January 2010 – Late Entry

January 29, 2010

The Great Seattle Boat Show

So if you live anywhere in the Puget Sound area media market my post title has just set off that cursed jingle from the commercials in your head where you won’t be able to shake it off until sometime in March. You’re welcome!

It’s that time of year again, though, and everyone is getting excited about the Great Seattle Boat Show. Three Sheets has a whole separate blog dedicated to the event, which will have updates throughout the week that the show is going on. I plan to check it regularly for hot tips on what to check out next. And Navagear’s Tim Flanagan has an unusual floating perspective on the Lake Union portion of the show (Boats Afloat) on his blog.

I just picked up our tickets today. If you happen to be a BoatUS member, you can get a modest discount by going through their site for the purchase (and you still get the free Qwest parking pass with the deal).

Oh, a Boat Show commercial just came on as I was typing this. Apparently it’s no longer the “Great Seattle Boat Show” but the “Big Seattle Boat Show.” I’m keeping the blog title, though… it’s the same jingle.

The show is always exciting, particularly coming in the middle of winter as it does, when most of us have been off the water for a few months and the itch to get out there again is reaching a fever pitch. I’m a little less into it this year, though. Last year, and the year before, we were deeply involved in planning for significant trips coming up the next summer, and we had both budget and motivation to take advantage of boat show deals for outfitting. There were also many mysteries of medium-distance cruising still in our minds, and the many informative seminars put on by people who had been there and done that were high on our list to feed our hunger for information.

(The commercial came on again just now. Funny how that jingle gets stuck up there, isn’t it?)

This year, we don’t have anything major planned for next year (which isn’t to say that it won’t happen, just that we’ll be poorly prepared for it if it does) and we have a lot of other things going on here in the next two weeks. So, we’re focused on other things at the moment, and the boats and exhibitors at the show all seem as if they are a long way away from where we are right now.

We have a plan to kindle our excitement though, which is to go for our first day with some friends who are looking to buy a boat and retire soon to go cruising. They are reformed boaters who sold their last boat long enough ago that they have forgotten all the reasons why they shouldn’t buy another, and we expect the enthusiasm to be infectious. We’re counting on it, anyway; I have to go back to our boat afterward and find the energy to dig into a fistful of projects that have to be finished before we head north in two weeks for Vancouver.

January 25, 2010

An Early Spring

As is typical in boating, our practices this winter didn’t follow the plans made in the fall. We had imagined we would be out sailing more, nearly as frequently as during the summer, rather than house-sitting and splitting our time commuting between boat and house. We didn’t spend much time winterizing, imagining we would be out and using all those systems, whereas in fact they have been sitting for the better part of three months without much happening. I managed to put off an oil change, radar troubleshooting, installing additional storage racks, rewiring a bilge pump, fixing a backflooding problem with the shower sump, and any number of other sundry small projects that make sailing life safer and easier.

So now we’re set to head north in less than a month, and it’s time to go through what is effectively our spring commissioning.

I’ve been a little scared to crack open the engine compartment, and if you have ever tried to pump cold oil out of a sump you would be too. Of course it’s my intention to warm the engine up before I take a crack at it, but the engine has been a warm-weather creature to this point, and I’m also a little worried it’s not exactly going to fire right up when I hit the starter. Better here than just off the Customs dock in Bedwell Harbour, of course, but I’ve got plenty to do already without having to nurse along a sick diesel.

Our radar has been claiming it doesn’t exist for some time now and I’ve been trying to find a method with which to get up the mast and get the hood off it without freezing to death. My technique so far can be described as “wait for spring” but time has run out on that one. The nice days we have been having, I have not been at the boat, and the days I have been at the boat have been uniformly rainy and miserable, which aren’t the best for poking around at delicate electronics, anyway.

The bilge pump wiring could probably wait but it’s one of those few things I can do as easily in bad weather as good so it is probably the only thing that will actually get fixed to my satisfaction before we leave. That, at least, will provide some comfort if the shower sump floods back into the cabin; in fine weather there is no problem, but when we are out getting tossed around (as seems likely to happen on a February sail) the fact that the head floor drain was built in without a one-way valve results in evil-looking slime creeping back out of the sump and making a bid for freedom. I’d let it go its way, but unfortunately I am often between it and the companionway. Only one of us may prevail.

Despite the daunting laundry list of things that need to happen between now and February 10th, I’ve found that having a good hard deadline does wonders to fix the mind on what is most necessary and to actually make progress on projects that have seemed insurmountable. I wouldn’t give odds, then, that I won’t get up the mast by then (although whether or not I am capable of debugging the radome is another matter), and I’ll get the oil changed even if I have to use a blowtorch to heat the pan to do it.

Come to think of it, our insurance settlement for a burnt boat might just cover the cost of hotel rooms in Vancouver.

January 20, 2010

The kindness of Canadians

I’m not saying Americans aren’t kind, particularly here in the Pacific Northwest (where we have something of a reputation for altruism, at least, if not strictly kindness), and certainly not among or around boaters and marina workers we have encountered, who are with very few exceptions complete gems and entertaining to be around in the bargain. Still, there is a certain extra something we find north of the border when we visit there; despite some not insignificant reservations our northern neighbors have about us Americans, they remain hospitable to the point of excess, as I was reminded today when I received a call from the False Creek Harbour Authority.

You may recall a couple of months ago when I began my quest for moorage somewhere in or near Vancouver during the Olympic Games so we would have accommodations with easy access to the bus lines leading to the Whistler venue, where we have tickets to one of the early events. Our search had been fruitless and unpromising; the few marinas I had reached who had open slips seemed reluctant to let them out, and many of the rest were full up.

It hadn’t really occurred to me to contact the Harbour Authority, or rather it had occurred to me and I had quickly discarded the thought. Most Canadian harbours have a public harbour authority which manages docks as a community resource; few cruisers who have spent time in British Columbia waters haven’t spent a night or a few at one of the ubiquitous red-railed public docks, which typically have lower rates and a more colorful community than their private counterparts. In some ports, they are the only moorage available. Most, however, have a primary mission of providing affordable moorage for the large (though shrinking) Canadian fishing fleet. They are rougher and older than most private marinas, and providing accommodations for cruising boats is a secondary concern. During the summer fishing season, though, when the fleet is out, they are happy to take in transient cruisers (cruisers who aren’t picky about slip-side services and who don’t mind rafting alongside commercial vessels with strange smells, noises, and early AM departure times) and some of our favorite Canadian port stops have been at public docks. In the winter, however, they tend to be full with their regular customers, and I didn’t expect to find any openings. Nor do they take reservations, typically. Hailing the harbour master on arrival was still on my list of options, but I was figuring that Plan C, anchoring out, was going to be the most likely outcome.

Here was where Canadian hospitality came through for us, however. Two months ago, I had called Pelican Bay Marina on nearby Granville Island asking about slips. The manager, Marcus, told me he had a spot, but that he had promised it to someone else if they got back to him that day. If they didn’t, he said he would give me a call and I could have it.

He didn’t call, and I figured that was that. This morning, though, my phone rings, and it’s Alison from False Creek Harbour Authority, and she had heard from her manager, by way of Marcus at Pelican Bay, that we were looking for a slip, and they had one if we were still interested and willing to put down a deposit.

Were we ever!

Alison acknowledged that this was all out of the ordinary; they don’t normally take reservations or deposits. But it seems as if someone realized that it’s a boon to the Authority coffers to make an exception during the games, so they’re taking reservations, bumping the rates up a bit (still extremely reasonable) and getting deposits. We couldn’t be happier with the outcome; we stayed at the Harbour Authority docks in False Creek a couple years ago when we passed through Vancouver and had a lovely time. They are particularly well-situated for exploring downtown Vancouver and the amazing Granville Island, the folks are friendly, and the facilities well-kept. If I’d known they were taking reservations, they would actually have been my first choice. Alison even spelled the name of our boat correctly on the first try (it helps to have something memorable!).

All of this only came about because Marcus, who I only ever had one two-minute conversation with (although I got to know his mother quite well as she was minding the phone while he was on vacation for a couple weeks before I managed to reach him), went out of his way to mention my name the manager at the Harbour Authority and pass along my contact information.

Might it have happened in Seattle? Maybe; we’ve got some good people around here. But although we didn’t ever expect it, it’s the sort of thing that we routinely are pleasantly surprised with in our dealings with our Canadian cousins. And it has us looking forward to our visit next month all the more.

January 11, 2010

Long Shots

The mariners of yore had it easy; oh, sure, the boats were frail and wooden, the weather was unpredictable and the waters uncharted… but did they ever have to try to pull in a wireless Internet signal from five miles out?

There are still sailors, of course, who hold to a philosophy of austerity, spurning fancy electronics, power-draining appliances, and complex gadgets like watermakers and satellite TV systems. Mandy and I ascribe more to the Einstein theory of systems complexity: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler”. The catch, of course, is what you consider to be the lower limit of “no simpler.”

In our case, Internet makes the list. Both of us run businesses that are heavily dependent on Internet communications. We can get away (and indeed enjoy doing so) from it for a few weeks at a time, by planning ahead and making some allowances, but for living aboard, intermittent or low-speed connections to the web just weren’t going to work for us.

At Shilshole, we have the option of getting Comcast cable internet, but cable is expensive no matter where you are and is an even worse deal for boaters: you only get it when you are tied up in the marina. Satellite internet was both outside our energy budget and price range. We don’t have, and don’t otherwise need, a High Frequency radio aboard, so HF modems aren’t in the picture, and are too low-bandwidth for our needs besides.

But we’re not going particularly far afield except in small doses, so easier solutions present themselves. In this case, in our region, wireless Internet is the clearest choice. Almost all marinas are equipped with WiFi hotspots, and here in the Pacific Northwest, most of those are controlled by a single wireless provider. That means a single subscription has us covered up and down the coast in both Canada and the United States.

Equipping ourselves to use that service was considerably more straightforward than most of the other alternatives. Although the provider does sell hardware packages for boats which they claim are necessary for the “marine environment” it’s not hard to roll your own solution at much less expense. For most circumstances, we’ve been well served by a fifty dollar USB-powered signal booster and an old 8 dbi antenna I happened to have laying around. As long as we are within a mile of one of the marinas, we have good luck connecting at high speeds with that rig.

We had another challenge that was a bit stickier, though. Our “winter quarters” where we are house-sitting are right next to a marina… but not one served by this particular company. The closest marina with that provider is five miles away across the length of the bay. Our cheap booster and omni-directional antenna were not going to cut it.

But five miles, across open water, is still within the realm of the possible when it comes to wireless connections, and using some handy web-based calculators, and some educated guesses about the equipment the provider was using, I was able to run the numbers. I could still use our existing booster, and with a vertical height of at least 21 feet and an antenna gain of 20Dbi, a connection should be possible.

I went with a 24Dbi parabolic grid just to be safe, mounted it on an 8 foot galvanized pipe atop an embankment to get to the minimum height necessary, and lined it up with a combination of binoculars and a basic wifi signal strength meter on my laptop. When it was all connected up, presto: Internet access across the bay.

Fine, you say, but what does this have to do with you and being aboard your sailboat? How does that help?

Ah, but that’s the best part. Even during the summer months, we spend quite a bit of time moored out in front of this very same place. With the cooperation of the rightful tenants, I can leave my arrangement up year around. Plugging it into another common wireless access point or to a computer with wifi and Internet Sharing capabilities (which describes most Macs and newer PCs these days) I can create a secondary wireless signal at the house… which we will then be able to link to with our standard equipment aboard the boat when we are dangling off the mooring ball out front.

Okay, this isn’t a solution available to everyone, but if you happen to find yourself in a similar situation, it might be an option. Get to know the neighbors in places you moor or anchor frequently! The antenna is relatively small (and for most connections, you could use one much smaller) and the power consumption is minimal. And if you share (subject to the provider’s terms of service, of course), they might even let you do it for free!

January 7, 2010

Grey Havens

The docks are a cold and forlorn place this time of year, grey and wet and whipped by unfriendly winds. It’s a far cry from summer, with people wandering up and back, voices and music always in the air, the sound of power tools and laughter carrying across the water on the weekends. There are still people around, the dim, small, yellow-lit portholes giving away the inhabitants cloistered away in their own hulls, but none of the long, twilight cocktail parties are happening in cockpits these days. Everyone is huddled below, staying as warm and as dry as they can.

I am beginning to understand the appeal myself. The twin onslaughts of cold and rain are a demoralizing force down on the docks, and wandering along slick docks looking at swamped dinghies and shredding tarps flapping in the wind is a miserable trek to make indeed. Clambering down the companionway into a warm, dry cabin has an appeal that is hard to understand if you haven’t had to make that walk. We are besieged with offers from well-intentioned friends to come stay in spare bedrooms, on couches, or just about anywhere to “just get off the boat for a while.” While we appreciate the offers (and I, for one, am not above taking advantage of them just to get to stand fully upright in a shower that doesn’t take quarters every once in a while), the boat actually isn’t all that bad. I find myself looking forward to it, in fact.

A couple months ago, I was complaining, sort of, about the sad state of the views one has from the cabin of the average sailboat. It turns out this is a sort of blessing during the winter months, though, because once you get the space heaters going and the place warms up, it’s rife with memories of sunnier days and more exciting locales. I can crawl into the v-berth and read and it’s an echo of reading in the same position in more interesting places… hanging silently at anchor in Prideaux Haven, listening to the drone of jetskis off Sidney Spit, surrounded by trees and mountains at the Chained Islands. It’s really no different there in the mists at Shilshole than it was in any of those places, and with the grey closing in outside, it’s easy to let the mind wander back there.

With the days so short, the lights are on more, and the cabin seems warm and cheerful, like it is on any late summer evening. It’s warm, and dry, there is electricity and food, and really, what more can you ask for wherever you are? Without looking outside, the grey becomes a haven, a cozy escape from the real world just as enjoyable as more foreign destinations… at least until the phone rings.