Afternoon Gin, Because Rain

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Not really. I mean the rain is real, but I’ve cut back on my afternoon gin dramatically even though yes, it’s raining as usual.  Also the evening wine. I’m not doing as much of that either. To be fair, I don’t really like wine. I know. No one likes a woman who doesn’t like wine. I’m more of a fruity beer or good cider kind of person. But those have too many calories/carbs so I decided Prosecco wasn’t just for celebrations and bought myself a nice wine cork meant to keep the bubbles in your bottle in the fridge. It works. I do like a glass of bubbly. But you can keep your red wines, thank you very much. You know what else I don’t like? Mushrooms. That’s right. Their texture is like rubber to me and I just can’t.

This lack of the ability to tolerate the texture of the mushroom is, apparently, related to my brain. Lately I’ve come to understand that there’s a fairly new word for how my brain works (or doesn’t, as the case may be): Neurodivergent. Huh. Go figure. I find this very amusing.  I mean, everyone has their quirks. Maybe I’m more quirky than some but I never considered myself ‘divergent’; a word which somehow seems like it probably means something close to antisocial, also something I’ve been accused of. Sure, I “diverge” from being told what to do. I consider myself somewhat of a free thinker who chafes at the constrictions of polite society, although I do have a moral compass. Of sorts. Maybe the life I lead “diverges” from the average path.

But as used here, this word that apparently describe my brain and its workings means neurologically divergent from the norm.  It’s a word reserved for people whose brain processes information differently, or learns somehow differently, or causes behaviors that are atypical. The only problem is that there are so many people whose brains are ‘atypical’ that it leads me to wonder why the typical people are not the divergent ones. Who gets to decide what is typical, anyhow? Probably someone who lives a beige life in a beige house and eats beige things. Like mushrooms. Phooey on them and their probably boring beige lives.

Making headway in that salon, just figuring out how everything fits together.

And where are all these other neurodivergent people I think I notice? Evidently they all live in Olympia, where people wear their divergencies on their sleeves; like they almost literally show them off. Maybe being neurodivergent is like the new blue/pink/green hair or sleeve tattoos. Like maybe it’s just all the rage right now and I’m actually normal. Maybe that’s why, overall, I like Olympia. I like that no one bats an eyelash when I do odd things like wear my little red wool pointy gnome hat well into the spring when it’s clearly a Christmas accessory;  or drive a Mexico van that was obviously completely paid for decades ago; or wear the exact same outfit for weeks at a time (a little trick I picked up as a cruiser and adopted in my land life because who cares? Not me, and clearly not you, either, because you never even noticed). Try that in some snooty city and see how far you get!

In Olympia, people generally smile at me and slow down so I can cross the street safely no matter how weird I look. One time I even got sent home with an entire box of fresh French pastries from the bakery on the corner. I feel certain it’s because I showed up in my red wool pointy hat since the van, which smacks just slightly of anti-capitalism and looks like it’s driven by someone whose idea of a perfect croissant can be found inside a cardboard tube in the refrigerated section of the local Safeway, was parked at the house. Or maybe they thought I just looked hungry. I’ll never know. I just smiled and thanked them because those pastries are like $4.50 apiece and French.

There are a lot of people like me here; people whose brains work in such a way that it’s impossible for them to remember how to tie a bowline even though they have learned it and relearned it countless times. My secret shame. I always blamed my brain, because why not? But now I understand that I was actually right about that, so I can move on and just accept it. After all, I’m divergent. Not anti-social, just a little bit different from a beige and boring definition of normal. Whew! I’m so glad.

We’ve had a bit of a delay working on Galapagos while Michael flew to Tennessee to make sure his mom was ok. She is fine now, which is a big relief to us all. But we were dead worried for a hot minute there and he felt compelled to go be with her, which is exactly how it should be. We are in the middle of putting the salon back together and it’s going much better than we had feared but we kind of lost our groove for a bit.

We were honestly so burned out from the big project of tearing the boat apart and getting the chainplates/rigging done that the puzzle that is the woodwork in the main cabin felt like a bridge too far. But enter the reality of the checkbook balance, not to mention the uphill trek of finding anyone who might do a better job than we could, and it seemed wise to just move forward the best we could. We have the port side done and I am close to finishing the starboard side. It’s coming together. When we move the cushions and mattresses back on board I have promised to open one of those bottles of Prosecco I have stockpiled around the boat. We will truly feel like we have arrived. Oh wait, no that’s not right. That day will be the day we reinstall the bow pulpit. THAT’s the day we will have arrived somewhere.

The list of tasks, it is still long.

In the past, our chainplates were hidden behind really beautiful teak boxes. Those boxes did look grand, but to take them off to check for leaks meant removing bungs, which then was a woodworking job to replace them and touch up the finish. We are not fans of hiding the chainplates, and so we are not going to do that again. With the addition of extra fiberglass to repair the considerable damage that had to be done to replace the backing plates, those areas where the chainplates are attached are now too wide to accept the box covers. So. We are going to show them off instead. I have a cunning plan on how to make them look attractive and to intentionally bring attention to them, my divergent brain at work here. We’ll do a post when that’s complete.

The old salon, where you can see the box hiding the chainplate in the background.

We’re getting there. Foreshadowing represented by the bright green paint on the fiberglass underneath the chainplates. And I look forward to refreshing the finish on this yellow cedar, which was finished first in 1991 and has not been touched since then. It’s good to know the previous owner of your boat so you can get this kind of intel about it.

On another note, it’s looking like spring outside, which I notice when I put my winter clothes on to go on my brief forays to the outside world. When we spent springs in Mexico on our boat, I did not suffer from allergies. Or from cold. Our third spring, I think, here and now I remember how spring hates me. Or maybe I hate spring. Or, more specifically, I love spring but my body hates it. The only cure is to get out of this environment again.  I am always cold here except during summer. And it seems I forgot that I also suffer from sinus infections here in the Pacific Northwest season that passes for spring, but in reality is just an extension of winter. This makes me unhappy. I want to go dig around in the dirt, but I’m allergic to everything growing in it, especially the molds that live in good soil. Dislike.

Speaking of spring, it feels wrong that I am not busy buying plants for the garden. Since I won’t be here to care for them, it doesn’t seem prudent to add to the gardens we already have.  I have spent the better part of spring for the last 35 years getting excited about growing new things and plotting where to place special plants in the garden so they show to their best advantage. I love plants. They are so mysterious in their ways!  In spite of the untenable amount of work our old yard in Lakewood was, sometimes I miss my garden there. I miss my greenhouse a lot. One year I started over 100 different kinds of seeds, after spending the long winter reading esoteric seed catalogs and going on a seed buying spree. Fun times!

A few hard spring plants I brought from our extensive Lakewood gardens.

We drove by the old place a few weeks ago and it was the first time I’ve actually cried about missing it. I disliked Lakewood, on the whole,  and do not want to live there again. But I miss my glasshouse.  It still looks like it did when I left. It still has the same “Dream” sign up above the door. It’s like I stepped away from it and never went back, which is actually what I did. Nothing has changed in the gardens that I can see from the road and it doesn’t look like anyone uses the greenhouse. I don’t think I can drive by anymore. It’s too hard.  The man who lives in the house now lost his wife shortly after buying the place. I imagine he does not use the greenhouse. It languishes. I hope he doesn’t languish with it. It’s a sad situation.

The glasshouse at our old place.

A couple of weeks ago our realtor friend, who is a really thoughtful man, called and told me he was listing a house and the owner had left a lot of nice gardening books behind. He wanted to know if I wanted them. His call came after a couple of weeks where I had been regretting getting rid of my rather extensive library of books about gardens and plants and all that stuff. I couldn’t believe it. Do I want the books? Hell, yes! He said they were nice books and I believed him. I made arrangements to go pick them up, not realizing exactly what I was getting into.

When I arrived at the house I was shocked to discover there were about 300 books, all of them like new. Books about garden planning, about famous gardens around the world, about perennials, bulbs, roses, annuals, exotic plants. There was a copy of almost every single book that I had got rid of when we moved out of our Lakewood house. Some of those books are hard to find anymore. Books by Ken Druse, Dan Hinkley, Rosemary Verey, Penelope Hobhouse… I stood, wordless, at this offering from the universal good. Knowing he really needed to move these out of the house, and not having the time to go through them at the moment, I just took them all, taking them to the car in piles heavy with the joy of discovery. It took me an hour to load them all. Good thing I still have my Mexico van! It was a treasure trove for a frustrated gardener.

Not even halfway finished bringing books to the Mexico van. A quick phone pic sent to Michael.

At the house, I unloaded them into the living room and commenced going through them all, picking and choosing those to keep and those to give away to others. It was glorious and gave me an exciting task to do while Michael was in Tennessee. Claire had just flown to Europe for a much needed vacation and I had the house to myself. The living room was literally filled with tall piles of the most glorious books. Just the sheer pleasure of looking through books that were like old friends and finding new ones to explore filled a couple of afternoons. I selected those I wanted and gave the others away but, honestly, if I were in a bigger house I would have bought an entire bookcase just to keep them all. Now I have my library back, which feels right even though I cannot be going about the business of building more gardens at the moment. It’s a promise for the future to have these reference books again. I do wonder about the gardener who bought all of these very expensive books and marked pages carefully with little sticky notes. Who was this person? And how did they manage to collect so many books? I would love to know that story.

After carrying all the books to the car, I noticed this lamp sitting on the floor near where I had been working through the piles. Feeling a little tingle of serendipity, and having been told I should take anything else I found in the house that I wanted, I decided I had room for this. It’s like the Universe spoke out loud in that moment and, in spite of how it’s a little bit kitschy, I felt like it made a certain statement. I’m not sure where it will end up; this house or another one. But with a new, neutral shade, it just might work. I might chose beige, the backbone that holds all other colors together.

I love a weird lamp. Especially with boats on it.

S/V Galapagos, standing by on channel 16 because our radio works again.

Also, it’s not lost on me that my photos are kind of all over the place lately. Someday I will get better at that again. Maybe when I stop using my cellphone and remember how to get other photos onto my computer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Great Refit 2023: How Much Did This Cost? Oof.

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If you are averse to reading about large sums spent on boats, better skip this post.

If you’re feeling brave, here’s an update to the blog to report that we have touchdown. The mast has finally stopped costing us money sitting in the yard and is back aboard Galapagos. The re-stepping of the mast went off without any troubles at all and we now have a shiny new  standing rig, enchanting new chainplates, and our mast has received about the right amount of attention to see us through another voyage. When we leave the dock this time, we will be resting easy that we have the safest rig money can buy. Well, at least, we’ve done everything we can do to make it so.

In the past, we have been hesitant to talk about how much boat projects cost because everyone’s boat is different. Also our boat is big and some of the numbers are really scary. This was a big project, however, and this blog serves as our historical record of important things like buying a new rig. I may go blind typing all these dollar signs, but it’s not like we didn’t have an idea of how much this would cost. Our lives, however, are worth way more than we have spent on this boat. And after losing our backstay on the wild Pacific, and reading recent reports of a Westsail 42 being dismasted between Mexico and the South Pacific (thank goodness for our keel-stepped mast), well, let’s just say we’d rather pay with money than risk that. We consider these to be cautionary tales. I mean, what else would we spend our hard earned cash on? Just. Keep. Working. A. Bit. Longer.

$20,000, give or take a quarter. That’s how much this re-rig cost us.

Good luck coins under the mast. We have a Greek Drachma from under the mizzen mast from when the boat was originally built in Greece. We have the Loony from Canada that Derek Denny, a previous owner who really loved this boat, put under the main mast, and we’ve added a Washington State quarter for our part. May we never see these coins again.

What does that number include? Yard/crane fees for removing, storing, and replacing the mast. Time and materials for the standing rigging ($3800) and rigger,  8 new chainplates and backing plates from Garhauer for the main mast (3100$ by themselves). New sheaves at the top of the mast.  It includes time and materials for the fiberglass work to ready the boat for the new backing and chainplates, and then to install the chainplates ($7,735).  It also includes the cost ($1400) of two new hatches for the main salon, and their installation (about $1100) because we have whole new fiberglass surfaces for them to rest on. So much grinding and dust.

It was worth every penny. In fact, I am feeling a little chuffed about having guessed that this is how much it would cost to have it done right. (Read: super stoked that it wasn’t actually more than 20K)  But we’re ahead of the game because I did not include in my calculations the buying and installing of two new hatches for the salon. So it’s almost like those were free!

Here she comes! I got to play the roll of ‘person who guides the mast into place’. I was so honored.

A word about Lewmar hatches: they sure are pretty. But our main hatch in the salon, the brand new one, leaks. It leaks at the hinge and yes, we have taken that apart and checked to be sure the seal is set correctly. It is. And the damn thing still leaks. I mean, the hatch leaked before! And that is why we spent the money on a new one. So now that we have a new one, I feel like it should not leak. Am I wrong? We have made a warranty claim but, naturally, to replace the lid of the hatch is to order something that is ‘out of stock’ and is back ordered. I am not happy. Mike is not happy. I want them to send me an entire new hatch and I’ll just take the lid off myself and replace the one that leaks into my salon!

In addition to the cost of the new rig, our extensive refit includes the following new necessities:

Radar 1500$
Anemometer with displays and depth sounder $1348
Radio antenna $180,
AIS transceiver $600
New cable for the radio antenna $100
Antenna splitter for the AIS and VHF $200
New headsail furler $2934
New deck and steaming lights $250
New expensive bulbs for the navigation light $100
Rebuilt hydraulic steering $4749, and we got gouged. Honestly I think the guy charged us for thinking about our steering while showering. It’s the only time in 20 years of boat ownership we feel like we were taken for a ride. I guess we’ve been lucky.)
Folding steering wheel $1000, but it was my birthday. Do I still have to count it?
new dinghy $2000 and used two stroke engine $1100.

We are grateful to a friend who let us order things using her pro account at the local boat supply shop. That saved us a ton of money, if you can believe it. These are the costs AFTER her discount.

Sitting pretty with her wires all labeled, in case you wondered. As I write this, all those wires are connected up and working great. Go, Michael!

But wait! There’s more! In addition, we bought a used aluminum radar pole with an engine lift for 250$ at the marine surplus store in Poulsbo. Our new outboard is too heavy for us to safely handle without using the laws of physics in our favor. This unit will solve that problem. We’ll have that installed by our fiberglass guy sometime in April. He’s probably tired of seeing us at this point and we for sure are tired of paying him, even though he’s worth it. I think this will be his last gig on our boat for awhile, or maybe forever.   I dropped the headsail and the spinnaker off at Ballard Sails this week to be looked at and repaired as needed. We decided to spring for a new 600$ ATN spinnaker sock to make our lives easier because the one we have causes what we generally refer to as a shit show on the foredeck when we try to raise the sail. “What? It’s STILL TANGLED ON THAT DAMN LINE? LOWER THE SAIL AGAIN, YOU SAY?? *&#^$&@*!!!” Hopefully those days are over because we fly that sail a lot.  And then it will be about $2000 to have the Viking life raft repacked and have a new soft-sided valise for that. But with the recent sinking of S/V Raindancer, we won’t go without one.  Is that all? Surely I’ve forgotten something.

Oh, yes. I did forget something. We’ll have all new running rigging as well, and we need to buy at least one, possibly two blocks for the mainsheet. We are problem solving that right now.

All in, that’s close to another 20k in kit, more or less because who’s counting at this point? We haven’t even bought anything fun yet. If anyone thinks they can do this on the cheap with a boat our size, and still be safe, good luck. I wish them all the best. This is our last hurrah before we slide into old age and get back to gardening. We’re going to do it right.

Finally, many readers (if they are still alert after the shock of all those numbers) will recall that Galapagos is a ketch. So what about the mizzen mast? In recent posts I have made reference to changes we are making that will make this boat easier for us to handle with only the two of us as we get older. (Because time sure is passing fast.) One of those changes is removing the mizzen mast. Having owned and sailed this boat for 10 years and thousands of miles, we have decided we do not use the mizzen sail the way we thought we would. We literally took years to come to this conclusion, so it wasn’t easy.  Yes, we know other people love a ketch rig, and that’s fine. We understand what we are giving up.

But at the end of the day, we would rather have the open real estate on the aft deck than to carry that other mast and all the accompanying wire, etc. Not having that mast on the boat really makes a difference in being able to move freely on the aft deck, an area of the boat we use so much (hello: fishing!). and the boat sails very well without it. In fact, during our three ocean passages, two of them of 3 weeks or more duration, we flew that sail less than a handful of times.  So for now, it’s stored at our house. We are not yet sure if we will get rid of it altogether because some day we might sell the boat and a new owner might want it. It’s deck stepped, so pretty easy to put back on.  But I bet they don’t. (For those who are mast-curious, no, we will absolutely not be moving the primary mast in this change to the rig. Absolutely not.) We may eventually opt for a longer boom, but not before we are ready to replace the mainsail. And it has a lot of years left. We’ll go with what we have for now and just enjoy the roominess of that aft deck. .

Our focus now is putting Galapagos back together. The boom is on and she is starting to look like a sailboat again! Mike is working on getting the woodwork back together in the salon, a project that I just could not wrap my brain around. We were thinking of having some cabinets made for the salon, but reviewing those numbers above made us rethink that. Woodworking 101 it is! Just put everything back the best we can and get some nice trim to cover the mistakes. Maybe later we can do cabinets, but we’ve gone a long way without them already so…

I removed every single thing from every single cabinet and cubby in the salon and we’ve got rid of a ton of stuff we thought we would need but never did. We are reorganizing from top to bottom and it’s refreshing to see all the dead weight leaving the boat. Makes me feel like we might actually go somewhere sometime, somehow.

That’s a lot of epoxy supplies and fiberglass resin and supplies. And now they have their very own cabinet to call home. And we can find what we need quickly. Yay, me.

So when do we leave Olympia? Honestly, we thought we would already be gone. We are not nearly ready to go by any stretch of the imagination, so our plans to sail to Alaska this season have been put off, yet again. That’s a hard loss because we truly thought we could pull that off and there are a few people there we would like to see.  At this point, we are aiming for June and doing a shake down in the Salish Sea again, possibly a circumnavigation of Vancouver Island, another thing we still have not done. We feel like we need to cut our cruising teeth again, having been land locked for so long. But as always, we understand that plans are never written in anything but sand. If we get the boat to Mexico again this year, we’ll be satisfied. Actually, if we just get off the dock at all and go literally anywhere, we’ll be satisfied.

Also congratulations to Michael who recently passed his license to talk over an SSB radio! That’s right. I forgot about that, too. SSB, coming to the boat before we leave for the South Pacific. We don’t need to worry about that right now because the South Pacific isn’t until next spring at the earliest.  Also Starlink. Because I will need to keep working for awhile and that’s going to make it easy for me. Someone has to pay for the SSB radio.

S/V Galapagos, standing by on channel 68 because who has a working VHF radio again? We do!

 

Great Refit 2023: Filthy with a Smack of Shine

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Last week we left our slip again and sidled up to the work dock at Swantown Boat Works. We had an appointment with destiny. That is, Hans and Heather of Osprey Boatworks were going to meet us there and get started with installing the new backing plates and chainplates destined to give us a feeling of safety and peace at sea.  We had been warned that this project would create a lot of nasty fiberglass dust in the boat.  My attitude, while not exactly glib, was of the ‘not to worry, I know how to clean’ variety. “We’ll be doing a lot of grinding and sanding and this fiberglass dust is going to get everywhere”, said Hans. One day, I will learn to take people at their word.

Mid project, I say hello briefly before running up into the cockpit to escape the poisonous fumes. There is no breathing below without a respirator. In case you are curious, that sign is translated to say “Bidden or unbidden, God is present”, This is written on Carl Jung’s grave and this plaque has been hanging in my office since I graduated from my master’s program in 1989. Michael got it for me because my “major” was Jungian studies. I love it and will always have it hanging in my home, wherever that will be.

OK, well we figured we would close up the forward cabin, midship cabin, and aft head, draping the closed doors with heavy plastic and sealing the cracks around the doors with blue tape. Hans looked at me in a way I interpreted as kindly but which, actually, was a look most people save for the dying. It’s a look of compassion and knowing; a look of long life experience that allows people to go through their motions without having to educate them on the futility of their actions. He knew our fate, if not our airspace, was sealed.

The workspace in the salon.

And so it came to pass. After a little over a week at the work dock, a week of grinding, sanding, laying fiberglass, and more sanding, we got a text from Hans. “Your boat is ready for pickup.”, he said. Huzzah! The work was done. We’d take the boat back to the slip, give her a quick wipe down inside, and then Michael could finish preparing the mast step for the final push of this long project: putting the rig back together.

Down at the work dock at slack current, Michael went below to get the chart plotter and make sure the engine was ready to start so we could take the boat back to her slip. “Wait until you see the inside! It looks great and they got everything cleaned up, too!”, he shouted from the cockpit.  Hans and Heather had vacuumed the workspaces and tidied the boat beautifully.  It sounded like our cleaning work was going to be pretty easy and, indeed, the salon and aft cabin looked as they did when we left the boat the week before. We were so impressed! Of course, it was dark when we left the dock. We could not actually SEE very much.  It’s these moments of childlike excitement, where we have not yet been stripped of the innocence of our naivety, that keep us going.

Inside the navigation cabinet. INSIDE A CLOSED CABINET SPACE. We crammed things in there… to protect them. Ahem. Nope.

Alas. The light of day, watery sun shining through gritty ports, told a different story.  While our careful efforts to contain the carnage probably helped a great deal, the amount of dust we found literally on every single surface; every wall, inside every cabinet, between every dish, inside every cup and glass…well let’s just say that we have our work cut out for us. We had been warned. But just as we failed, at the beginning of our first cruise, to imagine the tempest that is the Sea of Cortez on a bad day, so we failed to understand Hans’ careful warning about the nature of this hideous dust. It’s one thing to understand something ‘on paper’, as it were. It’s another thing entirely to experience it. I imagine even the inside of the oven is covered with a fine film of deadly white stuff. I guess I better remember to check.

This boat is filthy; a word which as used here means it probably will never seem clean again no matter how good I am at cleaning. Everything will need to come out of every cabinet and be wiped down. My carefully folded Turkish towels will need laundering again.  I guess it’s a good opportunity to go through things and get rid of stuff we don’t need, maybe reorganize some space. I am grateful we had the foresight to remove all the mattresses and cushions from the boat. Thank goodness we had also had the foresight to cover Hiram, our Beta Marine 60 HP engine, with length of heavy marine vinyl and tape plastic over and around his doors. I took the vacuum to all of his exposed parts anyhow, just to be safe.

We began today, bringing one of the filtered vacuum cleaners from home to begin our work. Armed with this machine, a bucket of Fabuloso cleaner that smells like Mexico, a basket of clean microfiber towels, and warm water, I began in the aft cabin and am working my way forward. I got the aft cabin, aft head, and the shop done today. I got half of the galley done. At least all the dishes have been washed. The good news is the boat smells terrific. Tomorrow I’ll get started on the rest of the galley and the navigation area.

The other good news is the new chainplates look fantastic. They did such a good job and they even sealed the openings in the deck against rain.  Here’s the story in grainy photos so you can see how these things are put together on this boat. The photos are extra poor because I was literally holding my breath while taking them, careful not to breathe in the toxic fumes of curing polyester resin. Man, that stuff is powerfully horrible. And I want to live a little longer. I have fish to visit with.

All laid out and labeled.

Hans and Heather dry fit one of the chainplates before they get started.

Backing plates were mudded in and allowed to set up. This green stuff is extra smelly.

The backing plate on the right is glassed over. The left one is ready to glass over. They leave a stud in the hole at the bottom for reference. Holes will need to be drilled in exactly the right places for the chainplates. This stud allows them to place a chainplate in the right position where the holes will line up with the holes in the backing plates exactly to be drilled.

A new chainplate is finally installed with new bolts. Isn’t it lovely? We’ll be dead before this needs to be done again.  Mike thought he would be responsible for putting the plates in. We were thrilled when we found out that was part of Hans and Heather’s job. We are very happy to pay them for a job well done. We’ll let you know how much this set us back when we find out. But it’s money very well spent.

Tomorrow is another day. More cleaning, Michael finishing up getting the mast step in order. Then we get the mast stepped next Friday. It’s coming together and we truly look forward to getting this boat put back together.

S/V Galapagos, radio unplugged and safely encased in a plastic bag.