Time is running out

The boat is completely torn apart, there are boxes and bins of stuff everywhere, several of the most important pieces of equipment on the boat are currently non-functional......  Guess it's time to leave, 'cause our timer isn't slowing down just because the to-do list is growing.

By the end of the day today (trying not to jinx myself by saying it) both our vehicles will be gone, I will be completely moved out of my work space in Everett, and we will have all our worldly belongings aboard the boat.  Of course, all our worldly belongings doesn't include the various keepsakes and trash/treasure items we have stored with parents and friends, but we felt it important to save a bit of "start-up clutter" for when/if we ever move back ashore.

Hopefully the next post here, and many others to follow, will be more interesting and have a bit more of a nautical theme.

Counting down

Recently some of our sailing friends posted on their blog that their countdown had finally gone below 100 days, reaching double digits, and they were feeling somewhere between elation and panic.  As you can see by the screen shot, today our timer hit single digits, and strangely I share the elation, but am thankfully missing the panic.

Two years ago when we returned from a four month "shakedown cruise" to Alaska I knew I wanted to see more of the area, and to do more traveling by boat.  Twelve years before that, on my first attempt to sail to Alaska, both the area and the mode of travel left me wanting more.  My desire to explore has been with me as long as I can remember, and the idea of traveling by sailboat has stuck in my head since reading books about the sailing lifestyles of the Smeetons, Hiscocks and other early pioneer "cruising sailors".  That trip twelve years ago taught me a lot; sailing skills, boat maintenance, navigation challenges, interpersonal relationship issues, financial responsibility, the list is long and varied.  Some may argue that quitting jobs and leaving on an open-ended vacation with minimal savings shows I haven't learned much in the financial responsibility category, but I feel like my sailing, navigation, and maintenance and repair skills are certainly much better than they were.  As for interpersonal relationships, the tensions and challenges of preparing for  a life change like this can be a struggle, but I feel like Nicole is not only up to the challenge, but together we compliment each others strengths and weaknesses to make a good team.
Guess I better quit wasting time in front of the computer and get back to the "to do before we leave" list, time seems to be running out.

Provisioning-Round One

For me there is nothing that makes trip preparation more real than that first big food purchase.  Yesterday Nicole took the day off of work, and we proceeded to visit two of the local Costco stores.  We found from provisioning for our trip two years ago that each Costco carries a different variety of food, some very different from others, so it's best to visit several locations for variety.  People say you should never shop for food on an empty stomach, but when your shopping trip cover half a day and spans several meal times I don't think it matters.  Little surprises really make a difference in keeping spirits high for these trips, so when we realized that the case of beer we deliberated over was never scanned at the checkout, we both left the parking lot a little happier.  Of all the free food you can sample walking the aisles of Costco, I'm pretty sure the free cases of beer will always be my favorite.

We have a somewhat unorthodox method of shopping, we wander up and down every aisle and whatever looks appetizing, we buy.  Having provisioned for a similar trip on a 29 foot boat, I appreciate the carrying capacity of our heavy boat and never worry about the extra weight, but trying to find space for 21 cases of canned goods and another dock cart full of other food items is taxing our creativity on where to put everything.  We stow our canned goods in top loading lockers low in the boat to keep the heavy things as close to the bottom of the boat as possible for better balance.  Once the cans are loaded in the lockers there is no way to see their labels, so we mark the tops of each can with a marker.  Hours of unwrapping and marking tend to make me a bit punchy and I get creative with my marker descriptions, so luckily there are just two of us to later decipher what "T MTR SP" means.   Half a day of shopping, and hours of removing packaging, marking cans, and stowing things in various lockers, and by midnight we were back to being able to move through the boat, and more importantly, get to our bed for a well-deserved rest.

Sorting and Purging

The word for this week is "declutter", which my spellcheck informs me is not a word, and needs a hyphen or a space.  Well, we need a space too, and hence operation de-clutter.  I won't go into the boring details of emptying out storage spaces, but will start a mini-feature for this week called "What's on the free shelf".  The laundry room at the marina has a shelf behind the washers that people have traditionally used to deposit unwanted items in hopes that other will take and use them.  These items range from old Beta movies (really?) to new clothes with tags still attached.  We have a stack of things to add to the shelf, and rather than doing it all at once I will make the walk down each morning to deposit a couple of our items, check to see what others have left, and see if any of our items from the previous day are still there.
I wanted to start off slow, being Monday and all, so today I brought down several spare foot-pump hoses for Zodiac type inflatable boats, an unused garment bag, an electrical extension cord, a yarn-art cat, and a miniature inflatable boat.  I was greeted at the laundry room door by little girl, probably about 2, and the inflatable boat never even made it to the shelf.  The shelf was empty when I arrived, so our items won't be competing against any antique tea sets or stereo equipment, at least not yet.  Tomorrow I'll check in to see what is new or left over from today, and drop off a tool kit in a plastic case that should be a nice find for someone.  The remainder of the weeks' cast-offs promise to get bigger and better, so stay tuned.

Edit:  My daily posts about our offerings to the free shelf were boring to me, so I can't imagine anyone reading this (Is anyone reading this?) was interested either, so I got rid of the posts.  I dumped a bunch of stuff on the shelf and will continue Friday and Saturday, and hopefully it all finds good homes.

A Little W(h)ining

For several years now Nicole and I have been heading over to central Washington each President's Day weekend for wine tasting.  The area just past Yakima has a group of wineries called Rattlesnake Hills, and they host a Wine and Chocolate event each year at this time.  This year we were joined by fellow sailors Jason and Christy, and also met up with Heather, Jodi, and Danny, friends from Nicole's work.  In recent years Rattlesnake Hills has been adding wineries to their group, and this year they were up to 18 wineries, which presents a bit of a challenge to visit all of them during the event weekend.  Luckily it's a three day event so we could spread out the fun a bit.  We knew Christy would be up to the task, but Jason mentioned something about not really liking wine so I was a bit worried, but he was either understating his wine drinking prowess or he warmed up quickly.

Nicole and I were trying hard to show restraint in purchasing this year.  With our sailing trip departure just over a month away, we have been concerned that we already have quite a bit of wine on the boat and are only allowed a couple bottles each going into Canada.  We agreed that this would be a tasting weekend only with no buying, and that decision lasted all the way to the second winery we visited.  Having done this trip in the past with just the two of us, we have been known to fill the trunk of the car with cases of wine, keep our bags and toiletries in the back seat, and go on our merry way.  This year with four people and their associated luggage, we were thankfully limited in the amount of wine we could bring back.  I did, however, notice an unspoken agreement between the two couples that the luggage was arranged around the passengers inside the car to provide more space in the trunk for wine.  In the end we all had a great time and tasted some great wines.  For those that like statistics and/or gory details:

3 days of wine tasting
18 wineries visited
122 wines sampled (approximate number, for obvious reasons)
47 bottles of wine purchased (20 by us, 27 for Jason and Christy)
1 wine glass broken
4 livers slowly recovering

Pre-Departure Shuffle

I believe this could be referred to as the pre-departure shuffle, where large boxes of stuff are moved off the berth so we can sleep, in the morning they are moved from the settee so we can drink coffee, in the afternoon they are moved from the other settee to the berth so we can get something out of a locker, then it's time for bed, with the boxes back on the berth....About day five of this someone smarter than me (Nicole) will ask what exactly is in these boxes, at which point unpacking and organizational mayhem ensues....
It could be worse, we could also be dealing with the boxes of things currently stored in our vehicles, or the stuff in the storage unit, or the stuff at friends houses.

Say hello to my little friends

It's been cold but sunny the past few days, and the critters in the neighborhood are taking advantage of the lack of rain.  We don't see the seals hauled out in the marina too often, but the otters are regular visitors.