Windarra has left the dock....

47'55.218N, 122'4.336W, at anchor at Pt. Ludlow

I know that many of you have been wondering when we would leave. I understand that someone was taking a poll on the dock predicting it. Well, for whoever guessed June 1, 2010 at 10:30 am, you are a winner.

This morning we got up early to run some last minute chores before heading out, pick up cat food, check, kitty litter, check, pick up mail at our mail service and let them know we will be gone for a while, check, stop at the place where we got our water maker and pick up some supplies and parts, check, pay for the new batteries, credit card and check, drop off our key fobs for the marina, check, have the holding tank pumped out, check, prepare Windarra to sail, check, start the engine and cast off from the dock, CHECK!!!

It is liberating to, at last, sail away after so many months (and years) of preparation. To leave behind the rat race (the rats are winning), the rush of traffic, the hurry, hurry, hurry to get things done, whatever those things are.

At the same time, it is sad to leave family and friends. We will miss weekly dinners with Sarah and watching the latest episode of 'House'. We will miss having Dan call up and invite us over for dinner. We will miss going to Doug and Nancy's on Bainbridge Island for a meal that Nancy calls something simple but the rest of us think it is right out of the pages of Gourmet magazine. We will miss going to Cafe Besalu for the greatest pain au chocolate.

But, at the same time, we look forward to seeing new places, having new experiences, meeting new friends and connecting with cruising friends we have met in the past.

Right now we are anchored in a small harbor. The wind generator is spinning away. It is time to relax, slow down, take a nap, read a book.

Make sure you take time, to slow down too.

No worries

Soon

We have been busy this week.

The solar panels are mounted above the davits and the dingy is now hanging from the davits. Normally when we make a passage the dingy is deflated and stowed on the foredeck but since we will be on inland waters (Puget Sound, San Juans, Straits of Georgia, etc) for a while we will hang it from the davits.

The refrigeration is complete for now. We are starting to put the fiddles on. This helps keep things from sliding onto the floor in the galley when we are sailing.

Rich had taken the old hatch from the forward head shower a few months ago and we had plastic covering. This was not sufficient for passagemaking. Since we have been so busy with other projects, we had Dave install the new hatch. It looks great.

Rich installed the new watermaker. It is not connected yet so it will not process sea water. That will be a project for some anchorage in the future. We carry 140 gallons in tanks below the settees in the main salon so we will be okay for a while.

I am starting to vacuum pack spares and storing them, such a engine fuel and oil filters which are stowed below the settee in the aft stateroom. I have a Foodsaver vacuum packer that we got at Costco before we left in 2001. It is still going strong. I use it for lots of things, spare parts, food stuffs, paper goods, clothing, etc. Toilet paper takes a lot less space when it is vacuum packed!

We went through some items in the storage unit today to bring back onto the boat such as paper charts of the west coast of Canada and from Neah Bay to San Francisco. Other items included the storm sail, Galerider, genicker plus some spare parts.

We have been waiting for our batteries. They finally arrived at the trucking depot. Instead of waiting for them to be delivered to the place where we bought them (Tuesday at the earliest, since it is a holiday weekend), Rich and I drove down to the depot and they used a forklift to load them in the back of our Subaru. We purchased 2 batteries, 270 amphours each and each one weighs 140 or so pounds. The rear end of the car definitely went down when the batteries and the pallet they were on were loaded. Tomorrow we will take the bed apart in the aft stateroom, remove the old batteries, and replace them with the new ones. It is not easy getting these heavy, awkward items out and into the salon, then up the gangway and out onto the dock and then reversing the process for the new batteries.

Thursday nights the liveaboards get together for BBQs. Everyone brings their own main dish plus a side to share. There was quite a crowd on the main dock by Windarra. Some friends, Linda and Brad, left last year to go cruising. While they were in New Zealand, they had a mishap on an unmarked reef near Doubtless Bay and their boat went down. Luckily they were able to get out and launch their life rift with no injury. They fired some flares and someone on shore saw them and rescued them. The fellow that rescued them was from a nearby Maori village. They were able to stay there and collect the items that washed onshore from their boat. They had insurance and they have already bought another sailboat in New Zealand and will be working here for a bit before going back and cruising again. Cruisers are hearty folks.

Now if we can just get the batteries in and get everything stowed.....

Open boat and dock party

Yesterday we had an 'open boat' and a dock party. An 'open boat' is like an open house but of course it is for our sailboat, Windarra. Since we invited more people than can fit on the boat at one time, it spilled onto the dock, hence it was a dock party as well.

It is great to be able to show everyone what we have been doing to Windarra the last 6 years and especially the last 5 months. We get excited about our new refrigeration, charter/plotter, radar, LED lighting, new bulkhead in the v-berth, etc. Of course we also just like being with our friends! I am sorry I did not get pictures of all of you but here are a few:

We are mentally ready to go. Unfortunately Windarra is not quite ready. The new batteries for under the aft stateroom are not arriving until Thursday, so we will have to wait. In the mean time we have other items to work on. Today Rich installed some of the hardware for our new boom brake. For you novices, this allows us to control the speed of the boom as we tack or gybe. This is very important when you have heavy winds.

Graduation at Reed and other news

This past weekend we went to Portland, Oregon to attend graduation at Reed College. Rae, Jesse's girlfriend, was graduating.

Rae graduated with a dual degree in chemistry and biology. All seniors at Reed write a thesis which is published and a copy is put in the thesis room in the library. Rae's thesis title is, "A study on the Effects of Small Conductance Ca2+ -activated K+ Channel Type 2 on Dendritic and Spinal Morphology". I am afraid you will have to ask her what this means.

I also got a chance to meet more of Rae's family. I have met her mother, Louise and her husband, Michael as well as Rae's twin sister Jenny. This time I also met Louise's mother, Ruth, Rae's brother, Gregory as well as Rae's father Peter. You can see us all in the picture below (from left to right: Gregory, Ruth, Jesse, Rae, Sarah, myself, Peter, Rich, Michael and Louise.

Here is the happy graduate with her brother and sister. Notice the resemblance.

We also cheered on other graduates including Jess Dennis, a good friend of Sarah's. Jess received a degree in psychology. Her thesis was "Metacognition in Rats". She invited us to attend a gathering that the Psychology department had for the graduating seniors. The thesis advisors wrote a limerick for each senior's thesis. The limerick for Jess' thesis was:

Jess made it her thesis ambition

To instill in rats, metacognition.

The rats, now self-aware,

Ask, "how do you dare

Study us without our permission!"

Jess and Sarah will be sharing an apartment in the fall when Sarah returned to Reed to do her senior year.

We had a great time and the weather cooperated.

And, by the way, the other news, Jesse and Rae are now engaged....

What happened between October 2004 and April 2010?

For many of you who read our position updates and/or read our website, www.svwindarra.com, we seemed to just fall off the face of the earth or the surface of the ocean or drop over the edge. Well, we are still alive and we are getting ready to go cruising again.

2004

In our last position update, October, 16, 2004, Rich, Sarah and I had sailed Windarra back to Shilshole Bay Marina in Seattle and Katmandu had flown from Brisbane, Australia to Seattle to join us and Jesse had gone off to college at Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania.

Many changes have taken place since then including the heater system Rich put on the boat. It is cold in Seattle !!!

2005

In January, I started work as a contract engineer at Boeing, working in the power lab on the 787 program. I did system engineering and helped add the airplane simulation capability to the lab to enable 'flying' the power system. It involved working lots of overtime.

Rich helped out with my parents, as well as keeping tabs on Jesse at college, Sarah finishing high school on the boat and boat projects.

2006

Rich and I moved my parents from their home to assisted living in the north end of Tacoma in January after my mother stay in the hospital and a rehabilitation facility with a broken pelvis. When we first returned in 2004 we realized that both my parents had memory impairment issues. Rich would go down frequently to check on them. It took an event but finally they agreed to move. Having regular meals, medication and someone to help made a real difference. In July we sold their house after sorting through a lifetime accumulation of possessions.

In August, Sarah started school at Reed College in Portland, where she is majoring in chemistry.

The crew of Windarra is now just Rich, Katmandu and myself.

2007

The summer of 2007 was a tough time for our fathers. Thankfully Rich was able to go back east shortly before his father passed away. Unfortunately my father had a traumatic stay in the hospital at the same time which resulted in a move from assisted living to nursing care at the same facility. Shortly thereafter we moved my mother to nursing care as well.

Sarah's friend from Reed, Rae, came up to visit us in August. Rae left not only as Sarah's friend but also as a special friend with Jesse.

Rich replumbs and installs flush toilets on Windarra. What a great luxury!

2008

Rich, Sarah and I flew back east in May for Jesse's graduation from Widener. He now has a degree in Mathematics and a minor in Computer Science. Our friends, the Hansmann's, joined us. Sarah and I flew back to Seattle while Rich and Jesse took a road trip across the United States, including a stop at the Grand Canyon in a snow storm. Jesse and Rae drive from Pasadena to Portland.

Rich replaced the old electrical panel with a new one and rewires to ABYC standards. In July, Rich and I (and Katmandu) go cruising up to the Broughton Islands at the north end of Vancouver Island for 5 weeks. It was a great break from work and a chance to get away from the dock.

Jesse starts work at HP in Beaverton, as a software engineer, taking after dear old Mom and Dad.

Here is a group photo of all of us taken in December.

2009

My father passed away after his fourth bout of pneumonia in January. My mother was sad but she does not always remember him.

At the end of her junior year, Sarah decides to take some chemistry classes and do some undergraduate work at the University of Washington. She lived on board Windarra for the summer and then moved into an apartment of her own in September. I guess Rich's boat work was too much for her.

Windarra now has hydraulic steering and a new autopilot thanks to Rich and our friend, Dave Stearns.

In October, I switch from working in the lab to working on the 787 program directly in the systems engineering group but only working part time. There is too much boat work to do.

2010

So far this year has been consumed with boat projects. We are replacing the refrigeration, the radar, the HF radio, watermaker, wind generator, adding solar panels and other changes. Rich has been converting much of our lighting on the boat to either LED or cold cathode. You can read more about the changes on the Boat Projects page of this website.

My contract engineering position at Boeing ended on March 25. Now I am available full time to work on the boat.

Sarah has a paid research position at the UW for the summer in the CENTC program. In the fall she will begin her senior year at Reed College and plans to do a thesis in organometallics.

Jesse and Rae are planning to move to Seattle sometime this summer. We will be attending Rae's graduation from Reed before we leave.

So many projects, so little time. We can't wait to be out cruising again. We plan to head north to Alaska in May and we want to be in San Francisco before the end of September. In 2011, we will head south.

Test of posting to blog via email

This is a test of posting to our blog via an email. I plan to use this feature when we send position updated using the HF radio.

Everything in the email will be posted except anything after #end in the email.

Setting up a blog

Rich and I have decided to use a blog to post the position updates of Windarra. This is new to us so please bear with us as we learn. Don't be surprized if this site changes unexpectedly.

Instead of sending or pushing emails out to a distribution list(s), we will post our blogs and then you can pull the information when you want to. There is a way to get our blogs automatically emailed to you as well.

You will be able to post comments and send email to us. We look forward to hearing from you.

We will continue to maintain our other website for a period of time (tbd) but eventually it will fade away.

So, welcome.