Introducing “Penguin”, Our Newest Addition to the Fleet

While we were here hemming and hawing about which dinghy we should get, wanting a Portland Pudgy, but not wanting to spend the money on a new one, and wasting time going to see inflatables and Mintos that got sold out from under us, the Universe was busy organizing a big surprise. Low and behold, on July 4, someone named Aaron in Port Townsend listed a white Portland Pudgy on Craigslist for exactly the amount of money I was willing to spend on a used one: way less than 1/2 the price of a new one.  I saw the ad within 2 hours of its listing, got so excited I emailed the guy twice just to be sure he got my message, and the next day I drove up to Port Townsend and put her in the back of my beater truck. I’ve never been so successful at Craigslist scrounging.

She fits in the back of our beater truck like she was made to go home with us!

She fits in the back of our beater truck like she was made to go home with us!

Honestly, we are pretty stoked that we’ve scored a Pudgy without paying retail price for it.  I hear through the grapevine at the marina that ‘all the cool kids have Pudgies’.  I’ve always wanted to be a ‘cool kid’. Who knew that at the ripening age of mid-50’s I might finally belong to a club that I might even want to belong to? Or that would accept me as a member.  Between being gifted charts for the west coast and finding this deal on the Pudgy, it’s been quite a week. I begin to think we might just be pulling this plan off.

So now that we have ‘Penguin’, some decisions that have been hanging like chads on a ballot can be finalized. We will get the life raft kit for her. The boat came with pieces to make our own sail rig. We’ll give that a go. We’d like to have the Pudgy sail kit, but it’s not really a requirement and we should be able to rig something decent from the pieces that came with the boat. We have wanted a sailing dinghy for a long time. This will be fun!

Penguin, not in her natural habitat.

You’ll notice on our new ‘gear to buy‘ list that I’ve left the RIB and engine on that list. That’s because we will likely go ahead and have a RIB on board, but now we aren’t in any hurry to get it. We understand that there are times when really the RIB is the best choice of tenders,  so we haven’t given up on that. To be clear, Universe, that’s a Hypalon RIB with a folding transom,  about 10’ long. If we can get the Achilles HB300FX that stows in its own bag, that would be great!

We’re looking forward to getting this pudgy little Penguin down to the docks to give her a spin and say howdy to the other Pudgies at the marina.

We Heart Charts

A while back my blogging friend Ellen over at The Cynical Sailor and His Salty Sidekick mentioned that she scored a bunch of paper charts on the ‘free’ table at her marina in Florida. I might have been just a wee bit envious of her score because we really need paper charts on board Galapagos. We can buy charts at about $25.00 a pop, but we need a lot of them, so that begins to very quickly add up to a ton of money, especially as they will not be our primary means of navigation. And especially as we have many other things we need to get. (Hey, I’ve spent some time updating our project list and creating a list of things we still need to buy.  Check them out.) I began to double down on focusing on getting charts to appear somehow. Somewhere. charts2

So why do we even want to carry paper charts? Isn’t that going a bit too far? Well, considering that the paper charts will be back ups to our back up to our back up, I can see why people who do not travel by boat might wonder that. But our GPS, great as it is, just cannot take the place of a big paper chart. With big charts there is no scrolling around on an electronic device, no zooming in and out on a relatively small screen, and generally no driving old eyes insane. You can see at a glance and a magnifying glass what the coastline looks like, what kinds of depths you will find, where might be a good place to tuck in for the night. You get the ‘big picture’ fairly quickly. They are also dead best for route planning. No one sits around the table dreaming and planning about their voyage over a hot GPS screen. Charts are required for that. So I want them. We heart charts.

Enter a man named Gary. Gary works on ferry boats and lives on a sailboat at our marina. He also used to work on tug boats where he was in charge of keeping the charts updated. Gary has a garage at the marina; we have a garage at the marina. Gary was cleaning out his garage, I was getting rid of stuff from ours, putting it in the ‘free’ area. I noticed these HUGE rolls of charts sticking out of his garbage box.

“You throwing those away?” I asked, breath held ever so gently, eyes casual.
He says yep, he is.
“We are looking for charts for our trip down the coast. Would you mind if I took them off your hands?”
He didn’t mind if I took what was trash for him, but could be treasure sure as the world for me.

I scurried away, charts bundled tightly under both arms lest he change his mind. Two days later, Mike would deliver a couple of 6 packs of good beer to his boat by way of ‘thanky very much, fellow sailor!’. Can we use his old charts? Why yes. Yes we can. charts3

What a gold mine! There are charts that show the entire west coast of the United States, including up to Alaska. There are charts for the Columbia River and Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, even Hawaii! Mike and I had too much fun looking over each one and sorting them in piles. Want, Don’t Want, Wish we wanted but we probably don’t. We were kind of a little bit in heaven. Both of us love paper charts. There is something, I don’t know, so ‘tactile’ about them.

These charts are several years old, of course. So they need updating, and you wouldn’t want to use them as your primary means of navigation without updating them. Fortunately for us, NOAA has the updates on line and has made it simple, if time consuming. You simply enter a chart number, and a list of the updates will be given.

Here's a screenshot of the kinds of updates you will find.

Here’s a screenshot of the kinds of updates you will find.

Most of the changes are minor, such as moving a buoy a bit. But there could be changes in depth in areas, and there are additions and deletions to aids to navigation. I took to the interweb site to update this chart of the coast of Washington State. charts4

Yeah, I could use some actual tools for plotting on charts, but for now this sheet rock square helped. By way of example, I had to move a buoy just a little further from the rocks on this chart. I plotted the new location for the buoy, which, frankly wasn’t very different from the first location and I thought , ‘man if we couldn’t find that buoy without a location that was precise to the minute, we probably have more problems than an out of date chart’. Still, we’re talking crunchy rocks here that this buoy alerts us to, so it’s not like it’s unimportant.

The black dot is the new location. Not too far from the old, but still, it's either correct or it isn't. Now it is.

The black dot is the new location. Not too far from the old, but still, it’s either correct or it isn’t. Now it is.

Again, these are back ups to our backups. They are great for getting an overall picture, and for planning, plotting,  and dreaming. So if the shit hits the fan and every single one of our other navigation tools somehow fails us, we can take that trusty little sextant out of the cupboard and carry on! (Yeah, we’ll blog about that another day.)

We’ll choose the ones that are most useful to us and then update them. But we’ll also buy a couple of new charts that are the most important ones, just to be sure. This has saved us a lot of money and we’re very grateful! Next, we’d really like to find some charts of the Pacific Coast south of our border, and the Sea of Cortez, Central America, the Galapagos Islands, the south Pacific Islands, you name it.  We’ll buy them off you if you’ve done your trip and don’t need them anymore. Pass the word to your friends! We heart charts.

 

Holidays at the Dock

Ah, the day we celebrate our freedom from our British Overlords. July 4th; the day when families get together and have big barbecues, go out on the water, swim and play and watch the fireworks together. Boat owners go places. Some people do cruises. We hope you are doing all of that stuff because we aren’t. And actually, that’s just fine with us, even though this is the first time in many years that we have actually been home on the 4th of July. We are usually out cruising, usually in Canada. We are at the dock this holiday weekend, happy to have some time to knock off a few projects. There is a lot going on down at Galapagos and it feels pretty good.

Having a double anchor roller allowed us to secure one anchor and use the other roller to deploy chain into the trashcan.

Having a double anchor roller allowed us to secure one anchor and use the other roller to deploy chain into the trashcan.

Yesterday we spent the day at the marina working on our projects at the bow. First we removed the anchor chain. We want to inspect it and have it regalvanized. There is one small area on the chain that gives us pause, as in we are not sure if it’s okay or not. Since our boat depends on having good chain, we’ll be looking closely at that small area. Fortunately, it’s near one end of the chain, so if we have to cut it off, we haven’t lost too much. Most of the chain is in really great condition.

To remove the chain, we rented a big furniture dolly, strapped a plastic garbage can to it, and then dropped the chain into it. Now we’re driving it around in our almost dying truck until we can get it up to Ballard to Emerald Galvanizing. (Hey local peeps, if you know someplace else, give us a holler.) We waited until high tide,  rolled her up the ramp, then transferred the chain to another container in the back of the truck. (Seriously, it would not surprise me if that truck just up and died the day before we leave. I only hope it holds out that long.)

removewindlass1

Our other agenda was to remove our Lofrans Falkon windlass so Mike could open it up and inspect everything, looking at brushes, and generally maintaining and putting his hands on each piece of it because that’s how he rolls. The windlass has worked perfectly, but he has already repaired one of the switches once, and we would rather make sure that everything is in good shape before we leave.

For those readers unfamiliar with boating terms, the windlass is what we use to drop the anchor and retrieve it. We have an electric windlass on board Galapagos, and we carry 300 feet of chain. To deploy the anchor, we step on a foot switch and the windlass begins rolling the chain out, the weight of the anchor keeping it moving. To bring the anchor in, we step on the other switch, bringing up a little at a time. This is a critical piece of equipment on board the boat. Our lives could depend on a reliable windlass and anchor so we don’t cut corners on this stuff.

Getting the windlass off was difficult, mostly because it was so well installed in the first place. After Mike removed all the bolts and pried away at the seal as much as he could, we used the main halyard to exert constant pressure on the caulk so it would gently pull away. A little more pressure, then waiting. Then a little more, then waiting. Then a little more, until it finally gave way.

Keeping tension to gently pull away from the caulk.

Keeping tension to gently pull away from the caulk.

When we pulled it up, there was some interesting looking white stuff that appeared to be used to fill a void underneath the windlass. We just don’t know what this stuff is. (Hey Derek, if you are reading this, do you know what this stuff is?) Any ideas out there in blog reader land? It has the consistency of that white paste kids use in school, the kind everyone secretly eats while the teacher makes gagging noises. There is almost no odor and (yeah, we went there) almost no taste. It is not greasy. Poking it with a finger and rubbing fingers together, it begins to dry out and then flake off the skin. Someone suggested it might be White Lead paste. Mike thinks it is corrosion, but I hope he is wrong and I wonder why, if it’s corrosion,  it would be pasty and not dry and powdery?

This white pasty stuff was under a rectangular void area on the windlass.

This white pasty stuff was under a rectangular void area on the windlass.

This is the rectangular void with some of the paste clinging to it.

This is the rectangular void with some of the paste clinging to it. Sorry for the photo quality. My camera is in being cleaned so all I have is my phone.

So you probably notice in the photos that the windlass locker has also seen better days. It’s been on my list to clean this space up, repair a rotted area of wood by the foot switches, and give it a fresh coat of paint. That is going to be happening. I have a nifty wood rot epoxy that I’ll be using to repair the small area that needs it. We also have some fiberglass supplies if we decide to lay a few sheets of that in addition to the epoxy. I’ll report back when we see how it works. The rot is close to one of the foot switches which we’ll be inspecting and replacing as necessary.

You can see the foot switches to the left of my foot. The area in question is between them.

You can see the foot switches to the left of my foot. The area in question is between them. That brown area is wood that is not covered with fiberglass for some reason.

We brought the windlass home, still taking advantage of a larger work space when we can get it. Mike couldn’t wait to take it apart and have his version of a good time. Andrew was home, so there was a little father/son machine and tool bonding time. He’s pretty impressed with the condition, and has plans to make it even better, which I will let him write about.

I do cherish scenes like this.

I do cherish scenes like this.

There are other fun things going on, but that’s all for now. Adios, amigos!