Friends and Storage

On Tuesday we drove up to Sacramento to have lunch with Chuck and Margie of SV Dreamcatcher. The last time we saw them was at Khutze Inlet on our way up to Alaska. They had driven down to see some of Chuck's family that live in the Sacramento area. We had a great meal at the Virgin Sturgeon which is right on the river. The weather was warm and we sat out on the deck. Apparently this is an old hangout of Jerry Brown, the governor-elect. We didn't see him so I guess he was busy catching up with Arnold. After lunch we walked around old town Sacramento. Rich and I plan to go back sometime and visit the train museum there.

On Wednesday we had Pete and Sue of SV Kiapa over for dinner. Rich fixed his Mediteranean stew. They told us about some places to sail to in the bay area and up the rivers as well.

In the mean time we have been working on projects in the pullman. Rich has installed new hatch. We also put in a new access hatch to the storage area under the lower bunk. Originally when the boat was built, there was a water tank under the lower bunk. The owner previous to us, converted this to a fuel tank. Unfortunately he used the same venting system even though it was now diesal instead of water. If the fuel tank was overfilled it would vent into the forward head sink. Yuck! We removed this fuel tank and put a new tank under the aft stateroom bed and vented it on the transom. With the tank gone we now had a new storage area. The only problem was the access hatches were small, so we cut a much large access hatch with a piano hinge on it. One end is filled with plumbing spares and the rest of it is filled with tools that do not fit in the port settee locker or that we do not use as often.As we went through the storage I inventoried all of the parts and tools and where we are storing them.

Where are we going to put all of this stuff?

Since we will not always be close to a marine store we carry spares just in case. This is a bit of a balancing act since one never knows what part might fail and you will need to replace out in the middle of some beautiful anchorage with no store in site. Ideally we would have spares for everything but then we would have to buy another boat to tow behind us filled with spares. So instead we make some judgement calls as to what we might need based on our little experience and out and out guessing. Some times we have guessed well and some times not.

Tuesday we fly to Philadelphia for the Thanksgiving holiday. There may be no updates until we return.

We would like to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving.

Elaine and Rich