Friday, May 27, 2005

May Flowers

So for grins we decide to head out to California first. I have a meeting on Monday with a VC in Colorado and then another one on Wednesday with a VC in San Hoser. Kathy decides to drive out early to California with the cats while I do my Colorado meeting. After the meeting on Monday, I head to the airport only to be greeted by several thunderstorms. Seems like the airplanes all got diverted to Colorado Springs and my flight was effectively canceled. But wait, somehow I managed to get rerouted and I have a new direct flight to Reno (where Kathy is waiting for me). So I manage to make it into Reno kind of late, but at least I made it. The next day, we scoot on down to San Francisco to stay at a friends house. I have my meeting on Wednesday and then head up to San Francisco to meet my bud Tracy for some general touring and dinner. The next day, Kathy and I head north and stop in Oregon for the night. The next day we head out and battle through some of the Memorial Day traffic.

Okay, so we arrive late on Friday afternoon with all intentions of just hanging at Bainbridge for the next couple of days. The first thing I got to do was replace the gaskets in the head, since the head was completely dysfunctional. This mostly worked, but the whole thing leaked a bit. But, Saturday morning was so nice that we decided to join up with the Family Yacht club's memorial day raft-up. David and Lizbeth from the Platypus joined us for a leisurely sail to Agate passage. Afterward we started the old motor and headed into Eagle Harbor. The trip was mostly uneventful except for a near miss with a pylon in the middle of Agate passage ... oops.

The next two nights we rafted up with five other boats and had a tasty potluck. A couple of us ended up shooting the crap and possibly drinking too much until about 4 in the morning. Needless to say, the next day we spent seriously lazing about the cockpit. That evening we headed to shore for a big Italian feast with the whole crew.

Now, we had been talking with the folks up at the Port Ludlow marina about moving our boat there. Finally, after much chatting, Kathy convinced them that we should be there, so on Monday we motored and sailed up to Port Ludlow and put Kalliope in her new home.

Now that was a pretty damn nice weekend.

Port Ludlow is a very pretty place, but duller than warm toast with no jam.

Okay, damn it. The head is still screwed up. And look a new head is only $120. So I decided to go and just replace the damn thing. This should be easy, but of course it isn't. After taking the head out, I noticed that the plywood that the head was attached too was a bit rotten. So I pulled the whole thing out dried it out and repainted it. But since I was painting that, I decided to update the paint on the boat hook. And why not repaint my spare starter since it had some rust on it. So this project knocked out a whole day or so. I'm thinking that maintaining a boat part time from Colorado is going to be a real pain.

After that it just started to rain. I'm just not sure I'm a very good NW person

Nothing like a good working vacation.