MERRY CHRISTMAS 2009

MERRY CHRISTMAS

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

We had a great year!

Maybe a bit uneventful because we traveled ground we'd covered before. But that just meant we got to camp in our favorite parks, watch wildlife, visit friends, moor in our favorite bays, and catch crabs. We are practicing using our GPS by geocaching; a scavenger hunt using GPS location readings.

We described the highlight and lowlights of the year in our blog.

Perhaps the newest and most consistent factor in our life was Miss Lily, the miniature dachshund we adopted last October. As she grew from "puppy" to "teen", we had to relearn many parenting disciplines we had forgotten. Perhaps we learned more discipline than Miss Lily did. But we also relearned the pleasures of dog ownership, as she amused us with her antics!

Family events:

• Grandson Jeff II graduated from high school and received several scholarships which helped him transition to college this fall at Western Washington University in Bellingham.
• Granddaughter Ashleigh moved up a few positions in her job at Children's Hospital, and got engaged to long-time beau Josh.
• Daughter Lori is still critter-sitting and saving dogs. Husband John is building airplanes.
• Son Jeff has embarked on a new career by getting his real estate license in anticipation of the next boom. Daughter-in-law Linda is getting used to the empty house with both kids gone.
• Sister and brother-in law, Irene & Richard, have retired and moved clear across country to The Villages, Florida. They are sure enjoying a warm and sunny fall.
• Mom finished with her clip art and entertained herself sorting through old jokes (42,000?). Her latest toy is a digital photo frame. At last count she has loaded 1700 pictures. She turns 80 soon and it's great to see her tackle the latest technology!
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  A re-creation of a 2000 visit to Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo with grandkids Jeff & Ashleigh was quite rewarding for us. Brother and sister are still good friends 10 years later.

Warm fuzzies for us.

Mom and dad must have done something right!

Healthwise, both of us are doing great, but sometimes feeling a bit like an old Ford. (Fix or Repair Daily) We are hearing better … with help. And with a Christmas Eve eve cardiac procedure, we expect Dean to have a bunch more energy when his heart gets coaxed back into a pit-a-pat rhythm.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Dean, Laurie & Miss Lily

Finding the Yule Log

As part of the Montesano Festival of Lights, there was a hunt for the Yule Log Sunday at a local park.

The hunt for the log, which was decorated with a sprig of holly, was made a bit difficult by the falling snow.
But kids and adults went a'searching.
Two young ladies found the log and with the help of the adults and a piece of rope, the log was towed back to the picnic shelter where everybody got to hack on the log before throwing it in the fire.










Nice hot cocoa, lots of cookies, and singing of Christmas carols

was accompanied by 25 handheld tone chimes (similar to handbells) with which we all became experts! Fun time!

By the time we were ready to leave, the snow had abated a bit.

Montesano Festival of Lights

Each year, the town of Montesano, population 4000, stages a Christmas-time event called the Festival of Lights.

A whole lot of people in the town and the nearby area put together a first-rate street fair and parade. Hobby and craft fairs, food booths, canned food drives for charities, open houses, caroling in front of the post office, a winter play for kids, tours of lighted homes, and a grand parade in the evening.

We ate at the Senior Center, toured the Chehalis Valley Museum, had clam chowder at the fire station, free (for donation) cookies and hot cider at the library, and watched the parade in freezing weather.

And what a parade!

Marching bands from several area schools, Shriner clowns, civic groups, local business-sponsored floats, military, fire and police units --- over an hour's worth of music, lights and gaiety. Lights on ATV's, lights in the wheels of cars, trucks, motorcycles, lights on dump trucks, a school bus, and a cement mixer. (How do they put lights on things that go 'round and 'round?)
A whole lot of hollering between the crowd along the curb to and from the folks marching or on the floats. Heck, most of them know each other, anyway. The festival flyer states that the town of 4000 gets 10,000 people for the event, and it looked like that many at the parade.A lot of pride showed in this small community in the woods of northwest Washington. Did we mention that the temperatures were in the 20's? Thousands of folks willing to stand around in below-freezing temps to watch a parade. A piece of small-town Americana at its finest.

It slices - It dices - It does it all - But wait!

I really am not a follower of the Home Shopping Network. I mostly stay away from anything "As Seen On TV". And the "BUT WAIT..." offers don't excite me.

But I have found FASTA PASTA performs exactly as it stated on the box. For a person who lives in close quarters on the boat and RV, I am always hesitant to prepare pasta because of the steam that is released from the boiling water. It's hard to get rid of that much moisture inside the rig. Also with limited water capacity aboard, I hate to fill a big pot with water just to toss out when the pasta is ready. But no more!

All kinds of pasta and vegetables are recommended for microwave cooking with the Fasta Pasta. Works great!

Converted!

Yep, I'm the resident guru on converting systems to Windows 7. Starting with Dean's (see Oct 23). Now that I have had time to think on it, that was the easy conversion. From XP to 7, you dump everything off the computer (nice time to think about getting an auxiliary hard drive), run Easy Transfer, then dump everything back on. The problems I had then were with old programs and Windows 7 not set up to let them work.

Ah, I'm so smart, I think. I ordered my Dell Outlet PC with Vista and an upgrade to Win7 coming soon. Of course, with a new computer, I've just got to get started moving files and programs over. And, lookee here, Vista has Easy Transfer! And I took off. Well, the Easy Transfer chugged and chugged on the old XP system building a humongous file and taking forever to do that (granted I did have my old sys pretty full). Next step was to Transfer this file to the new computer and it chugged and chugged (we are talking an hour+) before erroring out. Message complained about my auxiliary hard drive. So I did this again transferring less files and putting the file out on a thumb drive. Easy Transfer calculated how much space was needed on the drive and then started to chug (and notice only one chug this time). After only 45 minutes or so, Easy Transfer bombed stating a problem with the thumb drive. Hoorah!

Haven't been in DP for a zillion years without knowing how to convert from one system to another even if I did not take the "Easy" (???) way. Slowly, methodically, and surely all has been moved from the XP to the Win7. And I did it MY WAY!

Along the way, I got to play with Vista and confirmed I made the right decision not to upgrade before now!

Picky Eater

Miss Lily doesn't have the usual bad habit of other dachshunds....in that she doesn't eat everything she sees!

We've offered her a bit of meat - nope, a piece of apple - nope, and even some real dog treats - nope again.

She eats her Puppy Chow and that's it. She'll even do a roll-over and shake hands for a bit of Puppy Chow...that is, until recently!

Daughter Lori told us Miss Lily is no longer a puppy and needs to have adult dog food. We were afraid to make that transition with the bad luck we've had with other food. But we bit the bullet. Bought adult food and mixed her a dish of part adult dog food - part puppy food to see how she took to it.

Down the bowl went to her mat and she greedily started picking and eating! Picking the puppy food out and putting it on the mat! And chomping down the adult food! Surprised us!!

Can We Hear You Now?

EH?

WHAT DID YOU SAY?

We all know Dean is getting up there in years, but time is creeping up on Laurie, too.

After years of telling Dean that he needed his hearing checked, and/or hearing him answer some other question than the one that had been asked, she discovered she couldn't understand what people were saying to her either.

So, now that not hearing was a family event, we both went to get our hearing checked. Mild to moderate hearing loss for Laurie; moderate to severe for Dean. I think that's what the technician said. We couldn't hear her too well.

Net result: we each got a set of hearing aids (Merry Christmas to us!) and we are getting used to the care and feeding and idiosyncrasies of them. Even though Dean's has had selective hearing when I was speaking for years, luckily for me the technician talked him out of this model!

Chia Pets

Dean's been digging up very hairy chia pets who invaded our drain lines. Yep, that's packed roots which managed to clog up solid pipe....solid pipe but the connections were not wrapped. The chia's found and clogged!

Sure looks to me like this hole was big enough for a coffin. Very appropos for Halloween but needs filled in. Doesn't it look like a wrapped mummy down there?

Darn it, though. This job was no good for an "old guy with a bad ticker".

Our Little Miss Jelly Belly

Miss Lily is here modeling her Halloween costume.

Little Miss Lily Jelly Belly. Caught her in mid-bark as she let on how excited she was

with her new duds!

Home Wrecker

When you are the only dog in the household, the pressure is on to entertain your masters.

Miss Lily loves to bunt. Bunt books, bunt toys, bunt boxes, and bunt all wastebaskets.

If it can be moved with her nose, it is her mission in life to topple it.

WINDOWS 7: A CAKEWALK--OR--A CROCK POT?

Laurie installed Windows 7 on Dean's computer this week. The first kid on the block!

The idea was to convert that computer to see if we needed a higher version of Windows 7 in order to convert many of our programs or peripherals that might not have a Win7 driver. She would then know what version she might need on the new computer she planned to order. 64 bit or 32 bit version? "Home" or "Premium" version?

Since we never converted from Windows XP to Vista, a more cumbersome conversion is required from Windows XP to Win7. This entailed removing all programs and files from my computer, storing them on another device, and re-loading them after Win7 was installed. Hey! We can do that. Can't we? They promised it was so Easy!

Alas, just as in previous conversions, not all went as the Windows folks might lead one to believe. Files disappeared; files showed up in strange places. The computer would announce it could not continue due to "an unknown error".(Great --- if it's unknown, how are we supposed to correct it or work around it?) Dean was able to overhear several rude comments directed at the computer, the disk drive, Bill Gates' ancestry, and a few related to a particular body function.

I'm not sure how long she expected it would take to make the conversion. Probably not the 2 1/2 days that it took. But it's there, and it seems to work. We still expect a hiccup or two, but she gained enough knowledge to go ahead and order her new computer.

So, enjoy our first blog entry produced with Win7. As you can see, nothing can possibly go wrong go worngg go wanonga gexpport ggeeveenanono zebemop je#<*@++!

Zoo Time

What great fun to go to the zoo with our grandkids and grandkid-in-law-to-be.

Much has changed since our last visit. Many more animal-friendly displays. So friendly, at times there were no animals present. Lots of displays telling the visitor about how the changing environment is affecting the animals in the wild.

We got to see the new snow leopard cubs that were born in May.

The guano bedecked penguin pond.

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And had fun feeding the birds. When we ran out of seed, they attacked our shiny rings.

When I saw this lady, I remembered I needed to call my mom!

New Wing Flap Design

In a house with an airplane aficionado, you might think there may have been more appreciation in my new wing flap design.

Here it is at half-flap,

full-flap,

and no flap.

Unfortunately, the new design flunked it's maiden test when the CR-V it was attached to attempted to back out of the garage at full flap.

Besides being really into airplanes, this fellow is also a top-flight engineer and figured out what was necessary to realign the flap...er, door of the CR-V. What a fine job. Just like new.

And, no, in case you were wondering, I wasn't using my laptop to analyze work schedules during this test attempt.

Latest in Life Jacket Fashion

Miss Lily made it the whole boating season without falling off the boat. Not because she was a smart dog but because her masters maintained a strict watch, kept her on a long leash most of the time, and kept a salmon net at the ready just in case. A bit nerve-wracking.

But with Miss Lily's new personal floatation device (PFD in nautical vernacular) we think she will pop back to the surface if she does manage to mis-step off the boat.

Notice how the blue matches her eyes.

Notice the reflector stripes.

Notice the handle which will let us use the pike pole to bring her back aboard.

The Ditzy Doxie Dinghy Hammock (pat. pend.)

When you've got a ditzy doxie whose legs are too short to let her see over the side of the dinghy while you are rowing around, you've got to come up with something.

Miss Lily has really taken to the revolutionary Ditzy Doggie Dinghy Hammock.

She can look over the edge to the left; or she can look over the edge to the right, and sometimes, but not often, she looks straight ahead.

She often will nap on her left side and sometimes on her right; or if it is time for a little belly tanning, lies on her back with legs in the air.

She's comfortable and safe making this a valuable new product.

Soon to be in a pet store near you (...maybe or not)

Boating has changed

In the early 1980's, our 1978 40-foot Cruise-A-Home was one of the big boats in Puget Sound. With it's seaworthy hull and insulation, we took many a Christmas-to-New Year's cruise into the San Juan Islands or to Victoria, BC. When we would dock at a marina there would be nobody on duty as the facility would be closed during that time of the year. There were no other boats on the water as few were being built for the Pacific Northwest winter conditions.

Things change. Boats got taller and wider to a point where boats the same length as us tower over us, can overnight more people, and have more storage. Whereas boats used to have one shore boat, now it isn't surprising to see stacked on deck and/or towed behind four boats of which 2 will be kayaks.

Radars used to have huge tubes that you kept your eyes focused in but with computerization and chips, radars are now very compact and powerful and best of all affordable for even the small boats.

Another bit of new electronics are the domes at the top for satellite communications and TV. These folks always want to sit at a dock to keep their systems aligned.

And the latest and greatest toys we are seeing a lot of are "thrusters". Because boats have gotten taller they have more windage and though the boats are heavier they still blow around. Because of the hull height, it is harder for the crew to get the line to the dock except at the stern off the swimstep. The thrusters are designed to give the boat a bit of a push sideways to help with the parallel parking. That's the design. The expected usage. (of course, those as experienced as my captain can do the same with judicious use of his twin engines and transmissions)

Well...My theory is that husband wanted the new toy and has to use it often to prove to wife that it was well worth the expense. The thrusters make a unique noise and you can hear their "erk" noise when is use. You would expect the thruster to be used during docking but we are amazed at how often they are used in normal cruising. In Reid Harbor which is about 1 1/2 miles long you can here the "erk" "erk" "erk" noise coming from the time the boat gets in the harbor all the way in.

Of course, having all these new toys doesn't make you a pro. Practice, practice, practice. Just this week at our yacht club a huge fancy boat with thrusters and a remote (joystick) bashed into the pilings holding the fuel float to the marina. He could never find "reverse" with the remote. It never occurred to him to go back to his navigation station and take control by hand. He just stood on his foredeck playing with the remote. When he finally made it to the fuel dock, he did find reverse. Thank goodness.

Alaska and northern west coast Canada waters have become the place for the rich and famous to explore (if they like to freeze - this area is definitely not the Caribbean). Like the Odessa we saw last week, many have crew members to keep the boat off the rocks and to do the maneuvering. Some of the boats are freighted from one cruising locale to another through the Panama Canal and the owners reboard when the ship gets to the new location. Of course, many of the anchorages in AK/CA waters are deep and small. Having a 150' boat in the anchorage may take up all the room. Last time we were north, a big yacht tied to shore from one side of a waterfall to the shore on other side. What a great view they had. What a great view we didn't.

Fogust

Fog in August. An interesting and apt term for our sea travels the last couple weeks.

As we left the San Juans we crossed the Strait of Juan de Fuca heading south we hoped to spend a few days in Sequim Bay. Unfortunately, a low and thick fog bank reached halfway across the strait. We changed course but had to travel thru dense fog for the next couple hours.

We used every one of our navigation aids in this trek: radar, VHF, compass, GPS, depth sounder, horn, nav lights, paper charts, computer charts. We were able to keep out of the big boat navigation lanes. We avoided going between tugs and their tows. When we came up on Port Townsend we could see the Victorian houses on the hill but not the shoreline. Then at 1pm it warmed up and the fog disappeared. We did great!

But not so the Washington State Ferries. During dense fog on Sunday, a ferry hit the dock at high speed in Seattle and caused enough damage to take it out of service for a week. He probably wished he had a few more nav aids! We would have expected that he would have been crawling toward the dock at dead slow.

Lessons Learned

So now we know.

Last year at our favorite crabbing spot we figured there were 300 pots out each of the 5 days the season was open. If each pot captured the limit of 5 (6 1/4" male, hard-shelled) crab per day for the 5 day opening, approximately 7500 crabs were taken from the spot in just that week

We wondered if the crabs were so thick they were crawling on top of one another and if the pots being put down were landing on some of them.

Well, that was last year. This year the season opened two weeks later and the first day the estimated 300 pots were out and we caught our limit. But the next day we only got 3 crab and the following day none. We haven't had much luck anywhere else in the San Juans so we've come back here for one last try. Our pots are catching but the catch are undersized, or soft, or female.

How long will it take those puny females to raise their chil'ns to be the big crab we are used to? Looks like stricter controls will need to be put on the crabbing season for next year or two to let the crab supply build back up. Too many people, too many of whom don't (we suspect) follow the rules.

For just us and 10 other friends

I always feel like the poor church mouse when we stop at Roche Harbor for supplies. Roche is the place to go to see and be seen. Many (MANY) of the "yachts" there are valued in the millions and here we are in our old and comfortable-for-two 31 year-old cruiser.

When we stopped there for fuel the other day, our mouths were agape checking out these fine yachts but especially the British flagged ship M/Y ODESSA with a port of Bloody Bay!

Sorry to use a file photo but this boat was so big that our camera could only capture this much in the lens.

Yesterday ODESSA left Roche Harbor on a minus tide through Mosquito Pass which is tricky, very narrow, and shallow at even high tide. We think the captain might have been nervous as there was a helicopter assisting by pointing out the shallows. ODESSA, alas, doesn't have a 'copter but probably this one came from one of the other mega-yachts in the harbor. (T'would be the sporting thing to do, don'cha know?)

Looking online at Charterworld.com we found that this 164' boat is in charter and has accommodations for 12 (with a crew of 11). The charter rate is only 245,000 Euros per week (to make the calculation easier for you, that is approx USD $350,000). We don't know how long ODESSA sat at Roche to see and be seen, but it comes out to $50,000 per day for the charter fee, plus a piddling $246 for moorage.

Since this looked like a swell boat, we're proposing that we do all the work to make arrangements for a charter, and ten of our friends out there pass the hat to come up with the charter fee (that is: $35k each / $70k couple -- per week). Any takers?

Artsy Fartsy

Took the bus up the road from the marina to downtown Anacortes for their 48th annual Arts Festival. Think there were 250 booths with crafts, jewelry, paintings, photos. Food and entertainment. Lots of talented people out there.






The artists frown if you take pictures of their handiwork. So here are two shots not of the art.

Because the food booths need ready access to water and the booths are in the street, this fire hydrant has been modified to make it easy for the vendors to get water.







Over the buildings, we could see the stern of a boat being built at a shipyard. Not sure why the Ross Candies needs a boat at all much less that size.

Well, aren't we embarrassed. This is actually the bow of the Ross Candies. The ship is called an IMR — inspection, maintenance and repair — and is configured for work on the wellhead or other subsea infrastructure transporting oil and/or gas in the Gulf.

(There goes my thoughts of floating chocolate chips and caramels!)

Watch where you park!

I can imagine how panicked I would be if Troob were to be grounded like this. Imagine the damage to the understructure plus everything inside being turned upside down. Then needing to call for a tow and to wait for the tide to get higher.

We saw this boat at Spencer Spit Marine State Park. He was apparently anchored for the night. One of two things happened to cause this grounding: 1) about 4 AM the wind picked up to about 20 mph and may have caused his anchor to skid toward shore; or 2) he anchored in water that was not deep enough when the tide went out to a -1 foot.

We see a lot of groundings up here especially during the very minus tides which can be over 3 feet. Normal tides here range between 1 and 8 feet. So a big minus tide can be an unexpected surprise if a sailor hasn't taken it into consideration when he anchored.

At the entrance to Skyline yesterday, there was a sailboat aground.

Still feel mighty sad for them. Kind of ruins a vacation, huh?

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum

This is the name of the 36' Gibson houseboat and dinghy we were moored alongside. Doug and Sally have been living the dream life on this boat for 15 years. They have seen many waterways in this country by transporting their boat to wherever they want to explore next. They were able to do this because they own their own Kenworth truck and BIG boat-hauling trailer.

They talked to us about their explorations on the Mississippi, Ohio, Illinois, Columbia, and Willamette Rivers (among a few). The Erie Canal, the Bayous, the Great Dismal Swamp, The Inter and Intracoastal Waterways. The Sacramento Delta. And this year, Puget Sound and the San Juans.

What a life!