Are We Living in a Washing Machine?
-by mike-
Moving onto a 40 foot sailboat at the end of November in Bellingham, WA is not a great idea. In fact, the rainiest two weeks of the year in the Pacific Northwest are historically the last two weeks of November, and that is saying something. The winter here is cold, dark, long, and very, very wet. It is also windy, and as we found out, Bellingham seems to get more wind than many places nearby.
I’m not saying I regret it, but I am saying I would not recommend it. Especially on a boat that is not well insulted, and unfortunately Via, being built in Florida, has very little insulation. That means that, even though the inside of the boat was nice and toasty thanks to our fantastic diesel heater, everything was wet. The nice toasty air inside the boat gets very humid between two people and two dogs respirating, cooking and showering. All that moisture then condensates on the cold hull, hatches and port lights. Our bedding was perpetually wet, which was especially bad for Taylor given that she sleeps next to the hull. But, we were doing it. We had made the transition from land life to living on a boat, and we knew that if we could make it through the PNW winter then it would be smooth sailing, so to speak.
Our first month was spent mostly at the dock, but we took advantage of every break in the weather to get out. We spent Christmas tucked into a little spot in West Sound, Orcas Island. It blew a near gale for two days, the sun set at 4 pm, but Taylor made some amazing food and I drank my fair share of manhattans. We missed family, but it was the height of the Covid pandemic and travel was difficult anyway.
Via sitting on a mooring ball off Cypress Head.
The time at the docks was spent dealing with the theft (see episode 3), getting to know Via and her various systems, and starting in on half a million projects that would get her ready for our cruising plans. The plans at this point, by the way, are to head South down the coast in early August to California, visit my family in the LA area, and then set off down to the Sea of Cortez, Mexico, in November. We may join the Baja Haha rally as a way to meet other cruisers. After that, we don’t have specific plans. Maybe do the Pacific puddle jump through French Polynesia, or maybe we will make our way to the Panama Canal and enter the Caribbean. We’ll see how we feel. December was a blur, and I mostly remember our few short cruises between the endless train of storms that battered the area. We saw several storms with winds over 50 knots, and at least one over 60 knots. We were glad to have Via tied safely to a dock.
During January we got out of the washing machine and headed down to Southern California. We moved the contents of our small storage unit to a new one in Simi Valley, visited my family, and enjoyed not being wet and cold for three glorious weeks. When we returned to the boat, it was full on boat project time. I had a huge list of things to do. Much of it was maintenance, like changing the engine oil, fixing the coolant leak on the engine, and servicing the outboard. We were in a time crunch because we were only keeping the marina slip through February, and come March 1, we would be officially cruising full time. The to-do list got shorter little by little, and when the day finally came to shove off the dock for good, we promptly turned around after a few miles due to a seasick dog throwing up all over our bed. It was back to the dock for one more night to clean up and do laundry, but then it happened. We untied the lines and headed off as full time cruisers.
One of the projects involved having to go up the mast.