another month....

Wow, time passes quickly!
i haven't had a chance to catch up here because as soon as i got back from albuquerque and worked just for a second in sausalito, i left town again. it is easier to chouchsurf somewhere other than your home town... :-) but before i left i spend the night at china camp and woke up to the most marvellous sunrise with the Niña anchored out! a sign from different times...








I flew up to seattle and took the bus to Port Townsend to attend the Wooden Boat Festival. it was pretty cool! the busride was even cool, we managed to take the ferry at edmonds exactly at sunset and it was a gorgeous sight. just like all of the landscape up there is beautiful, the bays, the trees, the snowcapped mountains...






i got to stay at my friends Heidi and Peters house, met up with Margaret and we went to chanty sings, met cool people and roamed listening to street musicians and dug through thriftstores and jewelery stands.





after the festival was over we bussed down to Tokeland, WA and then traveled around the southwestern part of WA for quiet awhile. the beaches and the huge amounts of driftwood are amazing!




i flew back out of Seattle last monday just in time to attend the general membership meeting at Galilee harbor where i got voted in (!) YAY!
i am now a member of the harbor, in posession of the pink slip and will move aboard on wednesday -- only to move back off the following monday when Lotus (the boat) is scheduled for a haulout. i actually broke down and rented the little room in 207 for a month to have an actual homebase while the boat is out of the water and being worked on, this way i can do painting and re arranging without health hazard and too much stuff in the way. i am very excited.
oh, i forgot my welcoming commitee when i got to susy's boat, where i'm currently crashing. She has been invaded by 8, yes EIGHT!, racoons... here are two of them saying welcome home, well actually they are saying why the f**k is the door closed we want to eat your catfood!

on to a new adventure

o.k. given the fact that i am homeless for the month i might as well fly up to pt, so i got a ticket for tomorrow, thursday. it'll be better, as much as i love my friends, it is hard to live and work in a place while couchsurfing. it is so much less stressfull to sleep under a tree while vacationing...
sunday started slow with sorting out stuff and mail at 207. actually, it started sad with receiving the news of porkchops death. she was my ex-partner Natasha's cat...

but following the motto that water cures everything, i took up jody's invitation to go sailing on taihoa to find a leak that developes when sailing hard.
so, that's what we did, right through the slot on SF Bay, nearly to Black Aller and back. and she WAS leaking. katie and i took turns steering while Jody was checking out where the water enters, then i went to look, and we agreed that it comes in from some topside seams under the port chainplates. phew, a much easier fix than leaking mast step or something more complicated that involves haulout and giant investigation. we did get a bit worried about the amount of water coming in though and headed straight back into calmer Richardson Bay and Galilee Harbor - pumping nearly all the way. but the water did never get over the cabin sole, so that's good. I was thinking of Porkchop out there, and the rest of the Family... Death is a weird thing. and the ones who are left behind are the ones who suffer...

Paul Dines told me later that he was out the same day running a charter and right under the golden gate bridge they had a jumper just 100 yards from them, big splash, totally aloof clients that needed to be distracted and he had to inform the coast guard - horrible, stressful, seamans code AND trying to make a living at the same time. i have seen the smoke once when we were sailing. the suicide patrol on the bridge throws smoke flares after a jumper so they can retrieve the body easier... what a job! and why would anybody want to take their life!? life is so short if its long, and then there's all that time left to be dead!

Monday i went for a long bikeride and felt really good afterwards, i want to exercise more! i actually wanted to work, but couldn't get into the yard, it was a holiday... Checked in with Natasha and then went to crash a suzy's. Gay Jay came over to tell us about his recent adventures in NYC and we settled down to watch a movie, my first in a long time: Flags of out fathers. i was impressed and all the time, seeing the footage of the war i had to think of my friend frank who was there. he was a signal man, so he stayed on board of the big ships that dropped off the little landing craft, and helped putting the wounded and corpes in a row on deck so the corpsemen could inject them with morphine...

the next day i finally worked! it was so great to see all the combings and lockers i built a couple of months ago to have been painted glossy white, seeing my reflection as i re-installed the hinges and hardware, i can't wait to take pictures of the done job to post on my website.
after work i went to china camp to do laundry and repack, and to hang out with frank, since he was so on my mind the previous night. out there anchored was the Niña replica. i wish i had the time to row ot there and chat, but it was getting dark and the tide was going out making it more difficult for me to get the peapod back ashore. instead we had dinner, enjoying the unusual view and i did my laundry and repacked for my trip to PT.
My friend Lee is up there with his boat and will give me a pass to the show, and my friend Peter and his wife live up there and i can stay on their boat.
Margaret will get there the same time as me, so i get to check out the Lady Washington, and i'm sure i'll meet osme cool people, meet some i already know, and who knows, there might be an adventure around the corner, or a job to work on, or a sailing voyage to participate in.
come back to find out