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.
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