It’s nice to be back. Westsound Marina continues to be run by Ian and Betsy Wareham, a most pleasant marina and small boat yard on Orcas Island that was started by their father and the kids have continued the business. Betsy runs the chandlery and the manages the marina, Ian operates the boat yard and does all sorts of marine repairs, fixes motors, paints boat bottoms, you name it he’s probably already fixed one. Slips are at a premium in the relatively small marina, my Dad keeps his boat there and he was able to find a spot for his powerboat such that I could use his slip for Beetle. Beetle will be there for a couple of weeks and then will shift across to Friday Harbor for the winter., I telephoned the Friday Harbor folks and turns out the off-season starts September 15 (originally I was told September 1 – which would be odd as that’s prior to the big Labor Day weekend), and to bring Beetle over to the guest dock that day to set up for the winter moorage and liveaboard, plus there’s a place to keep the truck there as well. The interisland ferry that runs between Friday Harbor and Orcas is relatively inexpensive at $18 round trip for car & driver, no charge for walk-ons (you are only charged in one direction, the return trip is included in the cost of the ferry ticket).
Being back here also means various details of crashing back into a “normal” lifestyle: getting car insurance for the pickup truck, re-registering Beetle with the state of Washington, having an address that UPS and US Postal Service will deliver to without complaint, updating boat insurance to include the marina, and doing repair work on the property at Orcas (installed replacement deck boards on a portion of the barn’s exterior deck, repainting the barn is up next, intermixed with log splitting for the wood-fired hot tub). The pickup truck is running well, which is a great as it will get used while I’m here on island.
Beetle came through the run from Kauai with no damage, and I’m particularly pleased that the new standing rigging did not stretch during the trip and did not require re-tuning mid-ocean. I expect that tuning the rig in relatively high winds off Waikiki had something to do with that, plus I’m using compact strand ‘Dyform’ wire which stretches significantly less than 1×19 wire. Upshot is the mast remained in column and didn’t require adjustment along the way. The solent furler setup works wonderfully, making it super simple to change gears as the wind changes – swapping out from the no. 4 to the no. 2 was as simple as possible and being simple and easy means the change is likely to be made – no more beating up the no. 2 in slightly too much wind!
On the local front I’m going to join the Orcas Island Yacht Club as this creates access to reciprocal privileges at other yacht clubs. I asked Betsy (she’s the OIYC race officer) if I could join, she said, ‘Sure! Fill out the form and I’ll sign off as a sponsor.’ So I did, filled it out, walked over to the chandlery and she signed off as Sponsor 1; I asked whom else I might know that would be Sponsor 2 and she said, ‘Ian will!’ and wrote him in as the second sponsor. I must remember to thank Ian for doing this even though he has no idea he’s the second sponsor. Next up is to attend the Club’s salmon barbecue on September 19th and that fulfills the application requirement of attending a club event where the new person gets introduced around.
Other thing I did was visit the UW Medical Clinic in Eastsound to have my right foot and ankle looked at; it’s been not happy since the day after setting the spinnaker in the ridge up to the High, the foot swelled up making walking around the boat difficult, and when the swelling went away there was still a fairly good pain in the center of the foot just below the inner ankle bone that protrudes out as a knob. The doctor checked out the foot, no sign of gout or arthritis, nothing obviously broken, so either I had tweaked some of the soft tissue or had created an avulsion fracture where something joins the bone. X-rays were shot two days later when the x-ray tech was available (it’s a small island, we’re lucky to have an X-ray machine and someone that knows how to operate it), and yesterday the radiologist telephoned to let me know that there was nothing wrong with the bone structure and recommended rest, ice, and compression – let the ankle heal itself. So while I may have used two hands for the run from Kauai to Orcas, I definitely single-footed the second half of that trip. Looks like something got out of whack in the area at the top of the arch on the underside of the foot, closer to the inside of the ankle. The foot has been improving a lot, perhaps from being able to walk around (which is not easy to do on the boat), and it’s much better at weight bearing. Hopefully in a couple of weeks more everything will be sorted out and fine.
It’s Tuesday morning, time to get some things done at the property, then over to Beetle to continue working on the boat diet. Beetle has too much stuff stashed away on board, I’ve been moving through the lockers and finding things that I’m not using or didn’t use, and Beetle is floating noticeably higher in the water! I’ve also been scrubbing away with the boat brush attached to the long handle boat hook, removing the green algae growth that has plagued the water line, knocking off the wonderfully dark red/brown dirt from Hanalei that made it all the way across the pond, along with the newly-grown gooseneck barnacles that manage to cling to boats even when they’re moving along smartly. Whatever ‘glue’ the gooseneck barnacles use would make amazing underwater glue – apparently folks are studying how the barnacles do this, as there are various papers on the protein-based ‘cement’ the barnacles create. Perhaps ‘Barnacle Cement’ will replace ‘Gorilla Glue’ as the strong adhesive of choice.
Enjoy the day!
– rob
