Ordered Sails

Have placed an order with UK sails for five sails. Main, 110% geneoa, staysail, and two storm sails. This was a long time coming. We were being advised by all to go with Hassee or Shatteaur, but just couldn't spend 30k on sails. I think UK will make us a real nice set of sails that will take us where ever we want to go, and back. Glad that's done. Now back to ground faults.

Boat Projects cont.

Ok, did good. Got the first four items mostly done.

Was not able to locate the souce of current leakage, but did determine that there was nothing coming from the DC side. Since it is AC I have far fewer items to check on, but it will have to wait, as I am heading up to Victoria on the Clipper tomorrow. I will be meeting Alex from UK Sails. He will be showing me thier Bluewater Finish cruising sails. I would really rather have Hassee or Shatteaur do our sails, but the price for the UK is a bit less then the other guys.

If we were planning to do Cape Horn, then UK would not be my pick, but since we are just Ma and Pa Cruiser, looking for eternal summer, I think UK will do just fine.

I'm having fun now. Figured out the picture thing. Whoever designed this software is a genuis because I can never figure out how to do anything. In this case, however, it was a snap. Watch out now.

Oh, the picture shows the view from the Gorge Amplitheater in Eastern Washington. The Columbia River is in the background. There were times (12,000 to 15,000 years ago) when the entire canyon was filled with water flowing from ice age glacier lakes. Occasionally ice dams holding the lakes back would break releasing huge amount of water (up to 15 cubic miles per hour flowing from a lake that was 2000 feet deep, covering an area larger then Lake Michigan). The flood plane carved by these outflows is called channeled scablands. Miles and miles of river channels were carved out of the basalt rock in just a few days.

Google "Dry Falls" for the real scoop.

Boat projects.....

Just a beginning.

Remaining electrical stuff:

Complete battery link installation
Find source of A/C current leakage (now @ 30 milliamps)
Finish battery compartment fan installation
Make temporary wire connection for windless
Install inverter in Q-berth and install controller @ nav desk
Windless relay installation
Windless switch relocation to nav desk
Move Ample Power energy monitor to nav desk
Figure out what to do about 2/0 welding cable running to windless
Install battery watering system

I would like to be done with the first four items, at least, by next Friday so we can head up to the San Juan Islands for a week with Tom and Jan.

1st Post

Been struggling with the idea of blogging for a while now.

I like the idea of journaling. Our lives have taken a real turn lately, and it would be good to create a periodic record of events.

The problem is that I am not good at continued efforts. I can accomplish a lot when tasks have a beginning, a middle and an end. Building our last house for example was exhilerating. Required a herculean mental and physical effort that, on a daily basis, resulted in profound and lasting change. I finished on schedule, and on cost with a truly beautiful home. But when I was done, I was done. It was good to move in and move on.

The move on thing turned out to be landscaping. Judy was absolutely adament that she was not going to live in a nice new house surrouned by mud. So, off I went on the next project. Planted well over a thousand plants, all natives to the Northwest, including some that I collected from up in the hills. Installed a drip irrigation system to keep them all nicely watered through the transition to thier new home (none of them died). Also installed a sprinkler system for the bane of my existance, grass.

Beginning, middle, end. Been there done that. Now I am quit of the whole house building, landscaping thing.

I could barely bring myself to mow the darn lawn. I fought a good fight with the moles that moved in from the greenbelt behind the house to the more furtile hunting grounds my lawn provided, but in the end they were more motivated then me. I was going to rip the lawn out and plant a nice ground cover (beginning, middle, end) that would hide the piles of mole dirt and eliminate the need for a lawn mower, but we ended up selling the place and moving on to a condo before I got around to it.

I did manage to turn on the irrigation every spring.

So, daily maintanance is not my thing, and I have the good grace to excuse myself from all blame if I never write another thing. It's not really what I do.