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

Katmandu 1992-2010

Katmandu passed away on Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2010, He was over 18 years old. We adopted him at PAWS in Bellevue on Feb. 25, 1994 and they estimated his age at 1.5 years. He became our house cat. In February of 2001 when we moved onto Windarra, he became our boat cat.

Katmandu was also known as Mandu, the furry kid, Pooters, Pooterino or Poot, if you are into that whole brevity thing.

He traveled with us on Windarra from Seattle across the South Pacific to Australia and this year from Seattle to Ketchikan to San Francisco, accumulating over 14,000 nautical miles. Mandu may not have been able to pull a line or steer a course but he was able to let us know that land was near when we were 21 days from Mexico on our way to Nuka Hiva. We all had his company during our watches, especially at night when he would sit next to you and put out a paw to ask for attention.

Many cats are often aloof and merely deign to live with you. Mandu was special, a social cat, wanting to share the company of his humans. He would sit with us at meals or sleep next to you when you were reading a book or at the navigation station, surfing the web.

We all have special memories of Katmandu and he will be sorely missed. It is hard to say goodbye to our smallest crewmember. We hope he will be waiting for us at that far shore.

Elaine and Rich

Happy birthday Jesse

This past weekend Jesse, Rae and Sarah flew down to join us. Saturday was Jesse's 25th birthday and we got a chance to celebrate together.

Before they arrived on Friday evening, Rich completed the installation of the new hatch in the Pullman. We had to clean up our projects and move the items we had temporarily stored in the V-berth either back into the Pullman and still allowing room for Sarah to be able to sleep in the lower bunk and have room for her things in the upper bunk. The V-berth was cleared for Jesse and Rae to sleep in. As a consequence some items were stowed in our small dock box or along side the bed in the aft stateroom.

On Saturday the weather was clear and sunny. We relaxed and showed off the improvements we have made to the boat that they had not seen yet. Jesse tried to describe to us his new job in Portland where he is putting his math skills to work. Sarah, Rae and I went and checked out the IKEA store that is nearby. Rae and Jesse are moving to a new apartment in downtown Portland so she was looking for ideas. I was looking for a new cast iron pot for Rich. Sarah herded us both through the store. Afterwards we went out for lunch. In the evening, Rich made lamb shanks with polenta and we had a cake to celebrate Jesse's birthday. We watched the movie 1776 which Sarah is writing about for her Music in Film class. It was a great evening.

Sunday morning it was raining hard as we drove to the airport in Oakland to drop them off. On the way back we got caught in traffic going to the Raiders game. After a quick stop at Borders bookstore for some new reading material we went back to the boat to read and relax.