The Christmas Quilt

This is a Hawaiian quilt, ginger motif that I did for my mother's birthday in June. Well, ok, she got it for Christmas. She is ninety years old and can remember all the words to songs from a long time ago, but day to day memory is troublesome. She may or may not remember who made the quilt or why, and who knows how long she will appreciate it, yet, it was important to finish it. Mom has written a book about her time running a roadhouse in Alaska, when she was 17 and those memories are the ones that count for her.

We were struck with the power of the ocean this trip as those logs in front were rocking with the force of the spent waves. A coastal trip north would need to be done twenty miles from shore, with full watch schedules in order to avoid any floaters like this.

Mom's beach on a stormy, wet day is better than the best day in any city.

Into the wet........

Between Eureka and Crescent City is a small red school house and several large field where these traffic stoppers live.....hundreds of them...along with many signs warning drivers to watch for them. There is one huge problem - the road is windy and you can be face to face with them at any given moment. They look calmly at the dogs inj the van who look back with frantic barking. Finding the surprise of the elk among the redwoods is great, but as we have done this road so many times we try to be very quiet so the dogs don't raise a ruckus.
While walking down to the beach at Mom's, there is a herd of deer that come down the river that empties into the ocean - and the deer calmly walk throught the neighboorhood chomping on everyone's landscaping. This time, the dogs just stared them down. A portion of the Brookings Harbor
and the river is in the background of the cottage.

This homeowner has a great view.

All the chart books talk about going across the bar at slack tide, and the photo below shows why. Extremely dangerous, at almost any time. Summertime has calm waves, but the waves breaking in the mouth of the channel were pretty intimidating following this winter storm. I don't think so for any crossing in the winter.

It was raining too hard to show the foam and whitewater from the surf in front of the harbor. When the sun comes out here, Brookings is a magical place. In a storm it is awe inspiring with crashing surf heard into the center of town, mists blanketing the hills, and wet, wet, wet. Even more magic,

Legislating nature.....

There are four marinas down here in the south part of the Bay: Pete's, Docktown which is derelicts and nice houseboats, the "new" one out in the Salt flats and the municapal, which has about 6 boats on the channel and and larger marina area by Sequoia Yachtclub, which has some good memories for us. We are considering joining, just to meet some people and be forced to join cruise -ins on the Ba.

These are some of our neighbors. We never used to see pelicans here, that I can remember and would startle a night heron on our dock or see a few seals.. The view is across the channel, looking towards San Mateo, which today has hills covered in snow. Both heaters are going on the boat, which is a toasty 48 degrees f. We had a lovely quiet weekend at Linda's, celebrating my birthday. We will celebrate her's and Sandy's and mine next month with a spa or some fun thing to do hopefully in a place where we are not shivering to pieces.
We presently live in this harbor, and are down channel next to the tallest mast in the top photo. There is an inner harbor which has some elegant and some tremendously ratty boats, which haven't moved in years, mostly liveaboards, and someone estimated that there are about 50 dogs living aboard throughout the harbor.There is a dog walk/poop area, and we all check to make sure we arn't interfering with others trying to "walk" their dogs, as there is a lot of growling and posturing, especially from the smaller critters. The two shepherds lunge and try to act like silent killers on the prowl while we are pulled, flailing and ungainly, trying to keep them under control and smiling bravely. Your cool is shot, though, when you carry the poop bags over to the dumpster. Such is the adventurous yacht life.

It is possible to ride bikes all along the bay front, paved and unpaved, however, you can't run the dogs there , or enter the fields any more as we used to do. Signs all over prohibit anyone human daring to think of stepping into what is now called habitat. Where before it was homeless habitat in places. It is very urban here, and the sense that there is a large swath of nature just means you can look, but don't touch. The drawback is that where there are houses along the bay, they get to smell the low tide mud, twice daily.

Not stuck in Lodi, again......

Thanksgiving was magic in the soft light of lovely Lodi. The colors of the huge trees were astonishing in their brilliance, with leaves everywhere. A big wind storm tried to get rid of the last hangers on but didn't succeed when we were there. Bridget and Dave made an incredible meal, with 12 of us sitting together. Champagne not only goes well with turkey, but goes well with everything - don't ever let anyone tell you differently.

There was abundance, color, and new fun people - light filtering through the leaves to sparkle on more leaves. Blazing reds and golds. Solid, older homes, small town main street with people doing black Friday shopping - it is middle America at its best: us gypsies really appreciated it. Bridget and Dave skunked us at Trivial Pursuit and we slept the sleep of the sated to go home to attend St. Peter's, Redwood City on Sunday.

Now, that was spooky, as there were wonderful times there, and some pretty disturbing, distressing times, due to church politics. The liturgy has changed greatly, and some familiar faces were welcoming - since 1993, you may ask. But it was the first Sunday of Lent and we sang an anthem to the tune of St. Patrick's breastplace - which is the music with very different words for all great church occaisions and my ordination. Is it a sign of age when one is disturbed about changes in church liturgy? Humph.

Sell, donate, give away.....lighten the load

On the road again - only staying in Phx at Aaron's to have a garage sale with him and We cleaned out, compressed, were ruthless in throwing out "stuff - yet Aaron had a collection of wonderful, exotic furniture to sell. His neighborhood is an old established one - Arcadia, in Phx/Scottsdale and near an enclave of Hispanics. In two days we sold almost all of his stuff, most of our's and then some - mainly to Hispanics who peeled off $100 bills - off of money rolls. This was a better sale than those we held in Fountain Hills - go figure. At the end of the sale, I was exhausted from bargaining and Robert was just exhausted. We had managed to downsize: do the math - three years, if we last that long cruising x $79/mo, for stuff? We can afford to buy this "stuff" with the money we saved. Then, we get back to the boat and guess what? Rented another smaller locker near the boat

in order to hang up winter clothes. We had put them all in storage as Mexico is the tropics. Again, go figure. But our skis, bikes and possibly our kayaks will fit in there.

Then there is Bishop Jake who is famous world wide. he was featured with a bishop's mitre and cassock in a calendar. He danced and snorted all during our "unbirthday dinner".

The neat thing about unbirthdays is we can just celebrate being with friends such as Shelley and Doug, Eileen & Kenny, and Debbie and ...who? Where is Harold? Falling on his head somewhere while we drink champagne and watch Jake dance. I love it when Shelley explains all of us as family - which we have become. This isn't the family where you go when you have nowhere else to go -but the family that rejoices in your triumphs and mourns in your losses and sorrows. This is the family you would travel miles and miles to be there with for any old occaision. We really love you guys.

The elegant garage sale- it is telling that all that stuff was in storage!

And we are back on the road for Thanksgiving at Bridget and Dave's. On the road again------

crocks on the beach

Good thing there was a fence between him and us - the dogs were throwing out challenges and the meadow behind him was full of his kind. Elk - the critters that have signs all over northern 101 in Calif. We left Brookings and wandered a bit to unwind before getting back to boat work. The elders have caregivers and are ok for now, so we need to get back, move the boat to our new slip and try to figure out how to stay busy in this strange new retirement life.

No problem - we are going to go to Az. and sort out the storage lockers there and sell, donate and give away stuff. I feel it loading us down when we are twelve hours away from all that stuff.

We found this secret beach - Gold Bluffs, in Prairie Creek Redwoods State park - miles of sand and camp sites. Only my sister tells us it isn't so secret as there is a fern gully miles down the treacherous road and people come from all over the world to see the ferns.- we stopped to let the dogs run. We saw ferns in Hawaii, ferns at Lake Powell hanging from seeps in dry cliffs. The dogs needed a run and the fog was lifting. No ferns for us. The ocean was silver in the sun and the waves crash and echoes against the cliffs of this magic place, while the wind soothes the low evergreens by the road. I wanted to winter camp and stay awhile.

The dogs, of course, wanted to swim - but we just yelled at them to stay with us. The waves were huge and all we needed to see was shepherds being carried out to sea while we are land bound. They jump in any water available, so it was tough to keep them dry. Sha'ash thinks it is Lake Powell and he can drink all he wants.

Highway 101 runs down through giant redwoods, to the busy towns of the wine area, to San Francisco, and to the peninsula where you take your life in your hands on the Freeway.

We were glad to get "home" to unpack and organize the boat.

Beach art.

A metaphor.

Wrong way on Coast

And we thought coming out of Half Moon Bay was foggy! At least on Hwy 101 we didn't imagine giant ships spooking through the fog. We are in Brookings taking care of the elders and came up in beautiful fall weather. And then, rain. And today is November and we sat on the beach in the sun with the dogs - the extra dog is Buddha, and she belongs to Robbie, Mom's husband. She isn't sure of the bigger guys and has a tendency to run off. Both shepherds ran into the ocean and tried to drink it - thinking, probably, "hooray, we are at Lake Powell." They don't understand why we yell at them to not drink the ocean. Bad stuff happens to their digestion.


It is strange to be on the beach in Nov. and to have warmth. Mom's beach is a little cove at the mouth of the Chetco River, which is Brookings harbor. We had thought that last summer we would be cruising up here on our way to Canada. There is an old Jewish saying, "Man plans, God laughs" - so we land cruised in the van. Mom's neighbors must think the Clampetts have arrived when we show up as we sleep in the van in front of the house. I just smile and wave at them in my pjs.

Robert looks retired here - his new job is either International Yachtsman/ boatworker/dog walker/boat fixer/mechanic/fog driver/ or whatever he feels like.

We are very relaxed after the awful push of trying to get the boat ready. The worst part is that Robert made another list that is a full page of things to do on the boat. Ok - we will be cruising in and out the Gate for the winter and enjoying doing things with our friends here. As well as shortening the list. One would hope.

This , below, is Mom's beach with the tide trying to wipe the beach out. There are huge logs and piles of driftwood, which comes in from the ocean....or as a sailor would say, was out there on the water before it came to the beach. And something to watch for when we do come north. That plan is back in place - but again, a plan is a plan, is a plan. We shall see. We had some magic charters in Canada, years ago, and there was so much country we wanted to explore that going north is something we should get out of our system. I'O goes to weather beautifully, but the lesson, after seeing the huge logs on the beach - is we will harbor hop from about 20 miles out.

Rock and Roll at Pete's

This view is from our new slip in Pete's down towards the restaurant. The palm trees really give the illusion of tropics but right now we are rocking with high winds. It gets frost here in the winter. I came back from church one morning, several years ago, wearing my clerical collar and slipped on the frost on the dock. Skirt flew over my head and some salty language flew around to the amusement of the locals.
We read that the Baha fleet has had a recommendation of stopping before Turtle Bay to avoid extreme winds and waves down there. Ouch.

From the elegance of the plastic fantastics to the "character " of Pete's Harbor is quite a change. The winds are 40 - 60 mph and there are white caps and rollers in this little channel, in which we tried to maneuver our 45' plus sloop. Ai yi yi....I think our neighbors were checking their insurance policies. The photo shows our dinghy davit/solar panels support and the tv antenna. Are we cruisers or what? We can't move to an outside slip until the poor fellow who is in our future slip gets towed.Boating! After today, we are not sure we want to be out there as we can sit in the sun protected by our dodger and marvel at the wildness in the channel. This should be an interesting couple of months - we are snug and the dogs can learn about the poop deck, finally.

Ignominious, not

Three days of trying to find a circ. pump for our engine taught us a lesson in cruising: take more parts. What we didn't count on was hearing the word "obsolete" when looking for parts. Then finding out that the heat exchanger needed some work: Jeff did a macrame job on it. Robert and Jeff installed the part, tested the engine, found some leaks, tweaked and tested some more....and declared it fixed. We left Thursday early, in dense fog, with high surf bashing both sides of the entrance to half Moon Bay. Robert drove for 4 hours in fog so dense that we rarely saw land, and fought the high swells. The fog lifted, sort of after 6 hours, and we still had to work with the enormous swells, back to SF Bay. Wind was on the nose going and coming - but I'o handled it beautifully. Coming back to the bay was not so much a disappointment as a lesson: you can never be too prepared. We were met with questions of why not continue south and get parts there...not possible on such an old engine, after the trouble we had finding the pump. I made at least 20 calls all over the U S to find the pump, and heat exchanger jury rig convinced us to go back and get a new engine at some time soon. After we win the lottery. We were sorry to disappoint crew who had flown to San Diego to meet us, and found out that several boats had dropped out so we hope Steve found a boat south. We had calls from people we had interviewed who went on another boat and who had horrible troubles: water over the floorboards, losing all their fresh water, etc. - and they didn't get to go to Mexico either. Our return crew, of Frank and Jeff were incredible: the rock and roll driving was pretty scary at times when you could see the breakers coming at us and we rose tried to meet them at a 45 degree - and keep our course. Not always possible so we had a lot of side to side motion. Frank had to make sandwiches as going below was not fun. We had to go a bit north of the entrance to the Gate in order to avoid the wild breakers around Mile Rock. We entered on the end of a flood, no wind to speak of and got a slip at South Beach. I think we slept the sleep of the exhausted: the tension from the fog and the waves did us in. Our bunk never felt so good.

The fog bank off the coast.

Jeff fighting the waves...fog in the background. He handled boats in Alaska and is great on the helm.

Robert after escaping the fog...wondering whose idea this was.

Hiatus in Half Moon Bay

The road to Half Moon Bay under wet weather and southern winds. We are still here waiting for parts to repair the engine - if you have to be stranded somewhere, this is a good place. The rain blew through with three reefs and, with NOOA warnings that we were facing La Nina weather, and Jeff and I worked in the sun while Robert and Frank ran around the Bay area looking for parts. We have some options at this point, but are dependant on others to say if the work can be done. We can go, after repair and make the start out of San Diego; we can go after the delayed start (hurricane Rick) and catch up with the fleet; or we can go and chase them to Turtle Bay; or we go back to the Bay area and sulk. The boat sails beautifully even with the load we have added to it. We are very fortunate and blessed to have such a great crew: Frank is a wonderful sailor and navigator, Bill was with us for a few days but would have been late to his race on Saturday and left this AM, and Jeff, who has done an incredible amount of work on this boat, is on deck adding netting to the railings for the dogs. Jeff is one of those people who doesn't let you know he has the talent to take us around Cape Horn and quietly surprises us with his talent. Thank you, Jeff.

- These are our neighbors - thank heaven the harbor master is moving us -towing- us into a slip as these lovely critters woke us up at 5am with a war. The pelicans chase the party boats in to get the scraps and we get to watch their clumsy ballet. The next news had better be us on our way south.

Out the Gate

We had a send off of all time - and cried to say goodbye to friends. And here, tonite we are at a harbor not very far away from them - Half Moon Bay. It was on hell of a push to get out of Alameda: new stanchions, building fridge and freezer, getting the dinghy davits done, the auto pilot was tuned and programmed yesterday with Phil; shoppng and stowing all the provisions for 5 plus two dogs. I am very tired, and we fought the tide going out, after practicing tacking, reef points, etc. Good thing as the weather gurus here are smoking something funny as we had fairly good winds all the way down here. We were told mostly sunny - yeah. right. We put on everything we own and then some. We were overhwhelmed with the help from our friends: Bridget and Dave, who took the van down to Linda's; Phil who ws tireless in getting the autopilot done; Jeff, who has an astonishing work ethic and who is sailing with us; our neighbor in the Marina, Robert who wa wonderful with last minute stuff; Linda and Jean who surprised us and gave us much advice and direction. And John - it doesn't seem right to be doing this without them - but we have three crew who are fantastic with the navigation, helm and such. Yes, we are tired - but very happy to have made it through one long day out there on the ocean without a catastrophy. Well, we did unwind the jib while it still had a tie on it, but Given a swipe from Dave's new boat knife, we freed that!

Phil is showing the crew how to program the autopilot. We somehow have GPS's attached to navigation software in Robert's computor that just sends us right to where we want to go. In this instance, a harbor for the uptight dogs to in which to leave their mark. Koa and Shaash did very well, but they had remarkable holding ability. We were on the water from 9am to 8 pm and got pulled up the dog when we finally tied up. They didn't even stop to socialize with the seals. It was a grey day of sorts, sad at times, and wonderfully scary at others as we are setting on on the most excellent adventure . Tomorrow we cross Monterey Bay and go along Big Sur overnight

- that will be the dog's real test. Or our's.

Ready for the tropics

We have been so busy that we just fall into our bunks and ask, what do we have to do tomorrow. Got the new stanchions in, higher and safer. Got the fridge built and we are putting the evap plate in and putting the condensor on the shelf - we are converting the orig. awful fridge into a freezer - and finding places for the cond. and water pump. We are learning new careers...building fridges, whodathunk? The auto pilot is still in pieces, but getting sorted and the watermaker is 90% installed. We can now use the head for everything and have a little shower. Oh joy. The bow roller is on - Phil the rocket scientist designed something that works off an aluminum I beam. Most everything is stowed, including the seats of the foldaboat--hanging in the forepeak. When the dinghy davits are finished, they will be stored there when we are cruising - and Michael the metal man is welding them as I type.

That fluffy thing hanging over the boom is called a sunshade - made out of ripstop nylon and rests on the railing and moves, gently, we hope, in light winds. And really cools the boat off. It fits the entire length of the boom and we are really going to appreciate it when we get to warmer weather. We used it here in 90 degrees and wondered if we were already in the tropics. When we lived in Az, the weather would change like magic in mid October...and it has here, so the sunshade is packed away under a bunk - waiting for a southern tropical day when jumping in the water somewhere exotic doesn't do the trick. Even in the hottest days here, we were never tempted, except once years ago in Pete's Harbor. Anita and I jumped in to warm, clear water and floated up the creek with Robert yelling at us that we were going to glow in the dark. We floated up toward the creek, where creepy crawly strange things hung out, and Robert would rescue us with the dink so we could do it over and over. We are slowly looking at leaving here, sadly and yet, with some excitement, on the 17th for San Diego. It is more real now as we got a slip in San Diego for a few days before the Haha. Yet, we are pulling out winter clothes and talking of Puerto Vallarta and islands south. I think we are nuts.

Up the creek...errrr, mast

The view from our bunk - one of my favorite spots for reading, dreaming and watching the clouds - the 65' mast. Probably the tallest in the marina and possibly the most slender and possibly the most difficult to get a sail up because of the running backs. We either have to pull the sail up fast and trust we miss the running backs or there is a lot of yelling and adjusting. The person on the helm has to be accurate into the wind. Sunday the sail went up like gangbusters - Robert had put Sailkote on the track and we had a new crew on board that was not exactly king kong, but he made it effortless. Then we tried out the furler for the first time. It stuck 1/3 the way out as we were heading down the Estuary. Another new crew went up the mast - Robert's 5/1 climber zooms him up and we see people taking pictures from the tour boat, cruise boats, dinghys. What the hell? We were so focussed on fixing the problem that we didn't realize we were putting on a show. A large boat going down the Estuary, sails out, sort of, people at the helm, and someone up the mast.
Jeff and I put Robert up the mast to set the sail cradle a few days before and we were astonished at how easy it was to run Robert up. But that was in the slip. Young John was up the the mast with the boat underway, trying to fix the jammed furler with an audience. Not possible. After my phone call to the rigger, who called Robert back, saying, "I understand the sky is falling" (A little sexism, there?) he will repair his work in the morning. In the meantime, Robert went up 2x and diagnose the problem and took photos of our deck with all the projects spread around. The sail cradle did work, sort of, but when we tried to douse the main - it was stuck, too. No one panicked as we could send young John all the way up - beyond the jib (fractional rig, not easy to get to the top) and get the main unstuck. But wait. We couldn't get the jib unstuck, but did manage to furl it back. All of a sudden the main dropped, the side of the cradle failed and there was a bemused silence from all the new crew. Robert and I didn't say anything and started flaking the main. Ok. The boat is intimidating to some, but these new crew knew what they were doing and pitched in and kept talking about going up the mast again. Enough already. We had fresh peach smoothies from Dave's ice cream after the jungle gym and sat around in the slip talking sailing stories. Not a bad day at all.

More help from our friends......

Life is tough for these fellows: they now wear harnesses and get training about "doing their thing" on command. They did that in the past, but not as specific as now. We will have a poop deck with fake grass on it - but they like to do their thing on bushes. We don't have a clue how to handle that.

Another friend we can't do without is Phil Chin - a Chinese rocket engineer. In fact we were in Cape Canaveral when one of his rockets went up successfully. He, along with Emma, the skipper's daughter, was my watch mate on a trip to Hawaii and we played cut throat Scrabble getting to scores of plus or minus one. He and Robert crawl back to the stern and the dialogue between one who deals in minuscule tolerances and the other, who dealt in bandwidths, and such, is enough to send me to the front bunk with ear plugs. They are trying to design the "arm" of the auto pilot. They think they have it - and I can hardly wait to test it out - but still, have to install the thing. Phil is very verbal and extremely funny, and Robert is quiet and with a dry wit and work well with each other. The Phil and Robert show is pretty inspiring and funny.I thought you could just call Raymarine and get the stuff and put it in and take off. No way - it has been three weeks of off and on visits and confabs and drawings and test builds and options explored and options rejected. What was I thinking?

A little help from our friends......

That's five spinnakers, a "shadetree", two sewing machines and Robert in the backyard of Linda's house - it is the new stitch and bitch society. Robert did the wand holders for the shade fabric while I stitched what felt like endless seams. This, we can remember when in warm tropical places and are cooled by this structure. It stands with the help of the wands from the lifelines and allows the wind to come through - we hope - also is tent fabric and in a pinch, we could use it to collect water. We are blessed to have a friend such as Linda who opens her house and heart to the hooligan family - hair all over the place from Koa and Shaash,

who allows us to work on the big projects in her space. The next photo is of Jack, who has had a shoulder replacement, two knee replacements, a hip replacement and has prostate cancer. He was delighted when he found he could still climb masts. He is going deer hunting in Idaho before his prostate surg. - very quiet, unassuming guy. yet he went up our 60' mast with us winching. Well, Robert and a neighbor. And then there is Jeff, who took a diagram, made another and installed a work of art for the head, so we don't have to go two blocks to save SFO Bay. And Bridget and Dave, who put up the sail cradle and screwed brass closers - we are blessed. So, we get by, with a little help from our friends.

Foggy San Francisco Bay and 93 degrees

We came home to 93 degrees and these photos wouldn't prove it. We could not believe the heat here on the Bay. This morning was fog and we were lucky to get 74 degrees. But that is a good thing as we are unloading the Alameda locker,(three storage units is too much junk!) and sorting and resorting and we didn't need the heat to do it. We have been collecting boat parts for so long that we don't have a clue as to what some of these misc. twetchels, pipes, screws, etc. are and are donating them to Dave and Bridget for their boat. Let them figure out what to do with this stuff. One person's treasure, etc. Robert weas concerned that there would not be any room - but we had built all sorts of storage and surprise, we can fit things in. The big surprise/shock is the foldaboat that has some pretty hefty seats and parts that have to be stowed. The boat folds to 4" wide and the seats are a heavy plastic that will slide around under one of the rear bunks. So much for saving space! The seats also serve to keep the boat from folding up on us when we are putting around. Supposedly it goes through surf better than the inflatable. We shall see, in Turtle Bay, Mexico in November. Now that could be a scene: two German Shepherds crying to get out of the dink, us counting waves and yelling go now, and , and.....getting swamped. We did this off the Mokuluas in the inflatable one day, with me swimming the boat out, passengers rowing like mad and Robert trying to get the engine started. One of the passengers was our priest, and he was was oaring with such vigor that he didn't see that he was oaring across my chest while staring straight ahead as if we were after Moby Dick. I was laughing so hard that I had to swim out once the boat was started. And those were little waves. But great memories. How do you tell the parish priest he was messing with private body parts...although with an oar?

We took a short weekend off of working on the boat - and went to Placerville to do some work for Jeff, then to Lodi to kayak with Bridget and Dave. Jeff is the fellow who drove for hours to work on I'O because he likes to do boat work - well, we like to work on houses, so we drove up to his beautiful part of the country and did drywall and insulated heater ducts. Placerville is probably named for placer mining and is in the fooothills of the Sierras, full of hills and valleys and fruit stands. It had the name Hangtown as it was built on some steep hills. Beautiful place. Lodi, is in the central valley with parks, lakes and the Mokulumne River running through it. Some pretty big fish splashed around us with some pretty big idiots on Seadoos, but the peace and beauty of he place was barely disturbed. A huge turtle sat on a log to watch us glide by - at the end of the day I felt something that had been missing for awhile: relaxed. It was an unusual feeling - but one we are going to find a lot in the future. Living for the now is tough when you are peparing for a long trip, but I muttered something about finding out how the"real America" lives - sitting around a table, outside, under trees and talking with friends. People do it in summer all over the place, except we used to run from an air conditioned car, to air conditioned houses, to air conditioned restaurants. Some of the best parties that I remember at our house in Az. were outside, sitting around under the trees. Strange how perspective is created by where we live.

Boatyard bootcamp

This is the good, bad and the ugly in reverse of the normal progression of work - the bottom shows the liftout, then what is not shown is hours and hours of sanding the bottom, after cleaning strange and horrible critters off the bottom. Then more sanding, then painting with stuff that costs the same as a small city in Montana per gallon, then taping, more sanding, and smoothing with foul smelling putties, washing, and more sanding....good fun. At the end of each day we are so sore from stretching, painting, climbing the scaffolds, the ladder, the lower stands, that we reach for the ibuprofen and fall into bed. We will be fit at the end of this week. Sort of - although we have discovered new aches and pains that we didn't know were possible in the human body. Aching toenails? Right. The new green stripe at the gunwhales is to cover up a lot of bumps from water getting under the fairing - a great guy, Jeff, came down from the mountains and spent three days grinding and sanding, driving two hours each way, just to help out. He smoothed the bumps. We couldn't have done it without him! Launch is tomorrow and we will be in Monterey, vegging out for a few days. After this week : sleeping alternately at Motel 6, nice and on the water as it is, and/or sleeping in the van, eating whatever and whenever, it will be luxury to just be zombies in front of a tv. But, after this week of hard work and pushing ourselves, I can safely say that old farts rule!

Boatwork

Back at Linda's after a flying visit around the country to organize storage and sell boat stuff at Minney's in Costa Mesa. It was 85 degrees there, and for the coast, hot, hot, hot. And here we plan to cruise south...but the chores remain before that. We make manageable lists: cancel the haul out - move it to later this month; get help on the electronics; set up the Electrasan so we don't have to walk two blocks to use the marina head; and throw things away. Or donate. Things we thought were important for the boat get stored in Linda's garage for use later and the rest gets examined very hard. If we put something interesting at the dumpsters in the marina, it disappears immediately. We also had to resew the sail cover due to the new slides added - the sail coverlooks like a patchwork quilt with all the sunbrella fabrics, but we would know it as our's anywhere. We sat in Linda's garage area and unstitched seams, looking over the beautiful eucalyptus trees. So, the real fun part begins this week at Svendsen's Boatyard, and then the even more fun part, the sailing, begins sometime in early August. We have sails, we have electronics, we have charts, we are ready for adventure.

The work ethic

We are periodically at Linda's house, bless her heart, for work project's that can't be done in the confines of a boat. Robert was given a honking great table saw (his choice over watches with diamonds, for pete's sake) as a retirement gift, and was cutting up Honduras Mahogany for various shelves while I was remodeling the sail cover in front of her garage. We are the guests who came to dinner and stayed awhile: we join her in the Zone eating program (not as rigourous as Linda), we watch tv like people who have never seen it before (we have a flat screen to install on the boat and finally found our dvds and music in the overflowing Alameda locker) and we walk the beach (Moss Landing, where no one will yell at you for an off leash dog) and then we go back to the boat and do projects. The haul out is Wednesday afternoon at high tide - apparently you can't get to Berkeley Marine in our boat except at high tide as the channel is pretty shallow. I hope the next blog chapter won't have a photo of us stuck in the Berkeley channel with our almost 8' draft. There are plenty of exotic places with deep water we will be exploring - giving up the Bahamas and skinny water islands was not too heartbreaking as we will be getting to other exotic places faster. So much paradise, and so many projects. That is, if we ever get out of the Bay area. The dogs are tired of the road, too. That's them on their futon in the back of the van, 100% cotton sheet, no less, asking: "Are we there yet?"