September 1st we took our fellow tall people, the Miksis family out for a dinner and sail. Later this fall in November we’re going with them to charter a boat in the British Virgin Islands and they’re not sailors so we thought getting them out on the water with us was a good idea. They brought some delicious Ezell’s chicken and we went out for a sail for a few hours, Puget Sound felt almost as tranquil as we imagined the BVIs will be.
September 2nd through 5th we took Greg’s cousin Nicole and her family out for a make up outing for missing their time in Desolation Sound when everyone had covid. The first night we anchored in Manzanita Bay on the West side of Bainbridge, lovely sunset views there. The next day we headed to Poulsbo and spent some time ashore exploring and shopping. The boys swam the whole afternoon, Liberty Bay gets pretty warm as it’s shallow and there’s not as much tidal exchange. That afternoon a boat named “Untethered” was dragging it’s anchor and there was no one aboard. Just as it was getting close enough to us to freak out, the owners zoomed up in their dinghy. She stayed in the dinghy (!?!) and he took his time cleaning his shoes as their boat kept getting closer to us. Maybe he was waiting for his blowers? Finally they got moving and re-set, not well, and just about in the same place to windward of us. Then they left to go back to their party ashore. Astounding! Some friends swung by for happy hour who we’d seen exactly a year ago on our old boat and chatted about the dream of owning Rocket Science, so neat to be there living it! The next day was much nicer weather and the kids started it out swimming some more, then sailed the Minto around a bunch. We had a relaxing few days there and then sailed back to Shilshole. The Heart Interface charger was being weird back at the dock, we took a long while trying to get it to work and it still wouldn’t so we left the boat unplugged to let the sun and solar panels do it their way.
September 16 we invited Sunny Fenton, her boys, the Creitz family and Dieter’s Taser partner and his dad all out for a great sail. It was so fun having a bunch of sailors on board who knew what to do. There was a bit of time with a good amount of wind and we had fun going fast and flew the chute very comfortably. A friend of Greg’s sent the photo below of us fussing with the chute on the bow that evening. Fun fact: Sunny and my grandfathers were both founding members of CYC and now she and I (and Wanda!) are on the board there together.
The 17th we took some rowing friends, Amy and Peter Berner-Hays out for a quick sail, on the 24th we took out another rowing family, the Joneses. The 25th we took one of Griffin’s best buddies and his family out and flew the chute some more, got to see the last day of the Taser worlds racing around on the way home. It’s really good for us to be getting so much practice though we still stall out sometimes if we don’t get the jib around smoothly, the inner forestay is off so the sheets can get caught on everything around the mast as they come around.
October 11th we took a group of our Taco Tuesday friends out in a nice breeze at the beginning that died out but it was another great sail with a bunch of sailors! I love our TT group, so many great people with such deep and varied experience.
The winter was approaching and it was time to get into project mode. We’d been avoiding digging into the heater project but it was getting cold and time to get moving. See the projects page for the new heater install saga someday when we get around to writing it? Meanwhile, here’s photos of a system drawing and the unit, pump, and uninstalled buffer tank… I got really friendly with the space aft of starboard quarter berth. (Heater project is posted now.)
Last cruise of 2022 and the first of 2023 was over to Blakely Harbor where we met up with quite a few Taco Tuesday boats in a few different raft ups and had a great party. Red Hot brought crab from further north in the Sound that they pulled up while underway sailing; slow down, boathook the buoy, and pull fast! It wasn’t too cold out so we enjoyed picking and eating it for a long time in our cockpit. Expired flares were set off from a dinghy without anyone getting hurt with Griffin’s along. At midnight we could see the fireworks on the Space Needle and we were so happy to get to fall asleep with our new heater keeping us cozy. The next morning we went to Kay’s house to polar bear and have black eyed peas, a perfect start to a new year!
Next up in time is the Bottom Job and More in the projects section, blog will continue after that.