Punctuation on the Ocean

Sausalito to Napa

2010-04-06T07:38:00.000-07:00

This weekend I visited the boat for the first time since we left it moored in Richardson Bay last June. Besides being filled with mildew, I was amazed at how well our work had weathered a fallow year. Batteries were topped off, the engine cranked over, the bilge was dry, and the stove got hot and mostly stayed that way, give or take a few time-consuming modifications to the ever-fitful day tank fuel pump.

While talking to our water-lord about the boat's tendency to sail around her buoy and put torque on the mooring lines, I glanced out the window to watch a 40 kt gust hit the bay, and a poorly-secured sailboat break free from its tether and go skidding off into the endless mud flats of Tiburon. I promptly asked Bill to recommend an inexpensive dry-storage facility.

With one day left before my return ticket to Portland, I threw the dingy on the bow, lashed myself into rain gear and a bright orange life jacket, and motored like a slow yet terrified rabbit for the Napa Valley Marina. A trip I had estimated at 25 miles turned into 40, with 35 kt winds and 3 ft wind waves which, while not a threat to the seaworthiness of the boat, still managed to throw their crests into the cockpit with me. Add in sideways rain and my inability to leave the wheel (minus one 15-second sprint in to the cabin to pee) and multiply by 7 hours. I managed to get under the Mare Island drawbridge after several frantic phone calls to a local tow boat captain whose number I had saved on a whim - it was Easter Sunday and the bridge operator was only responding to calls from personal friends. Said captain pulled the necessary social strings, the operator pulled the necessary mechanical ones, and I proceeded up the Napa River. It was raining so hard that I spent 20 minutes mistaking a spindly tree for a green channel marker. Yuppies grilling steaks on the covered decks of their river houses waved mockingly as I went by. I drove through fields full of cows, not a sight to put an ocean-going vessel's skipper at ease. Finally reached the marina 15 minutes before sunset - executed a perfect landing at the guest dock (see prior accounts of my dock-ramming exploits to fully appreciate this feat), ate some canned soup, made an airport shuttle reservation, and fell asleep. Up at 4 the next morning: the shuttle didn't show, and I ended up taking the most expensive taxi ride of my life. I still missed the plane, at which point the airline personnel went against company policy to schedule me on the next flight - which, had I known about earlier, would have meant I could have taken public transit to the airport after all. But I digress. The boat is safely out of the water, and I will hopefully stop having nightmares about it bashing into mega-yachts.

The Lovely Mariah is currently sailing from Florida on a ship bound for Haiti. Go check it out.

2009-07-18T16:17:00.000-07:00

Landing fish: stacking hooks and lures as they come up on one of four motorized cables. Stunning and pulling fish onboard with a gaff hook (spike on a stick), and then beating them wildly about the head until they're sufficiently subdued to gut.

I wish I could send these to my family in Japan.
イクラを食べませんか？

A digression into fishing

2009-07-10T20:19:00.000-07:00

Since the sailboat is put away for the summer, I thought I'd include a few highlights from the Southeast Alaska troll fishery. The 10-day king salmon opening closed today, so we're off to search for silvers until August.

Dinner!

I really can't get over the weirdness of Ling Cod. They are the pattern and texture of an over-ripe banana, and have little angry eyebrows perched atop their skulls.

2009-06-06T12:08:00.000-07:00

Thank you, manufacturers of Dickinson diesel stoves.
We and our denim would have perished without you.

Trying not to get squished by tankers going through Golden Gate on the ebb.

2009-06-05T11:08:00.000-07:00

Pictures

2009-06-05T10:18:00.001-07:00

Around Pt. Conception.

Off the coast of LA, just before we learned how to rig reef points. The Cheez-Its ended up sadly moist.

We were the dirty hippie neighbors in Santa Barbara. And everywhere else.

"What do you do in all your spare time?"

Admiral Scurvy inspects our sail flaking skills.

2009-06-02T14:05:00.000-07:00

Arrived safely in San Francisco May 29th. Caught an abandoned anchor chain with our own anchor in Half Moon Bay, and resultantly arrived an hour late for the tide underneath the Golden Gate Bridge. the current and wind churned us around like a washing machine on "agitate", but all ended well. We are tied to a mooring buoy in Richardson's Bay; sunny skies and wonderful new neighbors abound. On to the fishing grounds!

2009-05-24T11:19:00.000-07:00

Click here for more pictures!

2009-05-17T18:35:00.000-07:00

We have successfully sailed (and motored, since the weather report's "10 knots variable" was accurate for the first time in known history) from San Diego to Newport Harbor--approximately 80 miles of a 450 mile trip. Kept going through the night, navigating through fog with the compass and taking 4-hour watches. Making surprisingly good time despite occasional calms. Morale is high, though the beer stores are rapidly diminishing. Arrrr!

VROOM!

2009-05-07T19:47:00.000-07:00

So we set the engine back in, and among all the other impediments to proper alignment was included a bent shaft coupling. It had to be pulled off and replaced. The C-clamp method was a miserable failure. We ended up bolting through the transmission mount and using sockets to push the shaft and coupling apart, 1 millimeter at a time. Putting on the new, non-bent coupling was very scientific. First method: blow torch, hammer, and cursing; failure. Pull it back off with bolts and sockets. Second method: extra blow torch, gloves, hammer, burning, and cursing; failure. Pull it back off with bolts and sockets. Third method: super extra blowtorch, two layers of gloves, and teflon lubricant; success!

Because the exhaust was made of rust and full of crud, we decided to re-build it. The options were a) buy 25 lbs of solid bronze fittings for the price of a used car, or b) build a featherweight system of custom-angled fiberglass tubing. For added classiness, we spray-painted it bronze.

Other maintenance completed recently: wench servicing,
oiling and tightening the shifting cables, replacing window gaskets, electrical bonding in the engine room, re-bedding cleats, and too much else to add right now because the best thing, the really squeal-worthy thing that I am here to tell you about in as few words as possible because champagne and sushi are calling our names at this very moment, is that we turned on the engine today. And it went "VROOOOM!" We are once again mobile and prepared for serious pillaging on the high seas.

Morale remains inexplicably high

2009-04-21T10:03:00.000-07:00

Here is what the engine was resting on when we bought the boat. Most of the fasteners had either vibrated into the bilge or never been installed in the first place. 285 pounds of internal combustion power has been leaping energetically around under the floor, occasionally coughing from lack of fuel, supported by three rusty s-bends and a pile of rotten scrap wood.

Beginning the long process of building new supports. We sanded down the fiberglass, sloshed on some solvent, measured haphazardly, and prayed to the God of Boat Projects. For good measure, we made many valuable sacrifices to His Holy Bilge.

Plywood forms for the subsequent layers of fiberglass roving.

After many mishaps, the fiberglass finally surrendered to our will. Note: never try to make 24-oz roving curve around a 45 degree angle.

Mostly finished products. There's been much tedious cutting and re-wetting with epoxy resin as we try to jockey the engine into an approximately correct position in relation to the propeller shaft. All the holes are drilled for brand-new shiny bolts, and so far (knockin' on wood) things seem to be lining up better than expected. The next step involves a set of digital calipers and various crew members being dangled by their ankles above the shaft coupling.

2009-04-02T22:29:00.001-07:00

The transmission is re-built and re-installed. Now all we need to do is fiberglass new engine mounts to replace the loose pieces of rotten wood that were there before. Someday, the engine will no longer live in our galley. Sigh.

2009-03-03T11:52:00.000-08:00

Old and new chainplates. The original was pitted nearly all the way through, due to moisture from a poorly sealed deck interface. The new one is shiny. Shiny!

The plate mounts to a fiberglass-over-wood rib which runs perpendicular to the starboard side. The wood had rotted into powder, so we cut open the fiberglass, put in a new piece of resin-soaked plywood, and re-fiberglassed over the top. Note the duct tape that is now an integral part of our boat.

The engine lurking happily in its hole, blissfully unaware of the gutting that will soon commence.

The engine perched precariously above the bilge. We hooked up a block and tackle with free semi-broken pulleys donated by a local rigging shop. The beast weighed slightly more than both of us together, so we had to bounce up and down a bit to get it up. Thanks to mom and dad for teaching me the value of third-world technology.

The transmission is in pieces on the back deck, waiting for bearings to arrive in the mail.

2009-02-11T14:11:00.000-08:00

Items:

Amy is taking off in a week to visit Hawaii folks, likely for quite awhile.
Can Mariah and I get the boat going before March? Stay tuned!

We bought a $60 spinnaker. Wooo cheap stuff!

We're scheduled for professional termite removal tomorrow. The heat gun was fun, but couldn't reach all the places it needed to. Must find a place to sleep while toxic gas surrounds our boat.

Progress continues to be made. Transmission parts should be at the post office today or tomorrow, block and tackle are rigged, instructional books are nearly memorized.

Mariah is building us a bookshelf! Perhaps the weight of knowledge will help to counterbalance the weight of new batteries.

The Kitten Chain

2009-01-26T14:48:00.000-08:00

Megan says: Hello, kitten. No, you can't help.

This is the path of the kitten chain. It starts with whatever project might catch your attention, and ends always with an innocent, fuzzy little creature who just wants to help. You cannot short-circuit the kitten chain. The kitten will find you.

It goes like this:
Wow, I really want to put up this shelf. But before I do that, I need to take the drimmel to the fiberglass around the chain-plate, since it's behind the shelf, and needs to be heartlessly ripped off and replaced. And before I can do that, the batteries need to be charged up, so I can run the drimmel tool (wicked cool, scary little device, by the way). To charge up the batteries we need either a generator or dock electricity, for which we must contact the dock and find out if there are open slips, for which we must go to town and get their number, and to do that, I need my coat. Megan, have you seen my...oh, hello, kitten.

Yes, our cat has psychic powers. How does he know where to find the beginning of the chain? I have no idea. Maybe tomorrow I'll just find the cat, and follow the steps from there.

2009-01-10T08:14:00.000-08:00

Welcome to this week's episode of "The Stupidest Thing I've Ever Seen".
Our Fuel System
Part One

There was a tank of stainless steel
Built to fit our vessel's keel
It had three fittings, one a vent
For air which in the tank was pent
It did not function as it should
So I took a piece of wood
And stuck it down the fuel hose
And using hands and several toes
Was able finally to pull out
A chunk of T-shirt from the spout.

Look carefully at the right-hand side of the frame, and you can see a sample of the large, sludge-covered piece of rag that was oozing around in our fuel tank.
Its removal didn't help the vent problem, however. We finally discovered that the original owners had hooked up a sump fitting (designed to siphon fuel from the very bottom of the tank) to a vent, and every subsequent owner for the past 30 years probably wondered why the engine kept dying...

Before alteration: Large fuel fill hose, red hose-clamped mess of fuel return hose, and "vent".

After alteration: Large fuel fill hose with a bronze T for the fuel return, old fuel return transformed into vent, and old "vent" plumbed correctly as a sump.

Our engine is in a strange limbo of improvement and decline. It's happy to be supplied with air, and starts much more reliably since we replaced the piece of non-fuel-or-water-safe wire that was fed through the bilge to the starter motor.
On the other hand, we have a neighboring mechanic coming over to discuss the horrible grinding sound our transmission recently started making.

We have a tentative agreement with the mooring office to be out by the end of the month: projects still pending are the replacement of a corroded chainplate and various turnbuckles, location of a working radar, and...oh yeah, learning how to sail.

2008-12-22T18:15:00.000-08:00

The (mostly) finished stove installation, complete with spaces on both sides for maximum utensil loss. Amy has already sent three butter knives and two forks to their linty doom.

Stack!

The kitten is masterfully highlighting this week's "stupidest feature in the world": a chain plate with the bolts installed in such a way that they can't be removed without ripping out an entire cabinet wall, or hack-sawing off the heads.

For the past few days Amy has been busy breaking loose frozen turnbuckles, through the complex application of heat, torque, and cussing. We're also in the midst of fiberglassing the walls of an acid-proof battery box. Four AGM deep cycles are waiting impatiently on deck. The fumes have impaired my ability to type with spelling, so goodnight for now, and happy holidays to all you land lubbers.

As per the request for a picture of Megan, unfortunately including the piles of clutter we live in.

Pouring concrete: L. Ron Hubbard's poorly publicized day job.

Racing

2008-12-14T17:06:00.000-08:00

All three of us crewing (mostly serving as ballast, or "rail meat") on a Cal 39 in the Hot Rum Regatta.

2008-11-18T17:35:00.000-08:00

Mariah stripping...wires. A small portion of the corroded or otherwise icky electrical components we ripped from the interior (and exterior) of the boat. Recycling for fun and profit!

Amy re-wiring the engine sensors. Our alternator was not connected to the batteries, which means our engine was producing electricity and then throwing it away again. Bleh.

The most impressively terrifying project to date: heating up the interior to 200 degreees F, in order to roast the termites that are eating their way through our woodwork. This is a huge, cannon-shaped diesel heater, surrounded by cardboard, pointing into the bathroom. So far the boat has not burned down. Win!

Avocado. Oh my god. Avocado.

2008-11-02T15:54:00.000-08:00

Today Mariah the Mighty climbed the mast with a hack saw to remove seized spreader and mast lights.
Many thanks to John, who supplied the super-comfy climbing harness that suspended her.

We have power, largely thanks to Amy's ability to visualize convoluted electrical schematics. The toilet, water pumps, stern and bow lights, depth finder, and various other small appliances are all hooked in: most of the vital-to-leaving wiring that remains is up the mast, and needs to be entirely re-strung.

The anchor wench is stuffed full of home-made gasket and re-bedded in the deck: it's solid bronze and seems to be in great shape. I managed to shear a contact on the motor while trying to get it out of the chain locker, so a bit of soldering remains to be done before it can be hooked back up.

Other projects include smacking the engine mounts to see if there is still enough metal left under the rust to use: the bolts have all come loose, and I suspect that the engine has been happily vibrating its way around the bilge and messing the shaft alignment up for the last who-knows-how-many years.

We are infested with termites. If anyone has suggestions as to their removal, without reference to fumigation, please share. Otherwise we're going to start using a taser on the bulkheads.

Overall, we are still making good progress. The goal is to have a working anchor winch, navigation lights, radar, and VHF (the prior owners never got around to installing an antenna), a semi-reliable engine, and wiring that won't set the boat on fire. The rest is mostly cosmetic, and can theoretically be accomplished while at anchor in the gulf of Mexico. Or wherever the wind takes us when we finally get this beauty up and sailing.

2008-10-27T20:56:00.000-07:00

Re-wiring. We have ripped out all the twisted together speaker wire, replaced all the huge corroded piles of green goo that used to be wire, pulled all the oil-soaked wires out of the bilge, shattered all the brittle wires up the mast, and are now sitting in a vast mess of connectors, terminals, solder guns, and various other expensive bits of electrical nonsense. Things are about half-way back to working. Maybe when all this is finished, the lights that shorted out during the first week on board will once more grace us with their presence.

Also, I went up to do routine maintenance on the windlass, which included filling the case with oil to protect the gears from corrosion. A pint later, I noticed that my feet were sticky. The gasket had completely disintegrated. So the winch is lying in pieces on the bow, while I figure out how to cut gaskets and re-seat six poorly-installed mounting bolts.

More later, when the kitten isn't trying to make the acquaintance of everyone in the San Diego airport.

Delicious.

Rennovation

2008-10-08T20:18:00.000-07:00

Scurvy the kitten overseeing phase 1 of stove installation.

Destroy! Hammers and clamps count as kitchen appliances, right?

Completed shell, ready for stove, diesel plumbing and stack.
Concrete board covered with aluminum. Shiny!

Scurvy dog says, "shouldn't have drunk that second bottle of rum."
What the picture doesn't show is the five minutes of poking it took to make him open his eyes...

Stuff and things!

2008-09-08T13:47:00.000-07:00

Thanks to a generous friend we now have a beautiful sextant, stacks of celestial navigation texts, reduction tables, and some badly-needed safety harnesses. Let the trigonometry begin!

I may also be sending a used Dickinson diesel stove down to San Diego, since none are available south of Portland. It is a combined heater/oven/cook-top, can share a fuel source with the engine, and is generally easy to maintain. While most modern sailboats outside of Alaska and Washington are outfitted with propane, diesel heat is drier and the combustion process much less prone to explosion. Installation will require quite a bit of labor: we will need to drill a 6-inch hole in the top of the cabin, as well as install an insulated stack, fuel line, filter, pulse pump, and backdraft-preventing stack cap. I am motivated by the far-off dream of cooked meals and reliably dry bedding.

2008-09-03T12:51:00.000-07:00

Of the three pirates, Mariah wins the Last Crew Standing Prize: she is still out on the fishing grounds. If you look closely, you can see her making rude gestures from the back deck.

Amy has already returned to San Diego, and is busy playing with the newest addition to our crew: a 2-month-old siamese kitten. Name (feel free to make suitably nautical suggestions) and pictures are pending. She arrived at the boat at 1 in the morning to find that the toilet motor had inexplicably crapped out. The chance for terrible alimentary puns has returned!

A short update on (mostly) terrible boat storage options in San Diego:

We left our mighty craft anchored in the tiny "free-for-transients" space known as A9, which threatened immediate impoundment for exceeding the 3-month stay limit. We submitted an application for a marina slip, and a month later, having heard nothing, we called the marina to find that our boat was "too old" to be considered for placement without a recent survey. Luckily, we had such a document on hand. The marina officials then took exception to every negative point listed on the survey, 99% of which we had already fixed. Finally, after multiple e-mails, phone calls, and faxes, their reasons for refusal came down to "smudges on the exterior of the boat, and neglected bright work". Basically, we were too small and dirty to fit in with the yachts. Foaming at the mouth with frustration, and two days before our anchorage permit expired, a magical boat-fairy descended to soothe our cares away. All hail The San Diego Mooring Company. They have a sub-let policy that includes installation of mooring tackle for a minimal fee, and we were able to put them in touch with a professional captain who moved the boat for an equally reasonable price. Life is now worry-free until the end of September, when the real owners of the mooring get back...

2008-07-25T11:38:00.000-07:00

More boat pictures.

The cleanest slaughterhouse

2008-07-25T09:14:00.000-07:00

The fishing season has progressed from king salmon to cohos, and we have all been adapting to life on our separate troll boats (or, as Amy calls them, the cleanest slaughterhouses in the world). Up at 3 or 4 or 5 am, depending on how many fishes need to be beaten to death. 10 or 12 or 14 hours spent shucking in and out of bloody raingear. Tangled lines, marauding sea lions, unexpected shallows, and erratically swerving boats to keep life interesting. Eating and eating and eating. I don't understand how we can live in the smell and slime of fish all day, and still eat it like candy for dinner. And lunch. And sometimes breakfast. Listening to our captains bullshit on the radio, feeding guts to endless clouds of seagulls, watching the waves build and trying to keep the wind from blowing hooks into our eyes.
Life is good.

Most of the fleet is tied up in Elfin Cove today, waiting out a storm warning and watching the rain come down. One little hand-troller, who raises and lowers his 40-lb lines manually instead of with hydraulic motors, went out this morning. I hope the winds are kinder on the ocean than they sound from the dock.

OH MY GOD LING COD! The most terrifyingly toothy fish in the sea. Even their gills have teeth. They come up out of the water clamped around a salmon like a dog with a bone, and are too stubborn to let go when we whack 'em on the head and stick a spike between their eyes. 50 lbs of flabby, beady-eyed deliciousness.

Captain Phil with a dogfish. Little sharks that also like to clamp their pointy mouths around our salmon. They get sent to sleep with da fishes, see.

Gone fishin'

2008-06-14T13:24:00.000-07:00

Well, the boat is closed up and anchored, the boat-sitter has been paid in Alaskan Amber, and we three semi-tanned Alaskans are two days away from brand-name rain gear and fish blood facials.

For the Hawaii-bound friends who first taught us about the joy of sandal tans.

Two steps forward, stagger back.

2008-06-10T19:27:00.000-07:00

Our 2-week-old bottom paint has unexpectedly decided to part company with the hull. After small amounts of fist-shaking at the boatyard, we were hauled back out of the water, the problem areas sanded down, and a new coat applied. This one had better stick.

Also, the propeller shaft packing has started to leak at an unacceptable rate. Thinking we only needed to tighten the nut that holds the greased cord in place, I foolishly began poking around with a screwdriver in the years of accumulated gunk that obscured the shaft fittings. I now suspect that our engine is as well-aligned as a high-RPM corkscrew. The engine mounts have been quietly rusting into oblivion, shedding bits of their load-bearing feet all over the bilge. Adjusting the alignment would require hitting them repeatedly with a hammer. Also, one of the much-maligned former owners installed something called a "shaft saver," a piece of orange plastic which, in the words of a local machinist, "doesn't do any good, and likes to explode into lots of little bits." This thing makes it impossible to take accurate alignment measurements, since without it the shaft is too short to allow the two coupling plates to meet. Might just tighten that nut and hope the shaft doesn't shear in the next few trips (and propel itself at high speeds out of the back of the boat, leaving us not only propellerless but also with a gaping hole below the water line).
Ahh, the restful life of a sailor.

Happily, the engine itself seems to be recovering from its years of abuse. Starts like a dream, and mostly reverses when I want it to. Unfortunately the new standard of performance is wreaking havoc with my piloting skills. The unexpected speed and maneuverability have led to two near-collisions with local docks. I think my co-captains may be planning to relieve me of my duties before I remove all the paint from the front of the boat.

John named this the Deep Dark Hole. I may have been doing maintenance, or searching for lost snacks.

2008-06-08T21:30:00.001-07:00

Repairs having taken more time than we anticipated, and slack running rampant in our ranks, we have unanimously decided to leave the boat in San Diego while we all head off to crew on fishing boats for the summer. Since the last update we have pulled the coolant system apart, dug out thirty years worth of solidified antifreeze crystals, disintegrated chunks of zinc, and rust from the heat exchanger, and flushed the system so that the engine can once again cool itself properly. Also cleaned the contacts on the starter motor, which decreased the number of start-button pushes from 30 to 2. Learned from a helpful dock neighbor that we need to tighten our stays before sailing. The wiring continues to be hideous, but we may put that project off until we've made enough money to fund further repairs. Otherwise we are living the good life, eating 50-cent mangoes in the sunshine, obstructing the surfers on Coronado Island aboard our pink inflatable pool toy, and learning how to 'obtain' free ice for our food cooler from hotel ice-makers. Looking forward to getting back to Alaska for our quota of 20-hour days, anticipating fish killin' and mountain climbin' and other things that are unavailable here in the civilized south.

Getting closer

2008-05-25T17:31:00.000-07:00

We pulled anchor five days ago and zoomed off at top speed (1 knot) to the marina to be hauled out. There was a four-foot-long beard of seaweed, full-grown mussels, and quivering pink sea-polyps clinging to the hull. They had to bring over an extra dumpster and a herd of workers with shovels to scrape up all the goo.

Our beautiful craft now has bright red bottom paint (they tried to fit us out with black, but being from Alaska, we've heard to many stories of boaters being rescued because only their bottom paint was visible through the waves...so it's red for last-ditch safety's sake, and because red is just, y'know, more awesome).

We also had two thru-hulls replaced, one of which was a gate valve that had rusted into a chunk of unidentifiable metal, and another that was plastic. During the process one of the toilet hoses had to be removed, and the resulting horror drove us out of the boat and into a hotel for the night. I spent ten hours or so fighting to install new 'sanitary tubing', and we now have a system that is not clogged with solidified ick and barnacles. Yay!

We returned to the anchorage yesterday, poorer but over 4 times faster. Most of the horrible engine noises have abated, now that it's not trying to push us and an entire submarine ecosystem through the water.
We found a way to bolt the hatch in the back deck down so that it doesn't allow salt water to pour onto the drive shaft. We still need to work on the starter, and possibly the reduction gear.

On the pirating front, we have so far pillaged $34, a bright blue buoy, a florescent pink inflatable pool bed, and a seized 15-horse outboard engine from the side of the road. We believe in the power of scrounge!

Saga of the Loo

2008-05-12T07:56:00.000-07:00

To begin: a lingering bouquet of neglected sewage, hovering around the marine toilet. First assumption: somewhere in the bowels of the bilge is a holding tank that needs pumping. Pumping completed, the odor vanished, and all was well.

Four hours later, it was back, lurking under the bathroom sink. Second assumption: the ancient, non-stainless steel hose clamps and badly-installed "sanitary tubing" have given way, allowing methane to have its naughty way with the boat's lower elevations. Having gotten rid of the rental car, we walked the six miles to West Marine for new clamps, hose, and sundry parts. Returned and opened up the hatches leading to the tank. At this point I should mention that 30 gallons of septic sludge, secured behind shoddy hardware, is thoughtfully located beneath the forward bed. Peel back the matress, pull up a few loose pieces of plywood, and bam: a whole mess of rust and unnamed goo and dubious smells. Here, in fact, we get to the gist of the story. The smell wasn't coming from the toilet, or the hoses, or the fittings. It was wafting directly from the top of the tank, hitting the mattress, rebounding through the wall, and ending up on the bathroom floor. Whoever installed the head, in their infinite wisdom, hadn't bothered to also install a vent. Because gas doesn't compress infinitely, it began to escape through various fittings on the top of the tank. The solutions of prior owners since then were sadly clear: a faded car air freshener under the bed, and a half-empty bottle of toilet deodorizer made from methyl alcohol and formaldehyde ("Cannot be made non-toxic! Use only in a well-ventilated space. Do not breathe").

Back to the store for more and different clamps, hose, and parts. Broke out the power drill, turned on the inverter. Inverter didn't work. Luckily, there are two. The second one worked. Plugged in the drill. Plug didn't work. Found an extension cord to reach the inverter directly. Cord didn't work. After an hour of John's electrical magic, it was successfully rehabilitated (among other problems, the ground had been wired where the red should be). On to drilling! One hole through the tank, one through the wall, and another out the roof near the window. Got everything installed with only minor mishaps. Then on to investigating a strange access panel on the tank itself. It was held on by a crumbling ball of rust that we eventually discovered was a cap. The entire thing was immovable. I gave John permission to destroy it if necessary, with no plan for how to seal up the 4-inch hole if he succeeded. He hit it with a hammer, which somehow caused the entire unit to neatly unscrew. Hooray! Out to the deck with a hack saw to take off the cap. I scrubbed off the chunks of solidified sulfur, re-capped it with plastic, smeared on some sealant, and screwed the thing back on.

The smell still hasn't gone away. It lurks under the sink like a flatulent nightmare. I should start replacing all the hoses and clamps, rebuild the toilet with new gaskets, put a new diaphragm on the hand pump. Or maybe I'll just encase the whole thing in clear epoxy as a shrine to the sad yet somehow hilarious incompetencies of otherwise reasonable people.

From all of this, I have formulated Lesson #1, to be memorized, highlighted, recited, laminated and glued in a prominent place on every free surface of this poor, neglected vessel.

Never, ever assume that any necessary, wise, safe, useful, or informative feature exists until you have seen it, tested it, used it for its intended task, and succeeded in determining that it is not broken, disconnected, rusted, empty, incorrectly installed, or simply nonexistent.

2008-05-01T19:57:00.000-07:00

Brief update from borrowed internet: after more adventures (good and bad) then I have time to mention, the boat and I are settled at anchor in the cruisers harbor near downtown San Diego. Nice view of skyscrapers from the back deck. My friend John came down from Alaska with me and will be here until the 5th. I couldn't have made it this far without him. In the last four days we have scrubbed out the bilge which was flooded with oil, run across town and back to track down three new fuel filters, diagnosed and fixed a wiring problem in the fuel pump, re-wired the bilge pump, replaced the dinghy oars, pumped out the stinky, stinky toilet tank, and made it out of the old marina on the last day possible. The engine makes approximately 2 knots. It also rattles, knocks, stalls, unpredictably falls out of gear, revs, and belches black smoke. It took four hours to make it across the bay to the harbor police station for an official "seaworthiness" inspection. Magically, we passed. Two more hours of limping back to the tiny anchorage that is the only place in the city that allows boats to stay for free, and we set the anchor as it was starting to get dark. Then a late-night bus ride across the city to pick up the rental car, and back
at midnight. Woke up at 6 am to the toilet overflowing four feet from my head. Ahhh, adventure. There is massive deferred maintenance, shoddy alterations, non-stainless-steel hardware, rotten wood, and the worst wiring that I have seen in my short life. I'm enjoying being able to rip things apart and get my hands dirty: I know what needs to be done, and physical work is a nice change from intellectual work.

Generally optimistic, tired, and scared of California roads. Arrrr.

2008-04-25T15:28:00.000-07:00

200 pounds of gear: two boxes of tools, books, and boat supplies, one box of bedding, and a backpack full of grungy clothes. Minus a box or four that I'm foisting off on the parents, this is what I'm left with after two weeks of giving away, selling, and tossing 4 years worth of detritus. Most of the furniture, appliances, and cookware are being foisted off on friends who are moving in after we leave. Suckers.

This will probably be the last post for awhile, depending on my ability to pirate wireless internet signal from the various harbors and waterfront areas of San Diego.

I have a shiny new cell phone with no roaming or long distance charges. Email megan (dot) emerson (at) gmail.com if you'd like the number.

2008-04-21T16:53:00.000-07:00

Mariah, boat co-owner and veteran crew of the commercial fishing vessel Madam Ching, on a test-drive she took over spring break. She brought along her mechanically-inclined brother, who kindly tinkered with the engine and electrical systems. As the prior owners told us before we purchased the boat, our radar and autopilot are both non-functional. Otherwise, everything seems to be ship-shaped. Except for that dinghy in the background, which is shaped more like a bathtub. Or a minivan.

2008-04-18T14:32:00.000-07:00

At 23, I am constantly solicited with offers for credit cards and mortgages. I am legally able to take out car loans and invest in an Individual Retirement Account. The amount of financial responsibility I could potentially sign up for is staggering. Even though I've been lucky enough so far to avoid it all, the possibility implies that the financial and legal institutions of this country, both public and private, have judged me to be an adult.

So why can't I pay $20 to rent a dented Honda Accord in the San Diego airport?

Apparently, car rental companies have a lower age limit of 25. I've been told there are crash and theft statistics to justify this. Still, it makes me laugh. I could start a business, embezzle the profits, not pay my taxes, go bankrupt and fire any number of employees. But there is no way that Hertz is going to take a chance on me driving down I-5 in one of their highly-insured vehicles, with a valid driver's license and clean driving record, for another two years at least.

In other boat news, I just ordered three full-body Coast Guard-approved survival suits, which will hopefully fit our heights more accurately than the usual "walking on the knees" version that we females have to put up with.

We are also investigating sources for a cheap diesel stove, since the boat's only source of cooking and heating is a portable butane burner.

Countdown

2008-04-10T14:14:00.000-07:00

January of 2008 found us sitting on a couch in Mariah's apartment, watching Alaskan sleet ooze down the window panes and wondering how to escape the beckoning tentacles of salaried jobs and car loans. Three young women, soon to be college graduates, watching with growing unease as our classmates got married, got pregnant, got 9-5 employment at a desk in a room with no windows. Our happiest memories were of manual labor, dip-netting and trolling for salmon, hauling rocks to build trails through the woods. We wanted to travel without being tourists, to wake up in new places without emptying our bank accounts on a string of last-minute plane tickets.

So we opened up a computer, got on craigslist, and bought the first sailboat we saw.

She is a 37-foot Buchan, one of only 50 ever built. Designed as a cruiser/racer for use in the Pacific Northwest, she met all of our requirements: keel-stepped mast, heavy-duty fiberglass construction, inboard diesel engine, lots of lead ballast and good handling in rough seas. A boat for blue waters. A patient teacher for three inexperienced sailors. A home on the sea. And drop-dead gorgeous.

The months since then have been full of phone calls, research on everything from brands of anti-fouling paint to radar components, a desperate scramble to learn about rigging and seamanship theories, to sell or store our worldly possessions.

Now, there are only 17 days until the final regression from college student to sea-bound vagabond begins. My fellow pirate queens and I will plunder (or possibly flounder, although hopefully not founder) our way up the wild and barren coast of California, raiding farmer's markets to stave off scurvy, and hoping not to ram any yachts more expensive than our insurance coverage.