Category Archives: Galapagos

Ho Ho Hoist the Sail!

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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.

 

Tour of O’Reillys

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So now that we’re back and you know the trip was great, I know what you are thinking. You are thinking “What? No boat work in the exotic wilds of British Columbia? No problems with Galapagos? Surely there were moments filled with tension, drama, and huge outlays of cash?”.   Well, maybe not, but we did get to do a grand tour of O’Reilly Auto Parts because : refrigeration.  Our little Cool Blue unit isn’t tweaked juuusssttt right yet. So here’s how that went down.

Mike, practicing being a hunter/gatherer just in case.

In Mike’s post on Reefer Madness he explains our decision-making process when it came to refurbishing the fridge box we already had on Galapagos. By the time we left the dock in July, the fridge was icy cold, the freezer temp was in the low teens, and we were ready to provision for the trip. You know, it is common wisdom that a full fridge is more efficient than an empty one so I filled both sides up to the brim with pre-chilled foods.  We had fresh food, produce,  milk products, and frozen meat to last us at least 3 weeks. We left the dock and made way to Liberty Bay to hopefully meet up with some cruising club folks for the fireworks display on July 3 (they do it a day early).

Turn out this is just too many boats for us. It was crazy crowded.

By the next day it was clear that the fridge was not cutting the old proverbial  mustard. My note in my cruising journal says “Fridge is struggling to keep up with keeping food cold and Mike is struggling to figure out why.”  The freezer was measuring at 19F but that must have been only in the very coldest spot as the food was not frozen, only cold, except in the very bottom. The fridge was measuring at 47F; not cold enough to keep bacteria from growing. With three weeks of food in there, we had to do something in order to avoid spoilage because Mike is still learning how to fish up here.  The only thing we could figure is that the system was somehow losing freon, although we didn’t know how this could be true. Still, it was a hypothesis to be tested.

One of the reasons we chose the Cool Blue system is that allegedly it is easy to work on in remote locations with easily obtainable supplies you can buy at any auto parts store. Since we were still in a town, I fired up the Safari Browser on the smart phone and located the closest O’Reilly, betting that some poor sod would be keeping the consumer fires burning even on a national holiday that celebrates our freedom.  We had definitely not planned on spending July 4 at Liberty Bay with literally hundreds of other boats, but the fridge duty called. Freedom isn’t free, you know.

This seems like the perfect place for the Cool Blue unit. It’s easy to access here.

We rowed to shore, crept surreptitiously up someone’s private stairs to the road from the beach, and hiked the 2 miles to the O’Reilly Auto Parts. It was open. And the freon was on sale. Oh happy day! We bought the refill kit, the exact stuff Cool Blue has in our instructions. Sigh of relief. On the way back we stopped at Starbucks for a celebratory coffee and mini-scone and a delightful conversation with a 5 year old girl and her baby brother. Ah, the early childhood days. How precious and fleeting they are. We hiked back to the boat.

Filled with the trust of the innocent, or at least denial, Mike prepared the Cool Blue for infusion with the life-giving fluid. The drama begins here. Because it’s just NEVER that simple, is it? Mike carefully attached the little hose to the can of freon, then went to attach the business end to the nozzle on the Cool Blue.  The attachment on the nozzle was the wrong size. It didn’t fit.

See that blue thingy? The opening on the other side is too big.

The little kit we bought, which matched the photo on the instruction sheet exactly, had the wrong sized valve for our lovely little Cool Blue. For some reason known only to men in outdated suits eating donuts in some board room somewhere, the manufacturers changed the size of the valve. I hate them a little bit for doing that. Mike’s face crumpled. He valiantly tried over and over to get freon into that system. But there was no way to tell for certain if anything was actually doing its job.  Was the freon, in fact, entering the tiny tube? Or were we breathing it into our lungs? Only time would tell, so we pulled anchor and hightailed it out of there while the current was in our favor to get under the Agate Passage bridge.

After observing the temperature for a couple of hours it was clear that we had failed. The fridge temperature remained the same.  Our destination became Port Townsend, one of the places we usually stop in preparation for crossing the Strait of Juan de Fuca. There would be an O’Reilly Auto Parts store there.

Trying to get the fitting to work by holding it on just a certain way; which is useless.

This part of the passage, from south to north, is almost always an upwind passage and over the years we should have learned not to try to sail on this leg. But you know, every time we sail to Port Townsend, we are still newly into whatever trip we are taking and we are like children at a birthday party who cannot wait to open their presents. We want to put the sails up and turn that dratted engine off. (Sorry, Hiram. ) We put them up. We tack. We make no progress. We sigh. Mike plays ‘Let’s Make a Deal’ with the wind, but what is behind door number two is more frustration as he tries to eeek out nautical miles against both wind, and by this time, current. Finally, Hiram is fired up to do his job and we motor the rhumbline to Port Townsend and drop the hook close to the public dock among our own kind. We love Port Townsend as a place to visit. Too bad it seems like we’re always either on a mission, or just passing through.

Why Port Townsend is so charming.

Someday maybe I will see the inside of this place.

After an excellent sleep and morning coffee in the cockpit we parked the dink at the public dock and walked the mile or so to see our friend, O’Reilly. There we ‘splained to the nice lady behind the counter what we were looking for and were met with the kind of blank stare we have come to both expect and fear. Mike and I exchanged a look; the look that says ‘We’re screwed.’ .  As one we went to observe the offerings on display in the air conditioning section. Then we went to some other section and hung around some more, coming to terms with the inevitable. I kind of felt bad for the O’Reilly lady. She seemed genuinely  that sorry she couldn’t help us. As we silently lumped back to the counter, she noticed a retrofit kit hanging on the vertical display by the coolant. This kit was specifically designed to  make the manufacturers more money  allow you to bridge from the old size valve to the new. Saved! We were in business.

The adapter kit.

The Hawaiian Chieftain was in dry dock. This is why we love this boat yard so much.

As is our custom, we celebrated the successful outcome of our emotional roller coaster with food. After a walk through our favorite Port Townsend boatyard, we had a big breakfast at the always-delightful and delicious Blue Moose Cafe. Cash or check only, and bring your appetite. This is a popular place and the food gods smiled on us as we were granted the last possible place to sit outside on a strangely hot day. By the time we were seated, there was a line of people waiting for seats.

Back at Galapagos, all systems were ‘go’.  The elixir of life was eased into the copper vein of the Cool Blue system. Our new fitting worked perfectly and Mike kept the little gauge in the green zone as he filled the system. It was all guesswork, though, because we really didn’t know how much freon was still left in system. One is supposed to be able to look into a tiny viewing window and see bubbles of some kind forming to assess the freon-flow situation, but frankly this is a viewing window for ants. We could never see a thing.

The viewing window for ants.

The only way to be sure would be to drain the entire system and then add exactly two cans of the freon.  Simply put, we didn’t want to go that route. We had two extra cans if Plan A didn’t work. Draining the system would require that we take everything out of the fridge, let the fridge get to room temperature, which was about 90F,  and then start over.

Putting the new size valve on the old one.

The transfusion process. We have no idea what that green zone meant, if anything regarding this system. We just figured green=good. Red=bad, just like in nature.

By this time it was 2:00 in the afternoon and we were anxious to get going, which was kind of dumb because we totally would have enjoyed more time in Port Townsend. Another day, perhaps. We were so ready to go that we forgot to check the current/tide charts. Whoopsie! Rounding Pt. Wilson we quickly realized our mistake as we lost speed against the current. Whatever. In for a penny, as the saying goes. We hoisted the sails and tried with minimum success to tack across the current. About this time Alex and Christina Marie Kimball on their beautiful Nonsuch 30 S/V Gypsy Wind, spotted us and hailed us on the radio to say hello. They, of course, were skidding into Port Townsend with the current behind them. It’s kind of hard to explain over the radio why people who should know better are trying to sail against the current around Pt. Wilson. So we didn’t even try. We got about 10 minutes of decent sailing in, then fired up Hiram as usual. And off we went toward Dungeness Spit.

Walking by the marina, we spotted this.

The refrigerator performed very well the rest of the time we were out. The missing freon continues to be a mystery. We are still considering tweaking the system a little bit as Mike has split the box into part freezer, part fridge and we are not sure this is really working as well as theory would suggest.  Still, we had cold food and most of the food in the freezer stayed frozen except for the stuff at the very top. And we did notice that the less food we had in there, the better the unit worked. Hmmmm. That is not what we are looking for. So Mike is going to contact the Cool Blue folks, who do offer really good customer service, and have another chat.

The only true failure was our idea of using that bottom compartment as a crisper. It just doesn’t stay cool enough. If we had a small hole in the bottom of the cold box, cool air would filter down and keep that area cooler. But that’s a decision we’ll make after other tweaks are done.

Update on August 8: Mike got a lengthy email from Rich from Cool Blue (really, this guy is uber-responsive to any and all questions and very helpful).  Turns out, the reason the valve on the Cool Blue is not the right one is because the laws regarding refrigeration are variable based on the state you live in. You know, that figures. He agreed with reader Steve Yoder that if the fridge was too packed it wouldn’t cool efficiently. He also sent more detailed information about what to look for in that little viewing chamber if we every go ahead and empty the system and refill it with exactly two cans of freon. Mike and I want to be sure that people know that we do like this unit and that the issues are issues with us, not with the Cool Blue unit. We’ve retrofit a large capacity box and then attached this unit to it. Probably it would have been easier in some ways to just rip out the old and put a prefab unit in place, but that would have required a level of galley destroying we were not ready to undertake. He’ll do another Reefer Madness post as we get the final tweaks done.

This was a failure. It just wasn’t cool enough down there. Maybe we’ll tweak that, maybe not.  All this stuff ended up in the fridge.

 

S/V Elsa, 1974 Ingrid 38

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Let’s all get real clear about one thing: It is Mike who is building the refrigerator system on Galapagos.  In his post on Reefer Madness Mike consistently used the prounoun ‘we’ to refer to all the work being done on our boat. In Mike’s case, he doesn’t generally refer to himself in the plural form as though he were royalty. Mike is not known to say things like ‘Take us to the royal bed as we are tired.’, or ‘We disagree with the lowering of taxes on the masses as we love our money.’.  No, he may speak the ‘Queen’s English’ as a rule, but he doesn’t generally speak as though he WERE the Queen.  Or King. Or whatever.

Mike aboard S/V Elsa took this shot of us as we passed each other out on the bay.

Mike aboard S/V Elsa took this shot of us as we passed each other out on the bay.

So I can only assume that his use of the collective term is meant to somehow imbue me with a sense of having participated more than I actually have. Or perhaps he is using the term the same way people do when the woman has given birth. You know, as in ‘WE had a baby’. Well, NO, ‘WE’ did not. The woman had the baby and you, pathetic man, stood by and watched with helpless awe and wonder. You got to be there for the fun part before, and the fun part after, but the actual growing and birthing of the child? Not so much. And don’t you forget it!

So let’s get real clear about the fact that it is Mike’s job to build this baby. My job is to stand by and watch with pathetic awe and wonder, my jaw usually on the floor. My how our roles have reversed in the last 30 years.

I got this photo of S/V Elsa on a beautiful winter sailing day in February. Could there BE a more perfect name for this boat?

Mike is burning the candle at both ends lately and I am waiting for the crash and burn. He hasn’t set a pace for himself like this since 1992 when we tore the roof off our second house to add another floor on the same day I went into labor with Andrew. If it were not for me, he would be working himself into a lather, and not the good kind. When he started becoming sleepless due to constant perseverating over the fridge project,  I knew I had to intervene and I would need some new blood in order to get his attention. I decided ‘we’ would take a break and have dinner with some new friends of ours and then go and view their beautiful boat, an Ingrid 38 named Elsa. There is nothing like new friends and their boat to get a guy’s attention, especially when the two guys have so much in common, not the least of which is their mutual first name. (Hint: MacGyver.)

If blogs are good for anything it is meeting other like-minded people. We have met a number of great folks through our blog, most of whom live nowhere near us. S/V Elsa’s people, Michael and Kristin, live in Kirkland and keep their boat in Tacoma at Hylebos Marina, where we used to haul out Moonrise, our old Cal 34. Kristin contacted us through our blog late last year and we arranged dinner together. It was great to see them again this year, hear about their new precious grand baby, and finally swap boat viewings.

Bronze samson posts. 100% saucy.

Elsa is a 1974 Ingrid 38 and Michael and Kristin are the third owners. They bought her from someone who had loved her well, started a lot of projects, then had to sell before seeing them completed. Fortunately for them, he left the boat full of brand new parts and pieces of beautiful wood to finish the old girl.  Michael and Kristin, like all old-boat owners who love their vessels, have found a project to fill their hearts and their days as they finish what the previous owner started. Michael’s goal with Elsa is to have a vessel with simple systems that sails beautifully, staying as true to the classic ways of this lovely boat as possible. Apparently owning a boat like Elsa has been a lifelong dream of Michael’s. He’s living the dream!

The previous owner made this block himself. He left a box of them on the boat.

Stepping aboard Elsa you can feel her solid structure under your feet. She rides in the slip gracefully, no jerky movements to put you off balance and plenty of room to move around. In fact, the Ingrid 38 is designed to be sea-kindly and to sail well in rough seas. Originally designed to be a wooden boat, she has the salty look of a much older sailing vessel.  It’s really so lovely to just be able to ‘step’ aboard a boat rather than climb aboard as you have to do with Galapagos. Different boats, different compromises. At 38 feet, Elsa is just right for a couple who wants to do coastal cruising in this area and she is built for off-shore sailing in mind so they have the perfect ‘go anywhere’ boat for two.

All new opening ports, added by the previous owner. Wow!

Like all ‘new’ boat owners, Michael and Kristin have a number of little projects and plans for their girl, but they are also dedicated to sailing her as much as possible. Between sailings there are plans to paint the deck a different color of tan, change the boot stripe color to a pale grey, and they receive their mainsail with new strong track attached this week. We are envious of that little addition to their sailing system and will be keeping a gimlet eye or two on how that performs for them. I get the impression that it is sailing first, boat work second.

MacGyver at his best.

In the photo above, note how Michael solved the problem of adding winches to his mast without drilling extra holes in the hollow wooden spar. Since the spar is painted, he cannot tell for sure what’s underneath the paint except to know that it is a hollow wooden box, many feet tall. He wanted winches, but not holes. So he had these steel brackets fabricated and mounted the winches onto wood boards. These can be easily removed to make sure moisture is not causing trouble underneath the wood. He also had that bar for the staysail fabricated to allow it to move freely as needed. Sweet.

Elsa’s heart.

Elsa’s Volvo engine is accessed through this hobbit door behind the entry steps. For a 38 foot boat, the engine space is generous and I enjoyed Michael’s description of how he would lay down a tarp and ‘swan dive’ into this space, being careful of the crunchy bits against soft flesh. I believe he may have shed a tear or two when beholding Mike’s engine room aboard Galapagos, but hey, you buy a 47 foot boat and you, too, can have an engine room. We all have our trade offs.

Here’s what made me shed a tear or two myself:

Two guesses what this is.

You’ll never guess what Elsa has on board due to the previous owner’s creatively devious mind. This, my boaty friends, is what amounts to a Japanese sitting tub. Yes, that is not me making this up just to make Mike feel guilty. This is an actual fact. Aboard this Ingrid 38 there is a sitting tub in the head. It’s also a great storage space for life jackets but the point is that if they WANTed to sit in a tub of warm water after a rough sail, they could. And I am dead jealous of that. My tub will be sorely missed when we move aboard Galapagos. I see those little tubs in boats like Spencers and Maple Leafs and it makes me swoon just a little. As I fall to the ground on my knees with desire, I have visions of how I could get me one of those aboard Galapagos. I see this one is built in place rather than fabricated and then installed. Hmmmm. The little grey cells begin computing…

V berth on the Ingrid 38.

While Mike and Michael compared notes on things like electrical systems and such, Kristin and I viewed the V berth with a critical eye. Kristin and I share in common a love of a good comfortable sleeping space on a boat. By ‘comfortable’ I mean one that has headroom, light, and that doesn’t require a herculean effort crawling over a sleeping spouse in the middle of the night when nature calls, as it so inevitably does. (And with more frequency, I might add, as one gets closer to that certain age, whatever that is.)

Kristin and Michael are planning to remodel this area. We will be watching closely. Photo credit to their blog.

So she is looking at a remodel of the salon to make cuddling up easier, and create a space for them to sleep more comfortably. I understand her pain. It seems we both have a certain type of space in mind, and while we agree that we understand sailing and safety systems come first, our desires will not be thwarted forever. Stay tuned for updates to all of that on our mutual blogs.

New sinks, countertops, and faucet.

Their galley is adorable and functional. The previous owner put in a new sink and faucet, lined the icebox with nice formica, and resurfaced the countertops. These are all projects that will be happening aboard our boat, too, so I was extra curious about this area. It’s really a lovely space. He maintained the feel of the interior and kept the surfaces easy to clean. Notice the sink is not yet plumbed, but all the stuff is there waiting to be put in place. Here are a couple more shots.

Really nicely done ice box.

Love that easy-clean area on the bulkhead behind the stove.

Notice in the photo above you can see that the previous owner added insulation to the boat, at least above the waterline. Ok, I am dead jealous of that.

For extra coziness on those wet winter days.

Kristin and Michael have a blog you can follow to watch Elsa’s progress as they complete the myriad projects they have in the works. She is already a beautiful vessel and has obviously been well-loved. By the time they are ‘finished’ (HA HA HA) with her, she will be the Queen of Commencement Bay. ‘We’ will be pleased for them.