Floaty toy on the bow.  Found that sucker floating in Lake Union about 8 years ago.  Kids love being dragged by the boat in that thing.

Appa in her new home for a couple days.  SYC marina.  We plan on moving the boat here from Shileshole I think.  Much cheaper but the access to the Sound is complicated.  4 bridges and the locks.  2 hours usually to do the trip.  I've done it in an hour but that was uncommon.  We love to take the boat out and swim on Lake Washington.  But the swim season is pretty short.  The Sound offers immediate access to anchorages and islands.  Better sailing most times also.  It is colder on the Sound though.  Decisions.
I have yet to get to the boat and check on the seams that Jurgurtha did.  No worries.  Great guy.  Still in talks with Baggett and Sons Marine about taking off the teak decks.  120 hours quoted.  I'll bet it takes more.  A lot more.  We'll see.  I trying to figure out what I want to do with the decks once the teak is off.  I love the look and feel of teak.  Just too much time and $$ right now.  We probably could go to Mexico and the decks would be fine.  That is a lot of money being spent on decks that could be spent elsewhere.
I need to upgrade other things also.  This engine is a good runner but the electrics that it ties into are killing me.  So many stupid little problems.  Buzzer that won't shut off, lights that work when they shouldn't, STOP button working when it wants to, tachometer that works when it wants, etc.  Typical boat stuff.

Summer in Seattle.  See the jackets!

Put the swimstep in.  Pretty cool.  Course it was bent.  Jeez.

New start battery charger

Old battery charger.  No more CLICK!!!  CLICK!!! everytime the start battery  checks it's current.

New stove.  I love this thing.  Best ever.  

Iverson's fitting the dodger.

Heading over to SYC Port Madison outstation for Father's Day!

Our boat next to my buddy Scott's 63 foot S&S.  Took the kids to school in the dinghy on the right.

 Been awhile since I updated the blog.  We are leaving for Canada and the beautiful Desolation Sound area for 17 days on August 16th.  Got lots to do before that trip.

1. I have a short in the new running lights.  Damn it!
2. STOP button on my engine panel works when it wants to.
3. No steaming light.
4. Windlass is having an issue but I think I know what that is.
5. I kinda want to get a new Rocna and new chain.
6. Booster fan in the heater duct so the kids can be warm.
7. Change oil
8. Check coolant.  
9. Top off batteries with water.
10. Find that damn water leak in the fresh water system.

On and on it goes. 

Suppose to rain this Thursday.  All day.  No big deal.  After all this is Seattle.  Iversons are suppose to come out and measure our dodger.  They won't pattern in the rain.  I'd like to get it on Appa before Father's day but that is not going to happen I guess.  Oh well.
Evidently I 've been wrong about our planned departure time to Mexico.  It is 2013 not 2014.  Why I didn't get that, I'll never know.  Was talking with Jen and said something along the lines of "Well we have 2 years to get the boat ready."  This was met with silence.  "What?"  "We are leaving next summer!"  "Huh?"
Hopefully all that crap from Japan is gone by then.  They recently found a whole huge dock drifted onto the Oregon coast.  It is huge!    Imagine running into that at night.  <shudder>
Anyway, took off the hatch that covers the sliding companion way slide.  Water squishing out of it when stepped on.  Just like the anchor locker hatch, all screws hold teak down are gone and nothing to stop water from getting in!  Grrr.  WTF?  Why would you do that?

That is water coming out.

Beautiful wet core!

I spilled about twice this.  LOADED with water.  Really crazy.

So right now I am rebuild yet another part of this boat.  Just what I want to do.  The teak on this thing is worn out also.  Better than the anchor hatch though.  I'll make it better.  Thankfully I bought all that extra stuff for build the anchor hatch.  Saving money right there.
Jen is flying out with our daughter to Florida to see some relatives.  I'll get a couple hours each day to knock things off the list.  That list has grown HUGE and now I have half the time to do it in.

Well, we did the race.  7th out of 9 in our class and in our division 14th out of 31 boats.  Got killed in the light air start.  The wind eventually built to 35 knots or so and then died down to 10-15 knots out of the west for the rest of the night.  Had a great spinnaker run home and were at the Inspection Dock at 0900.   The whole trip went off without too much trouble.  The engine ran great except for that blasted alarm and fuel tank gauge problem.  Have to figure that stuff out.
Now....PICTURES!

Great delivery.  Left at 0630 and arrived in Vicoria at 1500 or so.  Never saw under 8 knots SOG!

Bison burger!

Sticky Wicket having the cocktails!

Table out and covers of the cushions are on

Rich B.

Steak dinner on Friday night

Mid Strait and the wind is building. 

Eventually the wind built to around 35 knots

Drying stuff out

Maxey.  

More Maxey.  Delivery home

Spectra wreath

Learning line handling and knot tying from one of the best, David W.

Almost home

 If you would like to sleep in a coffin, it would be all right. -True Grit

This is Pete trying out the lower bunk in the bunk room.  He fits!  All 6'5" of him.  Even he was amazed.
Well, we are all ready for Swiftsure.  Had the prop adjusted.  Turns out in pretty typical fashion, the prop was installed wrong.  The blades weren't seated properly and the blades were out of order.  The bolts holding the prop together were bent and the thing was completely out of grease.

So the pitch was at 22°.  We reduced that to 18°.  I can now hit 2900 RPM.  Not sure if that is going to effect my top speed or not.  We'll see Thursday morning on our way to Swiftsure.
We decided that the alternator problem is not worth worrying about.  To be sure the wiring is suspect but we think that the 16.5 volts that we see is the regulator being programmed to overcome the resistance of the battery isolator.  I called AmpTech and they said that the alternator can run up to 300°.  I think all systems are GO!  I hope.

This winch has been giving us fits.  The cog was in backward.  Had to drop the ceiling in the head again to correct.  All fixed now.

Pete made these new spin guy blocks.  Pretty cool, I think.
I chased the heater duct down and changed out the registers to something that can close.  We now have some heat in the forward two cabins.

All done but the packing and stowing of food and such.  More later

This is the hatch in the aft head with the ceiling down.  That is wet wood right there.  But no rot.  Haven't had time to investigate it properly but it might be teak.  I saw that wet area and thought "Ah hell, here we go."  Stabbed it with my knife and it is solid.  It is leaking and has to be fixed and it might be leaking into a cored balsa area so I really need to investigate but at least this area is OK.  After Swiftsure, I take the hatch off and see what I see.

Here is the man, David.  He has probably logged more hours on boat projects than anybody else.  The winches are almost done.  Here he is tearing down the aft head's ceiling to gain access to the bottom of the winch.  Certain Harken winch models make you take the entire thing off to lube it.  What a pain.  Rachelle helped put everything back together while I stood around and wondered what the hell I've gotten myself into.  

I love the boat but she needs some work to get her up to speed.  I've been working so hard on the hatch, heater bullshit, etc. that I really haven't had time to figure out the systems on this thing.  

Underneath the lower bunk in the kid's cabin there is a nice area for storage.  It could be better if the PO had ran the waterlines a little more logically.  Some in moving the lines around in an attempt to get a box in that space, I noticed an airleak in the line that draws water off the tank.  Tightened that and then decided to hit them all.  Feeling good about that, I went under the galley sink to tighten those hose clamps and found a couple things.  The water pump is being held by two screws.  The insulation on the freezer sucks.  They squirted that foam in a can all over the place.  WTF?  This area also holds the valves for all 3 water tanks.  This means that there are a bunch of hoses under there.  Looks like a snake's wedding.  Maybe 100 hose clamps in that area alone.  Ugh.  That and some of the connections are iffy.  The PO has various sizes of hoses in the same run.  Why?  Pretty minor stuff but still.  

Engine.  Chris is still trying to figure out the reason behind the dimly glowing idiot light.  We spent couple hours going over the connections and found some loose ones.  He thinks, and I agree, that the external regulator needs a cleaner power source.  So much of our time was spent looking for a 12 volt power source that worked when the ignition key was on.  I had to go home and sleep and left him to venture forth into the Lucas hell that is my engine room.  

 Here is Rachelle unloading stuff from the boat to make room for other stuff.  Big Costco run Sunday.  Sure am glad that I have friends like this.

Stuff is everywhere.

Eventually I am going to have to say the boat is good enough and let it go.  I have one more project that I will do on Tuesday.  Then clean this crap up and be done with it.  I am going to be gone for 5 days and I haven't really be connecting with my wife or my kids.