We're looking for the trash fence...

Sorry for such infrequent updates, but we’ve been busy getting all of our friend married -- wedding number 3 in as many weeks is Saturday -- as well working on boat projects.

Wedding number 1, over the 4th of July weekend, was in Cle Elum. Lars and Jenny we’re absolutely beautiful and to be able to have all of our Burner friends together for a solid three days was an absolute gift. The weddding was meant to be a “Goofball Wedding” so I had to bust out my green PeaBear costume for the ceremony! (Have to find a pic of that still)

Wedding number 2 was in Roche Harbor and we took the boat up. The weather didn’t cooperate too much with sailing, but we did get a few hours in, used the Hydrovane and even had to put a reef in the main, I was glad I finished finished installing the reefing hardware on the main boom the day before!

Julia’s and Jason’s wedding was held at anchor on the biggest spinningest raftup I have ever been on. The AnderGuards (as we call them anyway) are an awesome couple and know how to throw a party. Some of us water people went ashore to partake of the Roche Harbor Bar as well. The lamb burger isn’t all that, skip it. The rum runner is delicious, have 3 instead!

On the way back we went to Blind Bay on Shaw Island. We went for a long walk on the island around the bay and enjoined some very good ice cream from the Shaw General store which first opened in 1899!! That night we took a dinghy of wood to Blind Island for a night of fire and marshmallows.

The night after was spent in La Conner, WA after handling the tricky navigation of the Swinomish Channel. The depths in Swinomish are supposed to be 6’8” at low tides, but can be a bit all over the place (usually deeper, but sometimes not) given that they don’t’ dredge it as much as they used to. La Conner is very cute town and if the Swinomish channel has been scaring you off, don’t’ let it. Just plan to go in with at least +X feet of tied where X = (7’ + Your Draft + 2 feet) and you should be fine. Also, don’t’ leave La Conner until you have similar depths. Aside from that I think it’s very doable but WAY easier for those shallow draft Bayliner wake machines.

Since we got back I changed the oil, installed new oil cooling lines which were leaking, changed the raw water impeller and the zinc in the heat exchanger.

Dawn has been working on organizing our medical kit and working on the sail covers. Because it was too windy to sew on the dock, we spent about 4 hours in the conference room at Windworks sewing all the main stitching for the covers. Dawn ran the machine and I manhandled the cloth to allow her to sew more easily. We can’t thank Greg and the staff at Windworks enough for loaning us the conference room. That was absolutely awesome!!

Wedding number 3 is tomorrow, I’ll save that for the next post, and we’ll do some more technical posts on the sail covers as well.

whew… I’m going to need a vacation after this 3 week vacation!

This has been our first time out with AIS on the boat and I must say it is absolutely worth it. Being able to see exactly where that tug is headed and it’s speed is very useful. Even more useful is when you want to cutoff the shipping traffic separation lanes, you can “see” way up the sound and know whether or not a freighter or tug is coming around that next bend.

If you have been unsure about AIS… GET IT !

That is not a new layered drink I’m perfecting. It is a picture of what my newly installed inline fuel filter for the dinghy outboard caught on it’s inaugural run.

Last winter we were bad outboard owners and did not winterize the outboard, nor did we dump the gas into the car. So this winter the outboard wouldn’t run. I took it to the dealer to have the carb cleaned and we dumped the fuel. Roll forward several months, with new fuel (<1 week old) and supposedly clean tank and with clean carbs and after about the first hour of use it was conking out unless you left the choke open or closed the choke and quickly gave it half-throttle. It would not idle in gear.

I checked the inline filter in the engine and it was clean, but it only collects particles, not water. I decided the fuel was bad, but couldn’t prove it, so I got a RACOR 025-RAC-02 filter designed for outboards. Installation is as simple as mounting the housing to the dinghy transom, cutting the fuel hose and securing it with some hose clamps. When I ran it for the first time it clogged with water (that is what is floating on top) and BINGO I confirmed that a) this filter is awesome and b) I really did have a fuel problem!

I poured all the fuel into the car, rinsed the can with more fuel, poured that in the car and then set that can aside to let all the residual gas evaporate (it was sunny that week). We then bought an additional fuel tank because I figured this was not going to be the last time we had to do this. In looking at the new can I think the vent is vastly superior to the old one. The old one is basically a plastic screw you loosen to let air in while running. The new one also is loosened like a screw, but it seems to have an openclosed position, not adjustable and it also appears to have some sort of gasket or pressure closure so it only opens when it needs to. I think the new one will let in lass condensationrainetc. I do think having two fuel cans is a good idea either way.

Of course I later noticed as I walked the dock that one of our neighbors has one too… ah validation.

And with that bit of DIY help, I will leave you some music to go with this week blog title…

There’s no way I wasn’t putting this in here… Blame it on the Alcohol

I’ve started devoted a little bit of time each night to playing around with our ICOM M710 SSB Radio. We’re sitting in the middle of a marina surrounded by aluminum masts so I assume reception or transmission is going to be greatly impaired. Thus far I’m focusing on what I can hear and then I’ll work up to transmitting.

With that in mind, two night ago I was tuning around to find some Shortwave broadcasts and was able to hear China and Cuba, not too shabby. Last night I use the GetFax module in Airmail to receive (or download you might say) our first weatherfax. Weatherfax will be critical to our onboard weather forecasts and route planning so it felt pretty good to see it work properly on the first try!

Here’s our first weatherfax image.

I’ll do a video podcast at some point of the image actually downloading its cool to watch, and it will be impressive to all my geek  friends to see just how SLOW it is. There’s no broadband at sea (well that we can afford).

is location working?

Here’s a series of shots of polishing and installing our chainplates. We polished them by hand starting by cleaning them with water and a scouring pad, then sanding them with progressively higher grained papers. The first go was with 100 grit and we ended up at 1200 grit. Mounting the paper to a board or a table was helpful, but this is intense labor and is very hard on the hands. However, paying someone to do it ridiculous. We did not put the chainplates (or any of the rigging we polished) on an actual polishing wheel, the 1200 grit seemed like it was as good as we were going to get.

As as DIY projects go, this is pretty easy one and just requires sandpaper, a bunch of free time (or late nights in my case) and a desire to stick through it.

Thanks to Port Townsend Rigging for the tips and the encouragement!

Here’s the chainplate pulled and lying on the deck when we were in the paint shed back in November 2010.

After cleaning them up we marked where the deck would be and covered that area with butyl.

The butyl was then tamped down by hand until it was a bit recessed to the deck (no shot of that)

The small space was then filled with Sika Flex, the chainplate covers were installed and any excess Sika Flex was cleaned off.

A shot of the bolted on chainplate and the green bonding wire (which were also replaced) from below decks.

These pictures were taken in May 2010 and thus far we have had no chainplate leaking. (knock on teak)

When we got to Poulsbo last weekend, we were using the ground tackle for the first time we weren’t sure we were going to be able to decipher the marking system we’d done months before. We actually had no clue what we done. However, once the chain started to go over the side it was VERY easy to figure out and required no secret decoder ring. That’s ladies and gentlemen is what we call good design.

Some people use paint or other flags, we used colored zip ties (which is also common) and this is our color coding scheme:

• White – 10 Feet
• Black – 50 Feet
• Red – 100 Feet

The way the system works is you add up the zip ties.

3 white = 30 feet\ 1 red + 1 Black + 2 white = 170 feet

Very intuitive and easy to maintain by just replacing zip ties when they inevitably break off after a while.

Crappy Pacific Northwest weather and constant work on the boat have kept us from taking the boat out, but this passed weekend Dawn and I took the boat out for out first trip since December. We organized a veritable flotilla of boats for a Poulsbo raft-up and viewing of the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Here are few pics of Viking Fest things. My main camera wasn’t charged up so these are just from my iPhone.

Cappy Bone and Tawn from s/v Palarran have another great video!

I’m writing you from the comfort of the nav station while securely anchored in LIberty Bay just off the shore of Poulsbo, WA. What a great night of sailing and seeing all of our hard work actually working! We took a little detour into Port Madison (hey where’s the Bridge??) and so we ended up arriving after dark, but not to fear. We were able to set the hook with the new windlass and chain locker configuration. We flipped on the foredeck light so Dawn could see me while I worked the windlass and she drove the boat. That was awesome because we could still use our hand signals for anchoring instead of having to shout.

But on the way over it was pure bliss to raise the sails and shut off the engine! We were doing well over 6 Kts in 18Kts of breeze as we crossed the sound, absolute JOY.

Right now I’m mooching someone's wifi ashore and the wifi antenna and Ubiquiti bullet are working pretty well for free internet! We still have a lot of thing we want to do, but man is it nice to get out and enjoy some of the fruits of our labor.

Tomorrow we’ll be joined by Danika, Palarran, Andante, and Defiant. We’re all going ashore to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie at 10pm, but all day tomorrow it’s Viking Fest in Poulsbo and we’re definitely going to go ashore and plunder some savages!

Goodnight and pleasant dreams !