The joy of crabbing

It's hard to beat getting off work and heading down to the dock to get aboard your boat with your wife, buddy, dog and a can of can food. Fire up the motor, cast off all lines and then head out for a 15 minute motor past the warships tied snugly to their berths looking at the sailors standing watch in their dress white uniforms. We always wave and raise our beers to my shipmates on USS Momsen while heading out to drop the crab pot. In goes the cat food, the pot is dropped over the side and off we go for an evening sail. The wind is just right to take us south of Everett towards the tip of Whidbey Island across from Mukilteo. Then we tack North towards the east side of Hat Island and then back East to try and locate our pot among all the red and white bobbers. Our reward for an evening like this is one big tasty crab.

Changing the zincs

Since Airborne has been hauled out I changed the zincs. Right is a before picture. I'll take an after one later in May before her keel is wet again. Other layup maintenance includes flushing saltwater from the cooling system with freshwater. I also bought new fuel filters to help with random depowering of the engine. The fuel filter will be installed after Airborne is docked back at NAVSTA Everett.

Hauled Out!

I have mixed emotions today about hauling Airborne out. I'll be gone for about two months and not able to sail her so it seemed like the right thing to do. I arranged the haul out service from the Port of Everett Marina. The process was really easy:

All I had to do was haul up the bumpers
Pull in to the slings
Throw the motor in reverse
Turn off the motor
Scurry forward to keep from ramming the wharf
Scurry up the ladder ashore as Airborne swings up behind me.

The peace of mind I'll have that she's safe an sound ashore is worth it.

The Long Awaited After Work Sail

It's been a while since I last updated. Here it goes!

Thursday was awesome! I got off work and gave Natalie a call to come pick me up. It was 4pm. Then I called her back and said "Let's go sailing!" I'd been dreaming of the day I'd be able to get off work, go down to the boat and then set sail in the evening to relax. The wind was about 15 knots from the West. I had the boat all prepped when Natalie arrived all she had to do was hop aboard. We motored out of the Naval station and as we passed the USS Abraham Lincoln I hauled up the jib and main. Before we were out Port Gardner we were under sail, making 5 knots!

I can't wait to try again next week! It was my dream come true.

New Links:
Printable NOAA Charts : Cool because I just downloaded and printed Approaches to Everett on an 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper. When we go to the San Juans this summer I'll print up all the area charts and store them in plastic sleeves in a notebook in case the GPS and netbook go down.

Lost Soul for Sale: I was cruising posts on SailNet and came across one about Lost Soul, Bob Bitchin's former boat being for sale. I thought, "kewl."

Milltown Sailing Association

Recently Natalie and I joined the Milltown Sailing Association located here in Everett. They have a very strong racing and cruising program. The folks are just great! Since joining we've raced twice and cruised down to Kingston, WA.

Below is a video of our last race. We're in the 2nd class of boats and followed the race winner "BitterSweet" across the finish line by 2 minutes and 10 seconds.

Blakes Lavac Taylor Kerosene Heater

Onboard Airborne I have a small cabin heater designed to run on Kerosene or Diesel fuel. It's model 079D. I was having trouble with lighting it and it staying lit so I looked online for user's manual and found the following instructions:

1. Open front port and chimney flue
   
2. Put 20cc of Methylated Spirit (Denatured Alcohol) in the burner pot
   
3. Light through the front port
4. Wait about 4 minutes for the burning alcohol to heat the center stool and allow auto drip
5. Press and hold the blue button, starting the flow of fuel
6. Adjust the drip rate for 80-110 drips per minute

Enjoy the warmth! I usually start to heat the cabin using an electric 115 V portable heater and then start the kerosene stove when I'll be onboard a while. After the kerosene stove is warm, about 30 minutes, I can cut off the electric heater when It's 45 degrees outside. Inside the cabin we can get it up to 60 degrees, quite comfortable when outside it's below freezing!

Linux GPS

As I eluded to in my last post the Linux GPS software OpenCPN is working great! It accurately plots the course and works with my DeLorme LT-40. All I had to do was install the GPS daemon. In Ubuntu all you need to do is enter the following at the terminal:
sudo apt-get install gpsd
Then I added this script to my box and run it when I run OpenCPN:

#!/bin/sh
sudo killall gpsd
sudo gpsd -n -D 2 /dev/ttyUSB0
xgps -speedunits knots -l

Many thanks to Thomas, user cagney over on the Cruiser Forums, he wrote the code. Just save it as a text file and make it executable. I named mine startgps and run it like this:
./startgps

I'm excited by the options to include AIS and autopilot functionality with OpenCPN but don't have the hardware to try and integrate.