We have been busy this week, slowly but surely crossing things off our list. We installed our AIS (Automatic Identification System). This will enable other ships to see us on their chart plotter and we can see them. It’s very handy in the fog, which I guess comes out of nowhere in Alaska. It took us 2 hours to fish a cable through the wall. (red emoji with cursing symbols in the mouth area) It took us several days and a lot of head-scratching; we felt SO victorious when we finally got it working. Literal cheering and high-fiving.
You can go to marinetraffic.com and type in our vessel name and you can see exactly where we are. Good thing there is a map because the description is inaccurate. A message on the site tells me that I need to upgrade to give our longitude/latitude etc. No thanks. I don’t think you guys care that much 🙂 The dot on the map is accurate at least!
The circle with a ring around it is us at marinetraffic.com
Soon, the circle will be somewhere other than Cap Sante Marina.
Not sure when, there is a BIG BLOW coming soon.
After (during?) the AIS installation, our tank monitors and autopilot upstairs no longer work. Our troubleshooting skills are exhausted, we have an electrician coming this morning to help us diagnose what happened. We have a site glass on our fuel tanks, and we have a watermaker, so not too worried about that. But it’s critical to know your black tank level. Especially once we are in Canada, we are no longer in the land of the free pump-outs, you have to pay, so may as well wait until you are full. I think it is something crazy, like $25. It’s free in Washington to encourage folks not to discharge overboard.
The davit installation has begun. We had a break in the weather, finally! Here I thought spring was around the corner, we had biting cold wind, snow, hail, rain and low temps. We did find some fields of daffodils blooming though, so it spring is around the corner. Back to the davits, a lot of cursing is coming from the swim step area. I’m sure it will all end up fantastic, as usual, but these projects usually take double the time we have estimated.
I wanted to insert a photo from yesterday’s davit progress, but the file is taking way too long to get to me from Jim’s Snapchat, so will post the progress tomorrow. I’ve got places to be! People to see! Ain’t nobody got time for that. https://youtu.be/waEC-8GFTP4?si=1uzkq9JHcW7cyVLR
We were invited to tour our neighbor’s Solaris sailboat, Kashmir, the other night. Beautiful boat! They have a YouTube channel focusing on using “shorts”. Here’s a link if you are interested. https://www.youtube.com/@sailingkashmir Now that we are where we are in life, we sure wish we would have learned how to sail when we were younger. We yakked for a long while. It was a nice evening. We need to reciprocate, but our boat has been in shambles since the beginning of January! Anyone who owns a boat gets it.
But if you remember the beginning of our conversation, we have an electrician coming at 9. Shortly, we are going to launch everything into the stateroom for his visit. Afterwards, while Jim is out mumbling and cursing on the swim step, I need to actually put as much stuff away as I can, instead of shuffling it around and do some cleaning, as we are having our friends John and Julie over tonight for tacos. I also have a lunch date with Gerry and the caterers for the PaNNTOA rendezvous at 1:30, so this is going to be a busy day.
I’ve bent your ear long enough.
Talk Soon.
Lots of progress. On the location map you can literally see which slip you are in. Close enough.
Your location will be fun to follow.