Quick! Back to the Blog!

I've just finished something like three weeks ashore and realized almost too late that I haven't really managed to update my blog in all that time. Oops.

To make up for it, I'm blurting out a small splattering of writings that I've halfway thought out and a few pictures that I took despite the fact that I was without my camera for most of the time in question. I will begin here with....

The Road Trip to Kick Off Vacation

When last I wrote, it was all about the New Year's Eve party. The next day was mostly spent waiting for my designated driver to recover from her hangover. We got a slow start much later than planned, and the big concern was going to be the weather in the mountain passes we'd have to drive over on Interstate 5 as we headed south.

Along the way, we stopped for a quick lunch and some time to catch up with my mom's friend Joy. She's been living in Washington state for some years now and this is only the second time I've been able to visit her since I started high school. Unlike last time, I managed to take a picture this time:


At the end of a thoroughly enjoyable visit, we set out in earnest. As we headed toward miserable weather, at least one little dog viewed our departure with concern:


Heeding that concern, we decided to head West once we were South of Portland. This meant avoiding the snowed-in passes and getting some great views of the Oregon coast:


It also meant adding several hours to our trip, so by the end of the first day we still hadn't made it to California and we were both too tired to drive.

The next morning we started out bright and early and quested our way South along Highway 101. Along the way we found a garden gnome:


I wanted to keep it, but Ana wouldn't let me. This probably had something to do with the potential trouble we'd've had fitting it into the car:



While we were gnome-shopping, the little dogs were finding trouble in the car:

Poor little rat dog still looks worried, doesn't she? I suppose she was right to be somewhat trepidatious though. Later that afternoon was the first time Ana's little, bite-sized-snack dogs would meet my larger, hungrier, highly predatorial dogs.

Fortunately there was no blooding of any kind. After the obligatory butt-sniffing, my two crackheads went back to their own business and let the little dogs alone to cower. It all went pretty well.

Boatload of Buttfunk

I take pride in my boat. I like to keep it neat and clean and make sure the rigging and running gear is in good order. Still, over the last year or two, the Heart of Gold has suffered the twin menaces of weather and neglect. Such is the life of a boat. Little nuisance leaks have become potential sources of dry rot, tiny imperfections in the brightwork have become disastrous eyesores of peeling varnish, and once-glimmering painted cabin sides have become drab and dingy.

With my job, there's not too much I can do about the neglect part. It's just a given that there will be months at a time where I won't be able to do much other than dread the to-do list I'll have when I get back from being out to sea. Meanwhile, there will be neglect.

The weather thing I can fix though. While I can't move to someplace without the damaging effects of rain or (oddly enough) sunshine, and I can't park the boat in a garage, I have gone ahead and done the third best thing. While I've been away, I've contracted a local canvas worker, Cary Otis of ZigZag Canvas, to build a custom cover that covers everything above the gunwale from bow to stern. Here's a shot of the cover in progress (before the stern section was done):

The little parts dangling from the bottom are sandbags. The idea is that the weight hanging from the bottom edge keeps everything tight so that water will run off of the sides even after the aging canvas has stretched a bit. The fabric used is Sunbrella canvas, which has an advertised service life of fifteen years worth of weather exposure.

With the cover in place while I'm not using the boat, UV rays from the sun won't eat up the varnish and paint above deck, rainwater won't creep under the fittings and trim, and birds won't sit on the lifelines and crap all over the deck. I'll get to spend less time and effort fixing and cleaning things and more time and effort playing with the boat. It's all good.

Well, almost all good, that is. There's one problem. I suppose it's really just part of the cost of making life easier. It's a tiny problem and it doesn't really need a solution because it's so small, but it's at least worth mentioning.

On board the Heart of Gold there are two heads.* Because there are laws against dumping sewage into inland waters, the aft head is blanked off and the forward head flushes into a holding tank under the bunk in the forward cabin. As it fills up, the black water** in the tank displaces the air in the tank. Rather than let the pressure in the tank build up, the system has a small vent so that the pressure bleeds out through a small hole in the side of the boat.

That hole is just under the gunwale, all the way forward on the port bow. The canvas cover hangs down over that hole. As a result, when you flush the toilet, the inside of the cover gets a little whiff of fart-smelling sewer gas puffed into it.

So the first time I woke up on board the boat with the cover in place I went forward to use the head. After I'd caught up on all of my reading, I flushed and went back into the main cabin. The only source of fresh air in the main cabin was the louvred vents in the companionway doors (inside the new canvas cover).

As luck would have it, my dog Kira sauntered into the main cabin at the same time as the months-old ass gas wafted its way from the holding tank vent, aft along the now-enclosed main deck, and into the cabin via the companionway doors. So just as she stepped in front of me I was assaulted by the nastiest fermented turd smell I've suffered through in recent memory.

It was only after several minutes of laughing at her through watering eyes that I finally realized that the smell wasn't her, it was me.

*"Head" is boat-speak for "toilet." Don't make me tell you again.
**"Black water" is the Marine Engineer's technical term for sewage. There is also "grey water" which is the sort that comes out of shower and sink drains and (hopefully) does not include human waste.

I Need One

New Year's Eve 2009

I spent New Year's Eve in the Seattle area this year. Some of Ana's oldest friends were hosting their annual New Year's Eve party and, seeing as we were around, we decided to attend.

The theme was "swank," and guests were encouraged to dress accordingly. Of course, there's nothing swanker than this jacket*:


Ana wore her Hepburn jacket and a nice silk dress:


It was a fun crowd and there was no shortage of adult beverages:




And we weren't the only people there dressed in the height of fashion:


A good time was had by all:


But especially by me:


It turned out to be a nice end to 2009.

Stay tuned for 2010...

*The jacket was custom-made by my tailor in Kabul, Afghanistan. I'd say it's one-of-a-kind, but it's not. There is another. To see the other one, CLICK HERE.

I Need to Hurry Up and Get Wealthy

For those of you who don't know, I flew from Singapore to San Francisco via Tokyo the other day. The ship had pulled into drydock and they really don't need a navigator aboard while the whole thing is up on blocks getting repainted and having a bunch of engineering repairs and upgrades taken care of.

Per the union's contract with the company, if they need me to fly anywhere they are obligated to send me via Business class or better. In the past I'd never really given it much thought. After all, if you're only going to be on a plane for a few hours, what's the point in spending hundreds of dollars for a slightly better seat. I'm the "average-sized" person that we were told to design things for in my engineering classes, so it's not like I really need the extra space.

But extra space is not all you get.

The 3rd Mate (Jim) and I arrived at the airport with almost three hours to spare. We were flying with All Nippon Airways. Once we were checked in (via the much shorter, faster-moving "business & first-class" line), the attendant told us how to get to their lounge. The lounge is reserved for business and first-class customers and I was just figuring it was a nice place to sit away from all of the noise of the main concourse.

I was wrong.

Inside there was free wireless internet (saving me as much as $12 compared to other air travel experiences), a buffet breakfast (saving $10 to $35), a complimentary magazine rack (saving as much as $20 depending on how much I read), and a nice coffee service along with a very large selection of complimentary soft drinks (saving at least $3 a round).

In addition to the monetary savings, there was also the sanity savings. There was no mad rush of people pressing through airport shops and restaurants with screaming children and piles of bags stopping everything up. Instead it was actually a pretty relaxing experience.

Once we were on the plane I found out that drinks were free as well. Normally I don't drink on a plane if I have to pay for it, but since it was free I figured "why not?"

"Why not," indeed. By the time I'd landed at SFO, I'd had two mimosas, a bloody mary, six (maybe eight) glasses of a very nice chardonnay, two doubles of Bailey's Irish Cream on the rocks, a shot of Cointreau, and two glasses of red wine (saving something like $90). In fact, on the first flight, I'm convinced that the only thing the little Japanese flight attendant could say in English was:

"Sir, would you rike more wine?"

That was nice.

The meal service on both legs of the trip was pretty nice too. I had a surprisingly decent steak on the first leg and rack of lamb on the second. Then there were the desserts:


So I'm not exactly sure how much extra cost is involved in flying business class, but it looks like I saved around $160 worth of little things I'd've had to pay for separately if I was flying economy. Now I just need to find out if that's enough to pay the difference. If not, I'll have to hurry up and find a way to make enough money to not notice the difference between the ticket prices.

Failing that, I could always just drink a bit more...