Category Archives: Preparing to cruise

Beat the Clock

Posted on by

Remember that game show? This is the one where there was a large clock ticking away while game show participants tried to complete weird tasks within a certain time frame. If they ‘beat the clock’ they won. If not…BUZZZZZZZ. This is a great game for helping Attention Deficit Disordered people focus and get stuff done. Apparently it’s also something that lights a fire under the butts of middle aged sailors who leave the dock in 2.5 months and counting. Even as I type this on a Sunday evening, Mike is up at the storage unit working on something or other…probably solar panels he just got, but possibly the forward head. The big clock. It’s ticking loudly.

The list of projects Mike is working on is taking on a life of its own. It’s growing faster than a compressed sponge dinosaur in a hot tub. He’s run new water lines, put hot water in the forward head. He’s installed the new water heater. He’s working on rebuilding the second ‘head’, a Skipper II by Crittendon Marine, the kind you can flush a raincoat down. I thought I would give a hand with that, but then I took a brief glance at the parts schematic involved and quickly decided that my ‘help’ would be more trouble than it’s worth. The list of things I cannot really help him with much on this boat grows alarmingly long. But hey, I have nice  hair and its usually clean. I try to smell decent, too. Plus I can sing, paint rocks, and make beautiful mermaid dolls.  We all have our jobs.

Most of the time, this level of boat yoga is Mike’s job. Most of the time.

We are brainstorming things like the layout for our jack lines and where we will put attachment points in the cockpit. (That’s for clipping ourselves onto the boat so it’s impossible to fall off.) How we’ll store Penguin the Pudgy on the foredeck. How we need to organize the lazarette and what the odds are that we can create some kind of additional on-deck storage for all the bits and bobs that need a home. We ordered and registered our EPIRB (the emergency beacon we never want to use). Our list is long. We are learning to pare it down to the bare necessities rather than all the things we’d like to have. The list of items we won’t be buying is also long. Listen to me while I heave a big sigh. SIGH.

I hear clunking on the deck. I pop my head up the hatch. It’s Mike with the solar panels. He’s like a kid at Christmas with his new toy.  Wait till you see how he’s mounting them on the aft rail.  I’ll give you a hint: Tate and Dani of Sundowner Sails Again gave him the idea. It worked great for them, even though the naysayers insisted it wouldn’t.

Time used to go so slowly. Now it’s speeding toward our June departure. Monday is our 35th wedding anniversary. We can’t believe that, actually. It’s a bit surreal. We were just babies when we tied the knot. We know that we are the lucky ones: the ones whose love has grown rather than dwindled over many decades. We drew the 10 of Cups card when we found each other all those years ago, bright eyed and ready to take the world on together. And why not? Everything in life is more fun when it’s shared with the one you love.

That time we drove from Wyoming to Texas in a Ford Fairlane with no heat. Fun times, fun times.

When we had our 25th anniversary, that seemed like a big deal. We took the family to Hawaii. For our 30th, we went to La Paz, Mexico together and had a hilarious time; dreaming about going there on our own boat. You might want to read about that trip. Mike wrote some ripping funny posts about it. They still make me laugh out loud.

We like to travel on our anniversary every 5 years. Those years feel like real milestones. This year, for our 35th, we’re in the final phase of preparing for our trip of a lifetime. Who knows where we will end up for our 40th?

Tick. Tock.

By the way, if you are reading this on a tablet or on your phone, you may not see the sidebar on the left where you can subscribe to our blog via email and where you can search through old posts by month of publication. You’ll find those at the bottom of the page. WAY down there. Turning your screen to the landscape mode will help. We’ll be making some changes that we hope will fix that. 

Our New Parking Brake

Posted on by

The list of items and projects to be bought or completed seems to only grow longer as we race to cut the dock lines this summer. Melissa and I seem to be working feverishly on about a dozen projects all while living on the boat and working full time.  So when we do get an item ticked off our list, it is worth celebrating.

Bill and Donna on sv Denali Rose bought a 99 pound Spade anchor for their Nauticat 43. Their New Best Bower Post was timely and inspired yet more googling.  The Spade is a great anchor and at 99 pounds, will surely keep their boat safe in the worst conditions. I had been considering the spade anchor, among others, and had almost made up my mind about buying one when we did our annual trip to the Seattle Boat Show. A new best bower for Galapagos was at the top of our list.

Usually at the boat show you have the opportunity to hear the sales patter from several different manufacturers and this year, we looked at the Mantus, Excel and Rocna anchors. I had done my due diligence research on line and had seen that anchors, like religion, all have their followers. In the end, the consensus seems to be that pretty much any of the new fangled anchors out there are good but there isn’t one particular anchor that is best in every single situation. Melissa’s brain trust group, Women Who Sail, splits about evenly between Rocna and Mantus in terms of anchor love.

For those readers not familiar with the term ‘Boat Buck’, that means $1000.  Both the Rocna and the Spade would cost us about 1 boat buck, more or less, for the size we need for Galapagos. At the boat show we saw another very nice anchor, the Excel.  It was going to cost us, again, a bit more than one boat buck. And anchor is not something where you want to just go with the low bid, but that’s a lot of money. And again, all of the new anchors get good reviews.

So, what did we buy?

The Mantus anchor comes in three parts but in one really heavy box.

The 40 kilo (88 pound) Mantus anchor above was shipped to our marina in less than a week and cost us less than $600 with shipping. That was about half the price of the very nice Excel anchor we saw or a Spade.

Everything laid out and ready to assemble. Small packs of Lanolin are also provided to smear onto the bolts.

The assembly was quite easy with everything provided and a one page set of instructions.  Small Packets of Lanolin are used to coat the bolts prior to assembly.  The use of nuts and bolts to connect the shank and roll bar to the fluke was a concern to me as it has been to many folks considering anchors that can be disassembled.  Given the robustness of the bolts provided and the use of common sense to check them periodically, I think the fact that the anchor can be taken apart and stowed more easily can be an advantage. Using bolts to put an anchor together is a bit counter-intuitive, but the way the load is distributed on the anchor relieves that concern. Losing the bolts is not an issue that has been a problem for any of these kinds of anchors.   Mantus could add some peace of mind to the system by drilling the bolts to accept a pin or seizing wire, like the Spade .

The 30 kilo Bruce being usurped by the new Mantus. The difference in surface area is impressive.

As far as I can tell, any of the new style anchors will be superior to the older CQR or Bruce anchors we now carry.  We have been using a 30 kilo Bruce for the last two years of Salish Sea cruising and it has held well in winds up to 30 knots.  But as we travel further afield, we need to know that we are secure. One of Melissa’s friends in the WWS group describes their Mantus like a parking brake. I like that.  I was tempted to go up another size to the 45 kilo Mantus but worried that handling that much weight by hand if things go pear-shaped would prove difficult. The sale’s person at Mantus did not recommend we go up to the next size.

The anchor fits well but it doesn’t leave much room for a second anchor on the port side roller.

The new anchor fits well onto the starboard roller which is the only side of our windlass with a chain gypsy.  The roll bar can be an issue for some boats but it fit well on Galapagos.  The very wide fluke does cause a problem on the bow though.  I can’t fit a second anchor on the port side roller and I would like to carry the Bruce as a backup.   At this point, I am thinking that I will stow the Bruce below with 30 feet of 3/8 inch chain and two hundred feet of rope rode.

 

There is good clearance for the anchor but no room to stow a second anchor on the bow.

I look forward to taking Galapagos out for a weekend to test our new best bower.  Melissa and I rarely take guest moorage in a marina and we love anchoring out. Knowing that you are well and truly fastened to the bottom during a blow makes for restful nights and more enjoyable time away from the boat.  We’ll keep you posted on how well this new piece of kit performs.

 

Immunization Fun Pack

Posted on by

One of the downsides of getting ready to travel extensively is that you have to get immunized against all of the many diseases the world has to offer. Yellow Fever. Hepatitis A and B. Typhoid. Tetanus… The world of germs offers many ways to either kill you or make you feel like you wish you were dead. Rather than take that chance, we decided to get our shots.

If you are in the market for immunizations, let us make it easy for you: just go to Costco. We’ve done the leg work for you, and our arms have the soreness to prove it. Like large packages of toilet paper and crackers, Costco offers the ‘fun pack’ of immunizations at a lower price than its competitors.  Unsurprisingly, the service is good, the quality high.

In shopping around I looked at two ‘travel clinics’ in Tacoma and at Costco. At the Rite Aid travel clinic, each consultation would have been around 80$. So that’s 160$ out of the gate, just so they can tell us which shots we need. It was the same price at the other travel clinic I called. At Costco, the cost was 40$ per person, a savings of 50%. Here’s how it worked:

First, you go to this Costco Travel website and a buy a full service Travel Medicine Consultation. You will get a link to fill out a form. This form is really written for people who are taking cruises rather than doing open ended travel, but not to worry. Fill in the information you have for the first country you will visit, then in the notes section indicate that your travel is open ended and give a list of some of the countries you will visit. A medical doctor will be sent the form and will send you an email with recommendations for which immunizations you need. We filled out our forms and in less than 24 hours, we had an email from the doctor with his recommendations.

When Mike brings flowers and we don’t have any vases on board. Just putting this in because I don’t have other photos of getting injections. And this is prettier.

Now, our experience is with the Travel Pharmacist in the Federal Way store. We cannot vouch for other stores, but Elizabeth in Federal way has 25 years of experience and is excellent. After receiving our email, I got a call from Elizabeth following up with a phone consult to confirm the information and ask more  questions about our travel plans so we could fine-tune the list of recommendations. For instance, the doctor recommended, based on the fact that we’ll be ‘adventure traveling’, that I get a rabies vaccine. Elizabeth and I determined, based on the LittleCunningPlan definition of ‘adventure’, whereby it’s unlikely we will ever be more than 7 days from a treatment facility (when on land), that I didn’t need to go that route. We then set up a schedule to begin.

Let’s repeat that: SHE CALLED ME and we had a phone chat for over 15 minutes where I got to clarify our plans and talk about options! In addition to her taking the initiative in following up on the on-line form, she was cheerful, friendly, and informative. That kind of service is hard to find these days.

Mike and I made our appointment together and tootled up to Federal Way for our first round of shots. We signed in at the desk and paid our measly co-pay because they had already billed our insurance, which covered almost all of it. Elizabeth greeted us, explained everything in detail, confirmed information, then gave us our injections. I’m not a happy person when I get injections. But she is so skilled I was able to take it like a champ. We made our appointment for our second round.

The day before we were due in, Elizabeth called to remind us that our second shots were due. We’ve received round number two. We have an appointment for the end of June to receive the last of the Hepatitis vaccines. That’s pretty much the last thing we have to do in the the South Sound before the long trip. So we know we’ll be hanging around at anchor here and there in our home waters for a little while. Probably sleeping.

So let’s recap: for 40$ we received an initial consult from a travel medicine doctor (who also talked to me on the phone, by the way, after I made a suggestion for their website forms), got a follow up call from the travel pharmacist and consulted further with her on the phone, got excellent service, the shots didn’t hurt, and they billed our insurance, which paid for most of these! In all, a painless and seamless experience. Thanks, Costco! Thanks, Elizabeth! See you at the end of June!