The Week Before Departure

The house is all spiffed up, we’ve found some good renters, and the boat’s ready. Now now all we have to do is move our stuff into storage and clean, while taking care of all those pesky details of moving from a land-based existence to being a couple of sea-gypsies.

We thought that doing so much work well in advance would mean that we could relax just before departure, but HA! say the Gods of Millions of Ridiculous Details. You thought wrong.

It turns out that when you try that, you make up more stuff to do!

Date is set: We’ve decided that leaving on a holiday (July 4th) when there are still a couple of things to do that would be better done on a non-holiday is just plumb inconvenient. For example, we need to complete the transactions of selling both vehicles but would like to use them over the weekend. There are also goodbyes to be said. Why rush? So we’ll leave the dock on the afternoon of July 5th, to anchor for the night in front of our beloved Port Townsend, weather permitting.

Which leads us to those goodbyes. If you are in the Port Townsend area on July 4 between 2 and 6 pm, come on down to Boat Haven’s D dock, second dock extension on the left, and have a coldie, some munchies, a boat tour, and maybe a hug or two. We’ll head over to a friends’ house in the evening to watch the fireworks. The next day we’ll wrap up business and go.

Which leads us to keeping in touch. There are several hundred friends and family on our email list, and so far we’ve had the luxury of emailing you directly when we update the blog. That is rapidly coming to a close. There will be times when we can email you from shoreside internet cafes, but more often than not the blog might be updated at sea from our Ham radio. We can’t email you directly from sea, because it’s such a slow connection. So slow that a single text file can take 10 minutes to download. So, hint hint, the ones who figure out the “Follow” or “Updates From Sea” gadgets to the left of this text will be able to get updates from sea as they are posted. "Follow" instructions can be found here.

First leg of the voyage: We'll sail for Neah Bay at the far northwest corner of the country, and await good weather there. Then we’ll head out to sea, destination Drake’s Bay at Point Reyes just north of San Francisco, California. Enroute we’ll stay about 70 to 100 miles offshore to avoid the shipping traffic, headwinds and crab pots that are common nearer to shore. (Lin and Larry Pardey confirmed to us that that this is the best and often shortest route.) We’re planning to stop in Drake’s Bay because it’s an easy harbor to enter and anchor in normal weather conditions after a long passage. We’ll rest up there and negotiate the busy entrance to San Francisco a couple days later, during daylight hours.

Speaking of Lin and Larry Pardey, they featured Sockdolager's pull-out table on their blog! Click here to see their article. Karen has been following Lin and Larry's adventures via their many helpful and entertaining books since the 1970s, and has learned much from them. They coined the phrase "Go simple, go small, but go now." Basically, they've been two of Karen's sailing heroes for decades. So it's a delightful surprise to: a.) be able to get to know them, since they live in New Zealand; and b.) learn that Lin has written a sweet memoir about their years in a very unusual location building their beautiful Bristol Channel Cutter, Taliesin. It's quite a change for a writer to do a memoir, but Lin has written a fine, readable, often funny book called Bull Canyon, subtitled A Boatbuilder, a Writer, and Other Wildlife. It's gotten good reviews, including from Publisher's Weekly. She keeps a brand new writer's blog separate from their other web site. Click here to go to Lin's blog and learn more about her book.

Lin and Larry came for a visit at the March 2011 Spring Sailing Symposium in Port Townsend.

And if you're looking for some nail-biting reading about a voyage through pirate infested waters, check out Cap'n Fatty Goodlander's web site and book called Red Sea Run, about traversing the area in convoy with other cruising boats. He just published a new book that describes the situation in that area in detail, called, Somali Pirates and Cruising Sailors. And in case you were wondering, no, we don't plan to go there.

Must get back to work now. More later.

You know you’ve been working too hard when...

1. You wake up at oh-dark-thirty in the middle of processing a long list of things to do, that in daylight seemed rather minor, but at three o'clock in the morning have morphed into MAJOR jobs with HORRENDOUS consequences if you forget a single one of them.

2. You can’t go back to sleep and you’re too lazy to get up and write it all down, so you juggle the list in your head, an endless loop of fear of forgetting whatever it was that seemed so... zzzzzzz. Yawn. Sound of robins chirping. OMIGOD! It’s eight AM and you’ve forgotten everything!

3. You throw a cup of coffee down your gullet, hoping nothing like that will ever happen again to disturb your precious sleep. Time to get to work.

4. Eight hours later you can cross ONE thing off the list... well, it’s not actually finished, so you can’t cross it off unless you want to cheat. Rats. What’d I get done today? Is the sun over the yardarm yet?

5. You pour a glass of wine, wondering how you got so tired without crossing anything off the list. The wine relaxes you. Suddenly you think of a brand-new thing that needs doing, and add it to the dadgum list.

6. The clock in your head says "Six weeks left! Tick-tock, tick-tock..."

7. You make a new rule: When the list of stuff to do gets to the bottom of the paper, throw the paper away and start a new list.

8. Ahhh, bed. Feels so good to lay down after a hard day’s work, gonna sleep goo... zzzzzzz. BOING! 3:00 AM. Wide awake. OMIGOD! Why haven't I done THAT yet? Don't forget, don't forget, don't... zzzzzzz.

Welcome to Ground Hog Day.

Headless Chicken Days: Okay, you’re probably looking forward to the last of these voyage prep posts as much as we are... no, wait, that would be impossible. The good news is the boat’s all but ready and so are we, but there are still a few... okay, make that LOADS of projects to finish on our 110 year-old house, including moving completely out so that we can rent it. In other words, it's Headless Chicken Days. You'd recognize the signs. Things like: You go to repair a wall in the laundry room that had to come partially out for some plumbing work awhile back, but you realize the flooring is too crappy for renters, so you tear out the whole danged thing, right down to the 110 year-old cement slab, which by the wavy looks of it was evidently poured during some great drunken cement party. Standing back, you look at each other through the settling dust and gasp, "What the hell have we done?" But a few trips to the hardware store, a few beers to fuel the planning, and you're back on track--just a few days behind where you were supposed to be, that's all.

Hoo boy, and don't forget to add "Check all the smoke detectors and change the batteries" to the list. Short cuts are tempting. (Just kidding, that's not our house.)

We had our first Ham contact via our new radio! It's exciting to press the transmit button and know your voice is going out over the airwaves to who knows where. Jim went first, trying to suavely sound like he'd done this a million times, all the while desperately trying to recall that string of senseless letters and numbers that make up his call sign.

Jim, pressing the transmit button, freezes: Ummm...

Karen: You just said Um over the radio. You're not supposed to do that.

Jim: I was trying to remember my call sign.

Karen writes it down: KF7OWV.

Jim tries again: Ah, um, this is Kilo Fixtrot, uh, Oxnard...

Karen: No wonder nobody's answering!

We write it out phonetically so we don't trip ourselves up and this time transmit successfully, but still nobody answers. Hmmm. Eventually we call a Ham friend on the telephone and ask him to answer our radio call. Being a Ham, he gets really excited, races to his ham shack, and warms up his radio. Over the crackle and wheeze of frequency noise, we enjoy our first Ham contact.

But in spite of such pleasant diversions, all that remains to be done makes talk about destinations such as gorgeous tropical isles start to sound like the sound track from a Bill Murray movie.

Jim: I dreamed about the Tuamotus last night. (note: The Tuamotus are gorgeous tropical isles.)

Karen: That’s good. What was it about, swimming and beachcombing?

Jim: I forget. Do the Tuamotus have ballet?

Karen: Huh? Ballet? I dunno, why?

Jim: Because then they’d have Tuamotu tutus.

Karen: I need another coffee.

Jim: Isn’t there a song about the Chatanooga Choo-choo?

Karen: Oh yeah!

Both: Pardon me there, is that a Tuamotu tutuuuuuu!

It's clear even to the most casual observer that this pair needed a break, so off we went in the boat, to busta wave and host the Spring rendezvous of the Northwest Pacific Seacraft Owners Association. It was cold. How cold? See previous post. A peaceful anchorage was the goal for the first night out, so we nosed Sockdolager between the rocks at the narrow entrance to Mats Mats Bay, dropped the hook in the lagoon, said "Ahhhhh, peace at last," and settled in for a nice... hail storm. We kid you not. It sounds like gravel hitting the water. We enjoyed the incongruous pleasure of throwing iceballs into the water and watching puzzled gulls dive on them, then Jim gathered up enough hail to make three snowballs and put them in the fridge for drinks later. "Want some hail in that gin and tonic?" is a fun phrase to drop on friends.

Jim throws an iceball.

Next day was perfect sailing except for the small detail of having the wind smack on the nose. While tacking to and fro, we tested our new wind vane self-steering gear, shown in the next two photos.

It's called a Cape Horn, and is made in Quebec by a very skilled, friendly and helpful sailor named Yves. It works by cocking the upper vane into the wind until it stays vertical; then you hook up the steering lines to the tiller. The lightweight vane moves the powerful servo-pendulum rudder, which in turn pulls the steering lines attached to the tiller. It's so well made that it worked even when we installed the upper vane backwards! This will be the silent workhorse that does most of the steering on long voyages. Jim built the cross-brace for strength, and Leif Knudsen, the shipwright, made it into a pin rail for attaching various lines.

The second photo, looking over the boat's transom, shows the powerful servo-pendulum at work, swaying side to side and pulling on the steering lines. Atop the stainless frame there was enough room for Leif to make us a teak platform on which to store small jerrycans of gas for the outboard.

The rendezvous in Kingston was a delight, and over way too fast. So good to see our friends again. In this photo, Ben Alexander of Puffin (Dana 24) Patty Kirby of Tonic (Dana 24) Karen, and John Hazen of Windward Pilgrim (Flicka) swap yarns aboard Tonic.

This is a 55-foot bridge, but when you're on a boat with a 34-foot mast, it sure doesn't look that tall. We realized that this bridge (in the Port Townsend Canal) may be the last one we go under until the Golden Gate in San Francisco!

For another fun break, Karen sang with her trio The Jazz Gals and a marvelous combo including piano, guitar, bass, drums and trombone, in a concert in mid-May. What a thrill to sing numbers like "Mack the Knife" in front of a wailin' band and a cheering audience, then calm it all down with "Stardust." Are there any jazz players out there who also happen to be cruising sailors? We hope so.

And finally, Jim loves to geek out with iPhone apps. This one's called "Pano" and he took this photo of Sockdolager's cabin with it. The cabin sports some of Leif's new fiddly bits that make it more enjoyable and add storage capacity, which we will show you more of later. The photo makes the cabin look palatial (click to enlarge), but still, a Dana 24 is a boat that thinks it's a lot bigger than it is.

Have Boat, Will Sail

Northwest Mantra--Repeat until July: The Sun is not a myth... the Sun is not a myth... Not even the coldest spring on record since the 1950s is going to keep us from getting ready on time, but it has made preparation a bit more challenging. Doing upside-down boat yoga in a cockpit locker, for instance, is more fun in sunshine than sleet. Trying to not poke a ladder through a garage window is much easier when it’s not blowing a gale. Click here for scientific proof that Spring in the Northwest has been “unstable.”

Don’t worry, we’re just practicing our spiffy new medical skills at an Offshore Emergency Medicine course. We highly recommend it (the course, not breaking both right arms.) Photo by Jill Dubler. More info below.

Something about juggling all those lists: We keep forgetting things. It couldn’t be age causing this, or even keeping track of unfinished work, so it must be the cold. Yep, that’s it. Karen, for example, completely forgot that Jim had made her a nicely shaped piece of wood to fill in a space between exterior wall shingles and the garage door frame, so she laboriously cut little mini-shinglets to fill it in and layered them carefully, then joined their edges to full-sized shingles. Nice corner, the renters will like it. Very fine work there, she thought, until Jim asked, “Geez, aren’t you going to use that piece of wood I made?” Cue sound of extra energy going THUD.

One of our favorite photos, taken last summer by Mae Jong-Bowles of Prince Rupert, Canada as we were entering Port Angeles Harbor from Sooke, BC.

But Jim takes the cake on forgetting, at least this time. He lost his wallet. Actually, he loses it rather creatively nearly every day, plus his car keys and glasses. Eons ago Karen offered him a basket for stashing them the minute he comes in the door, but nooooo... “Where’s the fun in that?” he retorted. Usually we (note the pronoun) find them all after a daily ritual resembling an Easter egg hunt. But one day his wallet seemed lost for good. The signs are always clear: Jim mutters while rifling through stuff and wandering distractedly. After ten minutes of this, Karen asks, “Which one are we looking for today?” Occasionally Jim will call out something like, “If you TRULY cared about me, you would know where I left my wallet/keys/iPhone.” This turned into the best setup he ever gave her. Meanwhile, there was no finding the wallet, and Karen silently began making plans to call credit card companies. She did notice a wallet-shaped bulge in Jim’s jeans pocket earlier, but thought, Nah, couldn’t be, he’s not THAT clueless. But he was. “I found my wallet!” came the triumphant call minutes later. Silence.

Karen: Where was it?

Jim: In my pocket.

Karen: No, seriously, where was it? (She walks over, begins searching his pockets slooooowly.)

Jim: What are you doing? I have to go to work!

Karen: I’m showing you how much I truly care.

Sockdolager under sail. Soon, soon...

Of course, Jim had a good excuse for such forgetfulness: all his brain cell were full, holding an encyclopedic amount of arcane facts needed to pass the test for a General Class Ham license. No room left in there for mundane things like wallets. His study marathon began right after we returned from taking the Offshore Emergency Medicine course. The man’s unstoppable. Karen is still trying to keep all the medical stuff from falling out of her beleaguered brain.

Time to go sailing. The day cannot come soon enough when we’re on the boat and don’t need to take tests or remember where we put keys because we won’t need the dadgum keys. Wallets and glasses will be easy to find because on this boat anything you don’t put away is in plain sight.

More on the Emergency Offshore Medicine course: First we read the 200+ page book to get ready. Then we took an online test and passed. Then we flew to Denver, where we had three nine-hour days of intensive classroom time, which included how to identify if something’s a medical emergency or not, what to do about it, and how to keep something minor from becoming major. We role-played, diagnosed using “big net” systems thinking, and even practiced emergency radio calls. Then there were the labs, hoo boy... we cleaned, irrigated and dressed a horrendous wound in a ham hock, practiced giving shots with real syringes and real drugs except that we shot up a bunch of raw chicken legs and not each other, administered a hematoma block in another unfortunate chicken leg, and smeared fake blood on ourselves before going out to lay in various pained poses in the hotel hallway, which impressed the hotel’s other guests to no end.

This course was taught with panache and humor by Jeff Isaacs and a partnership of MDs who get what it means to go offshore by sailboat. If you are going offshore and beyond the reach of medical assistance or timely medevac, then this is the course for you. It costs about the same as two month’s insurance premiums and buys peace of mind. We’ve connected the Docs with the Northwest Maritime Center in hopes they’ll bring it here, because Denver’s as far west as they’ve taught it so far. You can find out more about it here.


Ahhh, sunset. Sockdolager at anchor behind Dungeness Spit National Wildlife Refuge, just off the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Photo by Mae Jong-Bowles.

All that work will be worth it...

A favorite photo from the Northwest Maritime Center's Spring Symposium, taken on the dock in front of Sockdolager after a nice visit aboard with Lin and Larry Pardey, a couple of our sailing heroes... read on for more!

Three months to castoff! Though we’re making more progress toward our goal of departing Port Townsend on July 4^th for the open Pacific, it still feels at times like wading through molasses. The other day Jim said, “I should just put something on the list so I can cross it off, like ‘get out of bed.’

But we’re getting close, so close. We can smell the ocean, feel the boat’s swing and sway, sniff the warm breeze in our dreams. Well, not the warm breezes while we’re dreaming, we mean the warm breezes of our dreams… oh never mind. Angled into this mix is the need for a reasonable state of physical fitness, especially at our ages (budding geezerhood.) Jim’s boat yoga (contortions inside small lockers to build and repair stuff) has been keeping him somewhat limber if not bruised, and Karen has begun lifting weights and doing other exercises at the gym. Talk about wading through molasses. But the strenuous workouts are paying off. She attended a “Body Flow” class the other day and learned, while doing the combo Tai Chi-Yoga-Ballet exercises, about the effects of age on one’s general decreptitude. Later that evening, at home…

Karen: Hey guess what. The instructor says that balance isn’t the first thing to go when you get older. It’s the ability to twist.

Jim: Hmmm. Maybe we should download some Chubby Checker tunes to the iPod.

Winter cruise: Just to get outta Dodge, we went for a little cruise on December 30, to Mystery Bay, where we tied to a mooring overnight. Temps were in the 20s and we were the only boat out sailing. It was crisp and lovely, but holy mackerel, the idea of sailing without down vests, hats, gloves and lined boots is going to be an exotic new experience. Imagine flip-flops! Bathing suits! Yeah, baby! Diving in for a swim! Brrrr, never mind, it’s Puget Sound.

On the way out of Mystery Bay the next morning, we tested our new VHF radio with the amazing AIS (automatic identification system) that tells you where other ships are, their names, and which way they’re going. It was clear and sunny. Jim went below and turned it on while Karen steered. The proximity alarm went off immediately… BEEP BEEP BEEP! To small-boat sailors this sound means, “ATTENTION, INSIGNIFICANT OBJECT. A ship is heading your way and will be inside your Official Zone of Scary Events in 3… 2… 1…”

Jim: Do you see any ships?

Karen: No. Does it show a ship in the area?

Jim: Yeah, and it’s heading straight for us.

BEEEEP! BEEEEP! went the alarm.

Karen: I don’t see anything. What’s the name of the ship? We can call them.

Jim: It’s blanked out. No name, but the bearing’s coming straight at us.

BEEEEP! Jim: Ugh. I’m turning off the alarm.

Karen: Hmmm, were it not for that sand bar between us and Port Townsend Bay I might be worried, but there aren’t any ships in si…. OH. MY. GOD. Come up here!

A nuclear submarine’s jet black conning tower slipped into view just over the sandspit that separated us, and moved across it like a needle on a giant panic dial. It was huge, and we were, for once, grateful for sand bars. “Wow,” we said in unison. It figures the first ship contact with our new AIS would be a boomer.

Jim's full of big ideas. This is his idea for fishing in comfort.

Sailing back to Port Townsend, Jim informed Karen of an important discovery he’d made. “I did some extra calculations on the spinnaker pole as I was putting the new ends on,” he said. “There’s a lot of space inside that tube.” Jim had found the pole on Craigslist for a lot less than a new one would cost, and he’d bought new end fittings for it.

“You’re looking at the inside of a spinnaker pole for storage?” Karen asked.

“The pole is 3 inches in diameter,” said Jim. “A can of Pabst Blue Ribbon is two and five-eighths inches in diameter. We could fit 31 cans of PBR inside that pole.”

“Wow. Only you would spend the time to figure that out.”

“It might affect the pole’s performance, huh?”

“It might.”

We also discussed saving more storage space by eliminating all those icky tubes of engine grease and using peanut butter instead, for greasing the engine. This came about after Karen smelled the ubiquitous paste on Jim’s breath. “Too bad engines don’t run on that stuff. You could just butter up the diesel and lick it when you get hungry.” Jim thought this was an excellent idea, and, except for the fact that he prefers the problematic crunchy to the diesel-friendly smooth, he might have considered it.

Nerd News: We passed the test for our ham radio licenses. This means that we can talk long-distance to other hams on ham frequencies, and to ordinary mortals on the Single Sideband radio. Our friend Karen Helmeyer in Hawaii pointed out that we should excel at being hams because we are rather good at hamming it up. To which we respectfully riposte: We shall do a cartoon radio show on the other side of the Equator and call it South Pork. (Just kidding, Fellow Hams, we know that's not allowed.) In early April (whoa, that's now!) we’re off to Denver for an Offshore Emergency Medical course. Denver? Offshore? Hey, we don't make this stuff up, we just do it. And that about does it for school.

Lineup of boats on display at the Spring Symposium. Sockdolager's at the front. This & next 2 photos courtesy of Jan Davis.

Winter’s finally over, and around here that means the wind subsides to thirty, the rain falls at 45 degree angles instead of straight sideways, and everyone’s delirious about teensy little leaf buds and micro-patches of blue sky. It hasn’t been all work and no play, though. We took Sockdolager over to the Northwest maritime Center’s first annual Symposium, where we ‘re told she was one of the stars of the show. If the steady stream of delightful visitors was any indication, we believe it.

This was a gathering of serious sailors and powerboaters to learn and listen and interact in two days of intensive classes. It was great. One of the highlights for us was hosting Lin and Larry Pardey, two of our sailing heroes, aboard for a nice long visit where we talked about boats, cruising, and writing. Karen did her presentation on blogging your voyage, and we enjoyed long conversations with a bunch of interesting people.

Sockdolager at the Northwest Maritime Center.

Fiddly Bits: We’ve been having huge fun with our friend and semi-retired shipwright, Leif Knutsen. Leif, whose own boat is an astonishing assemblage of creative and beautiful boatwork, has been busy on myriad “fiddly bits” for Sockdolager. Wait’ll you see this stuff! Kinesthetically kewl doesn’t begin to describe the brilliant things that have created more space, secured heavy items, and found unique solutions for storage. In another installment we’ll take you on a tour of Leif’s innovative fiddly bits.

Preparations for the Life of Reilly

Several requests have come in asking what we’re doing these days to get ready to cast off for the Big Bodacious Voyage. “Geez,” they say when we start ticking off items on the To-Do list, “You’ve got lots of time!”

This causes the following immediate reaction: I freeze. Jim freezes. We look at each other. He dials up his iPhone’s “Number of Days Left Countdown” app. Cue the jangly music from the sand-running-out-of-the-hourglass scene in the Wizard of Oz where the Wicked Witch of the West cackles "Mwahh-Ha-Ha!" at wide-eyed Dorothy and her little dog, too. Jim announces how many days we have left. I can see the panic in his eyes. We both get that deer in the headlights look. This photo shows us practicing being cheerful castaways in our teensy but very well-constructed Winslow life raft. As part of the repack/inspection, we bought a couple hours of consultation time. One can never be too prepared--and time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping...

Here’s a partial To-Do list. Most of these things have been done already, but enough of them remain to keep life these days anything but Reilly-like. Besides boat prep we’ve got a daunting list of house projects to get through to make it really nice for whoever rents it. Which reminds me, I need to go to the hardware store because I’ve run out of thinset for the tile backsplash…

To-Do List, or... What Some People Will Go Through Just to Act Like a Couple of Lazy Bums. Or... Who the heck was Reilly, Anyway?

Sails & Rigging

Standing and running rigging—replace all, including sheaves where worn; convert boat to cutter rig with removable forestay, new mast tangs and running backstays.

Make sure all sheet/halyard leads are fair; re-rig roller furling with new blocks.

Rig reefing gear and boom vangs for maximum strength and ease of use.

Internalize jib halyard, add 2 extra external halyards as spares.

Install strongtrack, storm trysail track, spinnaker pole track extension.

Rig boat for extensive downwind sailing and prevention of sail & line chafe.

Have sails (made in 2005) inspected/repaired as needed--mainsail, genoa, staysail, cruising spinnaker, storm trysail, storm staysail.) All made by Carol Hasse’s Port Townsend Sails. One more needed, a light air drifter.

Replace 23 year-old stainless chainplates with custom bronze ones.

Tune rig. Replace old uncomfortable bosun’s chair.

Safety

Life raft—have it inspected and repacked. Organize ditch bags.

Ground tackle—overhaul entire system. Get old fire hose for chafe gear.

Replace lifelines. Get new EPIRB.

Rebuild bilge pumps & buy spare parts.

Waterproof seals & positive locks for cockpit lockers.

Have at least three independent handheld GPS.

Have sextant, tables and know how to use them.

Install Cape Horn wind vane self-steering gear.

Replace old aluminum fuel tank.

Install lee cloths on bunks.

Secure boat for knockdowns; stove, bookshelves, floorboards, galley, etc.

Emergency water supplies: handheld watermaker and spare gallon jugs.

Electrical

Install 175-watt solar panel on stainless arch.

Install 110-volt inverter and electrical monitoring system.

Re-wire boat. Convert all lighting to LED.

Install new Single Sideband/Ham radio, get Ham licenses.

Buy and install AIS/VHF radio.

New stereo with iPod dock. Record all CDs onto iPod.

Get tillerpilot in good working order.

Engine survey & oil analysis.

Kindles, iPads and ship’s library: get ebooks.

Other

Replace rigid dinghy, which is too large to carry on deck, with inflatable dinghy & 2-hp outboard.

New spray dodger, mainsail cover.

New cockpit awning.

Storage pouches for cockpit.

New interior cushions.

New cookstove.

Build wooden drawers inside hanging locker; create chart stowage space on sides.

Raise the waterline (see photo.)

Give internal teak a coat of beeswax finish.

Get ship’s papers in order.

Passports, drivers licenses up to date.

Wilderness medical kit.

Learn French. Brush up on Spanish.

Get the house ready to rent (another huge list; cue groans.)

We're still figuring out how to make the comments section easier for readers to do, but just discovered that an automatically-generated album of all the blog photos exists on Picasa, here.

The Big Bodacious Voyage

On the Horizon

Happy holidays! Many tides have ebbed and flowed since last summer, and much preparation for the upcoming voyage has been completed. (Much remains, however.) The departure date is set: July 4, 2011, from Port Townsend, Washington to…well… the world!

Photo of Karen & Jim by Yasuo and Michiko Hayama, from Japan. Yasuo sailed his Dana 24 from California to Tokyo (http://www.cruisingyachtsinc.com/psc24dh.pdf)

Yes! We’re going for it! From PT we’ll sail to Neah Bay at the end of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, wait for a good forecast, and jump offshore for the passage to San Francisco, about 700 miles south. After a spell there (heads up, SF friends!) we’ll harbor-hop down the coast to southern California, where we’ll await the end of hurricane season. Then it’s down Baja Mexico to explore the Sea of Cortez and get the boat and ourselves ready for the big crossing in March of 2012: 2300 miles to the Marquesas, home of gorgeous mountainous islands, great people, and lots of history. We can hardly wait to ramble through French Polynesia and, before the South Pacific hurricane season starts, book it for New Zealand. (Heads up, EnZed friends!) Once in NZ we’ll take stock—you know, the how-are-we doing, is-this-still-fun stock. If it’s still fun, we’ll keep going. A friend named Kaci Cronkhite (who’s circumnavigated and is the longtime Executive Director of the Wooden Boat Festival) has been spinning yarns to us about the delights of the Indian Ocean. And we do have friends in South Africa…

We’ll keep you posted via this blog as we get internet connections along the way. There is also the new ability to update it from far out at sea anywhere in the world, via our new single sideband radio. Both of us are going to become Hams as well, so talking from just about anywhere in the world will be possible, as soon as we learn how to do that. We may even be able to send coordinates of where we are right to the blog via our solar-powered shortwave radio. HOLY MACKEREL, IS TECHNOLOGY GREAT OR WHAT.

Our boat, Sockdolager, (Sock-DOLL-a-jur) a Pacific Seacraft Dana 24, is, well, only 24 feet long. This would make things rather crowded with all of you aboard, so the best way we can think of to take you along is to blog about the voyage. Which brings up another thing…

We GUARANTEE you won’t get seasick.
While we’ll be able to update the blog at sea from our shortwave radio, we won’t be able to notify YOU with an email, due to the cost and complexity of radio waves compared to internet electrons. We also can’t promise to update anything with any regularity, such as the blog or our position. Which means: don’t worry if you don’t hear from us for weeks at a time. We put a “Follow” widget on this blog to enable followers to get automatic notifications when we post via radio from the briny. Although we know beyond a doubt that each and every one of you is a leader, we recommend that you also try becoming a “Follower.” More on this with how-to instructions at: http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=104226

Talk back!
We’ve also figured out how to simplify the comments section at the end of each blog post—basically it’s open now to anyone for comment. We got rid of that byzantine registration thingy that previously prevented many of you from commenting. So fire at will, we want to keep in touch!

Good Old Boat and 48 North
Both magazines have published several humor articles by Karen this year. Our blog writings have become the ideas and raw materials for lots of these published pieces. Supposedly, writing for publication is like watching sausage being made. So if you love sausage, this may be your spot.

The man can do anything. And strong? Don't get me started...

Boat Bling

Sockdolager is getting ready for voyaging and is now solar-powered for all things electronic. Her rig, sails, and safety gear are either all new or inspected and good as new. She has a new Cape Horn self-steering vane gear, new dodger, cockpit awning, 175-watt solar panel on a stainless arch, special Odyssey batteries, water-cooled refrigeration, 110-volt inverter, Wi-fi antenna, a new Force 10 cook-stove, a new single sideband (long range) radio transmitter/receiver, GPS, and a new VHF (short range) radio with a cool gizmo that identifies ships by name and gives their coordinates (AIS.) Plus all new boat cushions and a new stereo system with an iPod dock. Karen, also known as the Navigatrix, has a refurbished Tamaya Jupiter sextant in case the electronics crap out.

Jim, also known as His Royal Geekness, has installed everything himself while contorting his body into odd, tiny spaces inside the boat. This practice will be familiar to some of you; it’s called “boat yoga.” Karen has watched him in slack-jawed amazement. There are now enough new antenna thingys on the boat to attract the interest of the CIA. Special note: if anyone ever tries to tell you that installing a single sideband radio (SSB) is easy, HAVE THEM IMMEDIATELY FLOGGED ROUND THE FLEET. Installing the SSB has been so much work that Jim now refers to it as the SOB. There are five good reasons for choosing SOB, er, SSB, over other options such as a satellite phone:

1. We can talk for unlimited amounts of time with any other vessels anywhere in the world, so long as they also have their own SOBs (and as long as our batteries last)
2. We can contact shore stations, including mobile nets, businesses, and emergency services;
3. We can send and receive e-mail from sea (but it’s expensive); and
4. We can receive weather charts by connecting our laptop to the SOB.
5. This radio has all the Ham frequencies, too.

Sunset from our house, which we'll be renting to someone who hopefully loves them.

We’ve thought a lot about this. Some people have become so reliant on their electronics as a crutch that their voyages have been negatively affected, even aborted, when they couldn’t stay in touch with shore. We prefer to view having these electronics aboard as a convenience rather than a necessity. Cutting the umbilical with shore is important if you are going to truly go voyaging; but the ability to be in touch when needed is awfully nice. If we let electronics impact the quality of our voyage, or the connections we should feel from navigating by sun and stars, or the self-reliance of a fully-found little boat on a big ocean, then shame on us.

Since the boat will be our cruising home for the foreseeable future, she should be as safe, comfortable and convenient as possible. We’re not camping out; this will be a matter of taking our little home with us, like a turtle takes its shell, so that we can be at home anywhere in the world. Different philosophy there, but it has served us well in justifying going broke!

Spring Sailing Symposium in Port Townsend March 18-20, 2011
Last Sunday morning Karen’s phone rang. We’d say it was early but it wasn’t; we were sleeping late. She leaped out of bed, mumbled hello. It was Lin and Larry Pardey, calling from New Zealand! Karen's eyelids went from half mast to Defcon 4. The sailing world’s most well-known couple, who are among the star attractions at the upcoming sailing symposium in the Northwest Maritime Center here in PT, were responding in person to questions Karen had asked them via email. The conversation lasted an enjoyable half hour. Want to know what we talked about? Sign up for the symposium, (http://nwmaritime.org/symposium/) because Karen's presenting, too! In addition, we’ll bring Sockdolager to the docks at Point Hudson, and she’ll be open to tours for registered participants. Karen also interviewed Janna Cawrse Esary, author of The Motion of the Ocean, Gary (Cap’n Fatty) Goodlander, author of Red Sea Run, aboard Wild Card (currently in Turkey,) and Andrew Revkin, former Science Editor of the New York Times, blogger at DotEarth and a sailor who’s crossed the Indian Ocean and Red Sea.

Karen’s presentation is called “Hello World! Ten Reasons to Blog Your Voyage (but not every day)”

Postscript: A Hole in the Heart
This one’s difficult. At our last writing, Jack, our beloved little sea-doglet, was still with us. He died in August, a few days after we returned from the mini-voyage to Canada’s west coast. Congestive heart failure finally claimed him in the back yard early one misty morning, as we cradled him and told him we loved him and would carry him forever in our hearts. We carried him down to the boat and sewed a little shroud for him, made of a bright red beach towel with an anchor jauntily embroidered on it. We weighted it with a round rock from our garden and sailed him out to the mouth of Admiralty Inlet, to a place that’s 650 feet deep, beyond the reach of fisherfolk. We drifted in the mist, read some poems, squeaked his favorite toys, cried, and slipped him into the waves as a pair of tiny harbor porpoises circled the boat. It’s hard to write any more about the little bugger except that we miss him.

We’ll post again as the time nears and there is news.