Seattle for Dodger Work

We decided to spend another night in the anchorage and motor over to Seattle in the morning. Woke up early to a clear day, so hauled anchor and set out for Seattle. The anchor was snagged on a long rope which seemed to have both ends ssecured somewhere, but made for a job getting it free. When we cleared the channel there was a nice 8-10 knot breeze from the north, so we sailed for an hour or so to cross Puget Sound to Seattle. It was glorious 8 am on a brisk morning with the sun just over the mountains.
We got settled in at Shilshole marina and waited for the dodger crew to show up. Like all things boat, they were an hour or so late arriving. They drove up from Olympia and we are well on the north side of Seattle, so monday morning traffic was a plausible excuse. Traffic in Seattle is like the bay area or Houston and randomly stops at all hours for no discernible rhymne or reason.

The guys came and talked with us for a bit and took some measurements. Off they went to there van in the parking lot to bend up the frame. A little later, they came back and installed the frame on Hot Sauce. Once we were happy with the positioning of the frame, they began making a pattern.

These guys were amazing, the teamwork was perfect and they needed very little communication. They used two sided sticky tape on the frames and stretched stabilized plastic film onto the tape to make the pattern. They mark the plastic with all the details about the frame and the boat interface and then pack it up and head back to the shop to sew it all up. They will be back in a week to install it, So I guess we aren't locked into sitting in a marina in Seattle after all. We had planned to take in the city life here, but the marina is kind of remote and there are few amenities nearby. I had needed to get to a pharmacy and grocery store, but each were a long walk or a confusing and expensive bus ride. We walked to a store in the area up some steep hills through a residential area. Very pretty in the summer, not so much in the winter, I would imagine.

We spent the night in the marina and decided that it would not take any longer to motor up to Port Townsend than it would to take a bus, transfer to another bus, take the ferry to Bainbridge Island, take a bus to Poulsbo, take another bus to Port Townsend, get the car and drive back down here. The fares would have run about $28, and I would have to worry about traffic and parking in the city. None for me thanks, we needed to be in Port Townsend to pick up the new dagger board on Friday anyway. So off we went back up to Port Townsend. I called the marina in PT to make sure that they would have room at the docks, and got the okay. We had been there a week before and they were working on the docks near the big haulout and we were to wide for anywhere else without dispensation from the harbor master who was not available that day. A long motor and we called the harbor master who said come on in, oh by the way multihulls must pay a 50% surcharge for taking up so much space. I had been quoted $1 a foot by the office ladies, but now it was $1.50. Not a good job of managing my expectations. We anchored out that night and did our business by dinghy for the next couple of days. The second day we drug anchor in the evening and I pulled up a ball of kelp and eelgrass the size of  the dinghy with the anchor.
There is a learning curve here, which I have been ignoring, because afterall we are just passing through. One of the big attractions to have in a boat like Hot Sauce is shallw draft, we only need about 3 feet of water with the board up. It turns out that shallow water passes enough light to make good habitat for eel grass, which turns the mud on the bottom into a silty soup, and is very slippery and full of junk. The low angle of attack of the rode from the boat to the anchor encourages flotsam and jetsam being swept by in the rapidly running tides to slide down the rode until it hits,,, well you get the picture. In 30 feet of water there is not enough light to support the eel grass, the mud is much more dense and the angle of the rode doesn't lead the floating stuff in the water down onto your anchor. I made this up, but I am sticking by it.

We went into the marina the next day. I just tied up at the work dock and went back to see the ladies in the office. They charged me $1 a foot as they had promised and asked if I had business with the tradesmen. Well yes I di, so half off for mon - thurs nights. So for what I was quoted for 1 day, I got two days and some nice comments on my lovely orange boat. I will probably never figure it out, but it seems I always have better interface in person than over the phone or radio. Got all the winches installed. We had been waiting to find out how the dodger would interface with all the lines and what lines we didn't really use while sailing and all that good stuff. At last it was all coming together. Had the mount made for the autopilot, and went into West marine to pick up the bracket I had ordered from them to attach the tiller to the autopilot. It was not what I had expected, but when I did my Aww Crap face in the store the friendly helpful employee asked if he could help. I showed him the bracket explaining that another friendly helpful employee had told me it would have to be ordered from the warehouse and would take 10 days to show up. I used the ship to store option on the web and had it two day shipped for about $20, and it wasn't going to work out. He looked at it and said I should have some of the ones you want in stock. So sure enough, he whipped one out and swapped it for the one I had ordered and I was a happy camper. The god of confusing randomness is alive and well.

The guy who is making the daggerboard ran out of a specific type of glass and had to order some more. So no friday board for me. At least I got all the hardware connected and am ready to try out the autopilot as soon as I can decide where to mount the display. There is good chandlery about 100 yards fromn the dock with nearly every type of fastener you can imagine on the shelves. Many projects have been shelved for days because I don't have th proper size bolts or such and this makes it all move at warp speed. Went to the chandlery 4 or 5 times a day getting just what I want. Some of the pieces I took off the boat had 6 fasteners, 2 phillips head 2 hex bold and 2 allen wrench. Maddening to need so may tools, but I understand where it comes from. I hope to be a bit more uniform with mine.

We started taking the tramps off, what a mess. As the nylon stretches, you have to re tension it or gets too saggy to walk on. Each time it was re-tensioned they just tied a new piece of line down the side to take the slack out of the nets. The trouble with this approach is that when you go to replace the nets there is a big wad of sun hardened lines several layers thick on all the fasteners. The only way to remove it is to cut it with a knife, tough work when you have to cut a hundred times to remove the small net. I found some aluminum rod at a local  hardware store and will thread it through the net and just tie the rod to the fasteners. This should even the tension on the net making it more stable and spread the load on the fasteners making them less stressed. We should be able to just untie it and mover the rod over a row or two in the net to re tension it later. Now I just have to find the right length rods, the local store only had 6' ones but can get 8' which will do nicely.

On Saturday we set out to go back down and anchor in Bainbridge so we can come over for dodger install on Monday. We were hoping to sail, but there was not a breath of air. Got on a collision course with a container ship and no matter what I did he seemed to be running me down. they maneuver slowly, but move at about 20 knots in open water like the sound. He was veering to the right but very slowly and I decided not to cross in front as he was going 3 times as fast as I was. When we crossed his stern wake it was 3 or 4 standing 8' walls of water to slam through and the third one was big enough to brihng the bow way up and drop it into the fourth inundating the decks bouncing us thoroughly and sending a bit of water in through an open hatch in the head. About 30 miutes later the engine packed it in. I think the bounce knocked some crud loose in the fuel tank, fouling the filter. This time I had a spare filter, but only 1 and I was afraid it might clog immediately if I installed it. I once had to use 3 fileters in a row to get the engine to run smoothly. Not only do the cost $35 each, but the process of changing them involves slopping some diesel about and having the contents of the bad filter in a bucket to dispose of later. We saw a small sailboat approaching us slowly and were amazed he could move at all as it was dead calm.
. As he came past, the mistery was solved, he was sculling with a long oar. I didn't have a sculling oar, but decided a dinghy would do in a pinch. I launched the dink, lashed it along side the boat at the stern, pulled the cord and off we go. The little 5 horse was quite content to push us along at aobut 3 knots and we had about a half knot boost from the tide. Rather than anchor at the port of Kingston with no local knowlege or access to transportation, I decide to head on over to Shilshole Marina and get in there so that we would be sure to be here Monday for the dodger install. It was uneventful and calm and about 3 more hours before we came into the marina. We headed back to the same dock we had been in before, and as I rounded the corner there was a huge aluminum surveying  power catamaran parked in our spot. So there I am standing in the dinghy running the outboard, steering the boat and unable to see a spot to put it or having room to turn around was as much excitement as I could handle. As we passed the survey vessel the guys on the dock tipped their beers to us and said nice boat. LOL Further down the dock there did happen to be a space and a couple of friendly sailors to help Joan with the lines. Cheated death again.....