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Greeting Party

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Enough about exhaust systems. Let’s focus on something more fun. On our recent trip to bring Galapagos home, in the middle of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, we had a tiny miracle. The humpback whales came out to wave us into our home waters! Whale watching is number one on my list of things that I could do all day long. If I see whales, it’s an excellent day.  Mike knows this and because he loves me, he has developed a secret squirrel persona. No phone booths being available on boats, he slips down into the aft cabin under the guise of ‘napping’. But I know what he is really doing. 

In his waking life a mild mannered programmer for a large faceless and heartless corporation, come nap time he slips into his trance of sleeping and becomes The Whale Father. From his supine position he silently calls whales in his sleep and they hear him and answer his call.

How do I know this? Reference the one time he was ALL ALONE in Commencement Bay and an entire pod of orcas surrounded him. Coincidence? I think not.

This trip Mike was taking a nap below and I was keeping watch. He arranges this so I do not bear witness to his dark magic song. All I know is that while he was resting, two humpback whales surfaced near the boat and began an underwater ballet in order to wave at us with their large pectoral fins. I called to Mike that his song had worked and he came up to commune with his brethren.  It was the best whale watching trip ever! We had a good 30  minutes of pure whale fun and games before they sank into their murky depths.

At the end of the show I was tired from all the excitement.

“Melissa, why don’t you go down below and take a nap? It’s going to be a long day.”, said the man who is the Whale Father.

Go below? As if.

“But what if there are whales? You wake me up if you see whales!”. I was vexed. Because truly I did want a nap. But I wanted whales more.

“Melissa, you can’t see ALL the whales.” He was nothing if not patient and kind, eyes crinkling and twinkling like the Father Christmas of whales.

“Why not? How do you KNOW they exist if you don’t see them? Maybe they aren’t really there until you see them with the naked eye! You don’t know. That could be true. It’s possible that the whales do not actually exist until we SEE them, which means we then see ALL the whales. We do them a favor by seeing them into existence. I’m almost 100% positive that’s how it works.”

“Melissa, go take a nap.”

We like to have these little existential conversations from time to time. And, curiously, just as I had decided to go below, I saw a whale blow in the distance. What if it hadn’t been there before I looked? The mind cannot hold these possibilities for long. I took a nap.

Here are some photos, which will never, ever do the whales justice. (Photos are cropped and enlarged, making it appear the whales were closer than they actually were.)

See? He’s waving!

Seriously big!

whale2

Taken from my phone, because one source of camera isn’t enough. So this is a little grainy.

Rolling in the sea.

Rolling in the sea.

Want to see some action shots? Here you go. It’s like you were there!

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Cheap and Easy Boat Tricks: Covering Salon Cushions

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During our trip I was able to finish my project of covering the salon cushions and we couldn’t be more pleased. When we bought Galapagos the cushions were 1980’s hideous. Really, what must we have been thinking in that decade? They were some kind of mauve and blue misty nebulous looking fabric that made me cringe. In addition they were worn and torn and the foam had seen better days. Brief calculations for replacement ran into the 1000’s of dollars and we were spending that on baby Beta ‘Hiram’ and his personal nursery room, so there wasn’t much left over for what amounted to prettifying the interior.

Skippy is displeased with this upholstery.

Having little money has never stopped me before, so I took it as a challenge and carried on. When one is faced with a task like this, it is important to keep the specific goal in mind; the current goal, not necessarily the long term goal. In this case the goal was to update the interior to make it a pleasure to look at and use until such time as we could afford to replace the settee cushions altogether. In a word, the goal was HAPPINESS. I wanted to look down into the salon and feel happy.  Eventually we will do some minor remodeling in the salon anyhow. So for now, the happiness upgrade had to be enough.

Since the foam was fairly worn, I added a layer of 1″ cheap foam I got at Hobby Lobby. Cheap is the operative word here and it’s good that I didn’t spend much money. I’m not sure I would go that route again. But I cut the foam to add a layer to each bottom cushion and got started. It did add some comfort and that’s what I was going for.

First draft. A revision was definitely in order. This looked sloppy and the fit was too ‘casual’ for me.

Like many projects of this type, I never know how I’m going to do something until I get into it a bit. I started by trying to make easy slipcovers, thinking I would then be able to remove them for washing. After making a couple of these I decided I didn’t like the way they looked and wanted something more fitted. I didn’t care if I could remove it or not, because, again, the focused goal was an upgrade in looks and comfort for the short term. It needs to last a couple of years. I would use Scotchguard to protect the fabric. As usual, I was making it way too hard.

The old upholstery was built like a tank with three separate sections on the settee backs, each containing its own foam and each with its own zipper. It made me tired just to think of how I was going to keep the same tailored look without all the trouble. In addition, I had bought all of this fabric that the store had because I loved it that much, but it still amounted to less than what I believed I would need. I would have to cut corners to extend the fabric somehow.

The solution was so much easier than I suspected. I simply pinned the fabric tightly to the cushions and, by hand, stitched the fabric in place on the cushion, tucking the corners in neatly and stitching them down. I had the fabric positioned, pulled snug, and pinned before stitching so there were a lot of pins.  I used a large running stitch to sew the fabric to the seams in the settee backs, giving them a ‘folk art’ look that goes well with the fabric pattern. These seams were the hardest part. I ended up ordering some cheap upholstery needles from Amazon. The 12 inch needle did the trick and will serve nicely as a spear should we ever find we need one.cushionback

One of the money saving strategies I employed here was that I did not buy zippers or any other kind of sewing accouterments. Only thread and the deadly needle. In addition, since I added a layer of foam to each seat cushion, none of them are reversible,  removing the need to have fabric cover the back. This saved me fabric, time, and labor as I didn’t have to piece fabric to get the entire thing covered.

Here’s the cost breakdown:

Fabric: 20 yards 160$
Foam 40$
Thread 10$
Deadly needle 5$ for a package that included even larger needles.
Total cost: about 215$

Once I got the method down, the work went quickly and easily and I actually enjoyed sitting in the cockpit and stitching away. We’ll call this a win in the cheap boat tricks category. .

 

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Home is the Best Nest

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Has it really been two weeks since I posted anything here? If it’s been that long, it must be because we were sailing! Looking back it feels as though we crammed a full month’s worth of adventure into what was really a rather short 8 days and 460 miles. While we had one or two hiccups, overall the trip was fabulous and we found ourselves really falling for this boat that we’ve worked so hard on for the past few months. We were certainly not ready for the trip to end.

Mike checking out the rain. Can’t say enough good things about this cockpit and hard dodger with the canvas enclosure. We love it.

We waved goodbye to Astoria the morning of July 4, crossed the Columbia River Bar into the Pacific, and turned right.   We had our first overnight passage on the ocean and watched dozens of 4th of July fireworks displays from our position off the coast of Washington State. We anchored out every night starting in Neah Bay and by the time we had worked ourselves over to Bellingham, we had the routine down,  the communications signals worked out, and had begun to trust our anchor and chain to hold us tight. We sailed under ‘jib and jigger’ as well as under full sail and under genoa alone; discovering to our glee that Galapagos sails well even in light wind. What a gift. We discovered cockpit dancing as the sun goes down. We began to know our boat and how to live on her. She began to come alive to us.

Relaxing in the Strait of Juan de fuca. This was the best day ever.

Here are some of my favorite photos from the trip.

Sunset over Vancouver Island close to Victoria. Can you hear the music playing in the cockpit? Lucinda Williams, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.

Schooner Zodiac from Bellingham.

Mike and Andrew in the bay.

Hand made dinghy. A work of art.

Raising the main.

Crossing the strait under full sail in light wind. She may be heavy, but she’s light on her feet.

We’re working on several posts about this trip. Mike is working on some film footage he took, and I’m just processing what’s worth writing up and what isn’t.

After what looked like it would be a false start due to the height of our main mast/antennae combination and the height of the Murrey Morgan bridge (apparently our ketch rig has a taller main mast than most)  we are finally settled in a good slip in Tacoma at Foss Harbor where we moored Moonrise for 5 years. We’re so excited to have Galapagos close to home. We can close the curtain on Little Cunning Plan, Part 1: Buy a boat and bring her home.

Little gaff rig.

Little gaff rig.