Author Archives: Melissa

Jarrell Cove Holiday

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We’ve decided that since we can’t have a long cruise this summer (BOOO!!!) we will do long weekends exploring south Puget Sound. As a rule, south sound is less crowded than the northern area and there are a lot of quiet areas to anchor, even if most of them are surrounded by houses.  Our engine, Hiram, got all the pent up energy out of his system on this trip, although we actually got plenty of sailing in as well. That’s kind of unusual in the south sound. We’ll take it!

Hey, that’s a Cal 34 sailing there!

So off we went to the lovely little Jarrell Cove on the north end of Harstine Island. We took off on Thursday evening, figuring we’d take advantage of the currents for a head start down to the island. We had an ulterior motive: to visit good friends Rose and Gary Benz, see their cute little Vivacity 20, Mudduck, and convince Rose to cook dinner for us.

Mudduck is like a boat for fairies. That boarding ladder is so tiny it borders on adorable. See how she sparkles?

The last time we were in Jarrell Cove was so long ago I’d have to do math to figure it out. You know how I feel about math. We had just sold our Catalina 27 to a woman who lived on Harstine Island and had docked the boat at a small private marina there. We had some boat stuff to bring her so decided to make the trek. Aboard our new-to-us Cal34, it took us an entire long day to get there. It seemed like such a long way.

After spending two nights in Rosedale catching our breath and doing a few boat projects, we had a nice downwind sail up Case Inlet to the northern shore of Stretch Island for a night, hoping to go ashore and walk a bit. Okay. I’m just going to say this: waste of time. There is a park on Stretch Island but perhaps the island is named for what a ‘stretch’ it is to say that this park is anything but a small beach, surrounded by – you guessed it- houses. Can you tell I’m ready for a little anchor time in the wilds of Canada? We anchored in front of a houseless sandy bluff and didn’t even get off the boat. Should have just gone directly to Jarrell Cove. Next time.

Scene from the side of a very sweet workshop.

Scene from the side of a very sweet workshop.

The wind shifted for us overnight, and we sailed into Jarrell Cove the following day, looking for a place to anchor. Perhaps my memory is bad, but it seems to me like we anchored out last time we were there. This time there were no places to anchor inside the cove, which was filled with mooring balls from the state park, as well as private mooring balls. We decided to pick up a ball, as it would be good practice.

The last time we tried this on Galapagos it was at James Island in the San Juans. The boat was new to us and I was filled with anxiety about the closeness of rocky cliffs. Mike was filled with anxiety about my anxiety. It was windy. We tried a couple of times, then bailed on the whole project instead of stopping, calming Amy G. Dala down, and coming up with another plan. It was dead disappointing and we felt like mooring ball failures.

There she is!

This time was way different! We had at least two plans before we even started. I helmed the boat, Mike lay flat on the deck just by the cockpit, and we picked it up on the first pass. Take THAT people on the nice Beneteau hoping for dinner and a show! Nothing to see here except a pretty boat! Go back to your previously scheduled drinking party. We high fived and I was so excited I posted to Facebook.

Tiny bitty winches and a tiny winch handle. Coming from our big boat, these amaze me.

We hooked up with Rose and Gary and prepared for a fun-filled afternoon and evening kayaking, showing off Galapagos, looking at boats, and visiting. The thing about Rose and Gary is that they like little boats. They like them so much that they own at least 10 of them, including that cute little twin keel Vivacity, 6 kayaks, a minto, a double kayak, and a zodiac. They are our heroes. In retirement, they live a life we aspire to live. They are in a great community of people who do things together and support each other,  have a wonderful place on the water where they can launch their little boats anytime they want to, and they have huge his and hers workshops where they can putter around and make lovely things. Seriously, if Harstine Island were not in the south sound (read: not enough sunshine, winters too long and dark for us) we would consider retiring there.

Rose also has a number of industrial sewing machines, since she used to have a saddle and tackle shop.

We spent a completely quiet night on the mooring ball and awoke to brilliant sunshine for our motorboat ride back home. It’s sure hard to leave when the day is so pretty and warm and the cockpit is so comfortable. No wind, but we continue to be amazed at how fast this boat goes compared to our Cal34. We left Jarrell Cove at noon and arrived back in our slip by 4:30. Whaaatt?? Of course, timing is everything through the narrows, but still, we were pushing 10 knots with a lift of about 2 knots from current. Not bad at all! I guess size really does matter.

Need a screw or nail, or brad, or anything else?

Back in Tacoma three friends waited on the dock, having seen us coming. I sure appreciate it when people run to help, just in case we need it. It makes my docking anxiety go way down. When was the last time we got that kind of help with stuff at home? I’m staring at the rocks that need cementing around that pond in my yard. I don’t see anyone at my front door here with big smiles on their faces, arms outstretched to catch bags of mortar …just saying. Our marina is pretty great.

Mike always makes a little list of things he’s decided to do to the boat at the end of every trip.

 

Nikon Prostaff Range Finder: A Big Win in a Small Package

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We just got home from our first mini-cruise of the year; this one to the south sound area of Hartstine Island. It was a ‘win’ all around, but one of the stars of our reality was our super little Prostaff Range finder made by Nikon. This was a Christmas gift to Mike last year from my mother, but I may have had something to do with whispering in Santa mom’s ear that this would be a good addition to our small  tools aboard Galapagos.

Ours is a rebuilt unit, which works great and cost less.

This was our first trip of the season and we wanted to play with all of our new toys before we actually needed them so we made a little guessing game about distances over the water. You know what? What they say about distances over the water is true: it’s weird how much further away things are than you think they are. Really! It is so very true that Mike did a couple of tests of the validity of this unit by using the GPS aboard to measure distance, then using the range finder to see if the results were the same. And they were. I offered to use the 100ft tape measure we have to be double dog sure of its accuracy, but Mike just looked at me. I’m so analog to his digital sometimes.

Our first anchorage was Rosedale, close to Gig Harbor. Rosedale is a very protected anchorage and this is where you should go if you want to look at houses. Seriously. There isn’t a spec of shoreline to anchor off without a big honking house plopped down on it. So I hope they enjoyed the view of Galapagos for a couple of days. We like looking at houses, but we’re not really fans of being in people’s back yards. Still, we dropped the hook in quiet water, surrounded by private docks, and whipped out the little Prostaff just for fun. How far is that private dock from our private boat?

Sure, it’s obviously far enough. But how far is it, really? What’s your guess? That dock in the middle was our target.

The Prostaff is dead easy to use. Just hold it to your eye, put your target in the crosshairs, and push a little button on top of the unit. That’s all there is to it. Just one button. Just one push. Maybe two if you want to be extra sure. Compare this ease of use to the new automatic fog horn Mike just installed. It automatically blows the fog horn every set number of seconds, which is nice.  It came with our GPS unit. I made the mistake of asking how to use the foghorn function. Apparently it involves pushing a button a number of times, reading tiny print on the screen, and then doing some kind of heavy scrolling action down a menu written for ants. I don’t know. I fell asleep during the scrolling down part. I’ll need written instructions for that one. Good thing we have those little cans of fog horn noise on board, too. In a pinch, I can just reach for one of those.  Give me one button to push and I’ll push it. Just one.

Hold it to your eye. Site your target. Push one easy button. Read the number. Done.

The answer to our quiz? The closest private dock was 162 yards from our boat. Whaaattt? That was way further than we guessed. We double and triple checked, which is easy enough to do since you only have to PUSH ONE BUTTON! In the second photo of this post, that dock is our target and that dock is 162 yards from the boat. That is over 1.5 times the distance of the playing field in football.

Here’s what having this little unit on board has done for my anxiety about being too close to things:

aok

How much anxiety? Zero. Nada.

Now, maybe you don’t want to spend the money on one of these little gizmos. No worries because we’ve got you covered with a cheap and easy old-school way to make one, which I just discovered while going through some of our old sailing books during this trip. In this case Crusing World’s Workbench:

I’ll just let them do the talking. They ‘splain it better than me anyhow. Warning: Involves math. Now do you want to just buy the digital version?

After we got settled I plopped the dinghy into the water to dinghy out to this sailboat anchored at the other end of the bay. I thought I recognized her from when we were boat shopping years before and I was right. She is a beautiful Spencer 1330 named Athena. Had she been in our price range, she would have been a serious contender for us. She is absolutely beautiful and I’ll bet she sails like a dream.

Narrower of beam than our boat, and without the full keel, she still represents a seriously great blue water cruiser. And guess what! She is still for sale. I can’t imagine why, but she’s listed on Craigslist and Yachtworld.   She has almost everything Galapagos has, including a new Beta Marine engine, PLUS a double walled Airex hull, which I seriously wish we had. If you know someone in the market for a boat in this price range, turn them on to this boat. We took a good long look at her from the outside and took a number of photos. We liked what we saw. Just beautiful.

Athena, a Spencer 1330, sitting in Rosedale harbor.

 

Put the ‘Fun’ in Functional Storage with this Cheap Trick

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I was complaining of being bored the other day. We won’t be moving aboard until at least the end of the summer, and we don’t get to have a long cruise this year because of Mike’s work. That pesky annual leave thing is going to be a thing of the past soon enough, so we’re content to wait out the remaining months doing a little bit here and there to move forward with our plan. The house and yard are in maintenance mode, my practice continues to slowly wind down. I’m fine with living in the liminal space, as a rule. But finding myself kind of wandering aimlessly around the house trying to look busy just isn’t my style.  It’s like don’t know what to do with myself. I decided I needed a few small but useful projects for the boat, starting with that cool cockpit mat.cockpitmat

The rumpus room in the v berth is taking shape and we will be using this cabin to watch movies and TV shows we like. To move forward with that plan,  I sorted and stored our DVD collection, throwing out all the colorful plastic containers and storing each DVD in its own plastic sleeve. I then labeled and stored them in nifty snap-locking containers I bought at JoAnn Fabric for 8$ apiece. I know many cruisers store hundreds of movies on thumb drives and maybe that will be in our future. For now, I don’t have the patience for that. This was quick and easy and finding what we want will also be quick and easy.

Our midship cabin got refurbished, too, with the addition of a layer of latex to the foam, and new upholstery.

You’ll be glad to know that the aft cabin project is moving along. We took possession of the finished mattresses this week and I carted them down to the boat to see that they fit before getting them covered. It’s probably overkill, but since I didn’t have any old foam to take in to use as patterns ( I had made my own paper pattern) I just wanted to eyeball the fit before covering. They fit beautifully and allow us to sleep any old which way. The bed is going to be very comfortable and will last for 20 years if we protect them. The next task is to bring them home so I can cover them in that PUL fabric, then take them for their final upholstery. After that, I get to make custom covers and sheets. Won’t that be a creative undertaking! I do believe our goal of having a totally comfortable, sleepable aft cabin is coming to fruition.

So much nicer than what we had before!

The trusty Brother sewing machine has been dusted off and I am rediscovering my love of sewing. As we are now envisioning being able to live with that aft cabin, it was time to turn my thoughts to how we would store our clothing there. We have one hanging locker, a small set of drawers, and a small drawer under each side of the bunk. There are shelves along the hull on each side and I’d like to keep them uncluttered. I would like to keep both clothing and bedding in that cabin and I wanted that storage to be easy to access because otherwise I am tempted to leave my clothes laying around draped decoratively on doorknobs and corners of objects. I know it’s a long shot, but we both really want to keep a neat and tidy look in our boat. It just feels better that way.

Cuteness overload!

Cuteness overload!

I had been considering colorful soft sided baskets to keep clothing in but where to put them was in question. Instead I opted to make fabric bags that look like pillow shams of different sizes and shapes. I bought 1.5 yards of this super cute owl outdoor fabric on sale for 12$/yard.  Then I found a 3$ remnant of orange fabric that matched. I purchased thread, some velcro, and a set of nylon upholstery zippers.  Total cost for materials was about 40$. For that price, plus some fun time at the sewing machine, I have a selection of sizes of storage containers for soft things like bedding and clothing: 2 large for blankets and such, two standard sized bolsters for shorts, tops, bathing suits, and three additional sizes – 7 storage units in all. These can be stored right in sight on the beds as pillows. The fabric is water repellant and UV protected. Plus…owls! Seriously, you can fit a ton of stuff in these things. Functional, practical, and fun!

The largest bag is 15″ x 26″, for scale purposes.

Mike is working on a couple of interior projects that he will write about soon. Our next joint project will be putting shelving in most, if not all, of the hanging lockers. We have a generous amount of hanging locker space, most of which is completely wasted because we don’t have that many clothes that hang. We already know that this job is going to be a pain in the hind end, so if you have any shortcut tips on how to make it easier, do tell. We want the shelves to take full advantage of all space, so that means they will have have to be custom cut.

This currently holds two blankets and two pillows. It would work great in the forward cabin as an extra pillow for lounging.

Oh, and guess what! We get to go on a short cruise over the Memorial Day weekend. We’ve got friends to stay with Skippy, so Thursday night we are out of here! Yay! We are both so ready for that.