May, Around Puget Sound
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| This is the second ferry I have seen broken down on Elliot Bay, You might imagine that if the engines stop and a tug pulls along side it might be awhile before you reach your destination. |
Our sailboat lies in Eagle Harbor so we are dependent on the Bainbridge Ferry to get to the marina.
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| The bilge is now dry. A long time ago Captain Bill in Kemah said the first thing to do is to fix any leaks, and Charlie at Canyon Lake before that told me to keep the water on the outside. All four opening ports leaked. They needed new o-rings in the dogs and a new lens. Fortunately, these are Lewmar and the parts are readily available and easy to install. |
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| A little Vaseline on the gasket helps to, a trick I learned from Kent Little years ago. |
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| If you look close there is a yacht on this container ship. So there are more ways than you think to get your yacht to distant ports! |
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| We like to take the Ferry back to Seattle at Sunset. |
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| We can walk to the ferry terminal and so we walk right past Bell Harbor where there are always interesting vessels about. This Washington Dept. of fish and wildlife vessel obviously has been in service for a very long time. |
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| The next day the research vessel was in Elliot Bay doing Research? |
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| Then some friends of our daughters who live on Bainbridge Island needed some house sitters. |
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| House sitting a historic farm house just a couple miles from our marina was perfect. A unique experience plus lots of boat project time! |
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| A great place for an IPA |
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| And this Dog was the perfect animal for Big D and Me! part border Collie this dog reminded me of times spent with my Grandfather on his farm and his dog. |
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| After addressing the leaks then next up was cleaning the keel bolts. Since some of the bolts are in small spaces a drimmal tool was required to get in the nooks and crannies. |
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| The plastic engine Cowl Vents and hoses were old and cracked, so replacing with a stainless upgrade looked better and will last a long time. |
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| Fortunately the approx 25' long hoses were not to hard to run from the vents to the engine compartment. |
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| We bought this Portland Pudgy dingy from a friend in Texas, the best part is the Electric Torqueedo outboard. No more Oil and Gas to deal with, No Gas tank, No starting issues, No smell. Love it! |
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| Almost there, May was a month of editing, finalizing and navigating CreateSpace and the Library of Congress. |
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| Spring tides mean extreme tides. When your doing boat projects means you sometimes have to leave the boat and go to the Ace Hardware to get a bolt so running up and down this ramp makes your butt firm. |
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| Low tide, check out the height of the piling. At low tide our depth meter read 7.6' and at high tide it read 32' |
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They recently added the hanging baskets but who would see them at low tide?
At high tide they are just above head high! |
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| Then it was time to rehab the 16 interior cushions. The zipper pull and sliders are aluminum and corroded. I went to Seattle Fabrics and got some 4.5 slidders and a seam ripper. The upholstery shops are so busy this time of year it would be 3-4 weeks before they could do our work, so I decided to just do it myself. |
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| 1st rip out a inch or so of seam of the zipper tape. Then slide on the slider on one side. Then cut the opposite side at an angle so you can zip on the other side of the slider. The first one took me about 30 minutes to get the slider on, the next one about 4 minutes, then I had it down and I could do all this in just a couple of minutes. It took 3-4 more minuted to hand sew the zipper tape back to the cushion and lock it in. I had to do this to 14 cushions, two of the cushions still had functioning sliders. |
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| This stuff keeps your zippers protected and if you apply about every year or so they won't corrode. We still have one cushion we kept from our 1986 Catalina and the zipper works great because we took care of them! |
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| After 6 years its time to replace fire extinguishers, so at about $20 a pop this was not hard to get done quickly. |
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| We spent our first night aboard. lots of boat projects complete, still a few to get done. |
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| This is the far West end of Eagle Harbor at high tide, at low tide it is all mud flats. Our route from the Ferry to the Marina passes this spot. |
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| Another Ferry sunset |
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| You cant stay on the boat and do projects all day so we take a break and find new places on the Island |
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| That is a Salmon farm in the distance. |
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| What is that? |
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| Well the Admirals camera has a pretty good zoom, web worms. Insects are rare to us in this world up here compared to Texas. This has been an especially wet winter and spring so along with the warming I guess the insects are happy |
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| Several coves, bays and lagoons around Bainbridge Island. |
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| You are sure to see an Eagle or two. |
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| Some really big logs on this beach, one to the left had a 6'+ diameter. There are certain times of the year when navigating in Puget Sound gets risky as these big trees get washed down the rivers during floods or snowmelt. |
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| The Canada Geese like it. |
May, Around Puget Sound
Two weeks on Bainbridge Island with Seattle Family, boat projects, and youngest Granddaughter Clara turns 5 months.
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| Bainbridge has over 60 miles of coastline so there are lots of Bays, coves, Lagoons, beaches and parks to explore. |
The first week we stayed in a large 3 bedroom condo in the community Winslow located at Eagle Harbor. It was easy to walk to everything including several parks, restaurants and the Town & Country grocery. The best part was it was just a 10 minute drive to the marina where #1711 is moored so I was able to go every afternoon and made great progress on the list of projects. This vessel is not unlike the last two we bought. About 19 years old at time of purchase and needing a thorough cleaning along with fixing about ten leaks. We are very efficient at identifying and repairing all types of leaks so this was accomplished in short order. Fortunately four of the leaks were from the opening ports which are all Lewmar and you can buy relatively inexpensive upgraded lenses and Ace Hardware had the perfect o-rings I ordered new gaskets but did not need them as the new lenses were a little bit thicker creating a tight seal.
A little latter in the month my daughter was invited to house sit for an old Standford friend. The Havilund House built in 1901 is in the Bainbridge Historic registry. Not sure who did all the restoration work on the grand old farm house but it was a lot of fun for a weekend. I think those who need house sitters are really wanting someone to take care of the family pet. In this case it was a treat since our grandson got to have Dover for the weekend. It was part border collie and Dover reminded me of the Border Collies my grandfather had on his farm. After the weekend at the farm we finished the week out at the same condo in Winslow. Two weeks of boat projects go a very long way. A 36' sailboat is a whole lot less demanding than our previous 42'. Now that we had the leaks fixed and several other details here and there our attention turned to the interior cushions. All but two of the 16 cushions had corroded zipper sliders and pulls. I packed the car full of half of them and brought them home. One cushion needed two buttons and the zipper repaired so we experimented and took it to a upholstery shop. The bill for that was right at $100.00. So next I went to Seattle Fabrics, the goto shop for marine upholstery stuff. The were super helpful and identified the zipper pulls as a 4.5 size. So I bought about 20 and a seam ripper and some needles/thread. I watched a couple of Utube videos on replacing the stuck zippers and started in on them one at a time. I got where I could remove the old and replace with new in about five minutes plus about five minutes to hand sew the zipper tape and seam back in place.
We looked for a place to have the cushions cleaned and then ran into the expense of 18 cushions so the cure for that was buying a small portable upholstery cleaner off Amazon for $75 and just fill our 600 sq foot condo up with the cushion cleaning project. We took eight back to the boat and brought the other half. June we will deal with the V-berth cushions.
Bainbridge is a forest with beaches, bays, streams, lagoons, hiking trails, and private coves. Hidden Cove is my favorite of all the coves I have seen around Puget Sound so far. a very cool place to moor a vessel. We spent a few morning hours each day just exploring the outdoors both with just us and and with the grandkids. Later I found out the island has about 54 miles of coast line and a lot of that can be driven by car so next time we plan to circumnavigate by family truckster.
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