San Diego, Round Two
We were in San Diego for almost two months, but that time seemed to blow past us at an extremely accelerated pitch. Our 'Cruising Permit' (the customs paperwork allowing the TIE Fighter to remain in the US while being a Canadian-flagged vessel) would expire February 1st, so we had to hustle if we wanted to get all the pending projects completed before we left for Mexico, where everything would be an order of magnitude more complicated!
When we originally cleared customs in Port Angeles, Washington back in September, the customs officer asked how long we'd like the permit to be - we laughed and told him that we intended to be in Mexico before Christmas. He nodded and said
"I'll just give you a couple of extra months anyway, just in case you run into bad weather..."
I guess he must had some experience with that sort of thing...
Anyway! On to the photos!
San Diego at sunset with fog rolling in downtown
San Diego, despite being a bizarre mix of old-money Republicans and impressionable young military personnel from the midwest, had its moments of beauty. Click this photo for the full-size version; check out the sunbeams reflecting off the mirrored buildings and through the early evening fog bank!
a frankenstein part I built for the water maker
At no point did we expect that the water maker install would be simple, but I have to admit I was expecting all of the parts to be readily available. That wasn't really the case, and I had to build this fitting to attach the product water feed to the tank inlet, while also adding a vent line so that the water maker water feed will never see more than 3psi in back pressure - apparently that would irreversibly damage the water maker membrane, which is a very expensive replacement.
the remains of the impeller
One night just before Christmas, just prior to having the water maker up and running, we decided to make a run to the fuel dock to fill up our water tanks. We made it out of the A9 anchorage and around the corner a few hundred meters when suddenly our engine alarms started screaming...
We blew the seals on one of our freshwater pumps on the way down - it was still working, but leaking coolant. I had a guy in San Diego rebuild the pump ($50 instead of a $400 new pump), but when I reattached the pump I didn't properly bleed the air out of the coolant lines. A brand-new impeller was just spinning away with nothing to pump, and it was destroyed within minutes.
Mostly I'm impressed with myself, that I was able to determine the cause of the problem and fix it within about an hour, without having to call for help or even consult any manuals. That kind of thing really helps with a person's confidence in taking their vessel far offshore.
the bridge to Tijuana
As it turns out, Tijuana is a $2.50 public-transit train ride from downtown San Diego, and so we decided to take a brief day trip south of the border. Tijuana is everything that I dislike about Mexico, condensed into a single city - a stark contrast to La Paz, which is absolutely nothing like it.
a spraypainted "zebra"
Between hundreds of shopkeepers (all bafflingly selling the exact same items for the same prices) yelling at us to come into their stores and restaurant owners offering cheap tequila (followed by "I've got something for your nose, amigo!"), there were random street "displays". This one, a burro spray painted with zebra stripes, was apparently available for tourists to take their photo with... for a fee, of course.
laundry day
The first step to arriving in a new city is to figure out where the basics are coming from - internet, showers, groceries, laundry, etc. Most of the facilities were a good five kilometres away from the anchorage, however, so we made the most of our time and split up the tasks between us. This is Miya, with all of our laundry packed into a series of heavy dry bags and our collapsible pull cart, headed for the laundromat.
one of the acrobatic mackerel
In my last post, I began by describing hundreds of tiny acrobatic fish hurling themselves at the side of the boat. Later that day I discovered that several of the fish had leapt into the dinghy! The internet told us that these fish were mackerel, but unfortunately it also told us that you should never eat fish that you've found dead; there would be no way to know how long the fish had been dead. Pity I hadn't looked into the dinghy earlier, these little guys would have made for a delicious breakfast.
Miya at the masthead
One of the biggest projects I wanted to have completed before leaving offshore was the ham radio install. This required several trips up the mast; one to affix a temporary backstay (length of steel cable holding up the mast) to measure the length of the new antenna, one to take down the temporary backstay, and one to affix the new backstay.
After hoisting me up the mast with our largest winch, Miya decided that it would be easier for both of us if she went up and I manned the winch.
the pelican mafia
The pelicans in San Diego were pretty much completely unafraid of humans, and would regularly surround our boat during their fishing expeditions. A few times they almost appeared threatening...
yup, it's grand
When we realized that the Grand Canyon was a short-ish eight-hour car ride away, and that we'd be unlikely to be anywhere near as close to it every again, we decided to take a few days and go on a road trip. Despite the cold January air, the canyon was everything that television and movies made it out to be: a very large, very beautiful hole in the ground.
pretty steep drop there
obligatory awful tourist take-our-photo shot
This is us enjoying the last moments of warm sunshine, just prior to the sun falling below the horizon and sending us sprinting for the car and warm sweaters. The desert gets COLD at night!
heiroglyphs in the painted desert
The canyon was nice, but to be honest we preferred the drive through the Painted Desert and the strolls through the petrified forests. If you click this photo and look right at the centre, you can see the 6000-year-old drawings on the side of this boulder, known as "Newspaper Rock".
continuing our world tour
Miya and I have a habit of visiting places with identical names to larger, more famous places; in 2011 we visited Moscow and Paris, both in Idaho.
salvation mountain!
Salvation Mountain, at the entrance to Slab City (as seen in the movie "Into The Wild") was probably the highlight of the epic January road trip. The life's work of a devout born-again Christian artist, the mountain is made from found materials, mostly dirt, hay bales, wood and leftover paint... lots and lots of paint.
Slab City was fascinating as well, though less photogenic - a squatter community in the desert, completely off the grid and self-reliant, on concrete slabs left over from an abandoned military base. I could see myself spending time there, especially if it were with a group of like-minded adventurers.
Rich recording voiceovers
Following the trip to Arizona, we jumped a plane and headed to Vancouver to help throw Sequential Circus 10, an event series that I've been throwing (well, with the heavy assistance of a group of close friends and dedicated volunteers) for the past five years or so. In this photo, Rich Hamakawa is recording voiceovers (in the booth, the vocal talents of France Perras) for use as the introductions on each of the podcast recordings. Sitting in the TopFloorUnderground studios with good friends and a bottle of nice tequila is a fine way to spend an afternoon.
photo by Luke Szczepanski
I have to admit, we do throw a helluva party. This is Drew 'Vespers' Betts performing for a packed dancefloor. All of the performances at Sequential Circus shows are live acts.
another excellent photo by Luke Szczepanski
Much fun was had by all - thanks for the great photos, Luke! Much more of his most excellent work can be found on his Flickr site.
Miya working on the garden
Back to San Diego and back to the grind - with only a few short days left until we left, I had my hands full with important travel-related boat projects, like finishing the water maker install and getting the ham radio up and running and retrieving up-to-date weather info. Miya took advantage of the boat being in "project mode" to make a mess on the deck, building her custom garden boxes. It's worth noting that Miya's blog, http://www.thenomadist.com, has lately been far more up-to-date than my own. 
installing the through-hull for the water maker
The hardest part of the install was the through-hull that needed to be installed below the waterline. Normally this would require a haul out, but we decided to try it in the water. I plugged the new brass scoop fitting with a small softwood plug, got all the tools and fittings ready, and then did the unthinkable: I drilled a hole into the bottom of the boat directly into the ocean!
I figured that given the balmy San Diego weather the water would be warm enough to do the install in just my swimsuit, but once I jumped in I quickly changed my mind and switched to my wetsuit. In the end verything went smoothly, and overall we only had about four litres of seawater pour into the bilge.
project day, viewed from above
The project days were fruitful, and if you click into this photo you can see many of them on the go - the flippers on the deck from the water maker install, the detritus from the garden construction, pillows out on the bow nets to air out, the blue bins of winter clothes out in preparation for cold offshore nights, the new Achilles dinghy and the old Zodiac dinghy alongside our venerable folding "beater" row dinghy... so much going on in this photo!
And that brings us to the end of January! One more blog post to go and I should be actually up to date and back to posting about things as they happen, instead of posting about them two months later...
Weather Window!
scraps of life in Neah Bay; a washboard and genuine hardtack!
Lovely and quiet as life in this tiny, remote coastal fishing village has been, after eleven days it's somewhat of a relief to finally pack up the boat and prepare to leave Neah Bay for the open ocean. The NOAA weather forecasts for the next few days show a favourable window, with the gale-force southerly winds that we've been experiencing for the past week subsiding and slowly giving way to gentle northwesterlies, which combined with the dominant currents should give us a safe and quick offshore passage south to San Francisco. We have enjoyed it here, but we're looking forward to being back in an anchorage with easy access to more modern amenities than a rustic general store - and somehow nobody managed to mention the fact that Neah Bay is a "dry community" in any of the cruising guides! I can't wait to have a frosty pint at a yacht club bar in SF.
The sprocket for the steering system came in with unbelievable swiftness - funny how parts shipped from the US to Canada always seem to take a few extra days, while shipping this hunk of metal from Canada to the US took less than twenty hours from the confirmation email! With the help of our new local diver/fisherman/handyman friend Daren Akin, we had the sprocket cut to fit and installed in a matter of hours, and since then the steering has been working far smoother than before.
howling southerly winds, all day every day
The weather has been the most stressful part about living in Neah Bay; the return of predominantly northwest winds comes as a huge relief as we wondered whether or not we'd missed our window to head offshore this year at all. For the past few days the winds have been howling day and night - during the day we seem to get gusty winds in bursts of about a half-hour of 25kn winds every two hours, but after dark the winds have been rising to much higher. Strangely, it seems like the only time we've seen really strong winds - 35kn-40kn - has been at 4am... for three days in a row now.
I've been trying a new technique; anchoring from the stern instead of the bows. The benefit is that the TIE Fighter tends to swing less at anchor, less "sailing" far to the left and right with the wind - but I can't really take credit for that. The real reason is that I installed the fancy Wi-Fi antenna to the side of the aft cabin, and apparently once the cabin sides are wet from rain there's no passing a Wi-Fi signal through them. We have to have the boat faced to present the Wi-Fi antenna at the marina a kilometer or so away if we want a signal!
The downside of this stern-anchoring trick is that I have never had to handle a dragging anchor from the stern before - the engine starts just fine, but with an anchor line off the back I would have to be very careful not to back over the line; in an anchor-dragging situation, wrapping a line around the propellor shaft could be disastrous! Combined with the howling winds and rains and utter darkness of the night, I've had a rough time sleeping, even with the anchor-drag alarm set on the Garmin GPSMap76cx on the pillow beside my head. I've left a second anchor rigged on deck, ready to throw over the side at the first sign of dragging - but to my surprise and relief, the Fortress FX-37 anchor has held through the worst of it, without giving a meter!
Miya trying to bring in a ling cod
We've taken advantage of the few days of the fall sun non-rain of the Pacific Northwest to relax, nail down some final boat-readyness projects (at least one project is now literally nailed down) and to explore the areaaround Neah Bay. Yesterday we hiked the little island that marks the entrance to the anchorage and explored a huge, partially submerged barge at the western end of the bay.
Mostly though, we've been working through stresses, finding our centers and getting our heads ready for the upcoming step; arguably the biggest step we've made so far.
Tomorrow we leave offshore. Within the next ten days, we'll arrive in San Francisco.
Neah Bay
Well, we're away. We left on Monday September 12th 2011 as planned, leaving Vancouver about ten hours later than expected but making good time across the Georgia Straight, spent the night at the mouth of Porlier Pass and motor-sailed the next day down to Cadboro Bay just east of Victoria. We crossed the Juan de Fuca on Wednesday, cleared customs and spent two days in Port Angeles, then motored on up the Juan de Fuca arriving in Neah Bay on Friday night. The weekend was spent carefully watching for a "weather window", in which we could set out with six to ten days of reasonably good weather to look forward to... but then I made an expensive mistake.
We've entered another one of these infuriating "hurry up and wait" scenarios, as a result of my carelessness while working on the steering system. I was removing a sprocket when it got away from me and clattered down the centerboard trunk and into the ocean. Given that we're anchored in soft mud in about 10m of water the chances of finding a heavy 10cm chunk of dark bronze were pretty slim, but we had a diver go down twice to look anyway. The replacement part is on rush delivery from Ontario and will hopefully arrive in the next few days.
The big question now is whether or not we've missed our weather window to head out into the open ocean, or whether the big storm winds of October and November are upon us. Traditionally, the end of October is the absolute cutoff time for heading out on an offshore passage south from the Pacific Northwest, but what with the changing weather patterns of the past couple of years it's anyone's guess.
Too much has happened lately to give a full rundown, so I will return once more to a pictorial style of blogging; here are a few snapshots of life over the past few weeks..:
Chad Taylor and Dan Ross jamming on the bows
During the last weeks leading up to the final departure, we spent as much time as possible hanging out with friends, enjoying what little summer Vancouver had to offer up this year. With so many projects to complete, perfect moments like this were rare but treasured.
installing spreader lights, repairing the steaming light
Most of the boat projects were one-man jobs, but Miya had to winch me up the mast several times for minor repairs. The next time we haul out I will likely run a few more wires up to the masthead; it'd be a much better place to mount the Ubiquity Bullet router and high-gain wireless antenna than the current location on the aft cabin roof, for instance, and someday I'd like to mount a webcam up there as well.
Jared and Thu departing on S/V Resolution
Our friend Jared has been working on his boat 'Resolution' for the past year or so, and left about ten days before we did for San Francisco. He's taken a few different routes than we have; going with a smaller monohull for instance, installing davits and monster solar panels and choosing a SatPhone instead of radio communications. It's been very interesting to watch another geek take on the challenges of living aboard on his own terms.
electrical room overhaul completed!
I've finally gotten the electrical room into a state that I can consider "finished". New features since the last photos - a smart alternator regulator on the far left, and a homebrew fuel polishing system on the bottom left, comprised of a pair of Racor diesel fuel filters and a Reverso fuel pump. The polishing system should help keep our engine Maude healthy even in the third world, where fuel quality can be questionable at best. Incidentally, since the last cooling system overhaul she's been running like a top!
On the extreme left you can see a little piece of the yet-to-be-installed Spectra Ventura 150 watermaker; the next compartment over houses our water system, and that project will be a fun challenge I'm sure... it will require a haulout to finish as the watermaker will need two new through-hull fittings, one for seawater intake and one for brine discharge.
first aid kit, populated
If you're planning to head offshore, you'd best be prepared for whatever may come to pass - and the first-aid kit on TIE Fighter was not exactly anything to write home about. Taking careful notes at both a Red Cross First Aid course and a pair of Bluewater Cruising Offshore First-Aid seminar, I assembled our new kit into a bomb-proof Pelican 1550EMS case which should survive anything that we throw at it. The kit contains everything from happy-face bandaids to hardcore prescription antibiotics and injectable painkillers.
An awesome first-aid kit is only half the battle though; Miya and I have enrolled in a Wilderness First Responder first aid course in San Francisco in October, which is an intensive 80-hour course covering emergency first aid in remote scenarios where professional help might not be coming right away.
the middle of the Georgia Straight at sunset
Once we finally got away, the stress of getting ready to leave didn't fall away as easily as planned. We were off, for sure, but tensions ran a little high while we adjusted to the new state of being. The first night we pulled into an anchorage in the dark, and currents and tides and deadheads made the situation questionable, but once the full moon rose everything came into focus. Waking up the next morning everything was much clearer.
freezing on watch
Neither of us were prepared for the realities of sailing in September; I think we were both spoiled by the 29º temperatures in Vancouver the days leading up to the grand departure. All of our winter clothes were packed away in tupperware containers in the amas, but those were quickly pulled out as it became apparent that gloves, hats and scarves would be necessary. We are very glad to have high-quality foul weather gear, and look forward to soon sailing in warm waters.
raising the courtesy flag
Before clearing customs into a new country, a vessel should fly a yellow flag - the symbol for the letter 'Q', or 'quarantine' - to indicate to the port that the vessel has not yet cleared customs but intends to. After clearing customs, the yellow flag is replaced by a flag of the country being visited, known as a 'courtesy flag'. Raising the courtesy flag of the US is something I had been looking forward to for a very long time, as it marks a huge milestone in this adventure!
morning in Neah Bay
Neah Bay, at the tip of the Olympic Peninsula, is the last safe harbour before heading out into the open Pacific Ocean. It is a small Makah indian reservation with a population of about 700 people, but we are still able to steal internet access from several open wireless networks using our high-powered antenna and router. The bay is wild and beautiful, with loons calling in the night and thick fog rolling in regularly.
surface analysis for the eastern pacific ocean
This is a 'weatherfax' transmission, retrieved from the internet. This is basically our window into what's going on weather-wise on the open ocean, and once we have a working HF ham radio rig on the boat we should be able to pull down these images for free from wherever we happen to be on the ocean. Learning to interpret these images is a steep learning curve, but once you get past a few key hurdles the information becomes somewhat fascinating.
One of the things I've enjoyed most about moving onto the ocean is the amount of knowledge about the world around me that I've been forced to learn - it boggles the mind that the tides move in and out with such regularity, yet mere meters away from the ocean Vancouver has a half a million people who have no idea what phase the tide is at any given time. Similarly, I feel like I've been living with the weather for my entire life, looking up at the sky without having the foggiest (heh) idea what I've been looking at. The more I learn about how weather systems function, the more I want to know!
working on the reefing systems
While we wait for the weather to change to a more favourable window there are dozens of small projects that didn't get finished before we left Vancouver. In this photo I'm working on the reefing system; a series of ropes and pulleys and hooks that helps to get the main sail "reefed", or shortened by a third - or two thirds - in case of heavy winds. Now complete, the improved reefing system will help us to sail even when the winds blow at gale force or higher.
out in the zodiac with a local diver, gps in hand
When I dropped the sprocket from the steering system into the ocean, I essentially paralyzed us; we can't steer at all. We're not only stuck in Neah Bay, we're stuck right where we've anchored until we can replace the part or work around it somehow. Miya walked the local docks looking for a diver, and to our luck the first person she talked to offered to dive for us. Daren Akin, a local diver, went down twice to try to find the part - sadly he was unable to locate it, though the attempt was greatly appreciated!
I cannot believe I did this. I really need to rewire my brain to assign more importance to small bits of hardware when working over a big hole that leads to oblivion. You'd think I would have learned that lesson from my bicycle.
Miya playing Nintendo on a rainy afternoon
So now we're stuck, with most of the projects out of the way and a boat fully stocked and ready to travel. The delay has been a blessing in some ways, letting us finish up work that we hadn't had time for and giving us a chance to catch our breaths and adapt to the new realities of life on the road, to sleep in and prepare for the monster ten-day marathon sail down to San Francisco.
Soon the company in Ontario from whom I've purchased the replacement part for the steering column will send me the tracking number for the UPS shipment, so that I might have a better idea of when we'll be out of here - but until then, we remain at anchor.
Anchor Musings
With less than two weeks until our scheduled departure, every single day is filled with project work! I've been trying to balance boat projects with tying off the last loose ends of life ashore, with good, steady progress. Still, I'm faced with having to carefully choose between which projects can be left for the time being and which projects are critical to the offshore voyage portion of our adventure.
the rock that nearly wrecked the boat
I'm definitely feeling "in touch" with the TIE Fighter and the ocean, however. This morning I was awoken by a wake from a passing boat, one which must have been pretty massive because it lasted for far more than the typical three or four waves. After about the twentieth wave or so I figured something was amiss, so I jumped out of bed and checked - sure enough, TIE Fighter was lying perpendicular to the incoming ocean swell, causing her to rock sideways. Usually the anchor line holds her bows pretty much directly into the swell, so this was out of the ordinary. I pulled out the GPS, and just as I suspected, the anchor was dragging.
The anchor I've been using lately is a Fortress FX-37. The benefits of a danforth-style anchor are many, but the real value of the Fortress model is that it's made out of cast aluminum alloy instead of steel. The FX-37 weighs a mere 21lbs, but the holding strength is reputed to be that of a steel anchor at least double its weight!
The biggest downside of the folding anchor model is that if the anchor should fail to fold, it ceases to work. This morning I was nearly blown onto the rocky shore as a result of a little one-inch rock getting wedged between the anchor flukes and the shaft! Fortress anchors may have the best holding power in their class, but they don't handle being re-seated due to shifting tides or winds very well. I'll be spending some time re-thinking the anchoring situation in the near future, let me assure you.
Update: when I went down to Seattle to help Miya move out of her apartment and onto the boat fulltime, disaster struck - I received a phonecall from the Kits Beach lifeguards saying that the TIE Fighter was about 100m off the rocks and headed in fast! Fortunately a friend from another boat rushed out and deployed a second anchor for me, and a phonecall to my good friend Simon had him scrambling to rescue the boat. He was able to pull the anchor and head in to False Creek, albeit with some hassle as the new fuel polishing system apparently siphons fuel from the engine lines if the valves aren't closed properly! He made it as far as the Burrard Bridge before the engine conked out, and had to enlist the help of the Coast Guard to tow the TIE Fighter in to safer waters.
It really never stops!
Adventure Time!
pirates at large!
Lately it's been difficult to find time to post here on the blog, as things have been moving forward at a fantastic (or even alarming) rate. It has come to my attention that I haven't even posted about the moving-forward Plan, and a deadline is approaching fast!
One major change: Miya and I have gotten back together. Though at times we're at odds with one another our bond is fierce and beautiful, and we'll face the upcoming years shoulder-to-shoulder. She will soon be again living full-time on the boat.
So! Without further ado, the Plan:
Stop being a directionless cubicle dronePurchase and move onto a sailboatLive aboard in Vancouver- Make the boat offshore-ready - almost complete
- Sail south until the water gets warm
- Continue sailing with no destination or schedule until it stops being fun.
Obviously with a plan this grand in scale, there has been constant hustle on both of our parts, sorting out the remaining ties to the land, legal considerations, health and dental priorities, and of course continuing to repair and upgrade the s/v TIE Fighter to a point where she'll be stable and strong on a long offshore voyage. I've come to terms with the fact that the boat will never be "finished", but we're almost to the point of "good enough".
There have been many jobs on my list for the past few months, and slowly but surely they're being finished. All of the major jobs fall under one or more of three major categories, which are, in order of priority:
- Ensure the boat is safe,
- Ensure the boat is sustainable, and
- Ensure the boat is comfortable.
electrical system, now with solar
One job which I have nearly completed is the addition of two massive solar panels to the roof of the aft cabin - well, I have nearly completed it, anyhow. The wiring is all in place, the solar charge controller is mounted and configured and the system is tested and active... but the panels aren't yet mounted on the boat itself. I still have to figure out how to properly attach them, and the hardware available just isn't up to the kind of abuse the ocean tends to throw at things! Hopefully this weekend I'll be able to sort that out, and with around 20a of current flowing into the batteries on sunny days we shouldn't have to run the generator anywhere near as often anymore. This both removes a point of failure (the generator could die, leaving us without power) and adds to the boat's sustainability.
Another job which has yet to begin is the installation of a watermaker. While not critical, in the strictest sense, the watermaker will remove our need for constant connections to the shore for fresh water. Here in Canada that just means motoring up to a nearby marina for 300l of fresh water from the city supply, but elsewhere that might mean getting tainted water, or more likely having to purchase water in disposable plastic jugs - either way leaves a bad taste in our mouths.
Miya, apart from all of the stresses of packing up a life on land to pursue a life on the ocean, has been working to make the boat a more beautiful place to live. She's converted the spartan master and crew berth situation into what she calls the "master nest" and the "guest nest", lined with blankets and pillows and hung with silks like some Afghani tent. She's crafted curtains for the windows and a privacy curtain for the head, and begun sprouting miscellaneous seeds in the kitchen. Together we built a box across the back of the aft cabin, housing eight large plastic bins, in which we will eventually plant a garden full of green leafy vegetables.
a Searunner (not TIE Fighter) close-hauled near Hawaii
There are projects that won't be finished before we leave; the boat still has bare exposed ceilings, for instance, and rough uncarpeted floors. Some of the paint from last years' intense labour in the Shelter Island boatyards has chosen not to stick to the primer, and there are ugly scuffs and scrapes and chips around that make us wince to see them. The anchor line is still tied to a cleat at the bow, retrieved hand-over-hand instead of a proper windlass and bow roller, and the edges of the bow have been worn through the fiberglass down to the bare wood underneath in several large patches.
Still, most of the remaining projects are cosmetic, and the vast majority of the critical tasks are already complete. The resounding chorus of cruising sailors remains "just go". There are plenty of sailors who spend their lives getting ready for a great adventure only to discover that they've waited too long and now they're made fast to the shore by family or work obligations. There are no projects left on the TIE Fighter than cannot be completed at some marina in Mexico, probably for significantly less than they'd be up here.
Our planned leave date is September 12th, 2011.
Recent Posts
- Delicious Ham
- La Paz, At Last!
- San Diego, Round Two
- San Diego
- San Francisco
- Coos Bay, Oregon
- Weather Window!
- Neah Bay
- Anchor Musings
- Adventure Time!
- RIP Schaltwerk
- And Just Like That
- Bicycles
- Electrical System Complete!
- Photoblog: What’s Up?
Twitter Feed
- mux: I think Pelican™ cases can be used as a pretty accurate metric of how awesome your life is. currently we have four large cases on the boat. May 18, 2012
- mux: tomorrow marks one month in the boatyard, with a few days left to go. today marks the second day in a row that has ended with a sunburn. May 18, 2012
- mux: multiple blisters... from power tools. not sure if this is a new personal best or new personal low. the new swing-keel is taking shape. May 13, 2012
Blogs I Like
Other Cruisers' Blogs
- Miya's blog
- s/v Celestial
- s/v Deep Playa
- s/v Eagle
- s/v Estrallita 5.10b
- s/v Nyon
- s/v Resolution
- s/v Rikki-Tikki-Tavi