The lead up to cruising season felt a lot like a year ago in Ft Lauderdale. We arrived from Palm Springs mid-May, and had a deadline (I thought we said we’d never have a strict deadline again?) of July 3rd arrival in Friday Harbor. Our daily job until this date, except for a brief hiatus for the Tollycraft rendezvous in Roche Harbor, was to work on getting her ready for cruising season.
A lot of these projects were what we call “round-to-its” or the nice to haves, not the need to haves, that did not get completed before we left Florida.
Tom re-built our Simrad network, hoping to solve why our NSS9-EVO3’s on the flybridge don’t play well in the sandbox with our NSO-EVO2 in the pilot house. We added a nifty WiFi hub to the backbone, and spent time with Simrad tech support, and what it came down to was we have a faulty cable somewhere which would require a lot of bird dogging. We hit pause on this project, as we have yet to run from the flybridge since the Intercoastal waterway, and moved on.
New Simrad VHF radio installed on the flybridge, for all that running we do topside. The reason being the windscreen blows the cool Pacific Northwest breeze right in your face, instead of having a vinturi effect. This will be a moot point in a couple years, as our second major boatyard project is putting on a hardtop and enclosing the front area in eisenglass.
While Tom worked on networking, Tessa worked on Flitzing the stainless on the boat.
Guest head vacu-flush switch replaced, and head working beautifully for a week, until another part failed.
Stern cockpit door took 12 oz (the equivalent of a can of beer) in three screw holes of penetrating epoxy to make it firm and usable again.
Flybridge door also had similar love, but took a lot less.
Aft bimini was nice for shade in Florida and the Bahamas, but here in the PNW you seek out the sun whenever possible – or at least we do. So off came the aft bimini.
Smart plug connector installed on power cable and cord side. This is a lifesaver, as if we have any rocking at a dock the regular marinco connector likes to work itself right out.
We also did some interior decor work. Out with the fishy tiles, and in with some of our own.
The paintings in the kids’ room replaced with canvas prints of our time in the Bahamas.
New lights with a usb plug in the kids’ room.
Custom fender covers.
After spending a day cleaning up the engine room, the old mats were tossed for these new cushy ones we found for $12 at Costco. Our feet and knees are happy campers!
Going up to Roche for the Tollycraft rendezvous we had a westerly gale, and coming back we had a westerly SCA in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Everything on the boat except the spice cabinet is set up for rough seas. We talked about, and really should have, taken a before photo. You couldn’t have laid all the bottles just how they fell. But needless to say, we’ve hit a freighter wave since that we weren’t prepared for and rocked the boat imitating rough seas, and all the spices stayed in place.
There’s always something you forget to bring aboard. This time was the downrigger balls. But the beauty of keeping our boat ten minutes from our house made it easy for those last minute gotchas.
Speaking of gotchas, the weather again thought it was going to get us. There were again westerly 10-20kts 2-4ft in the strait of Juan de Fuca predicted for the day we were to cast off. We also would be towing our fish boat and have guests aboard who do not handle rough seas.
So Swinomish Channel it was. Except there was a -3ft tide at 12:30pm, the biggest tides of the year. With the channel having yet to be dredged (beginning July 14), we did not want to take the risk of transiting in less than a zero tide. So, we all spent the night aboard, and we untied at 4:55am to make it through the channel with enough water under our keel. Unfortunately we got behind two slow boats at La Conner Marina, and did end up exiting the channel at a -1.6. The weather gods apparently wanted to make us feel like being back in the Bahamas: with 8ft of water while cruising.
We also had our brightwork done from the Pilothouse aft, which was also a race against the clock with our time away at Roche and the rain that came afterwards. The caulking was finished the day before our departure.
These 8v92s like to run sooty, or maybe it was just the diesel in the Bahamas. Either way, we had our boat name decal updated slightly and installed.
We were untying with some round-to-its still not finished. The main one being a new Wave WiFi, as we discovered the one onboard was ten plus years old and was of no use. This is particularly handy because it picks up the local WiFi and broadcasts it for all of your electronic devices on the boat. With the Simrad WiFi hub Tom installed, it is able to broadcast to our lower NSS9s as well as our Evo3s for updates.
We may have left July 3rd, but technically July 9th felt like our first day of cruising. After entertaining guests in Friday Harbor, and meeting with Philbrooks and multiple trips to the marine store in Sidney, we were finally on the hook, only one in the bay, and the round-to-its would stay exactly that.
