Summer 2022
July:
The hum of the generators on the new massive fishing boat beside us have been keeping us up at night. They arrived about midnight three nights ago with full crew working loudly until the morning and their boat hasn’t stopped humming that constant drone since. We’ve had our boat docked here at the yard where my husband works for 3 ½ months now. It was never meant to take this long, but covid and the way the world works now everything takes at least 3 times as long as you plan. Our main reason for being here is done – a complete re-power – replacing our old, leaky, unreliable, and tired Perkins with a brand new, bright red, beta 60. We have a few minor projects left that it’s helpful to have the shop right next door to complete and we are waiting on the initial fitting of a solar arch before we head back to our home slip.
It has been a huge blessing to be able to dock at this yard where Alex works – the boat is docked on a high wall, but remains in the water, plugged in with all systems operational. The alternative – pulling the boat on land into a boat yard makes living aboard pretty miserable for more than a few days. The use of water and the boat’s ability to level itself to the conditions go by the wayside. So we’re grateful to be where we are, and on top of that the crew here has welcomed us and treated our living here graciously to the point we’ve started referring to it as “home.” They have been kind and generous – willing to trade keeping a boat in our slip for us using the power here in the boat yard.
We are more than ready to be off this dock though. The couple of quiet weeks with no fishing boat aside spoiled us into thinking we had it good here. But as the season wears on and the new incessant noises overtake we are constantly reminded we are losing time. We feel anxious to get back into salt water, open water. To get hours on the engine and experience under our own belts. It’s felt increasingly difficult to set any plans in motion as the window to head south approaches ever faster.
Fast forward another month:
As our anxiety continued to build as our next project drew on and on and our timeline for heading south grew less and less clear – we made the difficult decision to reroute our plans for this year. We could have pushed and rushed and made the big left turn happen but it would have been a risk without more than a week or so to test all of the new systems we’ve been working on for months longer than planned. So to play it safe and give ourselves the time we wanted to do a true shakedown in the PNW, learning to read the weather and giving all the new things a chance to break while we’re close enough to resources to figure it out we’ve decided to untie the lines from Seattle for now but to stay within the Puget sounds and inside passage of Vancouver island until next year.
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