"If you can't tie a knot, tie a lot"

We just got back from an overnight sailing trip to Andrew's Bay with Joe and Audrey. We got off to a late start, but luckily had a southerly wind push us all the way to the bay. The wind was light, so we put up our drifter sail and got to have a leisurely sail full of laughs and good conversation.

Here is a picture of us going downwind with our drifter. It doesn't fit the boat perfect, but we bought it from someone for $100 which is super cheap for a sail! This sail is only used going downwind in very light winds. (photo credit Audrey)

My dad recently got us signed up for the 'Baja Haha'. It's a cruising rally from San Diego to Cabo beginning October 31st. The rally is in its 23rd year and has a reputation for being very laid back and fun! This picture shows the burgee flag that they just sent us in the mail, along with other pertinent information for the Baja Haha. (photo credit Audrey)

In the morning we woke up to a slightly stronger southerly breeze making it harder to get back home, but we were moving much faster, so in my opinion it was much more enjoyable. Overall, the trip was a great little final getaway with Joe and Audrey and I'll miss them so much! Really looking forward to coming back for the wedding already.

Here's a video Joe took of Epic under sail. Check out my sailing gloves that give +5 to sailing!

Tomorrow is our departure date! We plan on leaving as soon as we wake up and get some breakfast in us. Our first stop will be somewhere in Shilshole Bay in Seattle to get our watermaker serviced and ready to start making water for us. From there our next destination will be Lopez Island to visit some family friends. We won't make it all the way there tomorrow though, so we'll just have to find some protected bay to anchor in for the night.
After Lopez we'll probably play around in the San Juan Islands a bit more before heading up to Vancouver BC where I plan to get my next blog post published. Hope we get some steady winds and not too much rain!

Happy Sailors

It's a Party in the Seattle

Since I last wrote, we've been out sailing once. It wasn't just any old afternoon of sailing, but a double birthday party sail! My brother Joe and my soon to be sister in-law (right? I think it works like that) Diana both share an August 23rd birthday so we took them out and enjoyed hamburgers and tons of desert!

 Joe and Diana sailing on their birthday! (photo credit Diana's Facebook)

Audrey at the helm!

Joe and Diana ready for desert! (photo credit Sheri Timpe)

A few days after that fun we had our big going away party to say goodbye to lots of family and friends. We enjoyed hotdogs and hamburgers and we are so thankful to have such a large group of people provide us so much love and support. It's never fun saying goodbye, but it's nice knowing that we'll all be together again for Joe and Audrey's wedding in 9 short months come June.

A few of the family members that came to the party. You would have thought we would have had the sense to use the boat as the backdrop! Or at least the house! Oh well, it's the people who make the picture great. (photo credit Robin Thomas)

Present

Over the past few weeks a lot of people have been asking me if I'll miss the house. My answer has always been no. It is strange for me because typically I think of myself as having a hard time saying goodbye to things and moving on from things, but this is almost worrisome how easy it is to say goodbye. Today for instance I jumped in the lake and swam out so I could get a good view of the house and I was pretty much trying to make myself sad and miss it, but to no avail. It brought back a lot of great memories, sure, but I think I'm just ready to move on. I'm confident that whatever my future brings, I'll land on my feet and make the most of it, so trying to hold onto things from the past would only bog me down and make me lose sight of what's ahead.

Any minute now, Joe and Audrey are going to come over and we're going to go for an overnight trip to Andrew's Bay. I'll make sure to get some pictures and highlights of that posted before my parents and I depart Wednesday morning.

Lake Sailing

My parents and I have been busy trying to get the house emptied out and I've got to give all of you a PSA to de-clutter your life! We have so much stuff and the majority of it is so useless. Consumerism is out of control! I've always kind of felt this way about consumerism, but moving onto the boat and only being able to take what I absolutely need, make me feel so much more liberated and free. (Disclaimer: I'm storing some stuff at my brother Joe and his fiancé Audrey's house. But the more I think about it, the more I wish I would have just gotten rid of all of it. I'll have a decision to make in June when they expect me to move it out.) Anyways, instead of submitting my thesis about how consumerism is destroying the fabric of America, I'll just tell you about sailing.

A couple weeks ago my mom's cousin Linda and her husband Boyd came and stayed with us for two nights. The first day they got here we sailed to Andrew's Bay in south Lake Washington. It was my first time spending the night on the boat away from the dock and I loved it! Once we were anchored we had a great tuna dinner and spent the Monday night with 8 other boats inside the bay. The ladder of our boat is typically not on the swim step because it would be in the way, so my dad built it so that we could store it elsewhere, then put it on the swim step when we needed it. Well, when we were all done swimming at night my dad went to grab the ladder but I told him to leave it in case we swim more the next day. In the morning we discovered that our ladder had fallen off the swim step and floated into the lily pads. I felt responsible, and took the long morning swim to retrieve the ladder. I suppose the captain knows best sometimes.
We had minimal wind the rest of that morning, and as soon as the wind started to pick up again I had my friend pick me up off the boat into his boat. The actual sailing from that overnight trip was uneventful - just lots of learning how the boat handles.

Epic at anchorage in Andrew's Bay

About a week ago my parents and I took my grandma (mom's mom) out for a 3 hour sail. The wind was really blowing (I'll start documenting better...). We took off and had to shout to communicate over the loud winds. On our first tack, one of the jib (sail up front. It's actually a genoa, but I'll spare you the details) sheets (ropes) broke and a little bit of craziness followed due to the jib that was violently being whipped by the wind. Then to add to the chaos, I took the helm (wheel) from my dad and he had it turned all the way one direction, but I couldn't tell which direction because our straight ahead mark on the wheel was turned down all the way to 6 o'clock which is the furthest you want to turn the wheel, or else you risk breaking the rudders and losing your steering altogether. So to solve that, all while the jib was flapping, I pulled up one of the rudders to check it and get the steering aligned again. It was a chaotic five minutes, but everyone on board communicated well and we got everything fixed and enjoyed the remainder of the sail. We even got to play around with reefing the main sail, that is, to take it down from the top a bit so that you don't risk flipping the boat in high winds. We didn't necessarily need to do it in the conditions we were in, but it was good practice.

In our latest voyage, my parents and I took my aunt and uncle Sue and Jeff out for a one night stay in Andrew's Bay. We began the trip with Joe, Audrey, and Audrey's sister Diana on board, but after about an hour we swung back by our house and the three of them abandoned ship and swam to shore. After that we made great time to Andrew's Bay and enjoyed a Friday night with about 60-75 other boaters. Our favorite anchorage spot in that bay is all the way in the back of it, so I got to navigate the bay of boats by sailing downwind with mainsail up. I split between two anchored boats with about 10 feet on each side. On my left, the boater was impressed and clapping, on my right the boater was giving me a salty ol' stink eye. In the morning the wind was minimal and we motored all the way back home.

That's been it for our sailing the last two weeks or so. Now we're really focusing on getting all of our stuff and cars sold from our house so we can depart by September 1st at the latest. I'm starting to get restless - I'm ready to get going!

Video Tour!

Here is a little video I put together of the boat. I completely winged it and this is my first and only take. This is by no means a very professional blog, but I hope you can at least get a better feeling for what I'll be living on! If I go sailing this week I'll get a video of the boat under sail and more of the exterior of the boat. Enjoy!

Prepping for the Seas

Welcome to post number 1! If you haven't already done so, I would recommend clicking on the "About" tab at the top of the page and reading that page first. This post will be a bit of a continuation from that.

Catch Up

First things first, I need to bring my blog up to speed and let you all know what has been going on the last few months.
       -  About six months ago, Epic was lowered into the Duwamish River. My brother, his fiancée Audrey, and my parents navigated it to my parents house on Lake Washington.
       -  Then after some time, a mast was put on Epic at a boatyard near the Ballard bridge. During that time, there was some construction taking place on the 520 bridge making our boat too tall to pass under, and therefore unable to return home - so we found some dock space in Tacoma.
       -  Epic stayed in Tacoma for about 3 months until 520 construction finally made it possible for us to make it to my parents home.
       -  Since that time about one month ago, Epic has remained outside my parents house in all its glory! We have enjoyed taking her out on the lake a few times and getting acquainted to how she handles.

Present

The plan as it stands is to depart by September 1st. If all goes well, then we'll head up to Vancouver B.C and maybe (fingers crossed) even up to Hot Springs Cove on the west side of Vancouver Island. After all, once Epic goes down the coast it's hard to say when she'll come back up - so I'm hoping to persuade the Captain (my dad) and the Admiral (my mom) that this First Mate knows what he's talking about. Once we have our fun in Canada we think our first stop down the coast will be Ilwaco, WA. I recently worked in Ilwaco and have a ton of friends down there that have heard about the boat and would love to check out my new sweet digs. After that, the main goal is to be in San Diego by October 31st for the Baja-Haha, a cruising rally from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas. From there we'll go wherever sounds fun.

Epic just has a few more minor touch-ups that need to occur, one of which is to install a single side band radio (SSB). As I understand it (which may be completely wrong) is that with the SSB we'll be able to listen to little talk show programs practically across the globe. We'll also be able to radio a strange little phone place who will connect us to people we wish to call so that we could theoretically be in the middle of the Pacific and talking to loved ones! We'll also have a VHF radio which is a little simpler and only has a range of 20-30 miles. The VHF is what we'll use when chatting with other cruisers we know are in or around the same port we are.

Aside from that, the only work on Epic that must be done is all little stuff. We also need to all get moved on, but that shouldn't take long. In fact, I moved onto the boat a couple days ago with all my things and am sleeping out there now.

The bigger task that must be taken care of before we depart is selling everything! My parents plan to stay on Epic for many years, so for them it makes the most sense to sell pretty much all their belongings, cars, and house! Apparently when you live in the same house for 30 years, you accumulate a lot of stuff. Since coming back to my parents house at the beginning of July, many of my days have been spent cleaning rooms and closets out, showing people our rowboats and cars we're selling, and helping out with garage sales and taking loads to the Goodwill. A dent has clearly been made, but there is still so much more to be done. We may be crazy thinking we can be out of here by September 1st, but I sure hope we can stick to that.

Hope you all enjoyed the first post! I don't expect anything too noteworthy to happen in the next few weeks, but I hope to either get a bunch of pictures posted or maybe even a video tour!
Fair winds, Matey's.