot, sun-scorching day trying to pull a 10 gauge, two-conductor cable through a hole below the mounting bracket, into the PVC pipe, and out the bottom of the mast. We gave up, stripped the outer jacket off the cable, and tried again. We gave up again, defeated. Then we set out in search of advice. The advice we found was to use a larger pull rope than the string we had, and use copious amounts of Wire Lube. We also decided to use smaller 12 gauge wire, instead of the 10. I’m not sure which of those things made the biggest difference, but something worked. I’m pretty sure it was the lube.

The difficulty with the wires cost us a day, and prevented us from finishing up the boat itself. We were forced to reschedule our launch time. With Fourth of July vacations being taken, and high demand for the travel lifts, our next opportunity wouldn’t be until July 2nd. At some point I remembered that I actually had a job to go to, and physical deadlines for projects at work. Mentally, I realized, I had already made the transition to cruising.

With the generator wiring finally in place, the masts back on the boat, and three brand new halyards installed on the mizzen, I was already thinking about a future sunny day in Mexico, hauling a wind generator up to the mounting bracket and plugging it into the wires that had been so frustrating to install. But then, we learned that Ampair had been bought by another company, and the Ampair 100 was no longer being made.

The thought of starting over with a different model and different bracket was not only discouraging, but wasn’t going to happen. We had other problems that were more pressing, so the wind generator project was put on hold, along with, ultimately, the idea of being in Mexico by Christmas. We missed our planned late summer departure.

Over the winter we learned of two Ampair 100’s in a warehouse in Renton (near Seattle), at the ABS Alaskan company. We periodically checked the website to make sure they were still available, and thought that if the opportunity came up, and we had some money, we should grab one before they were all gone. The speculation was that the new company, Seamap, primarily involved in deep water oil production technology, would start manufacturing them again, but it was hard to say when, or if, that would be. The more time that passed, the more risky that option seemed to be. So, in late April, we called ABS Alaskan and bought one of the Ampairs.

Down the road, in Part 2, we’ll tell how it all worked out. But first, we have to figure out how to get our unexpectedly heavy wind generator up the mast and onto that “L” bracket thing.

Giving Up the Slip

Posted by John

We originally planned to quickly swap a daily-commute-to-work lifestyle with one of cruising endlessly (endless for maybe two years). This was supposed to happen about six months ago. It didn’t. The change is now less of a hot swap, and more of a power down and reboot.

We’ve taken small incremental steps over the winter, many of which have taken some getting used to. We’ve given things up, sold possessions and thrown stuff away. But we’ve received nothing new in exchange yet, certainly not that endless summer of cruising. When I went down the hill to do some yard work where we used to keep the goats, I half expected them to come running out of their barn, ears flopping and stubby tails wagging, just as always. Instead, nothing.

Over the winter we worked on the boat and the house, at least as much as we had energy for in the wind and rain. We also spent a lot of time involuntarily testing what it means to maintain an official permanent residence in one location, receive mail in another, and physically be somewhere else. It’s a good thing we had this trial run. A lot of time has been spent waiting on hold for customer service, and then even more time trying to clear up the confusion. You’d think that what we were trying to do was unique and unheard of. For future reference, the key word to use with government, banks and insurance companies appears to be “Snowbird.” That seems to be a lifestyle that they recognize and can work with.

With the winter dark days done, it was time to take the next step: give up the slip. So it was with high optimism that we told the marina staff not to charge us for the month of April, or any other month after that, because we would be out of there at the end of March.

Taking the boat out of the marina doesn’t just mean giving up a comfortable and familiar slip. It also means giving up the shore power connection, easy access by car, and dock carts to move stuff back and forth between car and boat. On the upside, we won’t be paying monthly moorage fees anymore. We’ll keep the boat on our mooring buoy until we’re ready to head south.

Ten years ago we had a mooring buoy installed near our house. For several years we kept the boat on the buoy during the summer, then took it back to the marina for the winter. For those months on the mooring we paid no marina fees. But the buoy was never as convenient as it sounds since it required shuttling people, the dog and gear to and from the boat in a small dinghy which we kept chained to a tree just above the high tide line on property we own. It was a workable option for the non-stormy months, and fun for a while. A few years ago someone stole the dinghy. For anyone who might think that this dinghy was a random treasure washed up on a public beach and free for the taking, the damaged lock and hacksawed chain said otherwise. It was outright theft.

We had obtained that dinghy in the 1990’s for $50. We fixed it up and used it for years with our previous sailboat. We’ve been looking, but haven’t been able to find anything that worked as well for quick trips out to the boat. Certainly not for that price, anyway.

About a year ago we bought a used inflatable for $500. It doesn’t row well, but can take a small outboard and carries more people and gear than the beach dinghy did. However, it’s even less convenient than the old dinghy. We won’t be leaving it chained to a tree or dragging it across a beach.

On April 1st we loaded the inflatable, deflated and packed into as small a package as we could, onto Mysticeti’s deck and backed out of our slip for the last time. With a slight north breeze, we unfurled the jib and sailed slowly away for an extended weekend.

The next day we decided to go to Poulsbo, on Liberty Bay. Having something from Sluys’ Bakery while reading the Sunday paper at a sidewalk table in the morning sunshine sounded good. As a bonus, it would force us to try inflating the dinghy on deck, get it into the water, mount the outboard on the transom, and get all three of us to shore and back again. After all, we had never tried that with this inflatable. The calm water of a lake-like bay would be the ideal place to do so.

We anchored just outside the public marina among several other anchored boats. It was quite warm, and the activity and atmosphere of it all felt a lot like summer. It took a bit of effort to roll out the inflatable on deck and assemble the rigid flooring. Eventually we got it inflated and over the side and ready for an excursion to shore the following morning.

Sunday morning the floorboards looked damp. I told myself it was just dew—perhaps a lot of dew. But as we lowered the outboard into place and put more weight into the dinghy, it became obvious that water was coming in from somewhere. We bailed it out, but more came in. We all got in and made it to the dinghy dock on shore, but the boat was definitely filling with water. When we had tested its air holding ability at home, I had just assumed it would hold water. I was wrong.

A few hours later, when we were ready to return to the boat, we seemed to be providing fine entertainment for a group of park-goers watching from the shore-side railing as we bailed many gallons of water. It was coming in almost as fast as we could get it out. Finally, we fired up the motor and went for it, back to the privacy of the mother ship. It wasn’t too bad. We managed to keep the newspaper and box of bakery goodies dry. We put the dinghy up on deck and didn’t use it again for the rest of the weekend.

When we arrived back home to our mooring on Monday evening, we took just the essentials with us to shore, taking everything and everybody to the beach in just two dinghy trips. Water was really squirting in now from somewhere under the flooring. We deflated the dinghy and took it home. Inspecting it the next day, I discovered that a seam near the transom, where the floor is glued to the flotation tube, was pulling apart.

The internet assured me it would be easy to fix with the proper glue. It also gave me about a 60% confidence level that our inflatable was made of PVC, as opposed to Hypalon. There’s a different glue for each.

We went to West Marine and bought a tube of “Inflatable Boat PVC Glue.” Except for saying it was Polyurethane MEK, no instructions, such as cure time or surface preparation, came with it. Inside the West Marine package, the tube itself is labeled with “Avoid Prolonged or Repeated Inhale Action While Using,” and “Chemical Glue For Repair of Boat.” Other than a few other phrases of questionable translation, mostly concerning eye contact, hand washing, and statements against smoking and against vomiting if swallowed, no other instructions were available.

I glued it, gave it 24 hours, and then filled the boat with water from the garden hose. None leaked out. After the fact, I looked up polyurethane MEK glue and found a site with instructions for inflatable boat repair. (Of course, after I’m done I find it.) Except that all of the instructions were for a two-part contact cement and the tube from West Marine was only a single part glue. Oh well, it stuck. So I’m calling it good. For now.

On the south side of Liberty Bay there is a house that is built to look like a castle. It blends into the trees, but in the right light, if you squint just so, you can imagine it to be an old-world castle on a hill with a village at its base.

An Exercise in DIY Interior LED Lighting Conversion

Posted by John

Most of Mysticeti’s interior lighting is fluorescent, with several being Alpenglow fixtures. Many of these can be switched between white light and red light to preserve night vision. Some can also be switched between high and low power.

I’ve always wanted to change everything over to LED lighting. Mainly for power savings, but also to eliminate the annoyances of fluorescent lamps. For one thing, the CFL tubes come on dim and take several minutes to warm up to full brightness. This is frustrating if you want light for just a few seconds, maybe to find something. Also, spare 12 volt fluorescent tubes of the proper size and shape are not that easy to find, especially if they have been dipped in some sort of red coating in order to produce red light. And most annoying to me is that the ballast goes bad. This may be just me, but over the last few years the ballasts in five cheap shop fixtures in our garage at home have gone bad. The box of replacement fluorescent tubes we bought still remains unused, and the money spent on replacement ballasts totals at least as much as that spent on the original fixtures. Key word here, I suppose, is cheap.

Years ago, when the ballast died in two of Mysticeti’s generic fluorescent light fixtures, we replaced them with completely new fluorescent fixtures from Fisheries (marine store in Seattle), for a lot more money than I wanted to spend. And when the ballast died in one of the Alpenglow fixtures, we just stopped using it because the process and expense of fixing it was more involved than I wanted to take on at the time, especially since what I really wanted was a good LED replacement of equivalent brightness.

The Alpenglow company in Montana now sells LED versions of the old CFL fixtures. They also sell LED upgrades, which replace the entire insides, including backplate and switches, with new. And they also sell replacement ballasts which you can wire in yourself. With a recent price for the ballast of $34, and a full high/low power, red/white LED conversion (with labor) being about $100, repairs or upgrades are not cheap. Upgrading all of our existing Alpenglows would be at least $1,000. Even a ballast replacement at a remote location would not be easy.

I’ve seen people using strings of LED’s that come on a tape reel with a self-adhesive backing. They’re available in several different colors including red, and are inexpensive.

We bought some from Amazon for only a few dollars each. A 300 LED, 5 meter string was $6.99. I’ve also seen them in discount parts and surplus catalogs for very low cost. Originally, we bought them to experiment with and see where we might have a use. Since the boat was tied to the dock for the dark and wet winter months, and I had some time to kill, I wondered what kind of LED upgrade I could do on my own.

The LED’s are wired in a series/parallel combination every three LED’s.

Series/parallel means that three LED’s are wired in series, along with a current-limiting resistor sized for 12 volts, and then the pattern repeats, with each three-LED-plus-resistor module wired in parallel. The wiring is accomplished through the use of a thin copper foil printed on a flexible strip which is the “tape.” Between each module the copper foil widens into connection pads, marked with a + and -. These pads can be cut through the middle with a scissors to form attachment points at each end of whatever length is desired. The back of the tape is coated with an adhesive material protected by a peel-off paper.

One of the white LED reels we bought is marked “waterproof.” Waterproof means different things to different people. Unless there is an associated IP rating, such as IP67, you really don’t know what the waterproof claim means.

What I do know it means is that the LED side of the tape is coated with a thick, rubbery, transparent coating which must be carefully cut away from the copper pads if you plan on cutting the tape into smaller sections.

Once the pads are exposed from the coating (not an issue on the non-waterproof version), they can be soldered to. This is a somewhat delicate task. Experience suggests that the very thin copper foil could be destroyed by too much soldering heat. The LED reels we bought came with a few extra edge connectors that slide onto the end of the tape and make contact with the pads. There weren’t enough connectors included for my use. I didn’t try using them.

Since the Alpenglow light fixtures seem to carry a certain amount of value (perhaps less so, now that LED’s are becoming the norm), my first rule of conversion was to preserve what I had. In other words, I was OK with taking them apart for now, but I wanted the option of being able to restore them back to original condition later.

The first unknown was how many individual LED’s would be required to match the full light output of the fluorescent tube. The next question was how much power did the Alpenglows consume before the conversion, so I could compare with what they consumed after. The power question was the easiest to answer. I put an ammeter in series with the power supply and measured the current directly. Here’s what I measured:

High power white = 0.840 Amp
Low power white = 0.430 Amp
High power red = 0.671 Amp
Low power red = 0.371 Amp

The question of light output was more difficult. I remembered that my dad had a photographic light meter when I was kid. Maybe I could use something like that to measure light output from the fixture. While wondering if that thing was still around, if I had it and where it might be if I did, I started thinking about the old photocells of mine that I’d come across while getting rid of stuff recently. And by “photocell” I mean a light-sensitive resistor which changes resistance in accordance with the amount of light striking it. The kind of thing used to automatically turn on lights at dusk.

I set up the photocell a fixed distance above the Alpenglow fixture and connected it to an ohmmeter.

I obtained the following readings:

High power white = 735 ohms
Low power white = 1,230 ohms
High power red = 3,800 ohms
Low power red = 6,250 ohms

I could make the same measurement with the LED version to see how close the light output was to the original. Good idea maybe, but in reality I didn’t control all the other variables very well—like ambient light. But it did give me a rough idea, since I had no idea otherwise of how many LED’s to use to produce equivalent light.

The insides of our older Alpenglow fixtures cannot be removed without cutting the wires to the switches. My plan was to create a new backplate using a piece of aluminum, and stick the LED’s directly to it using their adhesive backing. I would reuse the same Alpenglow switches, retaining the same functions as before so there would be no difference in operation between the converted and non-converted fixtures.

Inside our vintage of Alpenglow fixture, and why even replacing the ballast is a non-trivial task.

I experimented with the LED’s using my light measuring technique, then organized them into two white sections and two red sections. The low power setting would turn on one section, high power would turn on both. The red/white switch would determine whether red or white sections were powered.

I rewired the existing switches as shown in the schematic diagram below. One of the switches is three-position, double-pole with the center position being off. The other switch is two position, either red or white. Double pole means that two sets of contacts change position when the switch is pressed.

I was somewhat surprised with the result. I did not end up saving any power with the white lights. Too many LED’s? My crude attempt at comparing light output between the fluorescent tube and the LED strip probably had some flaws (lack of ambient light control, for one). I should’ve taken two fixtures off the boat and converted one, using the other for side-by-side comparisons. Next time, maybe.

What I did get, however, is a very bright, instant-on (no warm up required) white light with no ballast to go bad or tubes to burn out.

The red light fared much better (far fewer LED’s were used), producing a significant power savings. In the low power setting, it uses 0.081 Amp, compared to 0.371 for the CFL. Two or three of these could be left on all night with virtually no battery drain and enough light to see while moving about the boat.

Perhaps the best part is, we don’t have to carry any spare fluorescent tubes, and the ballast isn’t going to fail unexpectedly. The conversion of one fixture was maybe $12, with $8 of that going for the aluminum sheet from the hardware store. McMaster-Carr sells some 0.032 inch thick fiberglass sheet that I’m going to try next time. It can possibly be cut with a hefty scissors, is less cost than the single-quantity aluminum sheet, and the soldered connections won’t short out if they come in contact with it.

Putting the finished fixture back on the boat and trying it out at night revealed that the new high power setting is noticeably brighter than the old CFL high power setting. To my eye, the LED low power setting is approximately equivalent in light to the CFL high setting. So, perhaps I did achieve a power savings after all.

Rebedding Portlight Glass

Posted by John

I’ve read a definition that says a portlight is the openable glass flap covering a porthole. It also defines a porthole as a round opening in the side of a ship. Since the windows in Mysticeti are not just round, but also oval and rectangular, I’m not sure what they’re all supposed to be called. So even if I’m technically wrong, I’m calling the glass opening a portlight, no matter what shape it’s in.

We have several portlights that have been leaking rain water. Some of the leaking used to be through the seals where the portlight is dogged against the porthole frame. We fixed that several years ago by replacing the rubber seals. It’s the leaking around the glass itself that’s been the most problematic. Back when we replaced the rubber seals, we also took the glass out of one bad leaker and re-caulked it. For some reason the leaking only slowed down, but did not stop completely. With more leaks in more portlights this winter, we decided to try again, but use butyl rubber instead of caulk.

Some time ago we bought a box of butyl rubber tape. It came as rolls, about 1/2 inch wide, with a paper backing to keep it from sticking to itself. We’ve used it to re-bed deck hardware, including the chainplates we replaced last summer.

Mysticeti has six large rectangular and four smaller oval portlights in the main cabin, four oval in the aft cabin, plus two oval and two round in the head, and one round portlight in the engine room, opening to the cockpit.

The glass in the large portlights measures 17 x 9 inches, 1/2 inch thick.

Below is a portlight frame with the glass and old caulk removed.

We applied the butyl rubber tape to the inside faces that contact the glass. A cast bronze clamping piece fits on the back side of the frame and screws down with 22 bronze machine screws to hold the glass. Butyl tape is also applied around the mating face of the clamp.

The butyl rubber gradually deforms under pressure and evenly seals around the edges of the glass. Any gaps where the tape is not hard against the glass are easily seen through the glass from the other side, and fixed by placing a weight on the glass pane and giving it time for the butyl to deform and even out.

Once the old caulk was cleaned off the portlight frames, the butyl rubber was a neat, clean, easy way to affect a watertight seal.

For an El Nino year we’ve had an unusually high amount of rain this winter in the Seattle area. But since rebedding our portlights, we have had no drips. The best part is we no longer have to put drip catchers under them.

We hope this is a long-term solution. Only time will tell.

Goats go for a Boat Ride

Posted by John

Well okay, the boat was a Washington State Ferry and the goats were in the back of the family van, but the title is still accurate.

When categorizing those who cruise for longer distances than that which can be achieved on a weekend or annual vacation, there seems to be two types: those who live aboard with no other home, and those who maintain a separate home on land.

I envy those whose only home is their boat and the possessions which will fit inside it. However, for so many reasons that seem right at this point in life, we have chosen to keep our home and property and a lot of our things in waiting for our eventual return. At least that is the plan for now.

A few years ago when we first started formulating our cruising plan, we were responsible for a dog, a cat, two goats, fifteen chickens of various breeds and probably tens of thousands of honeybees in wooden hives. All of these creatures earned their keep, whether it was scaring bears away and chasing deer from the garden, or keeping the mouse population in check, or eating weeds and bugs, or eliminating blackberries and other invasive plants, or pollinating the fruit trees; or even just barking, crowing, clucking or bleating to warn us when something was amiss. Even a few well-placed bee hives will keep strangers from wandering around too much. But they all, including the honeybees, require at least supplemental feeding and human interaction. Not something from which you can just one day turn your back on and sail away.

The dog, the cat, most of the chickens and all of the bees were gradually lost through natural attrition. But what do you do with a couple of 175 pound pet goats originally purchased by a little girl with her own money, raised from babies, named by school children and shown at the county fair as a 4H project? When the goats first came to our house to live, we were told that we might as well sell our boat because we were now tied to the land more than we realized. So true. And that statement has echoed in my head for years.

For the past year we’ve searched for a new home for the goats, hopeful we had something lined up, only to then have it fall through time and again. Thoughts of where and how they might end up, and what happens if we can’t find them a new home, are the kind of thing that can keep you awake at night.

As a kid, while sailing with my dad on Lake Washington and watching boats coming through the ship canal from Puget Sound, I learned to recognize the differences between the bigger boats that were sailed mostly on weekends, and boats of the same size that were much more far ranging. The local boats had clean, white decks, everything neat and tidy, while the cruising boats had old jerry jugs and rope spools lashed to the rails, and self-steering gear mounted on their sterns where the local boats had swim platforms. The local boats appeared mostly of form, while the cruising boats seemed more of function. I used to think that a few chickens running around on deck would complete the image of the far-ranging live-aboard.

So yes, late at night I more than once gave some consideration, at least mentally asking myself the question, of what if we found a way to carry the goats with us on deck, perhaps lashed to the rail like jerry jugs? But of course, not a serious question. However, it points out that the process of just getting away from home for a few years is much more difficult than we originally had anticipated.

We finally found a new home for our goats but it meant transporting them from our home on the Olympic Peninsula, across Puget Sound by ferry, and north to Anacortes to a family that already has dogs and cats and llamas and sheep, each species with its own purpose. And now they also have a couple of goats whose job it will be to help keep the blackberries and other invasive plants in control.

Two big goats stuffed behind the back seat of a passenger van for a three hour road and ferry trip. What could possibly go wrong?

It turns out nothing went wrong, in part, I like to believe, because of thorough planning and preparation based on asking ourselves the very question of what could go wrong. The same approach we are using to get our lives, home and boat in order so that we may enjoy a few years of extended cruising.

If the window opened, he'd stick his head out — If the window opened, he’d stick his head out

Goats: the new kids in school; meet the guard llama

Exploring their new home, while we say good-bye. Have fun guys.