Wed May 4th
Today we pulled in to the fuel dock and got to experience what it was like to pay for over 700 dollars in fuel. Seriously, ouch – I have bought cars for less than that. Well it is the price to pay for pushing around a house on the water and to put it in perspective the pump man told me that last week he filled one boat for a total of $16,000 – now that is some serious fuel. Everyone tells me that these slow diesel boats are very economical but when you have about 2,000 nautical miles to accomplish that is just a matter of perspective.
After a run around huckleberry island and a practice at tying up to a mooring buoy we brought her back to our slip and this time we had about 1 foot tops on each side of our boat now that we have a sailboat for a neighbor. We managed to squeak her in so I guess my training wheels are off in terms of tighter landing. Good thing as my neighbor is a lawyer and his name is “Bill” – no coincidence I am sure. Actually a nice guy and turns out to know and play tennis with my father in law.
Cathy and all the boys are out shopping and playing at the park with family and I have been spending the afternoon getting odds and ends done around the boat. Tommorrow my Mom and Dad are coming as well as my sister, brother in law and some nephews and nieces and such and we are going to have some fun together over the weekend. The plan is to take the boat tomorrow to Garrison Bay and spend some days anchored up which will be our first overnight anchoring with the new boat and another step towards the bigger trip. Then we are back to Anacortes for one last week to finalize any provisions we might need and take care of any mechanical work while I have a team of professionals that know the boat.
I has been almost a week now on the boat with the whole crew and I have to admit – I better understand when people hear what we are doing with triplets and about scream out in astonishment – I am starting to think they are right but we are settling into some systems and the babies are now about sleeping through the night and as long as we get everyone to shore for a good part of the day it goes pretty smooth. We bought some serious heavy duty harnesses for them and that will be great when getting in and out of the boat and going to shore on the dingy.
I have been spreading out the larger purchased necessary to pull off this trip – somehow I think that if I spread them out it does not add up to the same large total. I am thankful I got such a good price on the boat and like all boaters I am able to justify the purchases based on words like safety and amortizing life experiences. It is amazing though how much all the little items from stainless steel screws to fuses to the much larger ticket items like Epirb, digital charts, kicker motor and such add up. I have been keeping all my receipts so that when we are home we can crunch all the numbers together and use this total as my incentive to get back to work and work hard. I actually have been missing work and have been hitting the coffee shop each morning to get at least 2 hours in and then periodically answering emails and phone calls throughout the day. I am really blessed to have a good team that have it under control and this is allowing me to take on this adventure. It is actually hard to break out of the normal routine that one establishes and I find that I fill my time with many trivial things that are just designed to fill my time and often to avoid more necessary things. With a boat those more necessary things tend to be right in front of you and demand your attention and all the much more with a large family in a large space.
Well I better close this off, time to scrounge up some quarters so that I can get a shower up at the Harbor Master facilities – never thought 1 quarter and 1 and a half minutes of hot water could be so good.
Looking forward to my time this weekend with family – Cheers to All
Joe
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