Author Archives: Melissa

Our Last Hurrah?

Posted on by

I got a couple of messages from the Universe this week that it was time to update the blog again. Actually, the messages were from readers either asking for links to old content or telling us they’ve been enjoying Little Cunning Plan for a couple of years. Naturally I began to feel the nudges of a particularly motivating form of guilt that always lies just underneath the surface when I’ve been too distracted by life to write. It’s sort of like forgetting to feed my dog.  I know when I’ve been remiss. The blog looks at me with doleful eyes and ears laid flat, then looks away, filled with loathing.

Or maybe just confusion.

But, after all, even if I am not spending every moment of every day working my rear end off right now, I feel deeply all the changes that are beginning to crystallize in our lives. So there is this kind of energetic ‘busy-ness’ that is constant all day every day. There is a tension in the very air, a pregnant waiting.  All big plans have a sort of tipping point where all the preparations begin to suddenly come together like precipitate in a test tube. First that liquid is clear, then one more drop and all hell is breaking loose in that little vial of glass. That’s pretty much how it feels. We’re waiting for that final drop, and we don’t know when, or even IF it will come.

Emotionally, I’m on the verge of excitement but still leaning towards fear. Maybe I just don’t know the difference between the two. Or maybe I’m afraid to feel excited because there are still many, many things that need to come together for this whole transition to be complete. A picture is emerging in this tapestry we are weaving, but we are still depending on our creative imaginations to tell us what the final product could look like. We try to just enjoy the process while having a loose idea of the direction we are going.

Maybe it will look like more of this. That would be great, but we’d really like warmer water and weather for awhile.

In practical terms, that means we’ve done most of the downsizing we can do until we actually move onto the boat. We’ve been meeting with our property manager and there is a concrete plan for putting our house on the short term rental market. This is Plan A. We are positioned nicely in terms of location. All indications are that there is a need for this type of housing in this area because of the huge presence of military bases.  We will throw our hat into this ring in January by advertising on the military websites, targeting specifically that population as well as the larger companies that have executives who come in for periods of time and prefer a home to the local hotels. If people reserve the house, that will be the drop in the solution that begins another flurry of activity. We’ll have to move all of our personal stuff out of the house.

We love our new logo.

We love our new logo.

So we were a little relieved when this week our name came up on the list for a storage unit at the marina. We signed for it immediately, feeling very fortunate that the timing, if a little early, was not too late. We got a unit about the size of a one car garage, located close to the gate we use at the marina. This is good fortune and we consider it a wink from the Universe that things are working out.

So when are we moving aboard? That is likely to be a process that happens very quickly, and we do not know exactly when it will be. The imaginary renters will determine that when they are made flesh in the real world. It could happen as soon as the end of February. It is likely we will not be full time liveaboards right away. We may be moving back and forth from the house to the boat for awhile, which would be very strange.

We will need to figure this out.

And what about our little Skippy dog? Simply put, we are starting now to get him used to the marina. He’s a smart dog, and we think if we start taking him down with us he can get used to being on the boat. I have been spending a lot of time on the boat seeing clients, which has worked out very well. I am considering taking him with me so he can get used to it. We won’t leave the country with him, but while we are here, he stays with us. He is very treat-motivated (some say extremely so). We hope by the time we are living there even part time, he will be adjusting.

So we are enjoying another Christmas season in our home with our kids. Claire and Dan arrived from Guatemala and will be with us until Valentine’s Day, when they head back to Scotland for a visit to Dan’s home. Claire has made herself a nice career writing for Investopedia and some other financial websites. Dan is a digital artist who designed our logo for Galapagos. We love our logo and we love that they are part of the new ‘digital nomad’ generation.  Look Claire’s articles up on Investopedia and Dividend.com. Dan has a new site with t-shirts he designed to appeal to the young and politically hip crowd. Need a logo for your boat or business? Contact Dan Moffat: moffatdesigns(at)gmail.com.

That day we had a pony party in our big back yard to welcome Claire home from some travels.

Is this Christmas season one last hurrah in our house? Where will we be next Christmas? Will Mike and Melissa and their little dog have to spend next winter aboard Galapagos in the marina? (Ack!) Who knows? We certainly don’t.

And those hatch lenses we fixed with aluminum tape? Still not leaking. Yay!

 

Ho Ho Hoist the Sail!

Posted on by

Christmas is coming. For most people, December 25 is a good enough day to celebrate gift giving in whatever form. At our house, Christmas has come early. That’s right, Mike and I already have opened our Christmas present to each other because Santa surprised us early this year. He came to our house from his house in Minnesota. He came in his truck with eight tiny horses under the hood and a truck bed full of spinnaker. Here’s how that happened.

Deploying the spinnaker from the forward berth. A dream come true for this man.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, the previous owner of the boat, with whom we are friends, had in his possession a beautifully made spinnaker. It had been made for our boat by a mystery previous owner (Our boat has had a number of owners.), and came stowed cozily in its magnificent sail bag. The sail was practically new and when times grew hard, he sold the sail to his brother, who sails a boat of similar size in Bellingham. Or rather, he owns a boat of similar size in Bellingham. I understand there isn’t a lot of actual sailing going on.  So when we bought Galapagos, she had not seen this sail for a few years. Like a family heirloom, it had been stored safely away from the light of day, probably in the marine equivalent of the brother’s attic.

We’ve been talking about wanting a light air sail, but, you  know, $$$$. We sure could have used a nice cruising spinnaker this summer when  light airs were all the rage along the coast of Vancouver Island. Little did we know Santa John was listening.

It’s like a large larval organism. Or perhaps a tape worm.

A couple of weeks ago John (the PO) traveled from his home in Minnesota to the Bellingham area. He repossessed this sail from his brother and brought it down to us, offering us a great deal on this excellent sail that has hardly seen the light of day. This thing looks brand new. It has a beautiful sail bag that fits exactly between the rails at the bow, and a sock that makes it dead easy to deploy. We took the sail with the understanding that we’d look it over, deploy it on the boat and then make a decision about whether we wanted to buy it from him. He left it with us and tootled on along his route. Ho ho ho, Mike and Melissa! MEEERRRYY Christmas!spinnaker fitting

When Mike came home and looked at the construction of the sailbag, he began fingering the sail, a glazed look coming over his face. It was the gaze of lust. And this time, I was not the target. This was sail lust. I knew right then Christmas was upon us. This sail would have to be complete crap to avoid becoming stored in our forward berth. And I knew that this sail was not a piece of crap. Visions of our checking account balances danced in my head. Sometimes, you just have to go with a great deal, especially when it would break someone’s heart to pass it up.

This past weekend we had sun and very light wind. We decided we’d tape those hatches, and then for dessert we’d play with this spinnaker and see what it was like before the sun went down.

So if you read our previous post and looked at the photos, you’ll notice who was doing all the work. That’s right. I was. This is because I cut a straighter line than Mike does. I am the tape installer.  So Mike played the role of ‘warm body’ whereby he cleaned the lenses and the hatch frames, readying them for the taping. Needless to say, he got restless and bored. Cleaning the lenses and frames and policing the deck for garbage from the project just wasn’t enough stimulation for his large mammalian brain, and pretty soon I realized that he was no longer looking over my shoulder. Then, I heard the sound of a halyard being surreptitiously raised.

“What the heck do you think you’re doing?”, I asked, hands on hips, knowingly. Yes, knowingly, as the larval sail was already halfway raised.

Caught red handed, he could only look sheepish (and GUILTY)  as I laid out my thoughts on people who started playing with new toys that are mutual property while other people are on hands and knees wielding a sharp cutting wheel and shiny tape. I was dealing with flashbacks of Christmases past whereby Santa left toys meant to be shared with my siblings. Ugh. Bad Santa!

This was NOT the plan. Tape first. Playing with new sail second so we could both enjoy it. And no, I cannot ‘tape faster’. This has to look decent or we’ll both hate it. Simmer down, my friend, simmer down.

I submit to you that this position is much less fun than raising a new sail.

“Put that sail back in the bag, Boyte. You don’t get to see what it looks like and have all the fun while my knees are killing me. What are you thinking? What unmitigated gall!”  Justly chastised, he put the sail back in the bag. Sometimes this guy just kills me with his cuteness over things like new sails. I have to be strong like Badger, even justifiably indignant. Someone has to have some discipline around here.

Having never owned a spinnaker sock, our previous experience with spinnakers has not been exactly delightful. We cruised with our spinnaker on Moonrise on a number of occasions, but it was always a lot of effort to get the sail up correctly and tacking was probably a pretty good show for anyone sailing close by. Raising the spinnaker was one of the occasions on that boat when I might have been heard sighing in acceptance of my fate, secretly asking in my head, “My God. Why can’t we just sit here and go .5 knots and be happy? Maybe there will be whales to watch.”. This spinnaker is much different!

Beautiful! We can’t wait to fly her on the water.

Up went this sail, and we both were delighted not only with how easy it was, but how beautiful it is as well. Wind was only about 2 knots and the sail was filling easily, tugging Galapagos in her slip. Sadly, late fall offers only short days and the sun was already dipping below the buildings in Tacoma.

We’re using red as our trim color for Galapagos and the sail is red and white, just lovely really. We plan to replace the lifelines with soft lines and I’ve been thinking red to match the lettering on the stern. Yeah, I know. I’m already decorating with this sail. Still, nothing like being a pretty boat out on the water and red is such a holiday color. Happy Christmas to us!

Want to see how easy this is to douse?  (Sorry about the sound. A train came just as we were filming. Our marina is very noisy.)  [vsw id=”giSmx7UQ86M” source=”youtube” width=”425″ height=”344″ autoplay=”no”]

We hope we use this sail more than any of the previous owners did. It’s a bit of a mystery where this sail came from, but we’ve been in touch Derek, another previous owner, and he’s never seen it. We think that leaves only the owners who sailed her to Mexico. We’ve contacted North Sails to see if they can look it up by sail number, but no response yet.

It’s a lovely thing, and we have visions of a beautiful downwind sail with it. How that plays out in reality we shall see. What do you think? Will we use this sail? When a piece of equipment this nice practically drops into your lap for literally a small fraction of what you’d pay to have one made, you don’t turn Santa down.

 

Ready, Set….No.

Posted on by

Okay, okay, yes, everyone in the Little Cunning Plan household needed to just calm down; get a little reality check, untwist our collective knickers. And we’ve done just that. Wiser minds have prevailed and I hope ours are among them. After our last post where I ranted about how pissed off I was that the hatches leaked, and threatened to use butyl tape to re-bed them in the cold season, our readers raced to our rescue and gave us a good talking to. We love our readers.  And we love how they bring good ideas to the table. Because I can come up with some really bad ideas when I’m mad. 

One of the comments that made us take a deep breath was this reminder by a reader known by the sobriquet of “Saffy the Pook”. Got to love that. He/She put in writing what we had been talking about, only reading it in someone else’s words planted our feet even more firmly on beloved terra firma:

“Like your exhaust, this is not a job that will tolerate shortcuts or amateur mistakes. Also like your exhaust, it can have serious negative repercussions if it fails at sea under trying conditions. As painful as it may be, commit to doing it right whether that means spending the time to do it yourself or spending the money to have a pro do it for you.”  (Saffy the Pook)

Of course, that is 100% accurate. You’ll get no argument from us, Saffy.  And you express this with such a reasonable tone, too.  When I say this kind of thing, it comes out more like, “WE CAN’T GO TO SEA WITH A *&^$^&* LEAKING HATCH! WHAT IF A BIG WAVE COMES? WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE HAVE TO DO THIS OVER? MY HANDS ARE STILL RECOVERING FROM ALL THE **&^ CLEANING WE DID LAST TIME! I STILL HAVEN’T REPLACED ALL THE BRAIN CELLS I LOST DUE TO ACETONE! CAN WE PAY SOMEONE TO DO THIS FOR US? WHY AM I WHINING IN CAPITAL LETTERS ALL THE TIME???”  Your way is probably better. 

Around the same time, alert reader and friend Lee Youngblood (sailor, yacht broker, photographer) sent us an email with this subject line: “DON”T DO IT!”.  Well that got our attention! He cautioned us about rushing into making a repair at this moment in time, reminding us that butyl tape is only for applications where there is compression between pieces (and duh, we actually knew that and it’s why we didn’t use it in the first place, but I forgot about that in my pissed-off stomping fit).  He also reminded us that cold weather was not a good time for bedding material to set up well.  Lots of smacking of ourselves in the head was happening, let me tell you.

Even when I’m in a rant, the better part of my brain is working the problem and trying to find the least offensive solution, but keeping the primary goal in mind is sometimes an issue. In this case, the primary goal was keeping water out of the boat for the rainy season, not redoing the entire job. So I had started researching short term solutions, wishing that I could find something like the butyl tape we used on the ports in the hull. That stuff is working great! But, of course, getting that off would not be easy, and it would look pretty bad, too. Didn’t anyone make a clear rubbery weatherproof tape with good adhesion? A girl can dream. A girl can waste plenty of time doing the Google on stuff like this, also.foil tape

Then we got Lee Youngblood’s email suggesting we try an old cruiser trick of using aluminum tape. Bingo. In fact, we had some of that on the boat already. Another reader suggested using preservation tape, and that sounded like it would be a winner, too. But we already had the aluminum tape.  Mike used it when he was building the refrigerator box. I remember at the time he was working on the fridge he commented that he loved that stuff and could think of many uses for it. He wanted to keep some on the boat, so we had maybe half a roll left. The stuff we used is called Extreme Weather Foil Tape and it’s basically like heavy aluminum foil with a good sticky backing. Don’t ask me why we didn’t think of using that. Viva, Lee!

I hope you weren’t holding your breath waiting to see if we actually did those hatches right this time because you’ll have to wait until warm weather comes back around. That’s a lot of breath holding. Today we went down to the boat and made her water tight (hopefully) with this stuff. It’s really too wide, so first thing we did was cut each piece into two pieces of equal  width. This stuff is really easy to work with but get it right the first time when you apply it. If you have to reposition it, it’s not going to be nice and smooth anymore. We did all three hatches and are very pleased that they look decent. 

After applying the tape, I went over it with my fingers smoothing it out and making sure that the edge was firmly adhering all the way around each lens. It is easy to puncture this stuff with any kind of sharp edge, so you need to use care when smoothing. Other than that, this tape is dead easy to use and the paper backing comes off easily. 

Anyhoo, I think/hope/pray we’ve got this under control for this season. Add it to the long list of tasks to be addressed at the haul out this summer. Ideally, we’d like to be able to take the hatch lids off to work on them. I think being able to take them home and put them on the bench to work on will help us be sure all the silicone is off, if, indeed, that is the problem. The other possibility causing the leaking is that we didn’t use enough product, especially on the forward hatch. We were nervous about using too much, but may have erred on the side of being too cautious. Live and learn. Perhaps that mystery will be solved when we give it another go.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for bringing your experience to the table!