Improvements – Riveted

We’ve Left the Dock!

Laura Domela — Fri, 19 May 2017 00:43:11 +0000

This has been a busy couple of weeks! We returned to Airship on Saturday and promptly started on a bunch of projects we still had left to do — a bit more provisioning, ordering a few more parts, going back for things we forgot, stuff like that.

One of our projects was to install two additional LTE/4G/3G/WiFi antennas (thanks SinglePoint!) on Airship’s mast so we can more effectively provide internet for our Slowboat flotilla to Alaska that we’re co-leading with Sam. We officially head north on Sunday and I think this upgrade will make our little “Slowboat Internet Cafe” (aka Airship rafted to Safe Harbour) pretty successful in terms of connectivity for people as we head up the Inside Passage. Here’s what they look like, all installed:

We’d originally had our guy Tony scheduled to help us with this install (since, you know, he’s a pro) but he got too busy and behind on his other stuff, so we ended up on our own. I think we did a pretty good job, considering.

Next up was the super cluttered pantry cupboard, especially the spices. There are far too many spice jars in here. I keep the most used spices in the front, but whenever I need something other than garlic, chipotle, cumin, or cayenne, it takes about 10 minutes to find what I want, and it’s a pain in the butt.

Oh yeah, and the tea. The boxes of tea take up way too much space…all that air! So here’s my solution: For the spices, I ordered these and ditched all the round jars. There are three clear acrylic trays that hold six spice jars each:

and for the tea, I got one of these Oxo square storage containers (left):

The pantry now feels way more civilized.

We managed to fit in a few social things in between projects: dinner one night with our friend Andrea at A’Town Bistro, after which we were treated to this sky:

A beer and some calamari at Anthony’s Cabana on a nice day:

Last night we went over to the bowling alley (San Juan Lanes Bar & Grill) in Anacortes for some fish & chips with Sam and two of our flotilla-goers. I know, but listen, San Juan Lanes has been voted “Best Fish & Chips” for 19 years in a row (they’re really hoping for the big 2-0 this year!) and they did NOT disappoint. SUPER fish & chips. And, you know…you can’t beat that bowling alley ambiance.

And finally today (after filling the water tanks, fueling up, getting dinghy gas, and topping off the propane) we left the marina and we’re now on a mooring ball at Turn Island. Kevin took the drone up for this shot:

Tomorrow we’ll head into Friday Harbor to meet up with some more friends, and then on Saturday morning we’ll cruise over to Roche Harbor to meet our flotilla (and probably do a load of laundry, and pick up a few more things we think we need at the market).

Here’s the view from making dinner:

Shiny Shacks | Airstream Repairs

Laura Domela — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 18:21:02 +0000

We have used our Airstream exactly twice since we bought Airship in September 2014. The first time we got back to our poor neglected shiny buddy, we noticed a little soft spot in the floor (front port side, next to Kevin’s side of the bed). It was small and in a low traffic area, and since we keep the Airstream inside when we aren’t using it, we didn’t feel rushed to get it repaired, but it was definitely on the list.

Then last month when we spent that week at the coast with it, the soft spot seemed like it had grown a little, and we also learned that we had a leak in our fresh water tank. Two things wrong = repair time. We’ve had plenty of experience with the local (and not so local) Airstream dealers/service centers, and our experiences have not all been awesome, so we contacted our friend Brad at Shiny Shacks in Salem, and asked if he wanted the gig. Brad primarily works on older trailers (40s 50s 60s)…repairs, rebuilds, remodels…but he was up for working on our 2010 model, so off to Salem we went.

This is Brad, with his 1962 Airstream Flying Cloud:

If you saw the other post about our first visit to Shiny Shacks, then you’ll already know this, but it is one of the 8 known survivors of Wally Byam’s Caravan Around the World (1963-64). The trailer belonged to Airstream photographer Fran Hall during the historic trip around the world, and Brad’s got a photo of it in front of the Kremlin in 1964. The Kremlin. 1964.

Update: Brad just sent me this photo to show you:

Anyway, here are some “during” photos of the repairs Brad did (photos courtesy of Shiny Shacks):

Well hey, look at all that rotted wood! Brad said the rot occurs because “Airstream places a thin insulation barrier directly over the frame and under the subfloor. It is not porous, so water coming in at the wall finds its way on top of the insulation. Because the insulation is supported at the frame rail, outrigger, and perimeter channel, the water pools in the center. This pool leaches up from below into the subfloor and creates dry rot. A couple of periodic holes in the insulation sheeting could have prevented this.”

We opted for a seam, rather than removing the bed and nightstands and pulling up the entire piece of flooring. This allowed Brad to get in there and just fix the problem area. Plus, we normally keep a rug there anyway, so the seam will never show.

Regarding the leak in the water tank, Brad had just done the exact same repair on a 2014 Airstream. It was a broken seam on the water pump inflow line. Seems the factory has an issue with their spin welder. Brad says, “The fact that the tank sits between the axles makes every vibration jam the rigid Pex line down like a jackhammer on the valve fitting. Perhaps a flex line at that point would avoid the issue.”

But now, it’s all fixed and no more leaking!

Brad is such a pleasure to work with. He does good work, his prices are more than fair, and he really thinks about the best and most economical ways to fix things. We highly recommend Shiny Shacks!

Boat Projects, Cypress Island, and Night 550

Laura Domela — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 02:50:48 +0000

We spent a few days in Anacortes doing some boat projects and general things like cleaning and reorganizing cupboards (which included ditching stuff we aren’t using…good to do this when you spend a lot of time in a small space). It’s so easy to keep adding more things to the boat (or the Airstream) that you think you’ll use, or you use once and then forget about. It’s nice to periodically take stock of what you don’t need and remove it, opening up space to do it again and again, many more times.

Anyway, on Friday late afternoon after re-plumbing the way the engine coolant routes through the hot water heater (more on that below), we decided to head over to Eagle Harbor on Cypress Island for the night. It was late in the day but we calculated we’d arrive not long after sunset (still light enough to avoid crab traps).

Great day to be on the water…glad we made it out!

We grabbed a mooring ball and spent a nice night gently rocking. This was our 550th night aboard Airship since the end of September 2014. I’d say we’re getting some use out of our boat, wouldn’t you?

Yesterday morning was gray and drizzly, and after a bit of work and some breakfast, we took the long way back to Cap Sante by heading north around Sinclair Island and then on the east side of Guemes.

Up ahead what looked like a long log turned out to be a tight group of cormorants. I’ve never seen this many this close together floating around in a group like this.

Cloud-makers (okay, not really) in Padilla Bay:

Okay, now here’s all about what we did with the coolant plumbing!

Our boat came from the factory (we’re assuming for safety/liability reasons) with a regulator that bypassed the engine coolant from flowing through the water heater if the temperature was greater than 120 degrees Fahrenheit. We think the intention was to prevent the water from getting heated to over 120 degrees, but the result seemed to be that as soon as the engine warmed up to normal operating temperature (around 189-190 degrees F), this stopped any coolant from flowing through the water heater at all. So, we could run the boat for 4 or 5 hours and arrive at our destination with the water in the hot water tank still cold. Furthermore, when our coolant system was pressuring up, we were getting some coolant leaks around the fittings of this regulator. So we decided that we could be careful not to scald ourselves with possibly too-hot hot water and we took the regulator out of the loop. We routed the heater hoses directly through the water heater (actually the way the water heater is designed to be used.) Now, after cruising for a couple of hours, we arrive at our destination with 140 degree water.

Additionally, we had noticed that our coolant overflow reservoir was neither increasing or decreasing, meaning there was no flow (overflow) between it and the engine, and we suspected we might have a bad pressure cap. The pressure cap is supposed to open up when the coolant expands, letting excess coolant into the overflow tank. Then when the engine cools off, coolant goes the other way, back into the cooling system. We went to replace the cap and discovered that it was a ridiculously high 145 kPa (kilopascals…about 21 psi/pounds per square inch). We decided to try a lower pressure pressure cap because in our installation we don’t ever put that heavy a heat load on the engine, and the reason for having a higher pressure cap would be to let the cooling system tolerate a higher heat load. Anyway, now the coolant is going back and forth between the engine and the overflow reservoir as it should, there are no more leaks, and we have hot water that we make while underway. Win-win! (Also, Kevin went a little OCD in the engine room with the zip ties while I got in there with the Dyson and some wet paper towels and the engine room is SO. SHINY. I should have taken a photo for you.)

Too Bad About the Fish

Laura Domela — Mon, 31 Oct 2016 20:00:18 +0000

We had Airship hauled out on October 3rd for a much needed hull cleaning, new zincs, and a new coat of bottom paint. Kevin was out of town so I took Airship over to Cap Sante Marine solo. (It’s only a mile or so down the way.) Tight spot!

It’d been about 18 months since we had our last bottom paint, but when we were hauled out in April this year for our electronics upgrade, the hull looked good. However, when we arrived in Ketchikan in May we noticed we had some not-so-lovely green fringe growing on the hull (which got nice and long as it had time to grow all summer). This looked like it was going to be a fairly easy and inexpensive routine maintenance operation (even with all the fringe):

The estimate for the work to be done (hauling out, pressure washing, adding a fresh coat of bottom paint, replacing zincs, waxing the hull, and then putting Airship back in the water) was about $1800 — about 2BUs (Boat Units). (Spoiler: this is not how things went down in the end.)

Turns out there was more than just the green stuff growing down there:

How did SideVu even work with all that crap covering it?

After the pressure washing to remove all things living, it was eventually discovered that the previous owner of our boat had used an epoxy paint over the top of an ablative paint, and the bottom paint was now just flaking off.

Here’s a good, short summary of how antifouling paint (aka bottom paint) works.

Simply put, ablative paint is designed to wear off of the hull (like a bar of soap sluffs off layers as it’s used). Ideally we would probably haul out and do new bottom paint every two years or so. (How often depends on how much time you spend in the water, among other things.) Apparently, if you put a layer of hard, epoxy paint over the top of an ablative paint that’s meant to wear off, then the epoxy paint won’t stick to it. It’s like trying to paint in acrylic paint over oil paint. The acrylic will just peel off.

The remedy for this predicament was to sandblast the paint off of the entire hull and start fresh. (Oh, and the estimate moved from $1800 to….$5000. Awesome.) There was no getting around it though…it needed to be done right. If you paint over flaking paint, you’ll eventually just have more flaking paint, so away we went.

Once the paint was gone, they discovered some thin areas in the gelcoat (sanding? no one knows), which meant moving Airship inside and applying four coats of epoxy before painting the hull with two coats of the normally-used ablative bottom paint. (Another $2000, ka-ching.)

Bare Airship (Bareship?)

The guys at Cap Sante did a great job, and the hull is now factory-fresh and likely won’t have anything growing on it for a while. (Oh, and the sonar SideVu sensors now have a sonar-appropriate protective paint so hopefully we won’t see barnacles like that again any time soon.)

The hull was waxed up to the rub rail while it was out of the water (much easier to do than when the boat is in the water). Nice and shiny!

And…finally! Going back into the water Friday afternoon:

Boat lifts are cool!

All good, right? (Except for the extra $ and three weeks out of the water instead of 4 or 5 days as originally thought.)

Not so fast, my little boater friends.

When the boat went back in the water, Kevin discovered that our house batteries were drained. Uh oh. This means at some point we weren’t plugged in as we should have been, and the 12V deck top freezer (the only thing we left running off the house batteries) had run the batteries down to empty. The deck top freezer. The one with 25 pounds of Alaskan halibut and salmon filets. I headed up to the top deck to check…and yep, what we had there was a stinky, soggy pile of fish mush. This must have happened when the boat was inside, because if we’d have been outside and not plugged in, the solar would have kept up with the freezer load. Also, the inside fridge/freezer had defrosted and dumped a bunch of water onto the floor in the galley (mostly dry by now…just the rug was wet). That’s another very good reason I’m glad to have Amtico flooring rather than teak and holly sole…if that had been real teak and holly under the fridge it would have been a big stained ruined mess of very expensive wood. The Amtico was just fine.

But to make matters worse, we think the freezer’s motor burned itself out from running on too low a voltage for some time, so we’ll be trying to figure that out over the next day or two. Kevin’s working on a wiring project (fixing/improving a couple of things that were on his list) and I’m trying not to be too sad that we lost about $600 worth of fish. (We can always catch more fish, right?)

To recap: we thought we’d be hauled out for 4-5 days (and outside in the yard the whole time) and we ended up out for three weeks (and some of that time inside a building, with no solar backup if we failed to have shore power).

The lessons to be learned from this are:

Even if you think you may only be hauled out for 4 days, it could be 3 weeks and all your fish will spoil.
Always be sure you know what kind of bottom paint goes on your boat, and that the next paint job is compatible with what’s already on there. The more you’re educated about the maintenance on your boat, the better. As new boat owners it’s easy to feel like you should just trust what “more experienced” people tell you…but it’s better to know for yourself.
All the loads to your house battery should be turned off. Our lithium batteries have built-in circuitry that cuts them out if the voltage gets too low (to protect them), but most house batteries don’t have this. If something’s running off your battery, it could overdischarge and damage or destroy your house batteries.
It’s a good practice to empty your fridge and freezer and do your defrosting in a controlled manner (and then turn everything off) before having your boat hauled out for any period of time. It’s harder to do this when you live aboard (even if you live aboard half the time), but, well…in our case I’d much rather have all that fish back.

Generally, if your boat is going to be hauled out, you should prepare it correctly to avoid accidental damage to things you care about.

If there’s a chance it will be below freezing while your boat is hauled out, you should fully winterize. The cold can attack much more quickly than when your boat is resting in 50+ degree water.
Be sure your propane is turned off.
Check all through-hulls when you go back in the water before starting up.
Some types of sonar transducers will overheat if they are turned on out of the water. Double check yours.
Don’t assume that your haul out will be a short as you think. You never know what will be discovered when your boat is out of the water.

Friday night after we got back to our slip, we emptied out the stinky freezer and started some tests on our house batteries to make sure they did the right thing (shutting themselves off before they got too low…looks like they probably did). We had a nice dinner and a glass of wine up at Anthony’s, and then came back to Airship and watched the documentary on humpback whales that I bought last week. It was a good choice as an end to a bummer of a day. Oh well. Live and learn.

Power Made Easy – Airship’s Electrical Upgrades

Kevin Morris — Fri, 30 Sep 2016 04:14:19 +0000

Before our 5-month trip up the Inside Passage to Alaska aboard Airship, we did some major upgrades to Airship’s electrical power system. Now, after five solid months on the boat – mostly away from marinas, here is a summary of how the system performed, what we learned, and what our “ideal” power system might look like.

SPOILER: It was AWESOME! We could not be more thrilled with how robust, reliable, and easy to use the new power system proved in five solid months of harsh use.

BONUS SPOILER: For the first 3 weeks of our trip – from Anacortes, Washington up the Inside Passage to Ketchikan, Alaska, we never once ran the generator or hooked up to shore power. We never once turned off the inverter or the water heater. We basically had all the power we wanted or needed without having to flip a switch, read a meter, or think about “how much power do we have?”

BONUS SPOILER DISCLAIMER: We said we didn’t “have” to read a meter or worry – but we did anyway. We’re data nerds. We looked at the meter about 15 times per day “Wooooo – look at that! We’ve still got 94% of battery left. Whoa! check it out – our solar array is pumping out 30 amps! Wow, we haven’t had to start the genset or hook up the power cord for WEEKS!”

OK, here is Airship’s system and the philosophy behind it.

We think of the power system in terms of power sources, power drains, and power storage. Power sources include the main engine alternator, the generator, solar panels, and shore power. Power drains are things like the refrigerator, freezer, water heater, lighting, laptops, and misc appliances. Power storage is the house batteries.

Airship 2016:

Power sources:

150A 12V engine alternator
5KW 120V Cummins/Onan Generator
Two 260W Solar panels with dual BlueSky charge controllers and IPNPro Remote display
30A Shore power cord connected to Magnum Inverter/Charger – 125A 12V charge rate.

Power Drains: (note, we are only counting “house” power – not including the navigation instruments, engine electronics, bow and stern thrusters, windlass, etc.).

Major: Water heater, refrigerator, deck-top chest freezer (These account for the majority of daily power usage.)
Medium: Nespresso coffee machine, laptop chargers, hair dryer, Wallas diesel heater fan (These account for noticeable usage, but aren’t significant.)
Minor: Lighting (Airship is all LED), phone chargers, entertainment devices (stereo, TV, etc). (These things use so little power, you almost don’t need to think about them.)

Storage:

600Ah 12V Lithium battery array with battery management system from AM Solar

Our philosophy is to set things up so the batteries can power anything and everything for one full day.

Why?

When we are traveling, we often spend only a single night at an anchorage or marina, then cruise several hours the next day to another destination. In that situation, we’d like things to be as easy as possible – no hooking up to shore power, no running the generator, just nice silent trouble-free battery power. And, we don’t want to be constantly worrying about how much power we’re using, turning things (like the water heater) on and off all the time, etc. That means we need a big enough usable house battery capacity to handle one day of our normal use, with a little to spare. And, we need an inverter big enough to handle any AC loads we might have without running the generator or hooking up shore power.

We calculated our daily usage while we were cruising around the San Juan Islands in the winter and spring. It looks like we use up to 450Ah of 12V electric in a typical day – if we leave the inverter and electric water heater running 24/7. (It turns out that the water heater accounts for OVER HALF of our total power usage on Airship).

NOTE: Don’t be put off by the electrical terminology. “Ah” stands for amp-hours. If that’s too unfamiliar, pretend that electricity comes in “gallons” and substitute that in your mind. “Airship uses 450 gallons of power per day.” Pretend that the battery is a fuel tank, and it holds a certain number of gallons. Pretend that the power sources pump a certain number of gallons per day into the battery. You’ll be just fine.

For that reason, we decided that a USABLE house battery capacity of 600Ah would be perfect for Airship. Note the word USABLE there. For normal lead-acid or AGM batteries, you should not regularly discharge more than 50%, so a 600Ah usable capacity would require 1200Ah of total battery capacity. For lithium batteries, however, they are typically rated for 100% of their listed capacity (some companies rate for 80%), so a 600Ah battery capacity gives 600Ah (or 480Ah if 80% rated) of USABLE capacity.

So, with a 600Ah usable battery capacity on Airship, we should be able to run everything just fine for a full day without adding any power to the system and without doing anything particular to conserve.

Now, once we’ve done that, how do we refill the battery for the next day?

Time to talk about our Power Sources:

First, there is the solar. Our two 260W solar panels don’t ever put out even close to 260W each. Solar panels must be rated by a marketing guy who stands in the Sahara Desert pointing the panel directly at the sun exactly at noon. No solar panel in the real world ever comes close to its rated output. Second, even in the Land of the Midnight Sun, it’s not always sunny. You only get a few hours of good, solid sunlight per day, and most of those are at a steep angle, not with your panel pointed right at the sun. Clouds, rain, and fog all cut down significantly on your power output.

Finally, for boats and RVs in particular, there is a HUGE issue with solar that most people are not aware of – PARTIAL SHADE/SHADOW. In a normal solar panel, if you cast a shadow on JUST ONE of the little square cells (many panels have 50-60 of these little squares) – you have just cut the output by as much as 90%! Yep, you read that right. Casting a shadow on something like 5% of the panel almost completely shuts the panel down. And, on a boat, there is usually not a place you can put a panel where it won’t often be shaded by some part of the mast, antennas, or some other rooftop protrusion. Add to that the boat swinging at anchor, and you realize you just have to live with the fact that your solar panels will often be severely under-performing.

On Airship, we have a mast with a radar dome and several antennas. That means that at least one of our two solar panels will almost always have partial shade. If you have two panels on a single charge controller, that one panel will cut the output of BOTH panels significantly. So, we chose to have a separate charge controller (called an MPPT controller) for each panel. That way, when one panel is shaded and the other is in full sun, each one will have its output separately maximized by the charge controller. But – if you’re adding solar to a boat, RV, or whatever – REALLY pay attention to partial shade. Even a seemingly-small shadow is NOT OK!

We have now measured the output of Airship’s solar system over a wide range of conditions – from winter in the San Juans to mid-summer in SE Alaska. We have seen our total daily output range from 80Ah to almost 200Ah. Now, remember when we said our normal daily usage was around 450Ah? That means our solar provides something like 20-50% of our daily energy needs.

Second, there is the engine alternator. Airship has a 150A engine alternator. When we’re cruising, about 100A of that (on average) makes it into the house batteries. So, if we put 100A into the batteries for 4.5 hours of cruising, we’ve replaced our daily 450Ah that we used from the batteries. If we factor in 100Ah per day or so from the solar, we could cruise as little as 3.5 hours and end up with the batteries full again – just from the solar and engine alternator.

So – what if we don’t cruise 3.5-4.5 hours per day with some sunlight to boot? That’s when we need the generator or shore power. If we stay at anchor for more than one night, we need to run the generator to replace what we used each day. Our generator (using the “charger” part of the Inverter/Charger to charge the batteries) gives us a 125A charge rate. So, we’d need to run the generator between 3 and 4 hours per day to refill the batteries. If we have a good solar day and the solar pitches in 125Ah or so, that cuts an hour off the generator run time.

One thing we love about the lithium batteries is that they can be charged at full speed directly to full. Regular lead-acid or AGM batteries have to be charged more gently, slowing down the charge rate as they approach full. Our friend Steve says he thinks of it as pouring beer into a glass – when you get toward the top, you have to slow down to let the foam settle. So, with regular batteries, you have to run the generator much longer to charge them completely. You get to 80% or so pretty fast, but then the charge rate slows way down. Generators like to be run with heavy loads, though. It’s not good for your generator to run “easy” with light electrical loads. Lithium batteries, then, let us run our generator for a shorter time, and under a much better load than if we were trying to put the same charge into conventional batteries. It’s win-win.

Finally, when we’re at a marina for more than one night, we can plug into shore power. This year, our power system was so good, and we so seldom stayed more than one night at a marina, that we hardly ever needed to get out the shore power cord. It was wonderful! (This also means that we saved a few bucks in marina power charges. Power can be expensive in BC and AK since marinas often get their power from generators. Power alone can add $20/day to your moorage fee.)

One thing we did here was reduce the charge rate for shore power. Usually, when you plug into shore power, you have plenty of time, so there’s no need to rush getting your batteries back to 100%. And, if your 30A shore connection is using most of its capacity to recharge your batteries, you can easily trip the breaker if you try to run “other stuff” at the same time. So, we tell the charger to go slowly on shore power, and save some of that capacity for other things – like making coffee.

The one thing we’d maybe upgrade on our system at this point is to change our Inverter/Charger to one of the new “Hybrid” models. These new units have the ability to sense when you’re using more than the available shore power, and actually dip into the battery reserves to boost the output. It can be almost like having 50A power available, even though you’re plugged into only 30A. Then, when you’re using less power, the Inverter/Charger goes back to recharging your house batteries. It would be a nice upgrade.

One final note, for expedition cruising, this system also gives a nice measure of redundancy. If the generator fails, we still have solar and engine alternator to give us power. If the charger fails, we have a second battery charger that can step in. If the engine alternator fails, we can divert power from the generator and solar. It’s a very robust system that (so far) has served us extremely well.

Overall, we are thrilled with the major electrical upgrades we did to Airship this year. As we said, probably the only additional thing we’d change would be a swap for a “Hybrid” style inverter. If you’re on a larger boat with 240V AC power and/or 24V DC power – all these same principles apply, you just need bigger (and more expensive) versions of the same equipment.

Spencer Spit and Cypress Head

Laura Domela — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 13:26:28 +0000

We spent a few days in Anacortes working on some projects, and then took Airship out for some island time. We spent Saturday night at Spencer Spit State Park on Lopez Island. We left Cap Sante late and arrived at Spencer Spit by about 6:30pm.

Saturday all day it was clear and gorgeous out, but Sunday morning the clouds had rolled in:

On Sunday we popped back over to Cap Sante to pick up a few things and then went over to Cypress Island for the night.

We normally stay at Eagle Harbor on Cypress, but this time we tried the NE cove at Cypress Head and it is lovely!

Looking toward Fidalgo Island, across the little bit of beach that joins Cypress Head to Cypress Island:

We went ashore and hiked around Cypress Head for a while. There are some primo campsites here:

After our hike we went for a little dinghy exploration. Lots of seals and bald eagles around here. We saw a bunch of porpoises yesterday on our way from Lopez Island to Cypress Island, too.

Sunset last night was beautiful and it was so calm in here overnight that it was hard to tell we were on a mooring ball and not in the marina.

This morning we're heading back into Anacortes. The carpet replacement in the stateroom and on the landing outside the head is almost finished…the stairs should be done today and all the trim pieces installed. It's looking SO GOOD! (You can see the last bit of carpet in the upper left corner. I won't be sad to see that go.

Anniversary Getaway in LaConner

Laura Domela — Mon, 14 Mar 2016 21:50:22 +0000

We celebrated our 19th anniversary (19 married, 21 together, woohoo!) yesterday by heading into LaConner for an overnight at The Heron Inn & Day Spa. The Heron Inn is super cute. It's a bed and breakfast with tons of charm. Photo of the exterior (from their website…it was pouring and blowing a gale when we arrived so we just hustled from the car to the front door):

We had the master suite for the night (and since it was a Sunday in the winter, we actually had the whole place to ourselves). Here is a shot of the master suite/fireplace (also from the Heron Inn's website):

The huge jacuzzi tub was so nice (scale is tough in this photo, but there was more than enough room for two in there)!

The nook at the end of our suite (taken while watching that tree outside the window whip around like crazy in the gale winds yesterday):

When I booked the room, I scheduled us each for massages (which were lovely). After some massage and intense relaxation, we headed over to The Oyster & Thistle for dinner. We'd been to Oyster & Thistle for lunch before once when we were in La Conner and it was great (especially the caesar salad!) …. but last night's dinner was top notch. We started with some Shigoku oysters on the half shell with a Vesper cocktail, a salmon and scallop crudo, a caesar salad to share (just as amazing as we'd remembered it). We shared two main courses: a paella with smoked duck, clams, prawns, chorizo, escargot, and saffron, and a cassoulet with duck confit, buttered white beans, house cured bacon, garlic and onion sausage in a roasted duck broth. Delicious, all of it. The service was great, the portions were just right and not too huge, and we loved the intimate ambiance. Highly recommended.

Heron stained glass back at the Inn, after dinner:

We stopped at the DVD/games library downstairs before heading up to our room, and found a game Kevin used to play with his family when he was little, called Milles Bornes. We played a game last night – the artwork on the cards is so cute.

We've ordered a copy for the boat (here, from amazon, if you're interested).

Here's a description of the game, from amazon: Rev the engine eagerly, waiting for the green light to send you hurtling across the countryside. Keep the tank full, find your way around the speed limit and avoid the accidents that will slow you down. Keep the pressure on full and be the first to make it 1,000 miles! Mille Bornes is the classic card game of cross – country racing. Keep a green light handy in case you get stopped and play a tire puncture on your opponent to keep him from getting ahead. Protect yourself with safety cards and save one for the classic Coup Fourre. Play your cards right and you'll be the first to cross the finish line and be the master of the Mille Bornes!

This morning we had breakfast downstairs at 9am…fresh fruit, yogurt, a little chia seed pudding, and then a vegetable scramble with cauliflower, broccoli, eggplant, scallions…and a side of bacon. Delicious. Kind of fun to have the place to ourselves, but we recommend you come to La Conner and stay at the Heron Inn. If we didn't have the "Boat B&B" we'd stay here more often.

After breakfast we drove back over to Anacortes and grabbed some groceries, then took Airship and cruised over to Blind Bay at Shaw Island. The wind had mellowed out a little bit and we were itchin' to be out testing our new gear. Take a look at the new sonar options:

These are all three sonar windows: top left is down view, bottom left is traditional, and right is side view. Side view is a little tricky to wrap your head around at first (well, it was for me). The center line is the bottom of your boat, the black is the water on either side of your boat, and the blue is the bottom on the left and right side of your boat. Here's a bigger, full-screen image of sideview:

It's pretty sweet. Passing the mooring buoys at Blind Island, you could see the concrete block on the bottom, and the chain coming up to the buoy on the surface. I'll try to get a photo of that when we leave.

We also figured out our fishing pole storage. No, it's not rocket science, but it is hard to carry along everything you want while mostly living aboard a 34 foot boat without looking like the Clampetts (which we will NOT do), so it can be a challenge. Will report on fishing pole storage solution later. :)

Electronics…Upgraded!

Laura Domela — Sat, 12 Mar 2016 23:48:00 +0000

Earlier this week we headed over to LaConner to have our electronics upgraded. Here's what we got: Garmin 7616xsv chart plotter, GHP Reactor autopilot with GHC20 control, GXM52 Sirius XM weather receiver, GMI20 marine instrument, Garmin gWind wind and weather sensor, and downview/sideview CHIRP sonar transducers, GST43 speed/temperature transducer.

Out with the old:

Hauling out for a couple hours to install the transducers (much different than our haulout in Juneau):

It's always fun to see the boat out of the water. The hull looked great…we did a quick pressure wash ("we" meaning the guy who hauled us out) and replaced one zinc…the one on the bow thruster.

Downview/sideview transducer on the starboard side:

Water speed, temperature, and depth sensor:

It was great…they hauled and hung us at the end of the day (a very windy day when most haulouts had cancelled) and we were able to get back in the water last thing so we didn't have to stay the night in a hotel.

Yesterday afternoon we took the boat out for some sea trials to set up the new equipment and test that everything was working as it should. It had been so stormy previously that there was a ton of wood in the water, so it made it a bit tougher, but we managed.

Back into LaConner at dusk:

Look at all those logs ahead!

Everything checked out well and we're super happy with the new stuff!

Random daffodil field on the way to Best Buy the other day (blurry, taken not with my fast camera/lens):

This morning I took Airship back over to Cap Sante while Kevin drove over in the truck. It was definitely not as windy as the other day (and I had almost a 2 knot current helping me along, woohoo!) Hey! Look at those shiny new electronics!

Once back in Cap Sante we mounted the iPad holder and iPad. We run Navionics on the iPad for some redundant chart plotting.

Looks great there, doesn't it?

Our new wind/weather instrument mounted on the mast:

And while I'm up there, here's another shot of those huge new solar panels:

This afternoon was windy and rainy, but late in the day the sun poked through and the light was beautiful against the gray sky:

This new gear will give us a lot of capabilities that we didn't have before. The satellite weather will let us get marine forecasts, precipitation, wind and wave heights ANYWHERE, which will be super useful as we make our way up to Alaska again this spring/summer. The new wind and weather and speed sensors give us a lot of information about conditions where we are: what the winds and currents are actually doing, etc. The new autopilot will steer a much smoother course with less wear and tear on the hydraulic pumps. The new sonar will give us much more information (with way cooler images of the bottom — we'll show you some images once we have some). The 16 inch touchscreen is a LOT nicer and easier to use than our previous 12 inch non touchscreen monitor was (pinch and zoom! pinch and zoom!!) We can connect to the new system with our smart phones via Wi-Fi (and even mirror and control the display via iPhone). And…it all just looks more modern and cool.

Fun stuff! Now to go try it all out some more!

Sunny Day in the Boatyard

Laura Domela — Thu, 13 Aug 2015 21:30:47 +0000

Airship Goes to Alaska

Wow! This is QUITE a change from yesterday's weather, for sure.

We put our Cutless bearing in the freezer last night and then went and had a nice dinner at The Rookery Cafe. (Pro Tip: if you chill the Cutless bearing first, it'll shrink a little bit, which makes it a little easier to press into the stern tube).

Dinner was delicious, but I only took photos of the appetizers (the house made pickle plate and some fennel-cured sockeye lox with creme fraiche and Gustavus peas):

We shared two entrees: the Rookery ramen with duck, and Dungeness crab gnocchi. Both were very good! We walked around a bit downtown and then returned to our boat/treehouse at the boat yard. Kind of fun climbing the ladder to get up to the boat.

This morning we took new Cutless bearing No. 1 out of the freezer, got ourselves a little dish soap to lubricate the stern tube first, and then pressed the bearing in. It only required a little mild tapping with a wood block to get it all the way in at the end, and, well, 5 minutes later, new Cutless bearing installed! We also changed the zincs and Kevin pressure washed the hull of the boat.

Just before we left for lunch, our second Cutlass bearing arrived from the Nordic Tug factory (thanks guys!) so we stuck it in the freezer and headed down to try Tracy's King Crab Shack for some lunch.

There are four cruise ships in port today and the weather is gorgeous, so there were a ton of cruiseshippers downtown today, but the wait at Tracy's wasn't bad at all.

The king crab comes from Bristol Bay and I believe is frozen and then steamed to order here. We tried the Alaskan crab roll and the crab cake roll (sandwiches) both topped with cole slaw (both with combination of king and snow crab). The Alaskan crab roll was crabby and buttery, and the crab cake roll had some spicy sauce…they were very different and both good. We chatted a bit with a super nice couple from one of the ships (they were visiting from Toronto) and after seeing their king crab leg lunch (they said it was fabulous), I think we need to splurge and spend the $24/leg for those next time. When in Rome…or, you know…close to Rome….

It didn't help that we were sitting at the window where they steam the crab legs by the dozens. Yummmmmy:

We stopped and looked in a couple of shops that were closed last night: Annie Kaill's, where I bought this ring, because it's right up my alley, style-wise, and also because they didn't have the cute little fish measuring spoons that I really wanted:

Next we headed over to Trickster Co. Trickster Co. was founded by Rico Lanáat’ Worl (a Tlingit/Athabascan formline designer) to promote innovative indigenous design focusing on Northwest Coast art and Native culture. They began by designing skateboards for friends and family, but their product line is expanding pretty fast.

We bought a couple decks of the Tlingit Language Edition playing cards (these are so cool!). Each card has the Tlingit word for the card name as well as the standard numbers/suits. This deck was created to provide additional teaching material for people studying the Tlingit language (or for those who want to support the Native language revitalization).

…and Kevin got a great T-shirt with the Eagle Raven Tessellation design by Rico Worl:

Love it!

We got back to the boat and did some waxing and buffing on the boat waterline. Now we're just working a bit more and doing some laundry while we wait for the second Cutless bearing to chill out. The last part we are waiting for now is the new Shaft Seal from PYI, which should arrive tomorrow or Saturday. We can install it ourselves as soon as it arrives, so I think we'll be ready to go back in the water on Monday. Woohoo!! Can't wait to get back out there (posting about whales and icebergs and stuff again)!

We “Fixed” Another Thing

Laura Domela — Mon, 27 Jul 2015 12:40:00 +0000

Behold, Airship’s new grill:

It’s the small Sea-B-Que made by Dickinson Marine, and so far, we rate it very highly. It’s brushed stainless instead of polished shiny stainless (which looks crappy in about 5 minutes), and it’s got ceramic, separatable grill sections (easy removal for cleaning), and even (gasp!) medium and low settings (that work!!)

We contemplated the large one, but for 99 percent of our use the small one is just fine (and more portable and efficient). The only thing the large one has that the small one doesn’t (besides more space) is an automatic igniter, but we can order one of those to fit our grill once we are home.

We’ve cooked on it twice now, and it’s fantastic, and WORLDS better than our old Magma that came with the boat (and bonus, it stays lit for more than two minutes)!

First we made burgers (messy, messy burgers, with chorizo and blue cheese) and the clean up was super easy. Last night we grilled the Coho fillets and same thing…just wipe the cool ceramic grates clean and you’re good to go.

We gave our old grill to some fishermen on the dock in Juneau before we left the marina. Hope it does what they want.