Update on Barb

Our friend Barb has opened retreat called Oak Hill Retreat. It is on their property near Monroe, WA where Trinda used to go to visit and spend weekends sewing, quilting and all kinds of other things.

We are proud of her and wish her great success.

Varnishing

They announced a swap meet, to get rid of the old stuff from the boat and get someone else's junk to replace it. So I took the day off from varnishing:


I had a hydraulic pump on the watermaker/generator motor. I needed to remove it. It took two days to get it off and get the generator back together. The pulley for the pump was behind the flywheel so it had to be disassembled this far just to take the pump off.

A view of the galley as I started stripping the old varnish off.


The port settee and galley 'finished. 3 coats most places with a 4th in the high wear areas.

Dive at Enamonet

Now that the Internet is a little cheaper to access (free at Wyndi's), here are a few pictures from Feb at Enamonet Beach in Majuro. It is a favorite picnic and snorkel spot because it is only about 6 miles from the main town on Majuro. Yet it seems like an outer island because the only way here is by boat and only 2 families live here. One is the care-taker of the hotel's property.

Trinda snorkeling where you can't see the other side of the lagoon, but it is not really in the middle of the ocean like it looks.

It was not a very clear day. No one remembers their camera on the exceptionally good days!

Trinda is OK.
Trinda examining the airplane near our buoy.
Why do my eyes always look so 'open' underwater?

Preparing for at Seattle Visit

The time for my flight to Seattle to visit the kids and catch up with Trinda is fast approaching. There is so much to do! Not to mention the never ending re-varnishing.

I have now completed the V-berth stateroom, the port settee, half the galley, the removable floor boards and (almost) the cabinet doors from the galley forward. 4 quarts of satin and 2 quarts of gloss.

I changed the oil in both the generator and main engine and cleaned the bilge, so the bilge pump will operate automatically as advertised. Of course the bilge pump hose is bad and has to be replaced too.

Still to go: filling the diesel tanks, pickling the watermaker, removing anything valuable from the deck/lifelines ( all those ropes Trinda thinks I should live without!) cleaning u inside and storing all these newly varnished doors below somewhere.

I have arranged for friend to watch the boat, including starting the engines occasionally and checking the mooring lines. I need to make a check list for him and written instructions for the engines.

These things need to happen as I say so long to Spike. He is leaving for Hawaii Saturday and I fly out on Monday. Again, the good thing about cruising is the friends you make, the bad thing is the goodbye's to those friends.

April 4 is the Liberation Day celebration in Aur atoll. It is the day the Americans liberated the Marshallese there from the Japanese during WWII. It seems like 6 boats are going up for the event. The American Ambassador was invited and almost went too, but reliable transportation is just not available for their time frame. There is no real scheduled inter-island transport. There is an airline, but with 27 islands and only 2 older planes, they have canceled flights regularly and they often skip a stop if they don't have at least 2 passengers for that stop. (They do tell you before you would have departed though.) But that leads to you can go, but may not be able to come back anywhere near the time you plan, as much as several months go by without flights.

I really wish I could go, it was so nice last year and we have a number of friends there. Maybe when we get back from the visit.