Month: March 2012

First Step — Back to the Bay Area

March 23, 2012 — Houston, TX

Denise (support for the Caribbean tour) and I finally left Portland on at 6:00am on March 19. Despite having stayed in Portland for an extra evening so that I could rest a bit, I ended up puttering around the house — the upstairs mostly as I had “handed the house over” to Ron who is renting the place for 6 months while I figure out my sailing plans — until about 1:00am. When Denise called at 5:00 am to say she was coming over, I was not as rested as I wanted to be. Whatever. We needed to leave. We needed to get to Houston and get the boat set up. We hit the road.

The drive down to the Bay Area wasn’t bad. I took the first shift down to about Corvallis. When I faded out, Denise took over. I slept through most of Oregon. We traded off back and forth after that until we got close to the Bay Area, when I took over for the last bit.

While my friends in the Bay Area come to visit me at some central location while I am down there, this time I went to visit a couple of them. The first was Nira in Mill Valley. Nira’s a friend from Portland who moved back home to the Bay Area and was happily back home a couple of streets from where she grew up. While I’d been back to the Bay Area several times since she moved back, I’d never made the time to visit her in her own home. So off to Mill Valley it was. Since it was around 4:00pm on a Monday, Nira vectored us from I-80 through Vallejo, and into Marin. This was a great way to get into the Bay Area as we ended up going against rush hour traffic.

Max getting spanked by Suzie

Nira’s new digs were a cute little cottage, replete with Sauna, plunge pool, and raised vege beds. Add chickens and/or a couple of Pygoras (pygmy angoras) and you could have been in Portland, but with warmer weather. It was also nice to see Max, Nira’s black labX who is Harley’s best buddy/cousin, and to visit with Nira’s mom — Nira. I’ve attached a pic of Max getting spanked by Suzie the short tailed and apparently ill temperd cat.

From there it was off to San Carlos via the Golden Gate Bridge where Denise and I were staying at Hotel Sahai — also known as the home of my friends Faye and Avanish. That plan, however, was altered by my friend Joe (remember Uncle Joe) from the radio installation?) to collect more radio gear for Pearl. Joe had bought a self contained APRS transmitter that he thought I should have on Pearl so that I could be tracked whenever I was close to land. So, after a mandatory brief stop at the Golden Gate Bridge, it was off to Joe’s after a brief stop at 3 Amigos in San Mateo to grab a couple of burritos before heading off to Joe’s in Milpitas for radios and how to install them.

Needless to say, it was pretty late by the time we got to Faye and Avanish’s — a long but good day. This is the first step in a completely undetermined journey.

 

Leaving Portland

March 19, 2012 — San Carlos, CA

On the road. Finally. The previously planned departure on March 18th was delayed again. The morning was both fun and frustrating. Jesse and Toni from Wind River took me out to breakfast at Petit Provence on Alberta. This was the fun part.

The frustrating bit was getting the truck packed and everything else in place — whoch took a lot longer than it should have. A part of it was the sheer volume of little things that needed to get done before leaving: laundry; clearing the fridge; cleaning little bits out of the yard; settling the upstairs; sweeping; taking out the garbage; blah, blah, blah.

Fortunately Jesse and Toni followed me back to the house. Jesse packed the truck with all of the stuff that had been staged the night before. Toni who had been a property manager in a previous life jumped on an issue that came up with the newly refinished bath tub in the downstairs bath. Cita, who was around as well, scurried around doing what she usually does which is take care of all the little details with stuff that I either gloss over or don’t notice, or defer and then forget. Truth be told, I wouldn’t have succeeded in getting anywhere close to being able to depart of not for a lot of assistance from Ryan, Denise, Jonathan, Jesse, Toni, and most importantly Cita.

Stuff in box

By mid afternoon, when everything was almost done, I was exhausted. This was partly physical, from shuffling stuff around. The more tiring bit, however, was emotional — from handing over the house to someone else, from contemplating saying goodbye to Harley for a while, and from realizing that I have way too much stuff for a single person.

At that point, rather than leave tired, I decided to spend another night and drive off to the Bay Area the next morning after a good night’s sleep. That, I think was a good call.

 

The end of the beginning

Portland, OR — March 17, 2012

Weeks of waiting following relaunching Pearl and returning to Portland to pack up are almost at an end. The house has a tenant. While the lease needs to be inked, that’s pretty much a done deal. The details are agreed. And the tenant is ready to move in. Interestingly, he would like the place furnished, which makes the move easier for me.

The stuff from Portland that’s headed to Pearl is packed and staged by the front door. There’s a bunch of gear: a Nova Lift to help get heavy stuff like the dinghy engine on and off without mishap; a life raft; an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB); books; tools; spares; charts; the list goes on. I’m not sure where we are going to store some of this stuff, but it’s headed down to Texas. The rest of the stuff is stored in the master suite upstairs.

It’s amazing how much stuff one collects over time and how much of it is used so little of the time. Things just but wait around until one needs the perfect thing for the perfect occasion. Living on Pearl will be an interesting departure from this lifestyle. Hopefully it will be an exercise in doing less with more — except for Harley. I am experiencing serious separating anxiety from him. He has been the metronome of my life for a while. He expects to go to the park about an hour before sunset to fetch his ball. That’s it.

While we are ready to push off from Texas, we still aren’t quite ready to jump off into the Caribbean and the wild blue yonder. Pearl is still undocumented. The officials in Sri Lanka charged with getting her registered there are dragging their feet. Why? I think it’s because they can. Perhaps they are looking for some consideration. Perhaps they are really busy. Regardless of the answer Pearls entry into the Caribbean is being delayed. Tick-rock. Hurricane season approaches and perhaps Pearl should be in the Med.

 

 

Cheaper Maps — Getting Discounted Jeppesen CMAP NT+ Chart Cartridges

February 29, 2012 — Portland, OR

If the phrase “chart cartridges” doesn’t mean anything to you don’t bother reading further. If it does, and your chart plotter uses Jeppesen data you will find the following pretty helpful.

Having become completely enthralled by Navionics, the thought of traversing the Caribbean without my best friend the chart plotter is beginning to give me the willies. The net of it is that I needed to buy chart cartridges to cover the entire Caribbean — that’s four chart cartridges at $200.00 a pop. Ouch! What was that about about BOAT = Break Out Another Thousand?

It turns out, however, that if you join Club Jeppesen (cost $85) you get one chart update for free. Further, if you have chart cartridges to trade, that drops the cost per cartridge to about $85. What this did for me and my 4 new cartridges is it cut an $800 bill to about $ 550 — a roughly 30% discount. Sweeeeeet!

While this isn’t price compettetive as the FREE NOAA raster charts that you can get using iNavx on an iPad, the benefits are that it integrates well with Otto the aoutopilot and give one the warm fuzzy feeling that one knows where one is.