New - Windarra on the map

A friend of our, Tucker, of SV Convivia, has put together a website for reporting locations based on reports submitted from cruisers like us. This allows folks like you to click on the "Windarra on the map" link on the right side of the blog or go to Tucker's website www.farkwar.com directly and see a google map with our recent locations.

 

We think this will be a better GoogleMap view than Pangolin (Where is Windarra now?), which has some time lag or Shiptrak (Where have we been?) which unfortunately lost some of our locations over the past 3 years.

 

So please take a look and let me know what you think. Through Tucker's website, you may also sign in to follow Windarra and receive emails when we report our new position.

 

The starting location shows where Windarra is currently, on the hard at Club Nautico Reloncavi in Puerto Montt, Chile. We will returning to the boat in October. When we start travelling again, I will try and post our positions so you may follow along.

 

Thank you Tucker for setting this up.

 

Cheers,

Elaine and Rich

Couch surfing, cats and chickens

While we are in Seattle, we have been trying something new. We did not want to spend all of our time sleeping on the couch at Sarah's apartment until her roommate, Jess, left for Australia in mid July. It is fine to stay at friends for a few days but we were looking for something to cover more of the two months. The answer was house sitting. Through friends travelling and friends of friends and a website site, www.housecarers.com, we found 4 different places to house sit. In addition to staying at someone's house, we also took care of watering plants, mowing the lawn, caring for cats and chickens. Rich mentioned that he had some experience with chickens while in boy scouts so he was nominated for that duty. He called the 5 hens, 'the ladies', and they started to recognize him after several days. One home was on Bainbridge Island so we had a chance to visit with friends who also live on the island. Another home was in the Greenlake area so we walked around the lake one day. This was an opportunity to experience different neighborhoods, and also remind us what living in a house was like as we have been liveaboards for the past 14+ years.



Hanging out in Ballard near our old house

Rich tending the 'ladies'

A chance to cook in a real kitchen

Views of Lake Washington and the Burke-Gilman trail

We are liking the experience so well that we will definitely do it in the future and possibly overseas as well.

 

Now we are back at Sarah's until we head to the east coast of the U.S. to visit before returning to Chile at the end of October. There still are a few more boat parts to pick up and we already have one large suitcase from Goodwill to take some of them back with us.