June 2016 The Longest Month

June 2016 The Longest Month

June started off with a 7 day trip to Kemah, TX to get our boat de-commissioned and to be trucked up to Puget Sound. I notified our broker, lined up a trucker and hit the ground running in Kemah by first unloading 6 pickup loads of stuff out of our Storage and back onto the boat.

This Little Green Heron was getting pissed off at me for continually disturbing his fishing from our stern lines as I hauled load after load of stuff back onto Wand'rin Star.

The Night Herons across the Street really didn't care.

After 3 truck loads per day for 2 days I emptied our storage and cleaned it out and closed the account.

I had to hurry cause I knew more rains were headed to Houston. I figured I would just throw all the stuff down below and when it was raining I could resort it all and stow it proper.

 After I got all the stuff on board a Broker, Rusty, at Little Yacht Sales called and said he had an offer on the boat. I think this is a new definition of the Yo Yo Syndrome!!! I told him he better hurry up with this deal cause this boat is headed to Seattle in July! I went to the store and got some beer.

There was a Band in Austin called Balcones Fault and my favorite tune which I heard them perform live, while I was throwing back a few bottles of Lone Star, at Sholtz's Beer Garten was "Beer Makes You Stupid"  Perfect, gimme some. 

I took a break and a beer and walked the brokerage docks, Kinda of liked this one. We were sort of considering Trawlers anyway

The next day between rain storms my buddy Phillip and his Admiral Sharon helped me move Wand'rin Star to a new slip. I wanted the brokers to know I was dead serious about taking this boat to Seattle if they didn't get busy and get this deal done.

Holy Cow, was this going to be the 40 day and 40 night thing???

 Turns out that it rained so much that I was not going to get all the stuff I needed to do anyway so I had to have a back up plan. I decided to just box up the stuff I really wanted to keep and ship it all to Seattle. I made a few more trips to Goodwill and the rest I just let go of. If the boat really sold the new owner was going to get a lot of bonus stuff that I determined was not worth the shipping cost to get it to Seattle. Another part of just letting go and let St. Joseph guide the way. (He was upside down in the Anchor Locker).

My Last morning in Kemah I decided to have Lunch at one of the Greasy Spoons so famous with the locals. Skippers is owned by a Greek Family. 

So I got the Gyro Plate.

No wonder the diver I hired to clean the bottom of the hull has not shown up!

When I got back to Seattle I had to hurry up and get our Washington Plates. I got up early the night after I flew in and drove straight to the Emissions testing place, $15 and 15 minutes later I was headed to the License plates office downtown. $175 later we were legal. I had already got a Washington State Drivers License, a requirement before you can get the License plates! The registration for cars is expensive in King county cause they really do not need anymore cars in this space.

Just in time to give our car to our Austin Family so they could enjoy their vacation in the PNW. Wow, Grandchild Number One Ella is going to be a Junior at Anderson High and the Ballerina is starting middle school!

We accompanied the Austin family to the Space Needle. Love this view of Lake Union and way in the back to the right you can see Lake Washington. Down center in front you see a buildong that looks like two boomerangs, that is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It takes that many people working hard just to give away their $billions to world causes. 

Then we got an email, someone new bought out the majority interest of the Eagle Harbor Marina. That is Eagle Harbor way over there on the other side of Elliot Bay from Seattle on Bainbridge Island. They invited all the tenets to a meeting to here all the new plans for the marina.

We got there a little early so I walked the docks hoping to find some old timers to talk to.

No people, just the boats were around.

Hope to have a beer here soon.

Looking East you can see Seattle.

 Well, long story short. A couple who own two other marinas in Puget Sound bought the majority interest and they are throwing everything out and putting in all new everything. It is going to be controlled by an app on their Iphone. No more paper anything. Slightly bigger and completely New Millennium. Great, it's all new to us, but those who fell in love with the funk are not happy.

Teaching sailing at the CWB helps me to forget about the stresses of selling our vessel and just enjoy sharing sailing with others. I also like to check out the sailboats that are donated to the CWB as part of their fundraising. 

Do not know if this was factory or owner added option but it is convenient to the helmsman to not have to reach over the stern to run the outboard.

We finally decided that if we buy another vessel it will be a sailboat, we have given up on the idea of a trawler. The first boat we looked at was over at Seattle Yacht club, This 36' Pearson was really interesting and I was pretty hopped up about it. But it had so much cruising gear on it, it was just not the simple vessel we envision.

Then we went up to Anacortes to see a couple of boats. 

The boats were listed with West Yacht Sales and at least the trip helped to define our vision and our goals for the next vessel.

In the Afternoons the Admiral likes to enjoy the gym facilities in our condo building, I take hour walks along the water front instead. This time of year the Cruise ships dominate much more than just the waterfront.

In between keeping up with Copa America I have been keeping a close eye on Team Kelp as they close on the Date for the Race to Alaska www.r2ak.com They added these specially modified oars for the race since there can be no motor on board and you have to be able to get in and out of harbors.

Here they are rowing into a strong headwind in Port Townsend out of the Harbor to the start line.

They said this was the hardest part of the entire Stage one of r2ak. due to the headwinds. I still have not heard the whole story but they were almost an hour late getting across the start line.

I used my app IK or IKitesurf to check wind conditions in and around the Strait of Juan De Fuca during the Stage One race.

You HAVE to know the tides up here, this station in Port Angeles just a couple miles West of Port Townsend.

My Marine Traffic App shows all the AIS targets. Each one of those little triangles is a vessel. A lot of commercial vessels but all the purple ones are just recreational vessels. I doubt more than a couple are race boats since they just carry te most basic electronics on board like a VHS and possible a small portable GPS chartplotter.. So that means the racers have a lot of traffic to avoid and deal with.

Finally Team Kelp begins to catch up to the pack.

It was very exciting just refreashing the r2ak tracker and seeing Team Kelp Passing lots of boats, once they got out into the Strait,  they were honkin!

Closing on Victoria and the finish line.

Two very happy Kelpers!

Here is the list of the 55 vessels that made it to the finish line

Kelp finishes 34 despite their nearly dead last start.Which means they sailed past like 32 other vessels on their way to the finish line. Way to Go Kelp! A great experience to wet the appetite for completing the entire race next year!

Another fine walk on the water front. Summer is almost here, currently highs in the 70's and lows in the 60's. It's Natural AC here.

The negotiations are almost complete, calm waters ahead as we near a closing date for Wand'rin Star.

After weekly and sometimes daily negotiations through our broker we finally have the deal done and Wand'rin Star will remain in Gulf of Mexico waters. We always believed this was  best for the boat. It is truly a southern waters vessel and is right where she is supposed to be. A active US Coast Guard serviceman being transferred from Virginia to the Houston area is the new owner. We find it interesting that we purchased the boat from a retired Coast Guard Captain and is now owned again by a Coastie! I'm thankful for our Austin's family visit, the R2AK, and many other diversions during June to balance the ups and downs of selling this vessel. Rusty, our broker at Little Yacht Sales worked his ass off to get this transaction completed. It would have been much smoother if I could have been in Kemah during the entire process. I could have much easier trouble shoot the issues that surfaced during the survey with much less time and money. The experience will certainly add another chapter in the book. Onward.