Melancholia

I really love getting under way early in the morning!  This morning it was dead calm, the water like glass.  Just a tiny burst of power got Eolian moving out of the slip, ghosting along at far less than a walking pace.  We were moving so slow in fact, that the rudder didn't bite and start to turn her stern until we were well out in the waterway.  A couple of quick bursts in Fwd and Rev (you single screw boaters know what I mean), got her bow pointed down the waterway, and then out of the marina.  A warm, calm, peaceful sunny morning, latté in hand, we left the marina and headed for the Islands.

The melancholy part is, that despite it being a perfect day to be on the water, warm and sunny, this could be the last trip out to the Islands for us this year.  So, in just the same way that you savor the last glorious days of summer when there is a hint of fall in the air telling you, that like everything else, it has to come to an end, the trip across Rosario Strait to Thatcher Pass was filled with not only the enjoyment of a perfect day on the water, but also with the memories we made this summer:

• Set a new record boat speed:  8.7 kt under yankee alone, in 35+ kt of wind, on our way to Sucia
  
• Speaking of Sucia, we ended up making four visits there this year.  It is a magical place...
  
• We discovered that going by north of Guemes Island and on to Sucia, one can mostly ignore the tides...
  
• We discovered a wind tunnel between Orcas Island and Clark/Barnes islands...  if there is wind anywhere, it will be here...
  
• Truly a mountain of crab!
  
• The stack-pack I made for the mizzen is wonderful!
  
• New friends on s/v Odyssey and m/v Konocti Bay
• And many, many nites at anchor, throughout the islands.
  

So...  here I sit, typing away in the last days of summer and the last days of the sailing season for us.  I am endeavoring to be present in each and every moment so that I will have enough days and nites stored away to get me thru the long, wet, dark winter that is inexorably coming...

Melancholia

Of Sailing and Gardening

Sailors, it would seem, have little in common with gardeners.  But this time of year, in the Pacific Northwest, they are brothers and sisters under the skin.

It is a time when being outdoors is unpleasant.  It gets dark early, and light late.  It is cold and rainy outside.  For the sailor sitting in an open cockpit or the gardener in ankle-deep soupy mud, it is a time when each wishes that he or she was in a warmer climate.  And so neither ventures forth from their carefully-maintained bubbles of warm dry air.

But we dream.

With cruising guides and seed catalogs we dream of the coming times when the sun will be brighter, warmer.  When the thought of a breeze brings warm thoughts instead of a hood pulled tighter, and green shoots appear to commune with the sun.  Days spent at anchor in a deserted cove and afternoons lovingly coddling tender green plants, tho impossible now, fill our minds.

And so we bring reminders of those coming times indoors to enjoy, and to give us hope.

Of Sailing and Gardening

Time Passes

In 1980 when our kids were just toddlers, I took a picture of this intriguing tree in Washington Park in Anacortes.  It was the occasion of our second trip to the San Juan Islands, and our very first ever boat charter (a Newport 28).

1980

We had occasion to be at Washington Park again this fall, and I was surprised to see that the tree was still there.  But sadly, the intervening 34 years have not been kind to it - tho still in place, it is sagging downward, and it has died.

2014

One other thing is apparent in these two pictures...  the technology of photography has changed dramatically over those years.  The first picture was taken as a 35 mm Kodachrome slide.  The second was a snapshot taken on my iPhone.  Clearly 35 mm format slide film with a 250 mm zoom lens beats the pants off of an iPhone, digitally zoomed out to the max.  Nevertheless, I'll probably never go back to toting around a big heavy camera bag full of expensive lenses.  The convenience of having the camera in my pocket wherever I go is for me an overwhelming advantage.

Time Passes

Sounds

I moved aboard at the end of 1996.  It was the end of the year, so a) I didn't spend much time outside, and b) neither did anyone else...  It was cold, after all.  But as the seasons progressed and the weather warmed, the sounds of spring filled the marina: sanders.  Whenever it wasn't raining, the air was filled with sound of sanders, near and far.  Multiple sanders - on G Dock, F Dock, and even as far away as the nether reaches of E Dock.  People were cleaning up their teak for the annual varnish job.

But times have changed.  It is no longer profitable to mine the dumpsters for scraps of teak - there are none.  And the sound of sanders is gone from the marina.

Now instead what you hear is the whine of the boat detailers' buffers.  Boats no longer have teak on them - it's just too expensive and too hard to keep looking good.  Now they are all white fiberglass, frequently buffed by that detailer's wool pad.

Progress, I guess.

Sounds

Nothing stays the same

Me, in the office in 1997

I can't describe it in any other way.

For sixteen and a half years, we had Eolian moored in Seattle.  Because I worked in Seattle, she was our Seattle home (as it said until only recently over there on the right).

Because I worked in Seattle, my work clothes were in the hanging locker on Eolian.  Because we attended church in Seattle, my fancy clothes were in that same hanging locker.  My good shoes, my rain shoes for the winter, my Tevas, my deck shoes were all aboard Eolian.

Yes, we had a log cabin up on Camano Island...  that we visited on weekends, sometimes.  My automotive tools were there, and there was a lot of lawn to mow.  But for all intents and purposes, the cabin was for us a fancy, expensive laundromat, 68 miles away from the marina.

And then I retired.

And then a slip opened up in Anacortes at the Cap Sante marina.

And we moved Eolian from Seattle to Anacortes.

That's a lot of changes.

The net result is kind of paradigm shattering for me...  we no longer class ourselves as liveaboards.  My good clothes are slowly migrating to the cabin.  And pretty soon the only shoes I'll have aboard are my deck shoes.  We leave the boat for a couple of weeks at a time.  And although we have never had a year when we were off the dock as many days as in 2014, there is... a strangeness.  Eolian no longer seems as much like home base.

As I sit here anchored in Blind Bay and typing this, the view from the office looking aft is the same as it was in 1997 when I started chronicling the changes we were making to Eolian.  But now, aside from those improvements, it is different, somehow.

Nothing stays the same forever - there is always change.

---

OK, I need to put something to rest.  After reading this Jane said, and the comments to this post indicate, that I managed to convey that I am feeling sadness.

NOT SO!

But I am feeling a twinge of nostalgia - fall is a good time for that.  This last year on the boat has been the best one we've had.  I believe that we've done more actual sailing this year than in any of the past 16 years.  And we've been on the boat, away from the dock, 51 days this year so far...  not just short over-nighters to Port Madison, but living at anchor for weeks at a time (he said, typing while at anchor in Blind Bay).
While in the past we provisioned the boat and then set off, we now are staying away from the dock long enough to need to find provisioning while out here.  We are living out here in the San Juan Islands for weeks at a time, not just visiting.     

(Note that none of the above is meant to take away from our month-long trip to Desolation Sound, where we provisioned for and stayed off the dock for the whole month - that was a special circumstance, proving to ourselves, I guess, that both we and the boat had capacities for long-distance cruising.) 

So it is all good!

Nothing stays the same

Searching for love, on twisty mountain roads

Not everything is about sailing; there are other things.

This weekend was the 2013 Dude Tour - where men of indeterminate age (I think I get the award for the oldest) take their (mostly) classic cars out and actually drive them (oh, the horror!).  And this is not just driving, but driving at (some would say ridiculous) speed thru twisty back mountain roads.  But we're not crazy - these must all be paved roads.  Nobody wants gravel rash on their baby.

And there is camping.  And adult beverages, of course (by now you must know me well enough to believe that I would give the event a pass if this were not true), campfires, and daily turn-by-turn recounts of the driving.

Here are this year's participants (from left to right):

• VW Golf R32 (Phil)
• 1966 Karman Ghia (Ken - my son-in-law)
• 1969 TR6 (Adam - my son)
• 1973 Riviera (50,000 original miles - Jeff)
• 1968 GTO (me!)
• Porsche Boxer (Kerry)
• 1959 Austen Healy Sprite (with monster rotary engine, and a tiny 9 gallon gas tank - Brian)
• 1969 Fiat 850 (Piotr)
• Porsche Boxer (Kirk)
• (Not shown:  late model Corvette - Brian's dad)

If you are noticing something strange about the Riviera - yes it is photoshopped in - it died along the road with a failed water pump.  We made a valiant effort to effect a roadside repair (yes, we all travel with tools...  of course), but when three of the bolts snapped off in the disassembly attempt, it became clear that this was the end of the line for the Riviera - it was going to have to go home on a trailer.   We split Jeff's stuff up amongst us (to be fair, I had the biggest remaining trunk in the GTO...) and Jeff finished the tour along with the rest of us.  As he should have.  But I lost my pace car - I have always relied on the fact that if Jeff can make it thru a corner, then I can too.  Now I was on my own.

The route - 514 miles, by Piotr's odometer

After leaving the Seattle/Tacoma metro area the route was the twistyest (sp?) road you could imagine, with lots of big suspension bottoming bumps hiding along the way.  Perhaps the most spectacular turn was the one where, with the sun in your eyes, the road made a sharp 15 MPH turn to the right (trust me, no one was going anywhere near that slow).  No guardrail (actually, no guardrails anywhere).  And straight ahead?  Empty space.  I have no idea how long the drop was I didn't have time to look), but the opposite side of the canyon had to be a couple of miles away. 

The route took us over Old Man Pass, where Adam made your correspondent pose under the sign.   Thankfully, I am assured that all copies of this photo have been destroyed.

It was a wonderful time.  All the cars except the Riviera completed the trip on their own wheels, and the GTO is parked comfortably in the garage once again. 

 We now return you to your regularly scheduled sailing blog.

Searching for love, on twisty mountain roads

Homecoming

When you have been away from home for a while, returning to home releases such wonderful feelings.  It's like they were trapped in there somewhere under pressure, and then the pressure is gone.

It is a release, a relief of kinds - the return of the familiar.  Familiar smells.  Familiar sights.  Familiar friends.  A nite in your own bed.

Ahhh.

When we got out into the open air last nite after returning from a Cheyenne Wyoming wedding, Kaci expressed it like this: "My skin loves the air here!"  Now certainly a part of this was the wonderfully perfect humidity and temperature of a Seattle mid-summer evening.  But a part of it was surely the homecoming release as well, brought on by that perfect air.





And as for me?  Well, sitting in the cockpit at sunset with a long anticipated IPA pretty much says it all I think.

Homecoming

The persistence of engineering

The ubiquitous cigarette lighter socket

Have you ever read that old ditty about the persistence of engineering? In case you haven't, I'll repeat it here for you:

The U.S. standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That is an exceptionally odd number. Why was that gauge used?

Because that's the way they built them in England, and the U.S. railroads were built by English expatriates.

Why did the English build them that way?  Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

So why did the wagons have that particular odd spacing?  Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions.

The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? The ruts in the roads, which everyone had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels, were first formed by Roman war chariots.  Since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

The U.S. standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Specifications and bureaucracies live forever.  So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back end of two warhorses. Thus we have the answer to the original question.

Now a twist to the story... When we see a space shuttle sitting on it's launching pad, there are two booster rockets attached to the side of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRB's. The SRB's are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah.

The engineers who designed the SRB's might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRB's had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory had to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad tracks, and the railroad tracks are about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So, the major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass.

I think you get the parallel. When it became necessary (back in the 60's?) to have a source of 12V in cars for some newly developed accessory, the cigarette lighter socket got pressed into service as the source of that 12V - it was right there, in every car.  Plugs were developed to tap that resource.

Today, cars still all come with that cigarette lighter socket, but no actual cigarette lighter.  And the socket is not labeled 'Cigarette Lighter' - it is simply called '12V', if it has any label at all. 

Modern generations of kids have no idea why a 12V source in a car needs to have such an awkward size and shape, not knowing its origins.  And they are right.  It is only because of 'persistence of engineering' that we are saddled with these things. 

But today a new standard is emerging: the USB plug.  The USB (Universal Serial Bus) standard was developed as a means for data transfer.  The provision of power via the plug was almost an afterthought.  And yet today, every cell phone, eBook, and in fact virtually every electronic device with a rechargeable battery inside it (even my remote control helicopter), uses a version of USB plug, not for data, but for power.

The new standard.  But with a still familiar shape...

To provide USB sockets on a boat, the old molds for the cigarette lighter socket were used to make the outer casing.  And because of that, the new socket will fit in the hole exposed when a cigarette lighter socket is removed.  For new installations however, it remains to be seen whether a more compact form factor will appear in the future. 

You are seeing a real, live case of persistence in engineering, right here in River City.

The persistence of engineering

Longing

It was grey, with lowering clouds this morning when Jane and I walked down the ramp to G Dock.  But it was one of those rare times in this season when there was no wind and Puget Sound was calm.  There was some light mist in the air from those low clouds, adding depth to the view across the Sound.  The sandy hook at Point Monroe was visible - it was a picture in shades of grey.

And we both agreed that it would be absolutely wonderful to be resting at anchor in Port Madison this afternoon.  And then we were both silent as we walked the 1000 feet out to Eolian, absorbed in our imaginations.

It was a compelling vision.

Longing

Funkiness in Friday Harbor

Are you mourning the loss of the Front Street Ale House in Friday Harbor?

Sadly, I cannot report that another brewpub has opened.  But if you are looking for some of the best BBQ you can find this side of Alabama, you only need to walk up the street a half a block.  There you will see this sign...  You will want to follow the arrow to the BBQ Shack.

The first thing I noticed in the place was the unusual ceiling fan.  Be sure to look up when you come in.

Now, when at a BBQ joint we always do the pulled pork, and you should too.  But here it was offered with an unusual side: smoked macaroni & cheese.  It turns out that this is a wonderful, rich combination!  Aside from the BBQ sauce that was a part of the pulled pork, the table was graced with a bucket full of unusual BBQ sauces that you could use to augment.  My favorite was the Gold Rush, and Jane's was the blackberry-based one. 

And tho this is not a brewpub, I can heartily recommend the beer selection.  We chose "The Gubna", an imperial IPA - really imperial (10.5%).  It was so rich and thick you could cut it with a knife - and that is a good thing.  It was the perfect companion to the BBQ.

You should stop in.  And when you do, please say "Hi!" to Kurt for us - he runs a great place!

Funkiness in Friday Harbor

The absolutely last, final bike ride home

Last nite I rode my bike home.

End of the road

Now, that in itself is not at all unusual - I do it all summer, and most of spring and fall.  In early spring and late fall, I don't make the entire ride - I ride from Shilshole to the Ballard Locks, and put my bike on the rack on the front of the bus - this is enough of a ride to be invigorating, and it keeps Jane from having to fire up The Beast just to deliver/pick me up at the end of the bus route.

But last nite, the bus didn't come.  I don't know what it is with the 46, but it seems to be the most unreliable bus in the system.  So there I stood at the bus stop last nite, with my bike, waiting for a bus that never came.  "No problem!" I thought, "I'll just hop on my bike and ride home!"  Having the bike does give you a great feeling of freedom.  So I coasted down The Av and turned right onto the Burke-Gillman trail.

Whoops.  

Things are certainly different from the last time I rode the trail, earlier in the year.  There are leaves everywhere - slippery, wet leaves.  As a thin sheet covering everything, and in wet, sloppy drifts that try to grab your wheel and pull it out from under you.

And it is dark.  I mean really dark - the trail is not lit, and so the only light is what filters in from nearby street lighting.  And my little headlight?  Well, it is more of a "please don't hit me" light, warning oncoming traffic that I am there.  It does almost nothing to illuminate the route.

There is not much traffic - bikes or pedestrians.  But what there is, is a real problem.  Many of the oncoming bikes have headlights that are seemingly as bright as car headlights - they blind me...  to the trail, and more importantly, to the pedestrians.

The pedestrians and joggers are the real concern - they are very difficult to see (why do so many wear black coats?!) - literally impossible to see if there is an oncoming bike with one of those very bright lights.  But blessings be upon you pedestrians/joggers that have retro-reflective stripes on your outer clothing!  My flashing headlight makes those stripes flash back at me, as if they were internally illuminated.  Those stripes really work!

It is a good thing that I have ridden the trail so much in daylight - there are several places where the trail curves and where it is simultaneously very dark.  Without the daytime familiarity, and with only my weak "don't hit me" headlight, I am certain that I would have been off in the weeds (or worse, splash!) in one of these corners.

I have two criteria that I use to determine whether or not I'll leave the boat on my bicycle in the morning:

• Can I get to the bus stop reasonably dry?  I don't want to start the day in wet clothing, and
• Is there frost on the dock?  I don't want to start the day in clothing wet with saltwater either.

So, aside from the scary dark experience last nite, those two criteria are closing in.   I am hereby declaring that the biking season over, for me anyway.  The bike goes into storage this weekend.

And the skis come out.

The absolutely last, final bike ride home

Baithouse lament

I'm going to do something a little risky here - I'm going to try to recreate in you a feeling we have.

It's a Friday nite.  It is dark.  There is a soft Seattle rain (some might call it drizzle, but that would be inaccurate).  We have walked down to The Baithouse, a tiny little venue right on the Ship Canal, close to the marina.  In fact, it is actually the daylight basement of someone's house, where a two- or three- piece ensemble has been invited, and where you can sip a beer and listen to live music, not necessarily excellently played, but it is live.  And all the while, there is nighttime boat traffic slowly passing by the window and the tiny little deck outside.  And the rain.

It is simple.
It is unorganized.
It is not a show; its more of a jam.
It is intimate.
Its a little bit of human camaraderie, away from the dark for a while.

And after a couple of beers, we walk home, back to the boat.  In the dark.   And the warm rain.

Sadly, its gone now.

Baithouse lament

Double anchor, double kudos

Friday, Sept 16 and Saturday Sept 17
(delayed due to sparse internet connectivity in the South Sound)

On an out-and-back trip, one of the problems is that the return trip can be kind of anti-climatic.  As soon as you turn around, you are in territory you covered only a little while ago, and there is a mixture of the beginnings of nostalgia and the undeniable draw of home.  We try to minimize this by stopping in alternate places where possible.  But portions of the trip are inevitably repeats.  Nevertheless, with the wind as propulsion, it is unlikely that both the outbound and inbound legs will be identical. 

We rose early again (rats!) and motored out of Filucy Bay ("wind as propulsion"?  not on this leg), heading for Gig Harbor once again.  It was a strangely uneventful trip...  We only saw three other boats in the entire distance:  the strange part was that these were three Canadian military vessels (#60, #61, #62).  We met them as they traversed Balch Passage, and we speculated that perhaps Olympia was about to be invaded by Canada.

A view of the Tacoma Narrows
bridges that most will never see

Passing under the (now dual!) span of the Tacoma Narrows bridge is always a rush - literally a rush if you do it properly, with the tide. 

We moved to the back of the harbor in Gig Harbor once again, in about the same place we had been a few days prior.  Tho the depth shown on the chart was a uniform 23 feet, as we drifted back and forth on the anchor, we occasionally saw depths of 14 feet.  I joked that perhaps there was a wreck down there.

It was a pretty evening and nite, and I experimented again with long-exposure pictures.  Normally I would have discarded this one, but something in the colors and shapes interested me, in an abstract sort of way.

Next morning: final, or final but one leg.  The wind forecast for Monday was for 20-25 kt at Shilshole, and I didn't really want to dock in that much wind.  So we hoped to use Sunday's 10-15 kt southerlies as travelling wind and get tied to the dock ahead of the big blow.

The first setback occurred as we hoisted anchor.  I was down in the bow, flaking the chain as it came aboard as usual.  I noticed that the windless seemed to be running unusually slow...  and then Jane called me up topside.  Uh oh.  There really was something down there.  Tho I can't say for certain if there was a wreck, there was certainly an abandoned old-fashioned anchor and its rode.  Kudos to our windless for being able to hoist this mess up to the surface where it could be dealt with!

The time-honored way to clean up this situation is to pass a line under the offending object, securing both ends on deck.  Then you lower your anchor, away from the now-suspended object.  In the picture I have started reeving the line.  The procedure worked for us (the second time we have had to do it), and the old anchor is back on the bottom of Gig Harbor.  It would have made a really neat souvenir, except that we really had no way to carry a very heavy and very rust-corroded object.  If anyone is interested, I can forward approximate coordinates - it would be good to get it out of the harbor.

We motored most of the way up Colvos Passage, with the current at our back.  Near the north end, the beginnings of a travelling wind appeared and we unrolled the yankee for a downwind run to Shilshole.

Unfortunately, by the time we reached West Point, we were seeing 20+ kt at our backs while making 7+ kts.  We briefly discussed running off to Port Madison and anchoring to wait it out.  But the forecast was for more (perhaps much more) of the same.  West Point partially shelters the Marina and the breakwater adds some protection.  We decided to explore and see how bad it was right at our slip - with the option to bail and head to Port Madison if it was bad.  Jane called Angela on the phone, and she rallied up a crew on the dock.

Things seemed tenable as I turned into the waterway, and so I committed to docking.  All went well until the boat was halfway into the slip.  Then a BIG gust hit us broadside, slamming us into the corner of the finger.  Kudos to Angela and our good friends and neighbors for saving us!  We already had one line ashore at that point - that meant that the bow could be kept under control; the rest of the crew fended off and took the other three lines.  No damage, thanks to all the help!

Tied to a dock again, for the first time since Sept 9... and the beer never tasted so good!

Double anchor, double kudos

Goodbye

Sunset on the eve of the Summer Solstice - 9:10 PM here in Seattle at the Western end of the timezone and up near the Canadian border.  From here on the days get shorter.

Sadness.

(Yes, that is a wine glass.  Also sadly, it is an empty wine glass.)

Goodbye

Last of the year?

Everything's ready!

When I got home tonite, Jane had everything all ready to go for a quick BBQ on the back deck.  It wasn't all that warm, but it was still fun.  And it is a *new* grill, after all!

Soon (*very* soon) the weather will turn disagreeable, with rain and cold.  But I like to cook on the grill, and it is only a few steps from inside, so the weather won't stop me.

Sunset

It won't be long before I'm doing it under the mizzen spreader lites - cooking tonight was still under way when the sun went down...

But that won't stop me either. There's something primeval that calls a man to burn meat over a flame.

Even if it is a propane flame.

Last of the year?

Maudlin maundering

I confess. I am guilty as charged.

I am maudlin about the end of summer.  Today is the last bit of it; tomorrow is autumn.  And here in Seattle, we have been running the heat on the boat at night for a while, but I've been hiding it from myself (I hide my own Easter eggs too).  The calendar is definitely correct - we are at the thin, nostalgic end of summer.

It has been a good one, and we have definitely gotten a lot accomplished.  And we ended it this last weekend with the visit of our friends from s/v Ghost to our Camano cabin.

I have 3 major projects under way, all of which foolishly presumed an endless summer: replacing the windows on Eolian, rebuilding Jane's '65 Mustang, and starting on the restoration of the 1959 Impala.

Where has the time gone?

I wore the white Hawaiian shirt to work yesterday as a celebration of the last full day of summer, and the black one today as a memorial.

(posted exactly at the autumnal equinox - the end of summer)

Maudlin maundering

Sadness

Something sad has happened.

When we were in Friday Harbor, we discovered that the Front Street Ale House was closed.

Coming to this pub has been a tradition with us, well forever. (Here's a picture of Jane and Adam there nine years ago. The whole family was there, but if I recall correctly, he bought the beer, thus he is immortalized in Internet fame.)

This was a brew pub. I am guessing that none of the beer they brewed made it off the island tho, so you've probably not tasted it (unless you were there of course). And it was good beer they made - something to look forward to, welcoming you to shore.

Things change, etc. But I am sad that this icon is no longer waiting for us as we walk up into town.

RIP Front Street Ale House

Sadness

The Shilshole Shuffle

It is sad. But it is a happy thing too.

We are about to lose our neighbors, Curtis and Cynthia on Wind Dancer. They will be moving their boat inside the Locks to somewhere on the Ship Canal because it will be closer to Curtis' work. We are sad, because they have been great neighbors, and we will be sorry to see them go.

But we will be happy because Brent and Jill on Ambition will be taking their slip, and become our new neighbors. Ambition is even the same boat as Wind Dancer - an Irwin 53! Amazingly, we had 4 of these Florida-manufactured boats on our dock at one point two summers ago - we are down to 3 right now, and with Wind Dancer leaving that will make two.

Shilshole rents slips from the first of the month, so at the beginning of every month there is a shuffling going on - people moving in, people moving out, people trading slips with others, working their way toward what they consider to be their ideal slip:

• Port tie
• Starboard tie
• North facing
• South facing
• Close to shore
• Out at the end of the dock
• Next to a liveaboard
• Not next to a liveaboard
• Straight-in shot (for those few slips where this is possible (I'm talkin' to you, Ghost)
• Next to a sailboat
• Next to a power boat

Fortunately, we think we are there, and feel very fortunate to have this slip.

There is another collection of folks who are in motion too - those who are sub-leasing slips. As one sub-lease expires, another opens up (or at least, they hope so), and so these folks move every month or three.

We who live on boats are, almost by definition, a transient community. In fact, tho we were dock newbies in 1999, we are now some of the oldest residents (well, yeah, that way too I guess) of G Dock. It falls to us to keep the memories of past residents like Art on Phoenix Rising (now at Fox Island), Brian and Martha on Nawura (now in New Zealand), Billy and Trish on Kwinhagak (now in Mexico), Tom & Dawn on Warm Rain (now in the South Pacific) alive for the newer folks.

There are, after all, plenty of memories.

The Shilshole Shuffle

Fall Morning at Anchor

This last weekend we made a quick jaunt over to Port Madison. We drove over using the engine, rather than sailing, since there was no wind. We had a wonderful afternoon at anchor (I worked some more on my Betsy Ross project). My eye was attracted to this dock ramp, which the years have given organic curves.

The evening cooled off rapidly, so we made a roast porkchop dish with cabbage in the oven, and got free cabin heat besides. It all went very well with the wine and guitar later.

When we woke up in the morning, the gift from the oven was still giving. All the moisture from the propane burned in the oven raises the relative humidity inside as well as giving heat. Over night the heat dissipates, but the moisture remains. It was 56 degrees inside, so I fired up the trusty Dickenson diesel heater, and we had it up to 70 in a jiffy. Bonus: the combustion air needs of the Dickenson inhale the moisture and expel it out the stack, so aside from the heating, there is also a net drying due to the air exchange. The windows cleared right up.

Slack water at the marina was to be at 14:15, so we needed to leave at about 12:45 to arrive at the slack (avoiding difficult currents at the dock). However, there was a competing need - the wind was forecast to rise to 20 kt in the afternoon, and we wanted to avoid docking with that much of a headwind if possible. So we decided to leave early, and hoisted anchor at 10:00.

It turned out to be a wonderful sail back across the Sound - we had wind off the beam at 12-18 kt, and Eolian scooted along at 6+ kt under just the yankee. It was great that what could be the last sail of the year was so wonderful (yes, I was feeling maudlin again...)

Due to our excellent speed, we arrived earlier than planned (but had the high wind anyway), and so had to manage the docking maneuver with both a 20 kt headwind and with significant current pushing us off the dock. In some ways it was easier, since I had to use the motor a lot just to counter the push of the North wind, and this meant that I had the use of the directed thrust from the prop and rudder available a lot more than usual. Curtis and Cynthia from Wind Dancer next door caught our lines, which was a big help.

I guess I am ready for the season to be closing, tho we may yet steal a day or two if moderate weather hits on weekends.

I guess I am ready.

I guess.

Fall Morning at Anchor

Final Thursday

Last Thursday, we rushed off the dock right after I got home from work (delayed, unfortunately, by a blowout on my bicycle tire) - across the Sound to Port Madison. Nevertheless, we barely had the anchor down and dinner started and it was dark. Not "city street" dark, *DARK*. There are no streetlights on the water. This will have to be the final Thursday run to Port Madison this year.

Dinner was fabulous, if a little sad because of this (I always get maudlin at the passing of the summer). Jane picked all the crab we still had in the freezer (it was getting a little old), and I made crab cakes - yum!

Crab Cakes

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• Pick the meat from 5 or 6 medium rock crabs
• Add two eggs
• Crunch up a half a line of saltines or so and add it
  
• Add a big blob of mayonnaise
• Season with Old Bay or shrimp boil (my favorite), or...
• Mix it all up completely
  

Spoon the mixture into a hot pan with a tablespoon or so of olive oil, shaping it into patties - pat them down until they are perhaps 1/2" thick. Fry until they are golden brown on each side.

Makes 4 6-8" diameter crab cakes

Other things you might consider adding to the mix:

• chopped celery
• chopped bell pepper
• squeeze in a clove or two of garlic
• chopped dill weed

Final Thursday