Boat Life, Books, and Boat Jobs

Travel prep for boaters when we're being landlubbers

I was thrilled to see how many people enjoyed last week’s post. I got a lot of nice comments and quite a few new subscribers. Sadly, I didn’t get to enjoy my 23 new subscribers for very long—about a day—before getting a notice from the powers that be at Substack, informing me that they were dealing with “bots” who had signed up in the thousands, pretending to be followers and subscribers in order to infiltrate the system (to what end? I have no idea. But I know colleges are dealing with fake online student accounts in the thousands, too).

The “Starter Dog” post still did better than any of my other posts in the last 18 months of Substacking. The answer is, of course, to keep writing about adorable dogs and their people!

I won’t always do that, but I will keep up my “Book Review as Memoir” series, because I like opportunity of being really creative in writing them. This month will feature reviews of both In My Boots: A Memoir of Five Million Steps Along the Appalachian Trail by Amanda Jaros and Girls of the Glimmer Factory by Jennifer Cohen, the sequel to her must-read book, Cradles of the Reich.

Speaking of book reviews, I did a post about book series that I recommend and somehow left out Eric Peterson’s popular and uproarious Horace Button series that begins with The Dining Car and continues with Sunshine Chief, as well as Jeanine Kitchel’s narco crime duo Wheels Up and Tulum Takedown. The two series are wildly different but all four books will keep you turning the pages, transported to incredible settings you will love to visit but would not want to call home—unless you were head of a drug cartel or could afford to live on a private train car!

In boat news, Russel and I have spent the holidays up in Port Townsend aboard Watchfire, and now we are getting ready to head south again, by car. We have local friends who are keeping a close eye on the boat for us, and coming by to check things out daily, so we are not worried about that. But any time you are leaving a floating home you love behind, you are going to worry—especially when the place you are leaving said beloved home is known for having serious wind and snow storms in January. So the list of things one has to do is long.

We’d already taken off the sails and the sail covers back when the winter winds started blowing, so that Watchfire has less “windage” (meaning there are less surfaces for the wind to press upon, which makes the boat heel, or tip). The winds over Christmas week were seriously strong. The windstorms mainly blow from the SE in Port Townsend, but occasionally it switches around and blows a gale from the NW. Keeps us on our toes, moving the water jugs from side to side up on deck, depending on the wind direction (our neighbor dubbed it “adjusting the hydro-ballast”) in order to keep the boat steady when we are aboard in a windstorm.

We ran our engine the other day for the last time and left it with fresh water in it—we bring in a big bucket and a hose and we run the fresh water through a diverted thru-hull with a garden hose fitting right into the engine—because leaving salt water in an engine while it sits for months creates corrosion and can promote calcification inside the engine’s tiny inner nooks and crannies. The professor had also checked out and cleaned the boat engine from top to bottom, did an oil change, and put in fresh engine coolant over his short Christmas break.

Meanwhile, I cleaned out the under-the-settee food “pantry” and the “wine cellar” (our bilge), and the deep storage holds under the vee-berth and wiped them down with tea tree spray; Russel had already tended to the corresponding tool-box and storage areas in the aft cabin. Then we put our latest purchase, plastic jars of Kanberra Gel, into all those cupboards to absorb the moisture, stop the growth of mold, and promote overall cleanliness. Luckily, we know the good people at Pacific Northwest Boater, who were able to get us six of the plastic jars for a fine price. We trust any product that’s “Pacific Northwest Boater tested and approved”!

Now the countdown begins to start packing up our clothes, shoes, and all the rest for our car trip back down to Southern California. The packing this time is a bit more complicated since our plans for January include a week-long trip to La Paz. That’s right, the Honeymooners are returning to Baja California Sur for a whole week. We will stay with our dear friend Peggy who lives near Marina de La Paz, and visit with the Shroyers and some other old friends on boats. Hopefully we’ll get to get out to the islands for at least a day so we can jump in the water. It has been way too long since we traveled south of the border and I can’t wait. Currently the temperature in La Paz is in the high 70s; it might just get up to 45 degrees here in PT today.

Yesterday was a shopping trip to Silverdale, which always comes with the bonus of tree-filled scenery along the way and a fresh sushi lunch. Today we’re off in our current rental car to get our new rental car; we can’t rent from a national car rental company here in PT, so we rented a gently used heap from our local guy and that quick run over to Avis will be the first step of the long journey. We’ll find a few side trips to explore along the way, as we always do; we have never gotten bored on any of our many long car trips!

I haven’t been bored since January 7th, 1989, when we went out sailing and then Russel asked me to marry him. I don’t have a photo handy from that day, but here’s a pic of us about a month later, when Russel flew out to NYC to help us put on “The Girl Least Likely” a comedy set in the 1950s, which is what I am coiffed and costumed for in this photo. (He’d also brought me his grandmother’s diamond engagement ring, which he presented to me under the stars on an empty stage beside the Hudson River.)

And, quite a few years later:

and even more recently:

Honeymoon At Sea continues to rack up customer reviews on Amazon, and the count is now 59. Wouldn’t it be great to get to 60? Have you already written and posted your review of the book? If you want to read a sample, here’s the link to the Amazon page.

My next missive will be posted from Los Angeles, if all goes well….

Hasta pronto!