Projects continue, with some successes and some setbacks. We completed our first round of provisioning, thanks to a friend helping us with bulk purchasing. We spent about an hour and a half shopping, and then I spent over 6 hours inventorying and stashing away the supplies onboard. Turns out we actually had room for 30 rolls of toilet paper, 2 liters of soy sauce, 6 liters of olive oil, 20 pounds of pasta, and so much more. We’ll do another round of provisioning before setting sail from Seattle. The goal is to fill our boat with a solid supply of non-perishable goods to last us for months. It’s much easier to provision while we still have a car!
Another big success of this week was clearing out our storage unit. This was all of our stuff after I reorganized and repacked it. About 1/3 of it was donated (including the old main sail at the front of the picture), 1/3 was brought onboard (primarily our dive gear), and 1/3 was stashed at the houses of family and friends in Seattle (thank you!). Now the unit is empty and we have one less monthly bill. It feels really good to have everything onboard now that we will take with us on our travels.
In other exciting news, the electric rebuild project is complete! Mark designed our new electric system and spent many hours and weeks with our electrician installing it and getting it up and running. It took longer than initially hoped, which is standard for pretty much all boat projects. But it’s done, and we finally were able to leave the dock! We went about 3 nautical miles north with the express purpose of testing our watermaker. The watermaker is a desalinization system we have onboard to turn salt water into potable water. We wanted to get out of the marina, and away from sewage lines, to find cleaner water to run through the system. The watermaker should make about 30 gallons of water per hour. It was a beautiful day to be out in the Salish Sea.
Now for the setbacks….
Our electronic navigation system was not functioning properly; the depth reading was flashing in and out, and it kept informing us that it did not have a heading and that AIS was not working. We also did not get very far testing the watermaker components because the low pressure pump failed. The low pressure pump brings the salt water from below the boat into the system. After some troubleshooting we returned to the dock with a longer to-do list once again.
Upon our return, I was talking with our neighbor about our afternoon off the dock. I said I felt like we had made one step forward and five steps backwards. His response: “It is still a boat.” So very true.
I’m so excited to follow your journey! Congratulations to you both!
It turns out the Gilda Radner was right, “it’s always something!”. On the upside, there is always valuable lessons learned and knowledged gained. Much better to learn it nearby than offshore. I’m impressed with all that you were able to stow and figuring out how much to get. Lots of nice weather coming for the next time off the dock!
Such is life, eh? You’ll get it all sorted out. I get chills (excited!) thinking about all that awaits you both. Wishing you the best in the next set of shakedown cruises! 🤗
It’s so exciting to follow along – thanks for the update!!! Great work on re-doing the electrical system.
Awesome! Enough olive oil till you get to Europe! I will be at GG Saturday morning till lunch to play Vb and celebrate Gwen’s birthday. Come out of the marina if you want to stretch those sea legs.
I cannot believe it’s your 13th day at sea keep on posting (mom says hi)
Fascinating to see all your amazing organization & planning skills. Won’t be long till you’ve got it all worked out. Tis still a boat.