S.V. CAMBRIA

Port Ludlow, Washington

Monday, May 16, 2011TheCambrians

Moving Out and Moving North

Wednesday, May 11, 2011TheCambrians

Boat Maintenance Sum It Up Sunday

Sum It Up Sunday: Final Preparations for the Season

Sunday, April 24, 2011TheCambrians

Most boat owners will tell you that things don't normally work out as planned. Things break. Parts don't come in. One job has a way of turning in to two or three. It's the nature of the beast and should be expected making this past week where everything ran smoothly and according to plan saving us thousands of dollars in the process all the more remarkable.

It started last Thursday. David was going to remove the inverter, which stopped working last June, to make room for the new one he was planning to order later in the day when he discovered the battery switch (the same one he'd checked last year) was bad. He replaced the switch with a spare we had aboard and re-checked the inverter to find it was working again. Not only did we save $1200 with a $30 part, but I was able to vacuum for the first time in eleven months. That may not sound too exciting but, when you have a dog aboard who's blowing her coat, it's a BIG deal!

Next up . . . the outboard motors. They never work at the beginning of the season and have to be rebuilt every year. They're old. They're ugly. But they're ours and we love them. Besides. They're two-stroke motors which (horsepower for horsepower) are lighter, smaller, and more manageable than the four-stroke ones they now sell. So keeping them running is a priority and worth every bit of frustration (especially when you're not the one fixing them). We didn't do anything special at the end of last season but, low and behold, both outboards started on the first pull and passed their test drives with flying colours. For the first time in years, it wasn't going to take two or three days to get them back in working condition.

With the outboards out of the way, it was time to tackle the auxiliary generator which stopped working in July of 2009. David had made a few attempts to fix it before but none of them had been successful beyond a few minutes, so this was a last-ditch effort before buying a new one. He pulled it out of the bed of the truck – it's home for more than a year – and tore it down. Two of the three bolts that secure the recoil starter had stripped out of the engine cylinder head, so he drilled out the engine block, tapped and set three new helicoils, replaced the recoil starter and rebuilt the genset case. Or some such nonsense. All I really know is that it works again and it's time cash in on our new-found luck and buy a lottery ticket!

Poulsbo

Happy 60th, David

Monday, April 18, 2011TheCambrians

David preparing to blow out the candles on his 60th birthday cake.

Normalcy is taking hold again, as it tends to, and we're beginning to make an impact in the list of things we need to do before we can officially drop our lines and head north for the summer.

But first thing was first and, when we got back to Washington, the boat was in a state of disarray. Cambria had been wet with condensation this winter so, before we left in December, I pulled everything out of cubbies, wardrobes, cabinets and bilges to allow air to circulate around the hull. And it all had to be put back. Six hours and several bruised shins, twisted knees and cut hands later most everything, including the truckload of stuff we'd managed to acquire over the past four months, found a place to live (or hide) and we could move on to the next jobs – provisioning (me) and preparing the boat for her survey (David). In the meantime, I had his 60th birthday to plan.

Friday was the official start of the celebration with presents (a new guitar strap and guitar book), breakfast (his favourite meal), congratulatory phone calls, and dinner with friends (though we had treated ourselves to a Buddy Guy concert while in Kansas and gone out to dinner with his son while in San Diego). But the real celebration wasn't until Sunday when I had a party for him here at the marina clubhouse. Living in such close quarters, a surprise was out of the question, but we both managed to be amazed by how many people were actually able to come, including our friends, Bill and Sylvia Emmens who drove six hours to be here.

It turned out to be a brilliant evening – I couldn't have asked for things to have gone more smoothly – and everyone seemed to have a good time, especially David who always enjoys the opportunity to be the center of attention (hee hee). We kept it simple: a little food, a little drink and catching up with friends, old and new alike. Most people left by 10 o'clock, but the highlight of the night, for me,came after that when we were able to sit down and relax with the few remaining friends to talk about our plans for the upcoming cruising season, among other things. But all good things must come to an end and, by the time 12:30 am had rolled around, we all said our good-byes and locked the doors behind us.

Thanks so much to everyone who helped make David's 60th special!

Poulsbo Puget Sound

Poulsbo, Washington

Wednesday, April 13, 2011TheCambrians

Steven Michael Wittrig: August 12, 1986 - February 19, 2011

Saturday, February 19, 2011TheCambrians

Las Vegas

Valley of Fire State Park

Friday, February 18, 2011TheCambrians

Our campsite at The Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada.

The road had been calling for several weeks and we were feeling the pressure to get moving but, as usual, the weather wouldn't cooperate. After dealing with sub-freezing temperatures and blizzard conditions a couple of weeks ago, another system moved through the area and dropped eight inches of snow postponing our departure another few days while ruining our chances for a weekend arrival in Las Vegas so, with nothing to do but sit and wait, we decided to go camping.

We left Wichita Monday morning and arrived in Henderson Tuesday where we bought the rest of our gear before driving the last 50 miles north to The Valley of Fire State Park. Our campsite was beautiful – as they all are here – but it'd been a long day, so we skipped the site-seeing and quickly set up the tent, ate dinner and sat by the fire before cuddling up to watch a movie and going to bed.

Sleep was short. At two in the morning, the wind came crashing through the canyons and howled the rest of the night blowing sand directly into the tent covering everything, ourselves included, in a fine orange powder. Hoping things would die down on Wednesday, we stuck it out only to be rewarded with a very long day of being beaten by a steady flow of wind that only seemed to increase as the day went on. It was blowing too much for a camp fire, so we went to bed early all the while wondering where this front had come from – it wasn't in the forecast!

Wednesday night turned out to be even worse than Tuesday. The tent was collapsing in all around us and making an ungodly racket. The approaching gusts, clocked at 50 mph, sounded like the roar from a jet engine giving us enough time to brace ourselves in case it was the one that broke the poles or split the seams which, fortunately, never happened. We did, however, manage to get covered in sand again, but it's all an adventure and our persistence finally paid off – the weather on Thursday was gorgeous. By late-morning, the wind had died down and we were treated to a lovely afternoon and evening. We drove around the park, had dinner, and enjoyed a campfire – the past two nights already a distant memory and somewhat funny (if not unbelievable).

Today, we woke up to another beautiful morning after an uneventful, but cold, night. Clouds are beginning to move into the area again signalling the next front from California – this one we had seen coming in the forecast – so we broke down camp after a late breakfast and made our way back to Henderson to see Chris, Stacia and the girls with a view to do it all again next week in Death Valley.

Wichita Year in Review

Home for the Holidays

Saturday, January 01, 2011TheCambrians

It's difficult to believe that another year has already come to an end. It went by so fast but, when you look at the numbers, that isn't surprising. From June to November, we spent 143 days at anchor and travelled 1430 nautical miles using 381.93 US gallons of diesel to run the engine 320.9 hours (97 of which were to charge the batteries) and the heater 427.8 hours. The savings in fuel and engine hours were thanks to the new solar panel array which put out 10,603 amp hours to recharge the batteries (142 kWh).

The miles on the water weren't the only ones we travelled this year. We left Poulsbo shortly after November's blizzard and drove to Wichita, Kansas by way of Ventura,California where we spent a couple of days with our friends, Mike and Lisa Dobson, whom we met while coming up the Pacific West Coast in 2008.

After a great time catching up with the Dobsons, we carried on to San Diego to spend a few days with John. While we were there, we received some exciting news – our great nephew, Jaxon Thomas Smith, was born at 11:30 pm CST on December the 8th weighing in at 7 pounds 10 ounces and measuring 20.25 inches long. But more importantly, the family name lives on (because there just aren't enough Smiths in the world)!

After enjoying several days of fine Southern Californian weather, it was time to move east for a weekend in Las Vegas with Chris, Stacia and the girls to celebrate an early Christmas before driving on to Wichita to surprise my mom, who thought we were staying in Washington for the holidays. But the surprise was on us...she wasn't home.

It was a quiet Christmas this year with the bulk of the family out of town, but a really nice one that lacked all the stress that can accompany large get-togethers. New Year's was quiet as well, an evening out with my sisters and their husbands, but we all managed to stay up late enough to watch the clock strike midnight and wish each other a Happy New Year before running off to bed.

Now it's time to look forward to next year which, as always, will be busy for us. Before we're able to drop our lines in May, Cambria will need to be hauled out for an insurance survey and bottom paint along with a couple of other odd jobs. After that, we'll be free to head north with, at this point, no real destination in mind. We can hardly wait....

Poulsbo Puget Sound

Blizzard!

Friday, November 26, 2010TheCambrians

Cambria (the tallest mast on the outside dock) during the beginning minutes of the blizzard.

The season's first major snowstorm arrived on Monday. The day began innocuously enough with some flurries but, by 4 o'clock that night, we were in a full-fledged blizzard with sustained winds at 35 knots with much stronger gusts and Poulsbo had become a ghost town. By 5 o'clock, the docks were undulating and waves were crashing all along the outer pier making it extremely difficult and dangerous to get on and off the boat – a necessity when you have a dog aboard.

At 6:41 pm (shortly after David said, “at least we still have power” the power went out and didn't come back on for thirty-six hours. We had everything we needed on board to be comfortable though – heat, hot water, refrigeration, etc. – and the ability to generate our own electricity.

Adding to the excitement, Cambria was rocking and rolling pulling hard against her lines and, eventually, being pushed back against the dock. As the storm worsened, so did the movement on the boat and we had to do something to stop her transom (the back end) from bashing against the pier. Adjusting the lines (which had stretched during the storm) by hand was out of the question because of the massive amounts of load on them, so we started the engine and put it into gear working hard against the wind and surf to create some slack so that David could tighten the lines and adjust our fenders. It took some time and effort, but he managed the job and, once again, we went down below for, what turned out to be, a somewhat restless night.

Tuesday morning we woke up to ice – both INSIDE and out. Even with the heater running, the hatches had frozen along the aluminium rims. Although the wind had died down and the dock was no longer moving,getting Sally to shore was treacherous because of the ice which had formed along the dock...and deck of the boat. Poulsbo was still quiet with all but one of the shops closed, but people were out in their vehicles attempting to move around again – the icy hills making progress for those without chains very difficult. Still suffering the effects of nagging chest-colds, we spent most of our time inside keeping warm and waiting for the power to come back on, which finally happened around 3 o'clock Wednesday morning.

Up until this point, I was determined to stay on the boat this winter for Christmas avoiding the long road trips and camping out at family members' homes, but the blizzard changed that in a hurry and the packing soon began. If all goes well, we'll be ready to leave by the first of December and be on our way to sunny, Southern California.

Poulsbo Puget Sound

Cold in Poulsbo

Sunday, November 21, 2010TheCambrians

Port Ludlow, Washington

Moving Out and Moving North

Sum It Up Sunday: Final Preparations for the Season

Happy 60th, David

Poulsbo, Washington

Steven Michael Wittrig: August 12, 1986 - February 19, 2011

Valley of Fire State Park

Home for the Holidays

Blizzard!

Cold in Poulsbo

Welcome Aboard

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