Time to get caught up to real time

Anna and her crew have been busy since the last posts about fuel tanks and chainplates, and yet  my blogging has been extremely poor.  Here are some of the highlight from the 2015-2016 projects:
New Dinghy and 15hp Evinrude, and new dodger panels, haul out and bottom paint by the captain--NOT easy!

We sailed multiple times to the San Juans and Desolation Sound BC in the summers of 2015 and 2016 and had some fantastic trips.  Highights include crabbing and even shriping like pros and feasting like kings on dungeness and king salmon from Campbell River.  We also got our first taste of big winds and seas on the Straight of Georgia.  Year one the straights gave us a whopin' but year two we figured out this thing called reefing the main, and what do you know, it works great!  There's a whole story about crossing from Vancouver BC to the Gulf Islands two different summers but lets jsut say that I learned to reef early, and now thats just what we do to keep everyone happy, including Anna.

Sailing to Princess Louisa Inlet and posing in front of Chatterbox Falls

Setting the spinnaker for the first time

Sunsets, seaplanes and cheeseburgers in Roche Harbor

More boat work to get ready to cruise including repainting the decks with Awlgrip and Griptex for traction, a new mainsail cover, re-certify the DBC life raft, new HT anchor chain and Spade 66lb anchor, IridiumGo!, one more 100W solar panel, and a thousand smaller projects that i can't even recall now, but were important and satisfying.  I really like taking care of Anna and she takes great care of us too..

This is really poor form and I hate to cram 2 years of sailing and boat projects into one crummy post, but I really want to get to the real fun stuff of sailing from Lake Union to  San Diego in July 2017!!

Projects to get Anna shipshape

Over the first winter we owned the boat we tackled two decent sized problems that came up.  First, we needed to get a "rig survey" for insurance purposes and while conducting the survey we found the 30 year old chain plates to be in need of replacement.  3 were cracked and the others were just a little rusty, but it was time to tackle this.  Cliff at Evergreen Rigging does great work and he made and installed 7 new chain plates with minimal assistance by me, which consisted of taking out the unbelievable layers of trim that cover the access areas.  The quality of the fit and workmanship for the panels and trim was amazing even if it took some time to remove and install.  The Ta Shing shipyard did a LOT of finish work on these boats.  Here are the before and after pics of the project.  I am glad the mast stayed up when we crossed the Straight of Georgia in 25 knots!

Next up, fuel tanks, because they were black iron and one of them got a leak and put 15 gallons of fuel into the bilge!!  Fortunately for everyone, especially the environmentalists, if you know a guy like Bob Ridenour (pro yacht fixer person) this fuel will not go into Lake Union, but can be lovingly pumped and fuel/water separated into jerry cans, using special pump, a Home Depot bucket, and some oil absorbent/diaper rags.  Also we used our clothes and skin to absorb the fuel, but it all came out and disaster was averted.  We got all the good fuel out of both tanks next and got ready to remove them. 

The

The real fun started as we had to disconnect the old tanks, remove the companionway steps and rails, cut a very small part of the floor up, and then hoist the tanks out using the main halyard. They weren't that heavy but had been in place for 30 years, but eventually they did come up.  This project has been done on virtually all of these boats so the collective wisdom is all there on owner groups, etc...   Just like most everyone else, we sawz-alled the tanks in half so they could fit out the companion way and had new ones made slightly shorter so they could fit back in.  The latest wisdom is to remake the tanks in aluminum and I hope they last another 30 years.  I love the new clean tanks and its reassuring to have fuel tanks that won't shift a load of gunk into the fuel filters in rough weather.  That's what you tell yourself when you spent a few $$$ on an item you didn't plan on replacing.  They are lovely tanks though.  See for yourself.  I also sterilized and bilge-coted that area so its all fresh and new.