Bon Voyage

we love you all. thank you for the support. see you soon, wherever it is

Ardea gains some much needed storage

Sorry for the delay, we've been busy with final preparations and I know that you all have been patiently waiting for my first blog post.  It seems that everything is going well as we prepare to embark except for the weather. The unnaturally warm weather that we've had for the last few months may be finally giving way to our first storm;,which is supposed to arrive tomorrow and last through the weekend. Departure may be delayed for a couple days but we're still shooting for this coming Sunday if possible. As our projects finally wrap up we can hopefully get some more blog posts up before we take off.


One of the many obstacles in sailing across an ocean with three people on a 31 foot boat is storage. We all have our own personal luggage and lots of toys (surf boards, kite boards, instruments, fishing and diving gear, etc.) not to mention the important stuff such as food, water, tools, spare parts and the dozens of other things necessary for such a journey. To fit all of this stuff on the boat it was clear that every inch of open space would need to be utilized. Somehow, I was haphazardly chosen as the resident carpenter on Ardea. While Connor was pretending to work at his job in Oakland I was assigned my first major project: to build a set of shelves in the starboard lazarette (the space below the cockpit on the right side of the boat). It is a large space but initially there was only a small, flimsy set of plastic shelves that were unable to hold much of anything aside from the few quarts of oil you see there in the background of the picture to the right. 

The plastic shelves were promptly removed and it was time to start designing some sort of shelves that would fill up the space but would not be so big as to block the access to the engine or the boat's batteries and wiring system. The problem with building anything below deck on the boat is that we did not want to attach anything to the hull. That would create an unnecessary pressure point that after many thousands of miles of pounding at sea could eventually lead to a weakness in the hull. This meant that everything for the shelves would need to be attached to the deck or the cockpit framing.

I decided that two tiers of shelves would be the most useful, with the top layer being removable to provide easy access to both levels from the cockpit. After many measurements,  I was able to create a couple of square braces that would support two layers of shelving and that could be screwed into the deck joists on the top and the cockpit on the side. The bottom shelf could be made permanent and so it was screwed into the bottom of the braces and into a wood frame which was supporting the fuel tank underneath the cockpit. 




To create the top shelves it was simply a matter of cutting our redwood boards to the correct length and fitting them onto the braces. In actuality, all of this was quite difficult due to the cramped space we were working in and the nature of constructing anything on a boat, which seems to involve a lot of trial and error and a lot of time.

The next area needing some shelving was the far aft quarter; where we figured that we could possibly fit 6 jerry cans for water. We had considered ditching the shelves and using water bladders instead but again, we didn't want to put the weight on the hull and we would have had to build some braces anyway to stop them from sliding into the bilge. Once again we wanted to attach everything from above especially since these shelves would be holding nearly 250 pounds of water when full. Thanks to Connor's impressive dumpster diving skills we were able to locate an old stainless steel pulpit from which we removed two of the stanchions to act as supports for our aft joist. We attached the stanchions to the underside of the deck and bolted them in place with a stainless backing plate on the top side of the deck (we used the stainless steel triangles seen in the picture to the right as backing plates).


We drilled some holes in the bottom of the stanchions and bolted on a pressure treated 2x4 for a joist. the other joist was screwed in to the backside of the cockpit and we used up the rest of our redwood for shelving. Everything turned out better than we had hoped and we were able to easily fit the 6 jerry cans- an extra 30 gallons of freshwater storage.

As Connor mentioned we were also able to rig up a rain catchment system for the starboard jerry cans that will allow us to manually pump rainwater directly to our faucet (we'll have more on that in another post). 

In the meantime we also threw in another set of small shelves in the bilge which can be accessed underneath the floor in the cabin.  However, an errant design flaw left the shelves only tall enough for your standard can of food and a just a little too short for can of beer. Further modifications may be needed.

We're all getting very excited as the departure date nears, more blog posts should be up soon so stay tuned. In the mean time, we'll be organizing all of our stuff... a bit daunting (see below). 

At Least It Broke Now (and other misadventures...)

There certainly seems to be some Murphy's law in action these days. In spite of it, the crew is incredibly positive and jubilant. One result of the combination of unfortunate unfoldings and steadfast optimism when preparing for a sailing trip is that you begin to imagine what would have happened if these little annoying things had occurred in a remote place... it helps keep it all from getting to you. But anyway, our (and, in some cases, just my) tribulations of late:

One manual faucet: broken. Just before giving us our first splash of saltwater... well, so it goes. This was certainly an "at least it broke now" moment. Already got a new one (and a spare).

One wallet, lost. Probably in the water whilst sailing with family, which was a glorious way to celebrate my Dad's 56th....errrr uh, 59th?... wait, 52nd birthday.

See? Optimism.

One coastal low pressure system: imminent. It's coming from the northwest and will probably push us back a few days. But that's ok because there's a nice high pressure system moving in on SoCal and I think the low will brush on through pretty quick.

One tooth: painful. It happens to lie in my mouth, so to the dentist I will go yet again for a root canal tomorrow afternoon. Does that suck? Yes. Did I have any dental issues before going to the dentist in an effort to preempt problems ahead of this trip? No. Will this delay our departure? Probably not given the aforementioned low.

Lots of optimism.

Really though- Ardea is looking great. We've serviced the engine and are nearly finished stocking spare parts. We've got loads of errands to run to get our living quarters and galley suitable for the three of us, but we're in great shape, we're feeling good about our vessel and we're having fun. Really can't complain too much.

Get ready for Dana's first post coming right up manana. I'll put one up after that about our awesome new water system! In fact, since it's going to be rainy for a few days, we might finally catch up on all of our blogging (in between sewing drogue cones, of course).


Very Excited to be Writing from Mexico,

Connor

Funemployment Begins

Friends,

Apologies, apologies. I know it's been a while since we've posted, and you'd think we'd be better bloggers while the interweb is still easily accessible, but I assure you the mean time wasn't wasted. We have been hard at work. Part of our hesitation to post is that I can't seem to find my camera's usb chord, so  I haven't got many photos for this post- I'll add more photos soon...

Finally, we're all working on the boat full time. My last day at URS was last Friday, though I had basically passed off all my projects by the end of December, so my last week consisted primarily of cleaning out my desk and drinking beers with co-workers. Needless to say, I am really looking forward to adjusting away from the 40 hour work week and cubicle lifestyle, though I will miss the friends I made at the ol' office...

A few big milestones have been reached since the New Year. We now have both solar panels installed and operational. We're waiting on a few parts that we ordered to complete our system for articulating the panels so that they can be positioned at the optimal angle, but other than that, the set-up is complete.

As you can see, they're fairly gigantic, but they should be able to keep up with our power usage. The concern with mounting them on the side rails like that is that they'll take will without doubt be splashed repeatedly and may take a fairly decent pounding from a wave now and again. They're designed for the marine environment though, so the water should be locked out well (I might take some sealant, or smacky, as Dana calls it, and put another bead around the junction box for overkill...) and we stabilized the rails with another stanchion on each side, so hopefully the whole getup is strong enough. Once we have the parts installed and I can take some more photos, I'll write a post with our energy budget (how we sized the panels) and the process of installing and wiring it all.

Aside from the solar panels, we now have a great shelf system in the far aft compartment. We refer to this area as the 'aft quarter' which is where the captain's cabin might be in a larger vessel- the spot with the beautiful windows on the transom and plenty of headroom in your typical pirate ship. This is really only because we cherish any 'piraty' qualities of any boat (old pirates with swords and cannons, not the 21st century buttholes with AK-47s and RPGs) since you can barely contort a body into this area of little Ardea. Before, it was all dead space. But with some clever maneuvers, we managed to get an awesome shelf installed. We were able to fit six jerry cans in there with room to spare. More on that in a future post from Dana, our resident carpenter.

Once we got those jerry cans secured in the aft quarter, we really started to get big eyes. We did some brainstorming and devised a way to catch rainwater and feed it directly to three of those cans (though we could expand to more cans later). Then, we ran tubing from the bottom of those jerry cans to the galley and installed a bronze y-valve under the galley sink. Now, we can select rainwater or salt water to be pumped through our newly installed manual faucet. For the saltwater, we plumbed the system to the intake at the head using essentially a garden hose splitter. We weren't sure if having the toilet and the faucet pulling from the same seacock would effect the water pressure at either, so we wanted to be able to turn them on or off independently. It worked out quite nicely. This will allow us to avoid using our electric water pump whenever we've got fresh water in our jerry cans and it will allow us to do much of our cooking and cleaning with saltwater. We're all starting to feel pretty good about Ardea's water capacity, now 108 gallons.

Aside from these bigger projects, we've knocked off a lot of little things. We finally built a hinge for the top of the propane housing, replaced the shieves (rollers that allow lines to make a 180 degree turn with little friction) in the booms and masts and installed our EPIRB and MOB strobe in the cockpit. We installed a boom vang on the main mast, got all of the reefing lines situated and run aft, and got the old Perkins checked out by a mechanic (no problems there!).

We're in a bit of a frenzy as our window for ordering parts, etc. is closing rapidly. I think we've got it all figured out though. We're putting in our order for paper charts today. Other than that, we've got to stock spares, wrap up these last few projects, and clean Ardea up for her journey. Though there may be a system coming in middle of next week, we're hoping the weather will be fit for our departure on Sunday the 22nd of January.

Progress and Pork

Friends,

As you might imagine, we're off the boat for a few days and with our families for the holidays. I thought I might post an update, though. Taylor and his wonderful mother, Janice, have set out to stitch the drogue together today and make some storage pockets (and perhaps some chalk bags for climbing) out of an old colorful sail I found at the dumpster. My holiday assignment is to place orders for some parts and study for the Ham radio license test. Dana put in a hard day's work in the aft quarter yesterday. And Anna was able to finish the lettering on the transom before heading back to Seattle earlier this week. Productivity remains high and the excitement is building!

We chose as a re-christening ceremony to pour a bottle of rum in our water tank and have ourselves a little shindig at the dock. We managed to roast 8 pounds of pork ribs dockside for four and a half hours pretty much to perfection. Dana (la cabra de la barca) handled the cooking and, with the help of dear old friends Shane, John, Candice, Zac and Charlie, we managed to put back a respectable number of beers in the mean time.



Our pre-Mexico list is getting pretty short. The solar panels arrived so our top priority is installing those and building shelves in the aft quarter for jerry cans. Incidentally, we were able to cut up Clint's old stern pulpit and are going to incorporate all four stanchions into Ardea. Two will go to stabilize the rails holding the solar panels and two will comprise the aft-most support for the jerry can shelves. We (mainly I) get a fair amount of grief for regularly acquiring parts and materials via dumpster diving, but I swear it pays off!

Shane, back from DR, built a glorious shelf in the propane housing and helped us find a home for more than a couple beers.

After the panels are up and jerry cans shelved, we'll service the engine and start to stock all of our spares. We're not ones to spare on frivolities though and I imagine we'll have a bit of a slow down next week due to celebrations: Dana is headed to Bodega Bay with his family and Taylor, Anna and I are all going to be in Tahoe for three days for music (Another music festival?!? Yes.). We've got a couple days to work on the boat this week and then we're really on the home stretch come the New Year. We may be pushing off for Mexico sooner than planned, but only time will tell.

Our happiest holiday wishes to all.

Connor

mini-Adventure...Point Reyes

This past weekend the Ardea crew took a test sail north to Drake's Bay in Point Reyes National Seashore. The morning started at 0430 so we could surf a 3 knot ebb out of the bay and into the ocean. As usual, we had a little hangup, this time at the pump out station. Our debacle is easily summed with a quote from Anna, "It really smells like shit down here."

Once the "situation" was resolved, we were on our way out the gate with the sun rising over an aft quarter!

hawt!

Besides proving to ourselves we could spend a whole weekend on a 31 ft. boat without ripping each others heads off, the main purpose of this trip was to learn how to use our new windvane steering system and, as it turns out, the vane steers a better course then we do. It is hard getting used to just sitting there while watching a big puff scream towards the boat, our instincts yell "hike harder, ease in 3, 2, 1" but in our new reality we should just turn the page in our book and let the vane do its thang.

After a few hours of sailing and naps by various crew members, we approached the bay under motor in calm conditions while dodging crab pots. We anchored in just over 15 feet of water...

Bluebird Day

Once in securely anchored we popped a fairly fine bottle of wine and pretended we were located in a South Pacific atoll, only the water temperature made us realize otherwise.

Red Spectra Line in Action

The sun dropped behind the cliffs of the bay and we all crashed around 2000 after a delicious batch of cookies.

0700 showed 8 knots from the north with fog however, the wind quickly died and the fog stuck around. Weather reports showed no more then 3 knots anywhere on the northern California coast, Plan A (sailing around the Farallon Islands) was thrown out the window as we devised Plan B.

The first order of business was to get some exercise by rowing our new dingy (in need of a good name) to shore for a quick hike. It is the beginning of mating season for Elephant Seals and since we are pretty sure one seal could take all three of us we did our best to find beach with no seals attached, this proved fruitless.

Gimme' your Salmon

Those guys are big. During the hike we decided the prudent choice was to start motoring back to San Francisco Bay and hope the wind would fill enough to carry us our to the Farallon Islands. The plan resulted in a 7 hour motor back to Berkeley Marina. The motor consisted of dodging crab pots, trying to figure out a distress call made over VHF, and another beautiful Pacific Ocean sunset.

California High Pressure System

While we didn't get all the sailing in we wanted this trip was a huge success and exactly how we wanted to start our lives as cruisers.

Cheers.

Hydro-victory.

Friends,

It's been a bit of a trying week. But we've come out ahead. We now have a Hydrovane self-steering system installed and we're getting ready to give it a sea-trial this weekend. I ended up at the office quite a bit less than planned and it took us three solid days and a lot of frustration, but we installed the damn thing. The tough part in the end was shaping the timber pad- a wooden plate that sits between the vane structure and Ardea- that had to project the support arm for the vane at the correct angle in order for the shaft of the vane to slide into both brackets. That ended up being a huge pain.

We first made the mistake of failing to realize the angle was off. We got the top bracket mounted and then drilled the hull for the bottom bracket. Instead of checking the setup to ensure it was in line, we decided to put bedding compound down and go for it like it was impossible to fail. Ignorant. Cocky. Stupid... I don't know- we got a little excited. Not only did this not work- but it took us several hours to cut the tubing little by little for the lower bracket to determine for sure that it was not going to work. As you can imagine, the polyurethane bedding compound was well on it's way to kicked when we realized it needed to come back off. It was a pain, but we got it off without screwing up the gelcoat too much. I didn't make it to work that day...

The next day we measured as best we could the angle and depth that we needed to sand on the timber pad. After a lot of fruitless hand-sanding, we got the idea from my friend Erin Maroni to take the pad to the Wooden Duck in Berkeley. Wicked smart, Maroni. The folks at the Wooden Duck were really nice and put up with two rounds of sanding our block for us- we couldn't have done it without them (by the way- they make gorgeous furniture out of re-claimed wood).

Connor putting the final curvature on the timber pad. To do this we taped 60 grit sanding paper to the hull and, after drawing many parallel lines on the timber pad so we could tell when all was sanded (i.e., a flat surface), we worked it vertically over the area it was to be mounted.

Chittick putting the bottom bracket on for the last time!

Anna in the laz.

In the end, we got it the angle right and everything fit well. We used 0.75 inch thick acetyl (plastic) backing plates for both support brackets for the vane. We bedded the backing plates and the timber pads with Life Caulk. And then we did a dance and celebrated- Ardea is starting to look like a cruiser!

Soon Ardea will be properly adorned as well!

It wasn't the smoothest bit of projects this week, but it all worked out in the end. And we continue to learn. We also now have an amazing two-level shelf in the starboard lazarette, which Dana, who designed and built it, is going to blog about soon. Man-over-board pole is also mounted. Topping lifts and reefing lines are re-done. Solar panels get here next week! The list is getting smaller for once...

We're getting up at 0400 to head out to Drake's Bay on the coast. We'll spend Saturday night there before heading out on the Ocean for a trip around the Farallon Islands. We'll get a chance to sea-test the new vane, practice running shifts and do some drills. The forecast is fantastic....

Have a glorious weekend,

Connor

It's not all fun and games. Here I am, supervising.

Ardea, now teeming with aspiring cruisers!

Ardea is happily accommodating her soon-to-be crew. The weather at the docks in Berkeley has been amazing (couldn't help but notice the weatherfax forecasts on Monday showed a pretty ideal window...) and we are beginning to charge through projects at an unprecedented pace.

With the help of Anna and "Spanish the Easy Way", we're brushing up for Mexico- according to the book, we should expect phrases like, "No es el gato, es la mesa" to be really handy down there.



Still plenty of time for beers!



The next few days will bring the installation of the hydrovane self-steering system, ordering solar panels and numerous small projects. We recently acquired a couple needed pieces of equipment: a dinghy, a whisker pole, some sexy foulies, and we're starting to stock spares. Also, the SSB radio is rigged and working! Still need to get licenced, but soon we'll be HAM ready. It's all coming together quite nicely.

We're prepping for a three day jaunt to Drake's Bay in about a week. Dana, Anna and Taylor are chipping away at boat projects while Connor is busy passing off his projects at the ol' office (only three more weeks!).

 More on projects and SF Bay fun soon!

Back in the Bay

So, I set this blog up a few weeks ago so friends, family and anyone interested can watch our adventure unfold, stay informed about their offspring or learn from our mistakes and start an adventure of their own. Time got away from me in Seattle and I haven't posted anything since the day I published the site (thankfully, Connor has been keeping things rolling here). It is time for me to briefly recap the last few weeks and let you know that I am now in California, currently sitting on s/v Ardea.

The last few weeks have been busy, very busy. November 30th, 2011 marked the end of life as I knew it, both my job and my lease ended and I found myself living out of the wonderful green Subaru that took me to Seattle in the first place. Exiting Seattle was much different than arriving though, the wonderful roommates, co-workers, and friends made leaving hard. I worked at the Seattle Sailing Club, a business that provides sailing on the beautiful Puget Sound. I lived in Ballard (the "sleepy little drinking town with a condo problem"). I met the majority of my friends via live music ranging from jam bands, all the way across the charts to funky soul, and back again to full fledged electronic madness. I love these three aspects of my life and will be back in the Pacific Northwest again, sailing under the Olympic Mountains.

It is now December 7th and I have spent my first day on the boat, my new home. The drive south was painless, my co-pilot (Anna Christopherson) picked album after album of great music, and we spent two nights in Portland with da boyz (and girls). Portland is grand, the people are great and the friends are fantastic.

Now, I do not know what to expect, this feeling is both exhilarating and frightening.

Love.

ps. If you have subscribed to this blog, please let me know you were notified about this post via email or comment.

Salvia's Final Sail

It's time I admit that I haven't been fully honest with my posts so far. I keep referring to Ardea, but the truth is, I still haven't changed the name on the stern. But with the windvane steering system due to arrive later this week, transom work was bumped to the top of the list. On Sunday evening, Dana and I took off the transom-mounted wood placard painted with her previous name, Salvia, and started prepping the transom for the new name.

Dana filling the drill holes in the now-bare transom.

I've joked for a while now that my boat has 3 names: Salvia, the old name; Ardea, the new name; and Saliva, the typo on the registration certificate. I'm pretty excited to finally have it down to just one. We gave Salvia a good last hurrah this weekend, though. Dana and I sailed for about 8 hours on Saturday and accomplished a couple of firsts. 

The Marin headlands are finally on the left!

We road a 5 knot ebb out the Gate and got her out on the glorious Pacific for the first time since her move to the Bay!

Also, thanks to finally having a second hand, I got to practice the joyful process of boat projects while underway. Dana sailed- well, I might add- while I installed and wired a new cockpit light.

We also had the most substantial night sail since I've owned the boat, which included plenty of commercial traffic. Though always scary to be sailing around ships you must assume do not know you are there, it was nice to have vindication for installing an AIS receiver. It was super useful to be able to see commercial traffic on the plotter screen- it's remarkably difficult to pick out ships' lights against the urban background and they move so quickly that before you've decided whether they belong to Ghiradelli Square or Alcatraz or one of the bridges, those lights and the millions of tons of steel they're attached to can be right on top of you.

Training.

We also gave the engine (Perkins 4.107 diesel) it's most significant run since I've owned the boat. Most of the time I run the engine for about ten minutes total getting into and out of the slip (we're spoiled with wind on the Bay). However, the wind died Saturday evening and we were still 2 miles outside the Gate at sunset, so after a couple hours of very slow progress, we fired up the Perkins. I think we kept it up near 2000 rpms for a little less than two hours without a hiccup and made 6 knots. I was happy to give the engine that test and even happier to have it perform well.

Then, Sunday, my parents came out for their first sail on the boat along with my uncle Tom and cousin Henry. We even brought Milo, the snaggle-tooth cat, along for the ride; he crawled all the way forward to the anchor locker and took a series of naps on the rode, puncuated by our tacking. More beautiful autumn weather, family and friends were a great last hurrah for the boat named Saliva. This week, I'll finish getting the new name and port-of-call put on the transom and we'll be that much closer. Though mindful of superstitions, I am excited for the new era of Ardea.

Milo, otherwise known as Snaggle-tooth.