Scrub-a-dub-dub

The Port of Anacortes does a great job on maintenance.  We were here in 2005 and the facilities don't look a day older than they did then.  Everything is clean and well maintained.  For the past week we've had young men power washing the docks.  Today they were working on "N" dock.  Our dock.  One of them had a power sprayer and the other one had something that was like a portable, hand-operated street sweeper.  We have concrete docks here.  They are wonderful because they are very stable underfoot, and yet they float!  That's a really cool thing.  Because here in Washington the tides are about 9 feet.  That means that the docks rise and fall with our boat every six hours.  So let's go back to the analogy of the bowl of water sloshing from side to side (see Tides).  So imagine you're holding a big bowl of water.  You have your hands centered on the bowl so they are right across from each other.  Your hands are the Equator.  You tip the forward edge of the bowl down and back up.  See how the water doesn't rise all that much by your hands?  But on the outer edges of the bowl it rises and falls a lot more.  The outer edges of the bowl are the poles - North and South.  A little more than half way between your hands and the forward edge of the bowl is Puget Sound.  That's why we get bigger tides here than Florida.  Okay, pretty simplistic explanation, but it works for me.

Anyway, back to the concrete docks.  If the docks didn't float, our boat would be way below the dock at times and way above them at others.  This is the way things are done here, but I understand it's not the standard in the eastern U.S.  So, I'm real glad we're here.

And we really like that the tree line behind us is home to bald eagles, osprey, crows, blue herons and all the smaller birds that harass them endlessly.  There is a bald eagle that likes to roost in a tree directly behind our boat so we can see it when we relax in the cockpit.

Although it's the day of rest, we accomplished some cool stuff today.  We worked through three chapters of our navigation study (98% accuracy on our quizzes Heidi!).  Then we went to work on an electrical problem.  We have two 12 volt outlets that had no power to them.  A 12 volt outlet is like the cigarette lighter in your car.  Only now we all use them to power our cell phone chargers and gps.  When we are at the marina we have 30 amp electrical hookups.  But when we are out on the anchor we depend on just our battery power. So those outlets are important because they will allow us to keep our phones and laptop charged.  After crawling through cabinets for an hour we discovered that the power supply was shared with the stereo.  That means that we have to turn on the panel switch for the stereo AND the accessories for the outlets to work.  Eureka!  Dave says it's like getting to know a woman, there's something new and unexpected at every turn.

And speaking of Dave, he has been cleaning our dinghy.  It's made of hypalon and has some oxidation on it. That means when you brush up against it you have chalky residue on you.  Dave has cleaned this all up and is putting stuff on it to protect it from the effects of all of the brutal sunshine here. :-)

Beeeeuuuuutiful.

So we are getting dangerously close to leaving the dock!  We really don't have much of anything in our way. 

Simon has been putting on the miles in anticipation of some island running.

However we would like to have some nice calm conditions when we pull out and return.  And we keep getting Small Craft Advisory and Gale Warnings.  These are based on wind speed and wave height.  We've been getting them since the middle of last week.  So far, really nothing but beautiful weather.  Kind of confounding.  

So we'll bide our time and leave when it feels right.  And we'll keep you all posted!  

I hope you all have a calm week ahead.