I am so grateful...

I am sooo grateful that we live in such a temperate climate.

It's not that we have never experienced the cold - we spent roughly 20 years in Eastern Washington, in Spokane and Chewelah.  The worst winter I remember there was 1975/1976, when, in Chewelah, the daytime highs ranged as high as -20°F, and the nighttime lows were down around -50°F.  And we're not talking windchills here... that adds on top.  So I know what cold is, and I can sympathize with those of you in Montana and the Dakotas, where your furnaces are running 100% of the time and perhaps not keeping up.

But actually, virtually the whole country deserves sympathy.  Here in Seattle right now, we are warmer than almost all of Florida, if you can believe it.  Everybody is getting hit with temps to which they are just not accustomed.

Gratefulness is something that I sometimes have to work at.  But not right now.  Every time the heat pump kicks on, the gratefulness kicks in.  And when it shuts off (meaning that the boat has been raised from 69.5° to 70°), another even bigger wave of gratefulness washes over me.

Hey you folks in Miami - hop a plane to Seattle for some fun in the sun!

I am so grateful...

Read FREE!

Now seriously, what could be better than free?  Well, free *and* good is better.  Here in the Pacific NW, we have a multitude of free boating magazines that are distributed to the various chandleries and marinas, available free for the taking.

Our two favorites are:

48° North

This is a non-glossy publication, devoted pretty much exclusively to sailing and sail boats.  In it each month, sailing in the Pacific NW is encapsulated.  Racer?  Yup, all the latest results and standings.  Cruiser?  Yup, there's a section or three each month on various cruising destinations and gunkholes, much like my destinations posts, but way better written (my pictures are better!)  There's "Galley Essentials with Amanda", always an interesting cooking idea, tailored to the galley, not the trophy kitchen.  News from the business of boat brokers, chandleries, and other marine-related business.  New products. Well, just about everything you might want.

And if you are looking for a boat, the want ads in the back are a wonderful resource.  In addition, 48° also catalogs all the boats offered by brokers, organized by length.  So, if you are looking for a 27 footer, this is a great place to go to see a summary of what is available at the brokers docks.  (But go to the docks!  It's a wonderful day that is spent looking at boats!  And the brokers want you there - really!).

48° also has a web presence.

Northwest Yachting

The showpiece of this large format magazine is the cover art.  Each month a spectacular, luscious (really, that word does apply) photograph by our own Neil Rabinowitz (Neil lives on Bainbridge Island) fills your eye.  And evey month, the editors play with the title - it's always something - sometimes pretty subtle.  This month it is obvious - the bow of the boat is in front of the title.

Northwest is devoted pretty much (but not entirely) to power boats.  But since few sailboats are truely sail-only boats, there is a lot of crossover.  And both are boats, after all.  Much of the gear featured applies equally well to both power and sail.

Northwest has a large want-ad section in the back, and also has an organized catalog of broker powerboats.  Northwest Yachting also has a web presence.


I think if you are a power boater, Northwest Yachting is your magazine.  If you are a sailor, then you will enjoy both magazines.  We are very fortunate to have these two fine publications offered to us free every month.  Go get a copy of each, and do some dreaming.

Read FREE!

Howard, Ship's Cat

For a number of years, we shared a berth with Tropic Star, a Howard Chappelle-designed strip-planked wooden schooner.  Joe and Sheila decided at one point that Tropic Star would be incomplete without a ship's cat, thus enter Howard.  Yes, he was named after Tropic Star's designer, and like the designer, he did not have a tail.

The lack of a tail did not seem to bother him.  Certainly he managed to get to all the catly perches on Tropic Star, like the end of the bowsprit.

No, not there...  all the way out at the end.  Which meant he had to do some decidedly catlike maneuvering to get past the foresail bag.  Howard only fell in once that I recall. (Joe and Sheila left a piece of carpeting hanging off the dock into the water to act as a kitty ladder.)

Howard was truely a sailor, in every sense of the word.  If you were a guest aboard Tropic Star, you were reminded that Howard liked beer.  See, if you set your beer down on the deck, he'd run up and knock it over and lap up as much as he could get away with.  Yep, a true sailor.

It wouldn't surprise me a bit to find he had an anchor tattoo under all that fur somewhere.

Howard, Ship's Cat

Reprise

It has been a year since I started this blog.  Well not exactly - the anniversary will come up on January 28.  But today is such a big benchmark that I am officially and arbitrarily moving the anniversary to today.  That way, everyone will associate the beginnings of this blog with having a hangover - and how appropriate is that?

When I started, I had hoped to put up one posting a week.  Ha!  I got to writing, and pretty soon my backlog was bigger than the blog, so I upped the frequency to 3 a week.  And I pretty much kept that pace thru the year.

(Parenthetical observation:  By now you may have noticed that I refuse to use the baroque spellings of two common words:  night and through.  Instead, I use my modernized versions: nite and thru.  Yes, I am a rebel - in small things anyway.)

So, here at the end of the year and the start of another, I have 27 drafts or ideas stashed away.  Thru last year, my drafts folder kept a total between 25 and 30, so things are about normal in at least that respect.

So, looking ahead, for the coming year, you can expect at least these:

• Parts II and III on crabs
• The Haulout
• A host of destinations in the South Sound
• More San Juan Island destinations (no, I'm not thru with the San Juans yet)
• At least 3 more "I learned about sailing from that" posts
  
• More book reports 
• Sailing - How I got interested, and the early years
  
• Whatever new projects Eolian throws at us.  I must confess that the backlog of older major projects is nearly exhausted (some of you are going, "Yea!")
  

So, how's that hangover doing?  Made it worse, didn't I?

Reprise