Log of s/v Del Viento

My Techie By MichaelVICTORIA, BC

2013-05-20T02:36:00.000-06:00

Everyone should cruise with at least one
kid, the skinnier the better. Exhibit A:
Here Eleanor runs cable for me so
I can install our VHF remote in the
cockpit. She squeezed through one
of those drawer cut-outs to get back
where I needed the cable.

On our road trip from Washington, D.C. to Puerto Vallarta (where we bought Del Viento), Windy studied for her HAM radio license as we drove cross-country. The process culminated with a brief detour through a small, rural Wyoming town where the girls and I played in a park and got ice cream while Windy passed her technical exam in a nearby Kiwanis Club hall. The year was 2011.

Since then, our designated Onboard Communications Director hasn’t really used the Icom 710 single sideband (SSB) that came with the boat. Everything she learned is theory and she’s admittedly forgotten much of it (though radio guru Michael on Wondertime gave her a tutorial in Mexico last year).

But these past couple weeks, after admiring the way Kyra was able to post a report on the Nyon blog every day of their passage across the Pacific, I urged Windy to finally get fluent with our radio so we could do the same on our trip north this summer. After all, I imagine there will be lots of time when we won’t have internet connectivity.

And what she did today is very cool.

She plugged our laptop into the mic jack of the SSB, tuned to a broadcast being sent from Hawaii, and our cabin filled with the beeping, static-noise of an office fax machine.

“Watch,” she said.

Soon, a beautiful satellite image of Vancouver Island and northern Washington state was rendered on the glowing screen, line-by-line. We all stared, holding our breath. Then maps of forecast weather and waves were slowly--miraculously--reproduced before us.

“Whoa,” I whispered, much like when Nemo first reached the edge of the reef.

Now even though this is like black magic to the crew of Del Viento, I totally acknowledge that receiving weather faxes via short-wave radio is absolutely nothing to most other cruisers--basic, basic stuff.

But there’s more.

In a flash of genius that reminds me why I married her, she downloaded some app on the iPad, set a pair of ear buds next to the mic jack on the iPad, and reproduced the same thing there.

She says that somewhere in our lockers is a different sound card she needs to dig out and play with before we can send and receive email via her PC, but I think she’s caught her groove and it’s clear sailing from here. Soon we'll be equipped for getting and sending the info we need when we’re off the beaten track. You'll know we've reached that nirvana when you see one of those TESTING, DOES THIS WORK? posts, a milestone indeed.

--MR

Here's my wife, the magician, at her nav station.
"How have you gotten weather info previously?" some
might ask. The answer is that since we started, we've
nearly always had internet access available, at least
prior to beginning a passage, and we've simply come this
far by the grace of www.passageweather.com, and
the buoy data at http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/--we've
infrequently relied exclusively on VHF-broadcast
weather, even when available.

Disco Winches By MichaelPORT ANGELES, WA

2013-05-13T02:30:00.000-06:00

Here are most of the innards from the big
48s--missing the drum and largest bearings.
After this I did our two Barient secondaries
and two Lewmar 30s on the mast.

The 1970s have long been maligned for their negative contributions to humanity, things like the Vietnam war, 20% mortgage interest rates, and disco. But what most historians fail to include in this list is our 1978 Lewmar 48 self-tailing winches.

Del Viento’s got two of them, one on each side of her cockpit. They’re big, they’re black, and they’re stout. Several times, fellow boaters have complimented them. I always acknowledged the compliment with a simple thank you, but I’ve always thought to myself: Oh yes, they are damn nice.

Indeed, without them Del Viento wouldn’t look half as serious as she does. Her coamings swell where the Lewmars are attached, to accommodate their big footprint. As a prospective buyer, these winches spoke to me: Just look at us! Nobody would put us on a 40-foot boat that wasn’t strong and ready for big loads.

I recently serviced them for the first time.

It was easy enough to start: nine Allen screws, three sets of three. They loosened easily and in turn released the top cap and both halves of the self-tailing cleat. I then lifted off the cast-aluminum drum to expose a solid bronze base housing the main drive shaft and two sets of gears fitted neatly at the bottom.

Now I’ve rebuilt winches before, different sizes and makes. To get those two sets of gears off (and to expose the pawls and springs between them), I had only to remove the vertical axles that held them captive. But for the life of me, I couldn’t see any way to remove these axles. Only after a long, difficult search online, having tried a bunch of key words and having waded through about a dozen online forum discussions on winches, and having returned to the cockpit several times to confirm what I was seeing, did I turn up a PDF of a tattered manual for our vintage Lewmar 48. There in that ancient record, in clear monospace, were instructions that validated the worse-case scenario I’d stumbled on in my online search: these gear axles are pressed in from the bottom and it takes a punch and a hammer to knock them back out, through the bottom. By design, the winch must be completely removed from the boat for servicing.

Isn’t that absurd? What were the 1970s Lewmar engineers and designers thinking? Have they never owned a boat? Has anyone else come across a design like this?

In the end, I recruited Windy’s small arms and hands to reach into the underside of our coaming and hold each nut while I loosened it from above. After completely cleaning, oiling, and greasing each winch, I re-bedded them and we reinstalled them.

Once I finished the first winch, I did notice the word England forged into the top. So maybe it’s not simply a 1970s thing, but a 1970s British thing…

After all, in America S&S designed Del Viento in the 1970s—and there was even Star Wars, Farrah Fawcet, and bean bags. But apparently, overseas it was the decade of IRA violence, the infamous 1979 Fastnet Race, and the Lewmar 48 winch that must be completely removed from a boat to be serviced.

--MR

The girls at Beacon Hill park near Del Viento. They love it there
and usually spend several hours exploring after their Monday
morning shift at the petting zoo is over.

North To The Light By MichaelVICTORIA, BC

2013-05-06T02:30:00.000-06:00

After trying seven tattoo parlors, some more
than once, we stumbled on Pair O' Dice where
Olivia was there and ready to make holes in
Eleanor's ears. No gun, she simply held a
cork behind the ear and pushed a needle
through the front. Eleanor grimaced, but
no tears. She was all smiles afterward and
is pleased with the results, go figure.
My friend EW suggested we take
Eleanor to the mall for this procedure.
But would a distracted, gum-chewing
16-year-old working at a mall kiosk
do a better job than Olivia, an artist,
a professional with about a dozen
piercings of her own, that I could see?
And would the girl in the mall
wear black latex gloves?

“All hope lies in one’s openness to experience and ability to change.”

That was Alvah Simon’s takeaway from his year in the Arctic ice aboard Roger Henry, his harrowing, “sojourn into the darkness.” I re-read Simon’s North to the Night recently—for like the fourth or fifth time—and I finally no longer feel inadequate, like my own cruising experiences are diminutive in comparison. After all, where did Simon freeze himself and the Roger Henry in over the winter? Yep, Canada. The exact same Canada where we and our good ship Del Viento just survived a long, cold winter.

Yes, I can hear the skeptics now: “But Alvah was alone.”

Of course he was, that’s why he had it much easier. Did Alvah have to constantly remind two kids not to leave the hatch wide open? Did he have three other bodies exhaling warm, moist air that would condense on the cabin walls? No, he had a cat.

In fact, Simon had it easy as he chose to winter-over in a part of Canada where mold doesn’t grow on the inside of your boat. Do you know how many trips Simon had to make in the cold drizzle to buy yet another gallon of vinegar so he could wage his battle against the nasty stuff? Zero.

Because Simon has long been a hero of mine, I’m going to stop with the comparison. Even though we’re now more or less equals, he was first and that’s worth something.

But we’re now facing a challenge Simon could not have imagined.

Where to Alvah the coming of spring meant a speck of moss spotted on a tundra stone, to us it is the roar of bow thrusters echoing through our hull as an 85-foot Nordhaven sidles in next to us, blocking our access to the spring sun.

Here on our docks in Victoria’s Inner Harbour, we grew accustomed to the long, lonely winter, the isolation, the quiet. We made our own rules, with plenty of space between us and our few hearty neighbors. We became a community, bound not by familiarity, but by shared adversity. Through the long, dark winter, we’d nod as we passed each other, heads down, along the 300-yard trail to the showers or laundry, too much cold and drizzle to stop and chat.

It was a month ago now, on
a freezing cold morning that
I rented dive gear for the day
so I could check our zincs
and scrub the bottom. That's
a 7mm suit doubled up over
my thighs and torso--the
water's cold.

Things have changed with the season. It’s warm enough to stop and chat, but our community is pulling out, one by one, headed out to explore as we plan to do. They leave us behind, at ground zero of a tourist mecca. Our new neighbors are transients, in for only a day, just long enough to browse the shops, walk the crowded causeway, and take their picture in front of the Empress. The gates that were locked for the winter are now open and tourists stream by our little sliver of dock, through our front yard. Security guards now patrol, picking up detritus left around by the kids and returning it to us with an admonition.

And the irony is painful, how now that I finally have the weather to do a little sanding and touch-up the varnish on my toe rail, I can’t. The couple entertaining friends on their stern deck is barely five yards away and downwind of where I need to work.

But our winter in Victoria was much more than adversity and our spring is much more than the crowds that have descended. We’ve made many friends, some of whom we’ll leave behind and some of whom are cruisers we’ll likely cross paths with in Mexico. And we are going to miss Victoria. We bonded with this pretty, resource-rich city, everything we want and more just a short walk away.

The end of the month is advancing fast. When it arrives, it’s hard to believe we’ll be gone.

But do have hope, Alvah. As we prepare to leave Victoria, to go north to the light, we’re open to the experience and I know we have the ability to change.

--MR

The same day Eleanor got pricked, the whole family stumbled on
this blood donor center. In solidarity with our daughter, Windy
and I donated blood. I used to do this every 56 days like
clockwork back in our conventional lives. We now have a
new cruising goal to donate blood--at least once--in
every country we visit. Of course, the more countries
we visit, the more likely we are to get ourselves excluded.

In Which I Fix Something By MichaelVICTORIA, BC

2013-04-29T02:30:00.000-06:00

This is an unhappy girl on a mission.
Over the past two weeks, we've visited
half-a-dozen tattoo parlors with
Eleanor. She is fired up to get her
ears pierced and every place we
go, the resident body piercing
person is gone or off. It's become
hilarious--to most of us.

“Can you please fix the medicine cabinet catch?” Windy asked me the other day.

"What’s wrong with the medicine cabinet catch?”

“You’ll see, it’s been broken for months.”

There is no shortage of beer-in-hand/body-in-hammock stories that depict cruising as a carefree existence, free of the work and hassle that characterizes land-based life. And to be fair, neither is there a shortage of flashlight-in-mouth/body-upside-down-in-bilge stories that depict the cruising life for what it is: a lot of work and hassles landlubbers never know—in cool places.

This is one for the latter category.

Indeed, I hadn’t noticed that the medicine cabinet catch was loose, barely keeping the little door closed. And now that someone else knew that I knew, feigning ignorance was not an option. I set about solving this minor problem.

Now, good reader, how long should it take me, an average cruiser, to fix a loose door catch? The answer is two days. But I didn’t know this then. And that’s why this story is as much a cruising yarn as our recent trip to the San Juan Islands. This story is an important reminder that solving any problem aboard a cruising boat nearly always takes longer than anyone ought to imagine. Always, even after I’m reminded of this! (In fact, my inability to imagine the actual time—and cost—that any boat project will consume is what allows me to keep going. My ignorance is the magic that keeps me sane, that allows me to start another project, and another, each time armed with a fresh dose of misplaced confidence.)

So I grabbed my screwdriver from the drawer beneath the nav station and made my way forward to the head. Before even trying to tighten the screws that attached the catch, I notice it’s pointless. There is a crack, a split in the wood running through both of the tiny screw holes. I removed the catch to study the problem further.

The frame was split, but not badly, just enough to keep those screws loose. I thought about gluing and clamping the split. I’ve had success in the past with Gorilla glue, but it would be impossible to prep the surfaces (let alone squeeze any glue into the crack). I figured Crazy Glue might wick in there, but I feared it wouldn’t be up to the task, that the repair would fail as soon as I replaced the screws. I decided on a mechanical solution; I would use two additional screws to pull the two sides of the split frame together tightly. I would have to insert them from the back so the heads wouldn’t show and they wouldn’t get in the way of the door closing.

Such a little thing...

Only five minutes had elapsed, and I already had a plan.

In the aft cabin, I moved Eleanor’s stuffed animals aside to access my drill stored under her bunk. From my yellow tool chest under the v-berth, I retrieved my drill index. From a cubby underneath the dinette, I dug out my box of stainless screws. From behind the starboard settee, I found my #2 Phillips stubby.

Frances was now using the head, but no matter, I picked out the right screws, installed the bit I wanted for pilot holes, and waited.

I now have an arsenal of tools out and I’m on the job. I realize I can’t drill from inside the cabinet because the drill’s too big, but in a stroke of genius, I decide to drill through the outside, two tiny holes that I can cover up later. Yet when I go to start the first screw from inside the cabinet, I realize my Phillips-head stubby is way too long. I need a right-angle screwdriver and I’m pretty sure I have one, someplace.

Someplace. After thirty-five minutes of tearing the boat apart looking everywhere for the right-angle screwdriver I thought I had, I grab some long needle-nose pliers with a bend in the end. It’s difficult to start the first screw by hand, but once I do, I gingerly try and reach around and grab the screw head with the pliers, squeeze, and try and rotate the screw. It is very slow going, just a few degrees at a time, and only when the pliers don’t slip off the tiny screw head or I don’t twist it sideways.

“I thought we had a small black Sharpie in here.” I want a way to mark the head or shaft of the screw, just to assure myself it is indeed turning; increased resistance now causes the pliers to slip off more frequently.

And turning it is, though only every third try with the pliers is successful. Ever so slowly my little black mark rotates out of sight.

But I’ve stopped again, back in the salon looking for the tiny 1” c-clamp that was aboard the boat when we bought her. I realize it’s critical that the wood frame is held together tightly as I affix my screws.

I find the c-clamp and note I’ve been at this now for more than an hour.

I go back to trying to turn the first screw, still only a few degrees at a time. The further it goes, the more difficult it is. After about 20 minutes, I finally stop; there doesn’t seem to be a gap between the frame and the head of the screw.

I realize right off the bat the second screw is going to be more difficult; I drilled that pilot hole just a bit closer to the inside of the cabinet. After a while, I give up, the second screw only half in. I push on the crack a bit and realize they both need to be tighter to be effective, much tighter.

“I’m leaving this door for tonight,” I call to Windy, “I need to go out tomorrow and buy a right-angle screwdriver to finish.”

The next day, after a 15-minute walk, I’m at Capitol Iron, the nearest hardware store. The old-timer in the hardware department sucks air in through clenched teeth, his lips drawn, “Yeah, I know exactly what you mean, but we don’t carry those—but we should, they’d be right here. Sorry.”

But my spirts aren't dampened. Even before he spoke, I came up with another plan.

Back on the boat, I gathered a couple tool bags from different lockers. With a short #2 Phillips bit fitted into a ¼” socket attached to a ¼” driver, I’ve got an improvised right-angle screwdriver. It’s a bit difficult to use, given that the broad head on the wrench buts up against the inside of the cabinet and doesn’t allow me to get a solid fit on the screw head, but it works. Within minutes, both screws are tight and when I remove the c-clamp, the crack is gone, the frame solid.

But then I notice that both sharp screws are poking an eighth of an inch out of the front of the cabinet face, right out the pilot holes I made. I go and get my Dremel.

With a metal-cutting wheel in the chuck, I grind down each of the sharp heads. Sparks fly and both little screw tips turn cherry red before falling off into the sink. The wood frame is scarred, but smooth. I attach the catch, successfully test the door, and begin the clean-up.

“What in the world was that sound? Are you grinding metal?”

“Nothing a little paint won’t cover. The medicine cabinet door is fixed.”

--MR

This is the bench between the girls' berths in the aft
stateroom. The green blanket is shore, the white
paper slips in a marina. We clearly need to spend
more time at anchor.

We Slipped The Lines By MichaelFRIDAY HARBOR, WA

2013-04-22T02:30:00.000-06:00

Most of the time, Windy sets the anchor
and snubber on Del Viento while I'm at
the helm. Here in Roche Harbor, late
afternoon, I noticed the girls up front,
watching her like two lion cubs watching
their momma take down prey.

For the first time in months, we left Victoria aboard Del Viento. Motoring out of the picturesque harbor, the girls assumed their familiar sailing positions under the dodger: Frances cozied up on the port side of the companionway, Eleanor to starboard. Clear of Ogden Point, the wind blew 15- to 20-knots on our beam and we charged full sail into a 2-knot opposing current at nearly 7 knots. Windy and I sat in the cockpit, smiling at the thrill it was to be underway again. All of us wore warm layers and warm hats to defend against the 50-degree air.

After two hours, we turned left at San Juan Island and ran up the Haro Strait in rolling swells, now nearly dead downwind. Hours later, just at the entrance of the winding channel leading to Roche Harbor, we furled the jib, started the motor, and rounded up and dropped the main. It doesn’t get any better than this (unless it’s warmer).

Roche Harbor is a former company town that’s been turned into a weekend getaway spot for sailors and a home for wealthy retirees. It’s like the Pacific Northwest’s version of Southern California’s Avalon on Catalina Island, only 1/100^th the size. Apparently, this place is bustling in the summer, but we dropped the hook in 30 feet with only two other boats to share the large anchorage and then nestled down below for a warm dinner and peaceful night aboard.

Only this column on the mausoleum
was constructed to appear broken,
to represent man's unfinished
work over a lifetime.

Ashore the next day, we walked into the forest to find the Afterglow Mausoleum.

John McMillin bought all of Roche harbor back in 1886. He turned the place into the largest lime producing operation west of the Mississippi. Late in his life, the turn-of-the-century tycoon commissioned construction of a mausoleum in the adjacent forest, a grand structure built of limestone to serve as the permanent home for his remains and those of his wife and the four McMillin children. It looks like some kind of Greek or Roman ruins, but apparently the guy put a lot of thought into exactly what it is. It’s so gaudy and out-of-place in the quiet forest, that it’s actually pretty cool. Today it’s a National Historic Place and mecca for the Sigma Chi brotherhood.

After we spent our second full day at Roche Harbor aboard, at anchor—reading, cooking, and playing games while we listened to the light rain tap on the deck above—we woke the next morning to sun and motored five miles over to Stuart Island and tucked into Reid Harbor, a beautiful, isolated narrow inlet with excellent holding. Emboldened by the sunny sky, Windy and the girls hiked up and over the island. Along with a bunch of animal skeletons Eleanor collected, they found a one-room schoolhouse that serves the island’s school-age children (both of them, in 1911 there were fourteen). There are no commercial establishments on Stuart and only about 700 permanent residents—all of them living off the grid, like cruisers. U.S. Postal Service mail comes three days a week via boat.

Looking at a chart, it’s clear this five-day trip away from our winter home scarcely covers a tiny piece of the puzzle of islands (thousands of them) that stretch up the inside passage to Alaska. We saw very little of what there is to see in even this small geographic area; it’s clear June, July, August, September, and October will only allow us to scratch the surface of this landscape.

Tonight we are in Friday Harbor, preparing to sail (hopefully) back to Victoria tomorrow, in time for the girls’ drama and gymnastics classes on Tuesday. I’ll spend the next few days completing some small boat projects in preparation for heading out again, soon. I think the next five weeks we’ll be in and out, wrapping up the lives we’ve made in Victoria, getting ready to leave that city and several good friends behind.

--MR

The flowers are blooming at Roche Harbor, but walking around
the deserted tourist trap was like walking around Disneyland in
the hours before they open.

This is it. The remains of each family member are entombed
beneath each chair. Each chair back is engraved with the
name of a deceased and the titles they attained during
their lifetime. John's includes, "32-degree Mason, Knight Templar,
Noble of Mystic Shrine, Sigma Chi, Methodist, Republican"
His wife's single accomplishment? "Wife of John McMillin"

The girls reading in the empty library of the Stuart Island schoolhouse.

Overlooking Reid Harbor, our bright yellow Pudgy at the public
dock and Del Viento just visible at anchor in the upper left.

The girls on a bluff on Stuart Island.

Six Simple Tools We Like By MichaelVICTORIA, BC

2013-04-15T02:30:00.000-06:00

The greatest thing about this vacuum is that
Eleanor can manage it easily.

There are lots of expensive things aboard the average cruising boat that get very little use. EPIRBs, life rafts, drogues, storm sails, and spare anchors come to mind. But then there are the small, inexpensive things that we value almost daily. Their place aboard is secure, they’ve almost become part of the crew and if we lost them tomorrow, they would be replaced in short order.

6 Ratcheting crimpers: Aboard the first Del Viento, I crimped hundreds of 12V wire connectors with cheap, common crimpers, the kind that come in sets. They worked okay for a short while, before the axle started to loosen and the handles began to twist under pressure. I always wondered if I was
squeezing tight enough, or too tight? I bought ratcheting crimpers at a boat show before we left and I will never go back to non-ratcheting crimpers. The tool is sturdy, the action is satisfyingly positive, and every crimp is perfect.

5 Colored tool bags: In our D.C. garage I had a nice tool chest that rolled on sturdy wheels and featured drawers that slid on greased bearings. When I realized this chest wasn’t coming aboard with us, so I wondered what to do with my ¼”, 3/8”,and ½” socket sets and my collection of metric and standard open-end and box wrenches. Plastic tool boxes take up a lot of space, especially if they have the snazzy molded spots to organize your sockets and wrenches. Then I saw these bags and decided to try them out. They are great. I know to grab the orange bag when I need an open-end wrench, and when I need a 3/8” socket, I grab the brown bag. The inconvenience of digging through a bag for the particular sized wrench or socket is way offset by the fact that when these bags are stuffed with tools, they are like bean bags: compact and can be stowed anywhere. I keep them in a cubby beneath the dinette where they’re out of the way, but easy to grab. For canvas bags, they are not cheap, but the Klein quality is evident and the metal zippers still work perfectly after two years. I've spared them no abuse and the seams are tight and the material is sound. I can’t think of a better way to stow these necessary sets of hand tools.

4 Nesting stainless steel bowls: We bought this sturdy set of bowls at a Costco more than 10 years ago and use them more than once a day. I’ve since seen much thinner bowls than ours and I don't think they would work as well. Not only are these things indestructible, but because they’re impervious, I can use them in the morning to soak an engine part in a solvent, and in the evening to toss a kale salad. Maybe this doesn’t sit well with everyone, but I appreciate dual- and multi-purpose things in our life afloat where space is at a premium. Also, these bowls can be scoured with stainless steel wool (you should have this aboard too) after bread dough has stuck to them like glue.

Okay, so I concede Frances
has never used this and
her affection is feigned.

3 Oil extractor: I used to suck all 6.5 quarts of oil out of our engine using one of those little pumps you spin with your drill. It was terrible. I'd sit for 30 minutes with the drill running continuously—tons of power consumed, tons of wear and tear on the drill, and it was inevitably messy. I saw this West Marine manual vacuum extractor raved about online by a number of folks. I was skeptical but I couldn’t find anything else that seemed better or had such stellar reviews. When I saw it in person, I was shocked at how big the thing is and wondered where I was going to stow it. After using it the first time, I didn’t care if it had to live in my berth, it’s that great. I simply connect the tubes (friction) and insert one end down the dipstick tube and plug the other into the top of the canister. Then I pump 10 or 15 times and walk away. Twenty minutes later all the oil is out of the engine and in the canister. I've used it also to suck up a spill in a hard-to-reach place in the hull. After every use, I simply wedge the end of the tube someplace high and let it sit overnight; in the morning, it's totally clean. This thing is great.

2 Vacuum cleaner: Having owned terrible rechargeable and 12V vacuums in the past, we researched vacuums like crazy before buying this one. We wanted something compact, but heavier duty that would provide a lot of suction. We’ve used this Eureka EasyClean vacuum at least every other day for the past two years and it is still going strong. And it doesn’t just get light-duty use. I use it on nearly every dirty project aboard, sucking up the waste from drilling fiberglass, metal, and wood, inside and out. It is well-built, stows neatly, provides lots of suction, and its bag-less design is easy to empty.

1 Screwdriver: I don’t know what I was thinking when I bought this thing at the 2010 Annapolis boat show; I was irrational, clearly in a buying frenzy. Have you ever seen anything more suited to a late-night infomercial? It is like those 6-in-1 screwdrivers that come with the different magnetic bits, except that all the bits are stowed inside and you simply have to twist it to the right position for the bit you want and then pump the thing like a shotgun to change bits. The Autoloader screwdriver is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Other than two monster screwdrivers I bought in Mexico, I’ve not used any of the dozen “regular” screwdrivers I own since moving aboard. Not once. Through all the work we’ve done, all those projects, all the screwing’s been done by this guy. I’ve used it so much and so often, I’ve memorized the order of the bits inside, so I just know I have to twist two clicks this way to get to my #2 Phillips driver and one more that way if it turns out #1 is a better fit. A great feature is that you can customize it with your own bits, or replace these if they wear out (they have not). Looking at it, I would imagine at least one plastic part would have broken by now, but none have. I know that no matter how emphatic I am, you will still think this is hokey, but you would be wrong.

--MR

My beloved Autoloader. That thing on the handle that looks
like a button, isn't--it's perfect in every other way though.

The Neskowin Ghost Forest By MichaelVICTORIA, BC

2013-04-08T02:30:00.000-06:00

I feel compelled to note that my previous post was in the spirit of the holiday, April Fools Day. I think it was obvious to readers of sailing magazines and books that I was having fun, painting caricatures of the personalities that are so well-known to many of us: Nigel Calder, Fatty Goodlander, Beth Leonard, and Lin and Larry Pardey. But it must have seemed odd to everyone not acquainted with these folks--now you know. And if you want more, check out last year’s April 1 post.

Now back to our serious programming.

Eleanor resting at the top of a bluff she
reached after climbing up a 250-foot dune.
See that coat next to her? Yep, she left it
right there and had to climb that dune
a second time to get it.

This past summer and fall, en route from Mexico to Canada, we stopped at 14 ports and anchorages between San Diego and San Francisco (mostly to visit with family and friends). North of San Francisco, we made one more stop in California (Eureka) and then only one stop on the entire Oregon-Washington outside coast (Astoria). It's not that we don't have as many friends north (we don't), it's that this stretch is comparatively desolate, with few ports or anchorages.

But we sailed (mostly motored) almost always in sight of this wild coast. Neither of us has spent time here and we wondered--even aloud--about its magnificence. I reasoned it would resemble the rugged beaches of Big Sur I know well. Windy figured it would remind her of cold, windy days she's spent on the beaches of Humboldt County.

A couple weeks ago we hopped on the ferry and rented a car and drove down there to visit friends who were staying about an hour north of the small Oregon seaside community of Newport. I knew we'd hit the good breweries nearby and discover the beaches we'd sailed past. None of us expected to see ghosts...

Windy just told her that it is
often said that there are as
many stars in the universe
as there are grains of sand
on all the worlds' beaches.
This idea didn't sit well
with Frances--she's not
a believer.

The forest is just a few miles north of a giant sea stack called Proposal Rock, in a town called Neskowin (pop. 170). It’s not a forest like one you may imagine on the Oregon coast, mostly because it is really on the coast—in the water actually. And forget leaves and branches and birds and shade, this is a ghost forest, made up of ancient Sitka spruce trees—that aren’t there. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Until 1998, these trees were the stuff of rural legend, of stories told and re-told. Generations of residents in the area spoke of a forest of massive stumps that appeared in the surf every 20 or 30 years before quickly disappearing. Then, some of the largest winter storm waves ever recorded on the Oregon coast hit at the end of 1998. When that storm season ended, the newly eroded beachscape featured a ghost forest for all to see: about 200 massive stumps stood in the surf, rooted where they’ve been mostly hidden for sixteen centuries.

It’s thought that these trees were casualties of a major subsidence event (this is where the ground level drops suddenly to fill a void beneath), sparked by a massive quake along the Cascadia fault line around 400 AD. The trees quickly died and rotted away—except for the root structure and 6-7 feet of trunk. This part of the trees was preserved in the dense sand that covered them up soon after (in fact, the nutrient-rich forest floor the trees grew in is preserved beneath the sand too).

But whereas before the sand had always returned--carried ashore by the prevailing summer currents--to cover the exposed stumps, after 1998 the stumps remained exposed. For the first time in 1,600 years, the stumps are weathering 15 years of continuous exposure, deteriorating in the elements. They are covered in barnacles, pounded by the relentless surf and tide. Scientists aren’t sure why, only that this period of exposure is unique. The leading hypothesis is our changing climate.

--MR

This is it, a portion of the Neskowin Ghost Forest. Not
a lot of surfers around.

Chance Encounters By MichaelVICTORIA, BC

2013-04-01T02:30:00.000-06:00

Eleanor with the garter snake she
caught at my sister's house.

I stepped off Del Viento, headed for the trash cans at the end of the dock, a bag in-hand filled with the greasy detritus of my efforts down below.

“Looks like you’re doing a bit of boat work.”

The British lilt from behind belonged to our new neighbor aboard Nada. I turned to greet him, “Morning Nigel. Yeah, I’m struggling with a couple projects today. On the engine, I can’t for the life of me loosen a couple bolts attaching the oil lines to the oil cooler. And up forward, there are gremlins in the wiring causing a reading light to flicker.”

“I can probably help you solve both those problems,” Nigel offered.

“Oh, I couldn’t…”

“I don’t mind. I’ve got a few minutes and can probably steer you in the right direction; I know my way around motors and electrics.”

Five minutes later, down below, Nigel shook his head.

“All of these traditional hardwired circuits…” he closed his eyes and exhaled before continuing, “You should tear out all of your wiring and start over with a distributed power system, it’s the only way to go—everything should be powered via nodes these days.”

“Nodes?”

“Of course. After your batteries, nothing is more important then wiring. What kind of batteries do you have anyway?”

“Six-volt AGMs, I installed them last year.”

“Oh, no—that technology is 10 years old,” he cringed. “You need a bank of lithium-manganese-ion-kryptonite cells, with Kevlar insulators and fuses—make sure everything is fused.”

I nodded. “Thanks for the info Nigel, any thoughts on the motor? I just need a way to loosen…”

He was already turned around, staring at my silver Yanmar. “Well, you could spray penetrating oil on the offending bolt heads, tap them with a hammer, and then wait overnight before turning your fists into bloody pulps trying to remove them. You’ll curse like a sailor, get nowhere, and probably break something else.” His head hung low and his voice got softer. “I don’t recommend it.”

I took the bait, “What do you recommend?”

He brightened, “Your future is a hybrid pod-drive system, why wait? Ditch the Yanmar and get a bio-fuel diesel genset supplying 48 volts to an all-electric engine powering a pod drive that swivels 360 degrees—with a joy-stick control at the helm.” He paused, “That’s the ticket.”

Before Nigel left, he invited us to tea aboard his Nada the next day. “We’ll kick around some more ideas!”

I was just getting back to it when there was a knock on the hull. I stuck my head out of the companionway, “Oh, hey Fatty! How are things?”

“Couldn’t be better! Do you guys want to drop by later and see our new ketch?”

“We’d love to.” I said. “You’re sure in a good mood.”

“Of course I am! I’m mainlining the most powerful drug in the world man, Freedom! Carolyn and I have an unlimited supply. And I can never be busted because the dirt dwellers don’t even know this drug exists.” Fatty paused, “But you seem kind of down, what’s going on?”

“Just some boat trouble: engine, wiring, typical stuff.”

Fatty scratched his beard, “You know, I saw a whole heap of wiring in the marina dumpsters up in the parking lot. I left it, but pulled out a couple halyards with thousands of miles left on ‘em. I’ll tell ya, if it wasn’t for the wealthy sailors among us, we’d be in a heap of trouble!”

I nodded, “Thanks. Any ideas for loosening a couple stuck bolts on my engine?”

Frances eagerly getting
eggs ready for the
big hunt--to be held
this year at our friends'
house in Port Angeles.

“That’s easy: a party. Get enough folks aboard and start dropping hints, doubting anyone will have the strength or smarts to loosen your bolts. Invariably, several folks will take the bait—you only need one who proves stronger or smarter than you.”

“Fatty!” came the call down the dock.

“Oh, gotta run, there’s an Italian bombshell looking for me. I love that woman!”

When Fatty left, I looked up at the clock. My day was slipping by and nothing was getting done. I decided a break was in order and walked up to the marina office to see where I could dump used motor oil. On a bench out front, a woman sat hunched over a laptop, working intently on a complicated-looking spreadsheet on her display.

“Michael?”

I stopped, “Oh, hi Beth, I didn’t recognize you, your head was down. How’s Evans?”

“He’s good, how’s Windy?”

“She’s fine, she took the girls out to the park so I could get some work done, but I’m not making much headway.”

“What kind of work?”

For the third time today, I explained the two issues I was focused on.

“Hmmm, good luck with that. Hey, let me ask you a question: as a cruiser, would you classify yourself Simplicity, Moderation, or High-Life?”

“Well, I guess I’m in between simple and moderate. Why?”

“Just a project I’m working on. Let me know how it turns out, will you please?”

“Sure, take care Beth.”

The office was warm and smelled like fresh coffee. I greeted the woman behind the desk, “Do you have a place I can dump used motor oil?”

She pointed to a shack across the parking lot and I turned to head out, thanking her.

Before I grabbed the door, somebody outside pulled it open for me, “After you!”

“Hey, Lin and Larry! When did you guys get in?”

“We just dropped the hook this morning, we were hove-to outside the harbor in that storm all night.” Lin said.

“Yeah, glad I wasn’t out there—but I couldn’t have been, boat problems.”

“What kind of problems?” Larry asked.

I told them what was hanging me up.

“Paraffin and mahogany are what you need.” Larry said.

“Huh?”

“What he means,” Lin explained, “is forget electric lighting. Do you really need the bother? A pair of nice oil lamps casts a much prettier light and they only need a bit of paraffin oil to operate reliably.”

“Exactly!” Larry beamed, “And as for your stuck bolts, a long piece of solid mahogany will do the trick.”

“What, for leverage?” I asked.

“No! You’re gonna carve it into a handsome sculling oar, that’s all you should ever need. You said it’s a sailboat, right? What do you need an iron jenny for? Haven’t you got a Dacron one? Go simple, you’d be out there now!”

“Well, yeah, I know what you’re saying…”

“Good, good. If you need planers or any other woodworking tools, I have them aboard, just swing by.”

“Thanks Larry, thanks Lin, see you later.”

I walked slowly back to Del Viento, two ideas taking shape in my head. First, that the cruising community is one of the truest forms of community out there, with another cruiser always ready to help. Second, that we’re all out here alone, bound to the boats and systems we have and responsible for ourselves. I picked up my wrenches and multimeter, refreshed and ready to tackle my problems anew.

--MR

On a trip this week to the Oregon coast, we found this challenging
harbor entrance in Depoe Bay. Despite the narrow passage and
strong tidal currents, there are 50-foot fishing boats inside the
small harbor.

My Border Problem By MichaelVICTORIA, BC

2013-03-25T02:30:00.000-06:00

To fatten our cruising kitty, we hired
the girls out to a local petting zoo. Once
a week they get there early in the morning
to clean stalls and do other chores. Here
Frances is brushing the goats.

Long time readers of this blog may remember that I have a hard time saying just the right thing when questioned by officials at border crossings (last paragraph of this post). I mean, when you’re cruising, the simplest questions are the most difficult to answer. Where’s home? What do you do for a living?

I took the ferry to Port Angeles (USA) a couple weeks back, to have lunch with friends and to pick up the engine hoses I ordered. Returning to Victoria that same day, the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) officer hit me right off the bat with a simple question that was difficult for me to answer: “What’s the purpose of your visit to Canada?”

A question like this paralyzes my brain. He’s expecting a quick, truthful answer and all I can do is stare back. I’m too literal, the wheels in my head are spinning: the purpose of my visit? Hmm. I’m not here on vacation or business, and I would never refer to our eight months in Victoria as a visit… After an awkward pause, the officer’s eyebrows are high on his head. He’s waiting for an answer to his simple question and no doubt wondering whether he has to call in a translator or if there is something wrong with me.

“Uh, we have a boat here, we’re kind of living here for the time being.”

Did I just say that?

“Who’s we? When did you first arrive in Canada?”

“Uh, my wife and kids are aboard now, here in the harbor, we got here in September.”

“Have you applied for residency?”

“Oh, no, no, no,” I tried reassuringly, “we’re not really living here, we’re just waiting here, waiting out the season until we can head north to Alaska. We come and go every 45 days or so to renew our visas.”

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was applying my Mexico-acquired logic in Canada. In Mexico, a U.S. visitor can stay as long as six months, leave the country for an hour, and immediately return to Mexico with a fresh six-month visa—and they can do this indefinitely, legally. When we planned our eight-month stay in Victoria, we knew we’d be coming and going and it never occurred to us the same strategy wouldn’t suffice to keep our status legal.

“What visas?” he asked.

“You know,” I said, as though I was reminding him, “when I leave the counter here, after you stamp my passport…” His face was blank, just waiting for me to ramble on and further indict myself. “I indicated there on the Declarations form that I intend to stay for 60 days, doesn’t that give me sixty days?”

“Please go have a seat over there, somebody will be with you shortly….Next!”

Eleanor descending
the ramp after dumping
the soiled bedding.

So I sat in a holding area, on a hard bench with a couple other travelers (both of whom looked very suspect to me), all of us staring through the window in front of us, into a room where yet another traveler twitched nervously and wiped tears from her eyes as officials sorted through the contents of her large backpack.

Ten minutes passed and I was absorbed in the drama behind the glass and still wondering about my own fate when an older official approached me, requested my passport, and disappeared behind a computer. After five minutes, he emerged, motioned for me to remain seated and went to talk to the guy who first flagged me. Then he came back and asked me to follow him, over to an area removed from the drama and other travelers.

“Look, it doesn’t matter if you’re going in and out, you’re basically living here and you can’t do that for longer than six months.”

I assured him we have no intention of trying to live here beyond the season, nor of working. “We even have health insurance.” I blurted out. He just nodded and held up his hand, nodding, before I let him continue.

“You’re fine, you’re heading to Alaska soon.”

“But what do I need to do now?” I asked. “Come the end of March we’ll have been here six months—off and on—we’ve planned a visit back to the States around that time…”

“Don’t worry about it,” he told me, “you may be questioned when you come back through here then, but just tell the officer what you told me. Understand you are not to work.”

It turns out that in Canada, you’re supposed to either apply for residency or otherwise formally apply to extend a visit beyond 180 days. Apparently, you cannot just come and go—starting anew each time—as in Mexico. Officially, once you’ve stayed six months for a visit, they expect you to be gone six months before returning.

But in this case, rather than subjecting us to a ton of burdensome paperwork, or the bribe that may have been expected by an official in some other part of the world, I was shown grace by a reasonable person with the experience to understand the intent of a law and the authority to enforce it thusly. In this post-9/11 world, what more could a cruiser ask for?

--MR

Here the girls clean the rabbit enclosure.

The Hobbit No-Go By MichaelVICTORIA, BC

2013-03-18T02:30:00.000-06:00

Eleanor posing gamely with my in-
need-of-servicing heat exchanger. I've
since had it serviced and I put it back on
the engine, good for another 3,000 hours.

We’re fast approaching the two-year mark from the day we embarked on this adventure. Several times I’ve written about our concern for the girls’ wellbeing, growing up on a transient cruising boat. Our concern can’t be helped and conclusions are difficult to draw because the calculus is not straightforward.

And the questions we’ve always asked ourselves have always been in the future sense. All variations of: Will the benefits of this alternative lifestyle outweigh the drawbacks? I realized recently that we no longer have to look forward and wonder, but can look at who they are now. For two years Eleanor and Frances have been living and learning—growing up—as cruisers. It’s a big chunk of time in their lives. And they have flourished.

Eleanor is reading The Hobbit. She also carries a Hobbit script around with her because she and the rest of her drama class will be in a production of The Hobbit just days before we leave to sail north to Alaska. As you can imagine, that girl eagerly awaited opening day of The Hobbit motion picture.

But she’s not going to see it.

She wrote the following in a letter to my mom, her grandmother, a couple nights ago:

"Tonight my mom is going to see the movie The Hobbit in the IMAX theater. She was okay with taking me and gave me the choice, even though it seemed inappropriate she was giving me the choice though, because I am in the play and I am reading the book. She showed me a preview of it...and I said no. It made me sad because I had really wanted to see it, but from the preview (which was on a small laptop) it was really violent and I didn't want to watch it. And I had to remember that I was watching the preview on a laptop, and I would actually be watching it on a six-story-tall screen in a movie theater and it would be super loud."

At nine, Eleanor’s arrived at the age where she can appreciate the weight of decision-making. We give her increasing leeway and it’s gratifying that she’s able to recognize a decision that serves her own interests, even when that decision is unpleasant. And when she demonstrates the maturity to act on her conclusion as she did, and to relate that to her grandma, my heart swells.

It’s impossible to say how she is different than who she would have been had we not left. We may have even seen the same outcome from the same circumstances in our old life. But I’m encouraged nonetheless because it’s evidence she is maturing nicely in this life and I have no evidence to the contrary—for neither of my girls.

We will probably never know whether this lifestyle is the best for them. And even if things are going well today, the girls and their needs may change. Yet I am comforted that as cruisers we are nimble and can adjust our pace and place according to our needs.

And wherever we are, a life afloat means that we live much more closely together, every day. Eleanor and Frances have many opportunities for taking responsibility, both as members of the family, but also as crew of Del Viento. They’re stepping up, doing chores, and accepting other jobs without complaint. Independently, they’re finding and exploring their own passions. They’re kind, happy girls—and thankfully not obviously suffering from our decision to trade the daily grind for sea sickness, financial unrest, and togetherness.

--MR

I've been meaning to post more pics of Del Viento's interior.
This is my writing desk in the aft cabin. Okay, no, but it is
Captain Vancouver's desk in a mock-up of his cabin aboard
the HMS Discovery, in our local museum.

Got Culture? By MichaelVICTORIA, BC

2013-03-11T02:30:00.000-06:00

We do live next door to the
Royal British Columbia Museum,
though it's a bit light on Americana.

Listening to a local AM talk radio station here in Victoria, I realized I’m missing a bunch of cultural references I need to understand some of the things that are said, and much of the humor. All of the common knowledge Canadians take for granted, such as the names of the major supermarkets, what the previous prime minister looked like, what their version of our 401K is called, the name of the sailboat on the back of their dime—is important to having a fluent understanding of everyday exchanges.

Then I realized Windy and I are raising two little Americans who aren’t growing up in the United States. They’re missing much of the shared American experience. I suppose we automatically compensate a bit when we tell them stories and expose them to the books, movies, and music we love, but will they ever have the fluency?

Of course, for exposure to pop culture, it’s hard to beat the television. And we do get a few nights out of each year in front of that thing, when we’re in a hotel room. And those few hours are good for a weeks’ worth of questions that lead to more questions.

Take our visit to a Vancouver Marriott a couple weeks back. We were there the night of the Academy Awards broadcast. It was very educational. They stayed up until the wee hours with their mouths agape. Thankfully, they now know what the Academy Awards are and what an Oscar is. They learned a red carpet is something fancy people walk on, a score is music behind a movie, and that a screenplay is the written story of a movie.

And has the knowledge ever sunk in. Even almost two weeks later, at the checkout this evening, Frances called my attention to the tabloid covers. “Dad, look! The lady with the red hair, pink dress, and lipstick from the Oscar television!” And when we returned to the boat, she and Eleanor once again amused themselves to no end singing, over and over again, “We saw your boobs!”

I know our life won’t offer our girls the full complement of must-know Americana, and they’ll grow up as deaf to some tones of their country’s culture as I am to Canada’s, but that may be okay.

--MR

Returning from our Vancouver cultural rendezvous.

The Warm Cometh By MichaelVICTORIA, BC

2013-03-04T02:15:00.000-07:00

The Bluewater Cruising Assoc (BCA)
invited us to a cruiser's presentation
at the Royal Victoria Yacht Club. It
was about voyaging from Japan to
Vancouver, a trip we may make
one day. Windy was in Thailand,
so Eleanor was my date.

We’re in port and I’ve waited nearly six months (and counting) for nice weather. I don’t like waiting. I’m tired of waiting. I’m tired of the long list of topside projects that I’m aching to complete, but that I haven’t started because it is either too wet, too cold, or too windy—or too much of all three.

So I hunker down below and work on the engine or reorganize lockers. The other day I saw what I’m missing, on the side of a can of varnish:

Temperature should be between 60F. and 85F…air humidity below 85%...avoid too much wind or sun.

It nearly brought tears to my eyes.

I realize Canadians think I’m ridiculous for letting this climate slow me down. And to the Canadians we’ve met who vacation here, escaping from their homes in Winnepeg or Saskatoon, who walk around in tank tops because this feels like the Bahamas…yes, I’m a wimp.

I grew up in Southern California. Until I was 30, I could count on one hand the number of days each year it wouldn’t be nice to be outside. I may have grown a bit hardier during the decade Windy and I spent in D.C., but then we bought this boat in Mexico.

Glorious 2011 ended without a winter and 2012 began without a cold snap. After 18 warm months, I may have softened a bit.

But we sailed north, against the prevailing winds, currents, and traffic of other cruising boats with the sense to sail south. We knew what we were in for, but I think I was in denial. I arrived in Victoria with nothing to put on my feet but a pair of Tevas. I did not own any socks. I dug my cold weather gear out from under the v-berth and found only sweatshirts.

Sure, we get out every day (we almost need a spreadsheet to manage the activities the girls are involved in). And it isn’t just rushing around from one indoor space to the other, we’ve walked on the beaches and explored the parks, but for me it isn’t so joyous when you’re bundled up like a Siberian Yupik.

So why would I suffer through boat projects that force me outside under these inhuman artic conditions? Why taint what I otherwise enjoy? I couldn’t think of a reason either and so the projects piled up.

But we can feel spring coming, one degree at a time, the days are warming and getting longer. We are worrying less and less about condensation. Once, recently, when we forgot to monitor the heaters, it actually got a bit stuffy in the cabin.

And just this week I ventured out on deck and started installation work for our new hatches—just a bit, not to risk frostbite. There is a lot to do out there. Besides the hatches, I’ve got rigging to adjust, stuff to re-stow in the lazarette, and lots of cleaning to do. I’ll haul Windy up the mast to investigate a stuck halyard, re-run and secure our SSB antennae cable, and install our remote VHF mic. I’ll remind the girls how to polish stainless steel and run the new antennae for our fixed-mount GPS.

And when we’re done, a great adventure awaits.

We’re northbound. We don’t know how far. We’ll have a solid 4-5 months before we want to be heading south to Mexico again, but it’s 600 miles from Victoria to the Alaskan border. And in that 600 miles are hundreds of islands and 15,000 miles of coast. The shoreline is punctuated with deep fjords. It’s said the geography is akin to Norway or Southern Chile.

We’re immersed in a community that’s largely familiar with these cruising grounds. Weekly people learn we’re newbies with plans to sail north and they gush superlatives like I’ve never heard before. One local captain told us he’s spent a decade exploring this area and has neither seen it all nor grown tired of it. "It will change you," he says. We'll see—as soon as the weather on my varnish can comes.

--MR

This is the Parliament Building from our boat--it never gets
really dark at night, and forget about stars.

Easier Than Ever By MichaelVICTORIA, BC

2013-02-25T02:30:00.000-07:00

Frances in her element, in Mexico
last year, a few months shy of 6-
years-old. Tomorrow she turns
seven in Canada.

Muriel Blanchet wrote The Curve of Time, a book about her adventures cruising in British Columbia—with her five kids. She took the helm of her 25-foot powerboat, loaded the gang and supplies, and took off for summers to explore near her native Vancouver Island. She sold magazine articles about their times to publications such as Atlantic Monthly. She was born in 1891, married at age 18, and widowed at 35. A single parent, five little ones, gone cruising.

In 1958, Sterling Hayden defied a court order to take his four kids across the Pacific Ocean (Wanderer).

In the 1960s, Lyle and Norma Graham took a young Robin Lee cruising through the South Pacific (Dove).

In the 1980s, Tom and Mel Neale raised their daughters up and down the ICW (All In the Same Boat) while Fatty and Carolyn raised their daughter cruising the Caribbean.

Clearly the parents’ desire to take their kids to sea is not new.

But today that desire is fulfilled in record numbers; look at all the families I’ve linked to over on the right, 33 of them—and just a fraction of the cruising families out here today. This is surprising because families are a tough lot to get out here—people typically with careers in their prime and stretched thin with middle-life expenses.

Yet despite the inherent obstacles wannabe cruising families face, I think the real barriers are diminishing and that the number who do cast off the dock lines will continue to grow. We live in a unique time:

A Glut of Fiberglass—Moxie Marlinspike first turned me on to idea that almost all the production fiberglass boats built since the late 1950s are still with us, and they aren’t going anywhere. This has resulted in many, many good, durable, plastic sailboats on the used market for comparatively, and increasingly, cheap prices. There is now a cruising boat out there for every family’s budget.

Communications Technologies—Nothing has shrunk this planet like advances in communications. The Internet is increasingly available and employers are increasingly willing to accommodate folks working from afar—even if afloat.
Workplace Mobility—Forbes reports that, “job hopping is the new normal,” and that workers stay with an employer an average of 4.4 years. This mobility presents opportunities to turn a transition into a cruising itinerary.

Sailboat Technologies—Advances in sail-handling and navigation systems reduce the demands on all crews. For a cruising family on a boat big enough to house a family, and with one parent often managing the needs of smaller crew, these steps forward are a boon.

I just exchanged email with the father of another family. After sitting behind the same desk for 17 years, dreaming of buying a boat and sailing away, he and his wife bought a Cal 34. Their passport applications are in the mail and his last day of work is only two weeks away. They’re filled with crazy emotions anticipating casting off. I can relate, it’s heady stuff.

--MR

Windy left February 2 for Thailand with her sister-in-law and nephews
(Oliver and Otis, pictured here in Bangkok). She is back now after three
long weeks. The girls and I had a good time though, missing Momma
together.

Good Friday By MichaelVICTORIA, BC

2013-02-18T02:00:00.000-07:00

In The Tale of the Unknown Island,
Jose Saramago writes about boats:
"Liking is probably the best form of
ownership, and ownership the worst
form of liking." I sure like Del Viento.

This past Friday I received two prizes for my writing on this blog.

Boating Writers International (BWI) is an, “organization of writers, editors, publishers, photographers, broadcasters, public relations specialists and others in the communications profession associated with the boating industry.” For twenty years they’ve held an annual writing contest for members in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. The group awards $17,000, split among 51 articles (1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd place in 17 categories) published online and in boating magazines. Four judges (writers and editors) review and score the entries in each category blindly—author and publication names are blacked out.

I was recognized for both my submissions (click here for a list of all the winning entries):

Third place in the Boating Columns category (this blog being a boating column as Cruising World reproduces it on their site) in which I entered these three posts:

Along for the Ride (or Shanghaied?)

Why the Radical Life Change?

The People You Meet

Second place in the Ethics & Environment category in which I entered these two posts:

A Heartbreaking Decision, Part I

A Whale Saved, Part II

Writing original stories on a regular basis is work. I spend a lot of time writing and re-writing paragraphs until the post is clear and interesting. Then the hard part begins.

Windy is an outstanding editor, often catching all kinds of errors of omission and things that don’t make sense. But she also often sends me back to the drawing board with hyperbole that’s maddening to my literal mindset.

“It could be much shorter, one-third the length.”—(What? How can you just say 66% of the words have to disappear?)

And she’ll go at my text with a hatchet instead of the scalpel it deserves.

“Delete this paragraph.”—(And what happens to that thought, it’s central to this post…?)

Do you remember that scene in Heller’s Catch 22 in which Yossarian (charged with reviewing soldiers’ outgoing correspondence and redacting sensitive info) turns it into a game and sends letters to anxious families on the home front in which everything but pronouns or adjectives is obscured? That’s what it’s like around here when I mention Windy in something I write for the blog. And her reaction to the first draft of this post?

“Obviously I don't like this post.”—(I know, I know…)

It’s always frustrating, but the feedback and the process are helpful to me as a writer. And the effort feels good. And I really enjoy collaborating with my wife.

Thanks for reading.

--MR

What do girls who live on boats play with?
Houses--until the swan comes by.

Over A Barrel By MichaelVICTORIA, BC

2013-02-11T03:16:00.000-07:00

Given that Victoria's Chinatown is
more like a Chinablock, their celebration
of the Chinese New Year today was
pretty impressive, though difficult to
see over the crowds. We did pick up
some sparklers to play with tonight.

I’m wrapping up a big preventative maintenance job on our 55-hp turbocharged Yanmar auxiliary. It started small, I intended only to replace the coolant and pop the caps on the heat exchanger to see how the tubes looked. But if you give a moose a muffin…

The coolant drain cocks were clogged with crap and the coolant that did drain didn’t look so good. So I decided I would remove the heat exchanger from the block (it is also the exhaust manifold) and have it serviced. But if I pull and service the heat exchanger, I might as well do the oil cooler. And once these parts are gone, the raw water pump is irresistibly accessible. And if all that’s gone, it would be foolish not to service the starter motor at the same time.

Two weeks passed and the parts are flushed, dipped, serviced, greased, pressure tested, soldered, and painted. I’m beginning reassembly, happy to have found and addressed several problems.

The only sting was the total cost of the Yanmar OEM replacement hoses and gasket: $431. I’m talking about seven small hoses that pass saltwater and coolant and one gasket for where the turbo mates to the heat exchanger. Yikes.

Boaters complain about this kind of thing all the time: “Those bastards charge an arm and a leg because they know they’ve got you over a barrel!” And boaters complain for good reason, hapless mariners do get gouged sometimes by manufacturers or retailers who slap the Marine Tax on goods. But this is different.

Seven little hoses
from Japan

Only Yanmar-authorized distributors can sell Yanmar parts. And a Yanmar distributor can sell Yanmar parts only in their proscribed geographic area. This means if I find a Yanmar part online, with a distributor in California, that distributor cannot ship that part to me in Canada—they can’t even ship that part to Washington state.

Is this a big deal? It is in this case.

Take the exhaust gasket. Authorized parts distributors in Victoria sell it for $60.68. In Washington state, distributors have it for $14.63.

Take one of my U-shaped hoses (I need three of them). In Victoria, $67.44 each. In Washington state, $26.60 each.

My $431 Victoria parts bill shrinks to $157 in Washington state.

I don’t have answers for this discrepancy, but I do have a solution. Port Angeles, WA is 90-minutes away via a $32 ferry. I’m on my way.

--MR

There's no question the hoses need to be replaced. They
felt stiff, but once off I saw stuff like this.

At Long Last By MichaelVICTORIA, BC

2013-02-04T06:54:00.000-07:00

The bread is always a 50-50 mix of
whole wheat and unbleached white
flour. But to each loaf I add things
such as seeds and rosemary. This
loaf has oats and ground flax meal
in it.

Bread: is there another non-boat-related topic covered more extensively in the sailing magazines and cruising books? It’s recurrent (and resurgent since the 2007 release of Artisan Bread In Five Minutes A Day sparked a bread making revival). In fact, it was a magazine article based on that book that sparked Windy’s and my interest in bread making.

For a couple-month span while still living in a house, we tried and tried to make bread. The results never surpassed marginal and were often closer to inedible. This was especially frustrating because the loaves were nearly always beautiful things…that tasted like cardboard. As our cast-off date approached, our lives grew busier and busier. We stopped the bread experiments and eventually forgot all about them.

Then, in Mexico last year, the French family aboard La Loupiote gave us a portion of their mother (bread starter). I wrote all about it. We followed Delphine’s instructions and the results were encouraging, right off the bat. Granted, disappointment is a product of expectations, and we were in Mexico, eager to celebrate anything better than Bimbo. Regardless, our joy was motivating and we’ve been nurturing and experimenting with our starter ever since.

I took over bread-making duty about six months ago and sometime this past month, I realized...I had arrived. I reliably turn out very good loaves of bread and it feels effortless. I don’t even measure ingredients or time dough rises, I just create.

My advice to any cruiser whose ever been frustrated trying to make good bread, is twofold. First, stick with it. Even after nearly a year at this, I know there is still a ton to learn and I look forward to experimenting more. Second, though most recipes call for dry yeast packs, instead try to either mooch some starter off of someone or make your own. I think using a starter makes everything easier.

I’ll leave you with two more things. First, the crew of Sweet Pea posted a series on their blog that is pretty close to the bread-making method I use (minus the oil and cooking spray). Second, check out the following tiny excerpt from Henry Miller’s essay, “The Staff of Life” written in the mid-1940s.

“…Begin today by baking your own bread. First of all, you need a stove. A wood or a coal stove. Not a gas range. Not an electric apparatus. Then let the flies in. Then roll your sleeves up and get your hands in the dough. Lick your fingers. Never mind if you lose your job. Eat your bread first, then maybe you won’t want to work in an office or a factory. Life begins with bread.”

And if you can’t make your own bread? Following is Miller’s recipe, from the same essay, for making mass-produced store-bought loaves palatable. This should work even for Mexico cruisers and their Bimbo bread:

“I have now found that the only way to eat our most unwholesome, unpalatable and unappetizing American bread, the staff of our unsavory and monotonous life, is to adopt the following procedure. This is a recipe, so please follow instructions to the letter.

“To begin with, accept any loaf that is offered you without question, even if it is not wrapped in cellophane, even if it contains no kelp. Throw it in the back of the car with the oil can and the grease rags; if possible, bury it under a sack of coal, bituminous coal. As you climb up the road to your home, drop it in the mud a few times and dig your heels into it. If you have a dog with you, let him pee on it now and then. When you get to the house, and after you have prepared the other dishes, take a huge carving knife and rip the loaf from stem to stern. Then take one whole onion, peeled or unpeeled, one carrot, one stalk of celery, one huge piece of garlic, one sliced apple, a herring, a handful of anchovies, a sprig of parsley, and an old toothbrush and shove them into the disemboweled guts of the bread. Over these pour first a thimbleful of kerosene, a dash of Lavoris and just a wee bit of Clorox; then sprinkle guts liberally with the following—molasses, honey, orange marmalade, vanilla, soy bean sauce, tabasco sauce, ketchup and arnica. Over this add a layer of chopped nuts, assorted nuts, of course, a few bay leaves (whole), some marjoram, and a stick of licorice cut into fine pieces. Put the loaf in the oven for ten minutes and serve. If it is still lacking in taste, whip up a chili con carne piping hot and mix bread with it until it becomes a thick gruel. If this fails, piss on it and throw it to the dog. But under no circumstances feed it to the birds. The birds of North America are already on the decline, as I pointed out earlier. Their beaks have become dull, their wing-span shortened; they are pining and drooping, molting in season and out. Above all, they no longer sing as they used to; they make sour notes, they bleat instead of tweeting, and sometimes, when the fogs set in, they have even been heard to cackle and wheeze.”

--MR

Eleanor poses at the scene of my flour transfer. I buy
10 kgs each of white and whole wheat flour and portion
them into this old olive vessel a circumnavigator picked
up in Greece and sold to us for a buck at a Mexico marina
swap meet. Between this and three of the smaller white
canisters, we can stow 20 kgs of flour aboard.

The Grim Teacher By MichaelVICTORIA, BC

2013-01-28T03:00:00.000-07:00

The girls with their fear monger papa
in the background. They donned their
goggles and are showing their displeasure
with the onions I'm chopping in the galley--
drama, drama, drama.

“Eleanor, Frances: we are surrounded by death,” is how I started my safety briefing to the girls when we arrived in Victoria. I knew that up to this point, their lives afloat hadn’t prepared them for the danger of Canadian marinas. They were used to running around on Mexican docks, surrounded by 85-degree water. Accidents happen and they’ve fallen in before; Frances even rode her bike off the dock once. But here, where a layer of sheet ice forms on the salt water surface some mornings…well, I thought my intro was apropos.

“If you scare the life out of them, they’re not going to be able to help themselves,” Windy said later when the girls recounted to her my safety briefing.

“But…”

“The girls said you told them they’d instantly go numb and not be able to climb out.”

“Well, I just want to impress upon them…” I didn't continue. She may have a point. I thought I was doing a service by scaring them, but I risked creating a situation wherein someone falls in and is then unable to play an active role in their own rescue because they’re too freaked out, paralyzed with fear.

So, in a brilliant act of redemption, the next time Windy was out, I showed both Eleanor and Frances where the marina rescue ladders are located and how to deploy them. When Windy returned, my prodigies gave a demonstration that impressed.

Check it out:

If six-year-old Frances can manage this, every marina dweller over 50 pounds should be able to deploy the ladders in the marina they frequent. They may save a life someday.

In teaching my kids where to find the ladders, I realized I was blind to the ladders prior. Like fire extinguishers in a building, rescue ladders and other safety devices are so ubiquitous they can go unnoticed—and can then be difficult to locate and deploy in the stress and chaos of an emergency.

--MR

It's A Small Boat World By MichaelVICTORIA, BC

2013-01-21T02:30:00.000-07:00

A tourist town, Victoria has no shortage
of street musicians vying for change.
You've got to be creative to stand apart.

The girls have been writing up a storm: letters and postcards to friends and family. They love receiving responses, but there is another motivation: “Does this count for school, Dad?”

“You bet,” and off I went to the Black Ball ferry terminal, hoping to find a courier willing to drop off our U.S.-stamped mail in Port Angeles, WA. When none of the passengers I queried last time were willing to take our mail, the ship’s purser, Pat, saved the day.

This time I’d only stepped through the door when I caught sight of Pat at the other side of the terminal, his arm outstretched to receive our mail.

“Hey, thank you, my daughter sure appreciates this.”

“It’s not a problem, your daughter is a friend of Zada.”

I was dumbfounded, trying to think of a response. Eleanor does indeed have a boat friend she met in Mexico named Zada, aboard Eyoni. But he couldn’t mean…

Pat continued, “I thumbed through the mail last time, noticed a letter to Zada Smith, there can’t be that many Zada Smiths—her grandpa works on this ferry.”

“No way. Are we talking about the same Zada? She’s a little girl, lives on a boat in Mexico? That’s where we met her, before we sailed up here.”

I headed back to Del Viento to share this story with Windy, amazed once again how small the cruising/boating community is (in this case, including ferry boats).

***

Outside the marina showers, there is a boaters’ book exchange. I’m always looking for interesting reads for myself and the girls. Inside one children’s book I noticed an inscription: “Amy Boren.”

Wow, I know that name! Amy is a kid on Third Day, she and her family spent four years in Mexico. And here was her cast-off book, having journeyed all the way up the coast, from one kid boat to another. So incongruous to see it here!

“You’re not going to believe this.” I held up the book so Windy could see. “I found this in the book exchange. Guess where it’s from!”

“That’s Amy Boren’s book, we picked it up in La Paz. Eleanor just finished it, why are you bringing it back aboard?”

--MR

I've removed just about every peripheral from our engine. This is the
bottom of the heat exchanger. This freeze plug looks bad and may
be weeping, or maybe this is muck and moisture from the raw water
hose that's been pressed up against it for thirty years, chaffing with
the vibration. There is a gouge on the hose, but not obviously
punctured. The inside of the exchanger is filled with gunk.

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16 Months Out: The Cost Of Cruising By MichaelVICTORIA, BC

2013-01-14T01:00:00.000-07:00

Windy underway: cruising is much cheaper when
you stay on the move. Settling into a marina
means slip fees and all kinds of opportunities
to spend. We're all itching to get moving
north at the end of this winter.

Before we left, I projected our rich new lifestyle would be had for less than the U.S. government’s poverty level for a family of four ($23,050 in 2012). I was wrong (so far).

We moved aboard Del Viento the first day of September 2011, sixteen months ago. Since that date, we have been a family of four cruising full-time, and tracking every dime we spend. Not including refit costs, this lifestyle is costing us $2,980 per month, or $35,760 per year. We aim to bring that number down quite a bit. It shouldn’t be too hard once we are spending less time in marinas and we are back outside the U.S. and Canada. (Though we plan to spend nearly all of 2013 in the U.S. and Canada, so it may be 2014 before we see a big dip.)

But let’s look back on the past 16 months. The two biggest expenses for that period were refit costs and food.

Refit Costs

While I didn’t include the refit costs in our monthly average, I understand that these are not one-time costs; Del Viento will continue to need repairs and improvements. But I don’t anticipate another year or so where we spend as much money on the boat as we have over the past 16 months ($39,830—and this on the heels of the money we spent before moving aboard).

Following is the list of major things we spent our refit dollars on since September 2011:

New outboard
New dinghy
New chainplates
New water tanks
New holding tank
New instruments

Haulout

New injectors

Turbocharger rebuild

Stainless welding (stanchions, pulpit, anchor roller)

New mainsail

New foil-less furler and code zero

New interior lights

New hatches

New mattress

New radar and mount

New mainsail cover

Not included in this list (nor in the refit cost since September 2011) are the refit items we paid for prior to moving aboard. This includes stuff like a haulout, bottom paint, portlights, batteries, standing rigging, and a solar panel. So really, since starting this endeavor, we’ve replaced nearly all the major systems. For this reason, I think that over the next few years, our cost to keep the old gal going will be minimal. Nonetheless, it will be interesting to look back over the next couple of years and see what we end up spending. (I know we have a leak where the rudder meets the post—when we haul out the rudder weeps for days. We plan to be in Mexico next year, where we'll haul out, open up the rudder to investigate, dry out, and re-seal. This project should involve lots of our labor, but inexpensive materials.)

Food Costs

Food is our biggest monthly expense and reflected in our monthly average. In our case, the Food category includes everything involving eating and drinking: a coffee at Starbucks, dining out, alcohol, groceries, and tea at the Empress with my sister over the holidays. Over the past 16 months, we’ve spent an average of $983 per month on all things food. (In Mexico we ate out often and our food expense was reliably between $700 and $800 per month. In Victoria, we seldom eat out and our food costs are always over $1000 per month.)

****

So $2,980 per month; could a family of four cruise for less? Absolutely, far less, by reducing marina time and cutting back on discretionary spending.

In Mexico we spent much more time in marinas than we wanted to simply because of the work we were doing on the boat. Slip fees in the U.S. and Canada are high. In the U.S., we chose to visit friends and family in places where anchoring out wasn’t an option. In Canada, we’ve chosen to winter over in a slip (and in an expensive city).

Here in Victoria, we’ve spent money on gymnastics classes and climbing wall passes for Windy and the girls. We don’t eat out much, but we drink alcohol. And we’ve traveled: Windy went to Thailand for two weeks earlier this year with her brother’s family, Eleanor flew back to D.C. for a week, and Windy and Frances flew back to San Francisco from Mexico.

A last note about our cruising costs concerns constants and surprises. Health insurance is an annual constant for us (I wrote about our health insurance). We spend about $1,700 per year on a catastrophic policy for the family. The annual cost of our boat liability insurance is about $550 per year—though it doubled for our time in Victoria because the marina requested we double our coverage (I wrote about our thoughts on insuring our own boat). We spend roughly $25 per month on our mail costs (the box, mail scanning, mail forwarding) and usually about $50 per month on an Internet data plan.

Fortunately, the only surprise this year (besides the need to replace our water tanks) is about $800 we spent on medical care for an eye problem Frances had (this highlighted for us the cost difference in obtaining health care in Mexico and the U.S.—I wrote about this too).

So that is it in a nutshell—a good look at the cost for this cruising family of four during our first 16 months. It is not likely to be the same for your 16 months, but hopefully the information is helpful to those planning their own cruises. A comprehensive and detailed list of all our costs is on The Cost page, above.

--MR

NOTE: the writers at the Sail Far, Live Free blog recently posted a great rundown of cruising costs, citing other cruisers. Too, on our The Cost page, I list other sources of cruisers' costs.

But stopping in one place for a while, especially in a slip, does
give me the opportunity to tear things apart and find the sources
of problems. This corroded butt terminal buried deep behind a wall
in the head was a source of lighting problems for a while.

The Nomadic Family's Dilemma By MichaelVICTORIA, BC

2013-01-07T02:00:00.000-07:00

Eleanor uses Frances's finger puppets to
practice French dialogue.

You want to rile a homeschooling parent? Mention the s-word. No, not that one,* I’m talking about socialization.

It always comes in the form of a question, almost always from someone who is benevolently curious about our out-of-school kids. And what they’re keen to know is how we overcome the liability of not having access to an entire school of other 6- and 9-year-old playmates to entertain our kids and teach them how to get along with others.

For years we rejected the assumptions buried in the question, and in answering, we sought to educate the inquisitors. After all, the girls had Windy and me, each other, neighborhood friends, and a lot of time spent with a core group of other homeschooled kids their age and those kids’ parents. With the parents facilitating, our kids reaped the benefits of social interactions that were overwhelmingly positive. There were squabbles from which lessons could be learned, but no cliques or bullying. Socially, it was ideal.

But we are no longer simply a homeschooling family, we are a cruising homeschooling family. And while we aren’t the only family afloat, cruising families are small in number and spread across oceans, literally. Friendships with other cruising kids end sooner than everyone wishes as kid boats coalesce and then ultimately scatter.

Before we went cruising, I wrote about this. About how most people are quick to congratulate parents on their decision/good fortune to be able to give their kids this life. And I think the positives are overwhelming, particularly over the short term. Yet, as Wendy Mitman Clarke (Osprey) wrote in Cruising World years ago, “A darker side of this life may also be a deep understanding of loss at too tender an age and a fear of commitment that comes with never knowing what will happen next and of always saying goodbye without knowing if and when you might meet again.”

We’re lucky that 6-year-old Frances and 9-year-old Eleanor are the best of friends. But Eleanor’s world is growing fast. She is devouring books and can’t recognize Frances as a peer on some levels. She wonders whether she will meet a 9- or 10-year-old-friend she clicks with, let alone stay in the same place long enough to bond with them.

In Victoria’s vibrant homeschooling community, social opportunities abound. But what happens when it’s time to depart again? What’s down the road? We don’t know. But we do know that the average duration of a family cruise is relatively short compared to how long we hope to continue, and we know our daughters are growing, changing rapidly and so are their social needs. What about socialization?

--MR

* Eleanor asked the other day, “What is the s-word and the f-word?” Windy and I raised our eyebrows and Eleanor continued, “Is the s-word STUPID?”

“No, not stupid. Tell you what, they’re both words you hear all the time, you just haven’t noticed them. Now that you’re interested, you will probably hear them soon.” Eleanor begged us to just tell her. “No, but when you hear it, let us know and we’ll tell you if you’re right.”

That night, we all watched a Storytellers concert DVD with Sarah Mclachlan performing and I’ll be damned if she didn’t drop both the s- and f-bomb talking between songs. Windy and I started cracking up each time. “Did you miss it? She just said the s-word.” Eleanor’s eyes grew wide and she was in a panic, begging us to rewind. “No, just keep your ears open,” we told her.

The next day, Windy showed the girls something on YouTube and Eleanor noticed the s-word in a comment along the side. “Is that it? Shit?” she asked. Later I found SHIT scrolled across the top of the girls’ drawings (“I’m trying to remember it.”) and Frances keeps chanting it because she can tell that we still can’t stifle our bemusement when we ask her to stop.

The two are best friends, but is that enough?

The Expensive Winos* By MichaelVICTORIA, BC

2013-01-01T15:07:00.000-07:00

Thankfully, the Walmart gingerbread houses
did not taste good enough for the girls to
eat, they became fish food.

I have a drinking problem. Hell, Windy and I both have a drinking problem. There’s no denying it.

It wasn’t with us in Mexico. In the peak summer heat and humidity, I could put down four or five ice cold Tecates in a day, each refreshingly teased with lime and salt. Total cost? About 58 cents a pop. When the weather cooled, a fair bottle of red wine could be had for three to five bucks.

In the U.S., our drinking problem began, but it wasn’t a surprise; we’d lived there, after all. And remembering we’d have to pay $11.99 for a 12-pack of beer was tempered by the fact that it was much better beer. Thanks to Trader Joes, our wine cost remained stable.

We arrived in Victoria, B.C. with beer and wine stores aboard that lasted into our third month. Then it was time to replenish.

The Strath is the closest liquor store to the marina and it’s pretty fancy. I opened the black French doors and stepped in from the cold. The magnitude of my drinking problem was evident right away. There wasn’t a 12-pack of beer for sale under $25 Canadian. I didn’t see a bottle of wine priced in the single digits. Then I caught my breath: I was still in the heart of the tourist shopping zone, of course these prices are absurd, this isn’t where the locals buy alcohol.

We enjoyed the cousins' visit. Their parents
kindly brought a bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream,
but their mom drank nearly all of it
while here.

Five blocks away and out of tourist-landia, I found it. Swans Liquor Store on Pandora. The floors were linoleum and beer and wine were displayed simply, stacked in the boxes they were shipped in. Handwritten sale signs were everywhere. I ventured in to find a bargain.

But there were no bargains. The prices were barely a tick below The Strath. I pulled out my credit card anyway.

We brought our last bottle of wine to a friend’s boat for Christmas. I’d consider stopping drinking, but not until the kids are older—could I possibly cope with the demands of parenting without the promise of a glass of wine in the evening?

People told us we were crazy to head north for the winter. They warned us of the cold and the rain. But nobody prepared us for the high cost of beer and wine. And we expect our drinking problem to continue through this coming fall, with little hope of price decreases as we sail north. If you visit us, please bring a bottle.

--MR

* A nod to Keith Richard’s band by this name. I just finished Richard’s fascinating autobiography, Life.

Where did we go wrong? Frances: "I didn't want to waste my time
telling a fake Santa what I want for Christmas when I should be
writing to the real Santa about what I want." Eleanor: "I'm too
old for that."

The Right Light By MichaelVICTORIA, BC

2012-12-26T23:38:00.000-07:00

Outdoor vapor lights provide a nice
glow. This is the true light, no flash.

Lighting a boat isn’t like lighting a home, the needs are different.

Do you regularly look under your couch or bed for a can of refried beans? Is your dining room table also a game table, workbench, countertop, and desk? Do you spend whole nights awake in your house, reading and going about your business, but with only red lights on? Do you have an electrical meter on your wall that you check regularly to see how many amps you’re consuming? Is your ceiling less than a foot above your head?

On a boat, lighting deficiencies are magnified. Since the day we bought Del Viento, I’ve pursued more light, less light, better quality light, red light, improved light efficiency, and attractive fixtures in our cabin.

General Lighting Fixtures

When we bought our boat, general lighting came from four overhead, circular, plastic fixtures. These were mounted throughout and each had a single on/off switch and delivered plenty of cold, harsh light. Two were inoperable. The 9-inch fluorescent bulbs of the remaining two sucked almost 2 amps from our house bank, models of efficiency in 1978. But that was then.

As of this week, general lighting aboard Del Viento comes from five Alpenglow 9W LED fixtures. Their white light color is warm and pleasant and can be delivered at a low or high setting. The lights feature a second switch that controls a red light, also at a low or high setting. Each light consumes three-quarters of an amp at its highest setting. They cost $139 each—a real value.

The girls discovered this weighted plate tied off
to a dock piling. They pull it up often to see
what's living on it. Here their friend from Riki
Tiki Tavi replaces a crab. We get precious few
days with clear skys and light like this. This
means it is usually pretty dark down below.
Even during the day, we use our lights a lot.

Reading Light Fixtures

Del Viento came with six reading lights; we wish there were more. Four of these lights are traditional metal lights with the bell-shaped shade, two were nice looking lights with a teak base and teak shades. All of these consumed a lot of power—and for hours at a time as we read by them or used them for ambient lighting. Because they were incandescents, their shades got hot, really hot. On the teak lights, the shades were very small and the bulbs protruded a bit, resulting in several cases of burnt fingers.

We started by replacing the incandescent bulbs in the traditional metal fixtures with LED bulbs. For these four lights, this has been an acceptable fix, eliminating the power consumption and heat issues. (But not a complete fix, as it introduced other issues—I’ll explain this in a future post).

But for the two teak lights, this fix wasn’t possible as the shades were not large enough to accommodate an LED bulb. And because these two lights were also falling apart, we replaced them, again going with Alpenglow.* This time we bought two of their dimmable (a unique feature in this kind of light), LED reading lights. The light is a very warm white, they use little power, and the dimming feature isn’t something we sought, but is now something we appreciate. These things are awesome and if money were no object, we’d replace all of our reading lights with these.

Task and Ambient Lighting

I bought inexpensive LED strip lights at IKEA. Their profile is about 1/8 inch and they are extensible. I’m considering attaching several in series and mounting them behind trim in the galley to illuminate the counter spaces. If that works well, I may do the same in the main cabin, but with a rheostat to dim them. We’ll see.

I knew that improving our lighting down below would be a welcome improvement. Celebrating Christmas in our cozy cabin this year, I remembered that for years I worked in offices with cold, unflattering light and that I appreciated evenings at home with my incandescently illuminated wife, kids, and surroundings. It’s good to be home.

--MR

* We’ve been very happy with this company and its products, but our praise is unsolicited, we do not receive anything from Alpenglow. And while I’m disclosing, please note that this blog is not supported by advertising. Our only compensation is twofold: the knowledge that folks are interested in what we write, and a monthly pittance from Cruising World that gives them the right to reproduce this on their site—with no editorial influence.

This is one of the five new lights. If it weren't for the mark left
from the old teak pad, it would look like these lights were built
for the boat. Fortunately, in removing the teak pads, we learned
that we may be able to remove this popcorn finish on the cabin
top as easily as wallpaper--we just need to have it tested first to
be sure it isn't asbestos.

Can Your Dinghy Fly? By MichaelVICTORIA, BC

2012-12-19T22:58:00.000-07:00

Our former dinghy hogged the foredeck underway,
the Pudgy is more than 3 feet shorter--both a bonus
and a trade off.

We like our Portland Pudgy and accept the fact that she’s slow. Her displacement hull is, well…pudgy. She isn’t rated for an outboard larger than our 4-hp-equivalent Torqeedo, but that’s okay, she moves well under oars and so we row most of the time. But maybe there’s another way.

A guy named Jonathan Trappe bought the same dinghy we have, same color, same options. That is to say he bought a canary-yellow Pudgy with the sailing kit and inflatable exposure canopy. Then he registered it with the FAA as an experimental aircraft: N878UP (we didn’t do this).

Last month, in Mexico, Jonathan attached some balloons to his Pudgy and soared to 20,000 feet. He raced along for seven-and-a-half hours and covered 118 miles before landing in a lake. That is to say, Jonathan’s Pudgy averaged 13.65 knots during this trip.

Jonathan plans to take his dinghy across the Atlantic the same way: as a gondola suspended beneath a bunch of balloons.

Interestingly, of the 231 posts on this blog, by far the most popular is from November 2010: Life Raft Or Lifeboat? I wrote it as we prepared to head out cruising, thinking about whether we’d adopt the Pardey model (and cruise ship model) of repurposing our tender as a lifeboat. We committed to this approach the day we ordered the Pudgy and haven’t had any regrets. I never wonder whether my lifeboat will inflate if needed. I never think about getting it repacked. Except when we’re in a marina, we use our lifeboat day-in and day-out.

Aside from the peace-of-mind she brings as a lifeboat, the thing we like most about the Pudgy is simply that she’s a hard dinghy. Unlike an inflatable, we can row her. We like rowing and it gives us exercise. Leaving the outboard at home is convenient (not having to ship the outboard), eliminates the risk of outboard theft, and lightens the load. Our Pudgy has sheer, tumblehome, and she’s tough as nails. Sailing her is fun (especially when the air and water are warm) and an excellent diversion for the girls. Sure there are trade-offs (not being able to cover large distances quickly), but I am now starting to like the idea that she can fly.

--MR

The following video of Trappe's trans-Atlantic trial run is pretty cool:

The Reel By MichaelVICTORIA, BC

2012-12-15T21:17:00.001-07:00

Most of the reels use either floating polypropylene
(pictured) or flat webbing, few use nylon three-
strand. Seems to me that polypropylene would
comparitively little strength or chaffe resistance.

In 1995, I saw Alvah and Diana Simon give a presentation in Ventura, CA. Their riveting talk and slide show focused on their trip around Cape Horn in their steel-hulled Roger Henry. What stuck with me all the years since is their description of anchoring in the Beagle Channel. Alvah said he observed the trees on the cliffs around the anchorage, wickedly malformed by the fierce prevailing winds, the williwaws that can blow at hurricane strength. Understanding they faced the prospect of gale force (and higher) katabatic winds that would drive them from shore, Alvah and Diana tucked Roger Henry in close and tied off ashore. The long length of three-strand that they used to do this, they kept on a reel astern.

Since then, I’ve noticed time and again, in the pictures that accompany adventurous articles in the sailing magazines—articles sent from crews at the extreme latitudes—the reels. To me, these reels evidence serious sailors, extreme cruisers.

But now I’m floating in a sea of boats with reels. A twenty-two-foot day sailor behind me sports a reel. Every other boat I’ve seen in B.C. has a reel—even small powerboats. I’ve learned why.

British Columbia (and the Inside Passage north) is filled with more nooks and crannies to explore than could possibly be done in a lifetime (our knowledgeable friend, Warren, pointed out to us that some of it is still uncharted!). These anchorages are often narrow, deep, crowded in the summer, and subject to huge tides (up to 15 feet). All of these factors combine to limit the amount of area available for a boat to swing on the hook. Accordingly, many folks up here stern tie to immobilize their boats. Apparently summer season wind is not such a factor.

So, we’re looking into our own stern tie reel solution for Del Viento. At first glance, I like the space efficiency of the narrow reels of polyester webbing. We’ll see. I want to make sure this is indeed a must-have, even for just our planned single season. Because if we return to Mexico with a reel I know there will be a lot of eye rolling, “Oh look, the Robertsons spent a year up north and now they think they’re Alvah Simon.”

--MR

Our friend Warren hosted us for dinner and gave us a
run-down on the Gulf Islands, the easternand western shores of
Vancouver Island, and the mainland inlets of the
Strait of Georgia. He is a captain with
years of experience and an intense affinity for
the area. We covered a lot, but according to
Warren, we barely scratched the surface. Here
Windy is notating our iPad Navionics chart
app for reference. We attached a "Don't Miss!"
label to far more places than one season will
allow us to explore.

O Canada! By MichaelVICTORIA, BC

2012-12-09T23:23:00.002-07:00

Reading this blog here, you likely missed the vitriol that erupted on the Cruising World site when I last wrote about Canada. Of course, the post was tongue-in-cheek, but that escaped some. Check out the comments…

The girls hanging with our resident swan.
There is also a resident harbor seal.

******

A single, simple holiday card: standard size, less than an ounce. Do you know what it costs to send that thing from Canada to the U.S.? C$1.05! Do you know what it costs for someone in the U.S. to send the same holiday card to a friend in the Great White North? $.85. That’s quite a discrepancy; now you know why you’ve never received a holiday card from a Canadian.

But forget international rates. In Canada, sending a letter domestically costs C$.61—and next year it’ll be C$.63. Yikes! You gotta love our U.S. first class domestic postage rate of $.44. These poor Canadians have it rough.

But consider that the U.S. the postal service lost over five billion dollars ($5,000,000,000) last year (and they'd have lost more than $10 billion had Congress not allowed them to postpone an annual payment to a health benefits fund) and that they’re begging Congress to increase the postal rate and cancel Saturday delivery. (And as Rueters reported in August: “Lawmakers, who have said they are committed to helping the Postal Service become profitable, left last week for a month-long recess without reaching an agreement on postal legislation.”) In Canada, taxpayers are not going to have to bail out Canada Post because it earned a net income of over C$281 million in 2009 and it’s closed Saturdays. (And it’s not as though Canada Post has it easy. It delivers to a larger area than the postal service of any other nation, including Russia, where service in Siberia is limited largely to communities along the railway).

Sure, U.S. fiscal responsibility is ~~waning~~ nowhere to be found, but what’s a cruiser to do? Well, I stood out in the cold rain yesterday, soliciting passengers boarding the Coho for their ninety-minute trip to Port Angeles, WA. I clutched a Ziplock freezer bag stuffed with over a hundred Robertson holiday cards, each displaying the 44-cent forever stamp. After a few passengers made me feel like a terrorist or drug smuggler asking them to do something illegal, I finally found a sympathetic crewmember in the terminal to agree to drop them in a mailbox Stateside for me. That’s practically money in the bank—that someone’s going to have to pay back someday.

--MR

The girls went to watch the salmon run at a nearby creek.
Of course, the salmon die after spawning and there are
carcasses everywhere. Here a naturalist shows Eleanor
and Frances (between them are the Riki Tiki Tavi kids)
a salmon heart. She dissected the thing for them.