This feels sort of weird – it’s 7:20AM as I’m writing this (actually on July 24th), and I’m tracking Flying Colours with my SPOT messaging device as she glides past the east side of Guemes Island . . . while sitting at home staring at my PC screen. How can this be?
The house we tore down last April - because the construction of it just wasn't up to standards for an extensive remodel that we needed to get away from the Leave It To Beaver current style - but more importantly, a floor plan that just didn't work. The entire house wasn't right for us, and we finally concluded that a teardown and new construction was the only way to go.
Kap is actually at the controls of the "cruncher" that took down the old house in less than a day. She got the first few crunches on the garage roof, with the contractor watching and guiding her on the left. A few minutes later I got in to give it a go. What a hoot! The best part of the whole process was, virtually all of the house was recycled, which had been a real concern for us, as the last thing we wanted to do was fill a landfill with building materials. Prior to the crunching, we had a Seattle company called Second Use come in and deconstruct almost all of the interior and it was sold at their store in Seattle, with the proceeds going to Habitat For Humanity. The rest of the house then went to a nearby recycling plant where it gets sorted and re-used.
(Remember, you can click on any photo to enlarge. Also don’t forget that the formatting of this blog entry is better – and the captions line up with the photos – when you read it online at www.ronf-flyingcolours.com – click on this link to go there.)
Since the beginning of the year, our 2012 cruising plan has been to circumnavigate Vancouver Island, with a scheduled departure date of May 1. Well, that didn’t happen. With the new house construction going on, meetings at least twice a week with our architects and designers to make this or that decision, daily visits to the house to watch things progress and to make even more decisions about exactly where to place that light switch, fighting with the city of Clyde Hill building department to renew our building permit without costing us an arm and a leg . . . plus, plus, plus. All this caused any thoughts of getting out on Flying Colours to be pushed back day-by-day, then week-by-week, and now month-by-month. In fact, by early July, we hadn’t even seen Flying Colours for almost 8 months, and the longer we were away, the more distant any thoughts were about getting some kind of cruise going for the summer.
The new house, now within about 5 months of completion. Cedar siding is 3/4ths complete, the stone siding that is on a rail car from Vermont is almost here, interior drywall is complete, kitchen tiling is complete, and quite a few interior projects are being worked on.
Finally, in mid-July Kap and I made a quick trip to Anacortes to make certain everything was OK. It was, and the best part of the trip was, it really sparked an urge to get some water under our bums – besides, our freezer was almost empty of the prawn stash from last summer’s hunter-gatherer foray. We made the decision to get away, no matter what. After all, we have four video cameras (one outside, three inside) that send jpg photos to our server and we can dial in and look at those anytime we wish. We can also make arrangements with the architect and builder to schedule a cluster of meetings before and after a short cruise time – what can go wrong?
Kap came up with the idea for how to make it happen. What about having Mike Johnson, our highly experienced Fleming guy in Anacortes who has been watching over Flying Colours since we got her back in the slip last November, ferry her to Port McNeill (at the top end of Vancouver Island). We could fly up, spend a couple of weeks in the Broughton Archipelago with lots of time to get away from it all and do some prawning. We could then either leave Flying Colours back at Port McNeill for a later return trip or bring her a bit south and position her close to Desolation Sound for a subsequent trip. What a great idea!
We got ahold of Mike and pitched the idea to him – which didn’t require a lot of pitching, as this is exactly how Mike gets his greatest kicks. Mike has been looking after almost every Fleming yacht in the Anacortes area for years, has ferried several of them both north and south to Alaska for their owners, and he really knows them, so we had little qualms about the idea – it was just weird to think about her heading north without us aboard.
Kap is giving a briefing on all Flying Colours' systems to Mike Johnson.
Since we didn’t want Mike to be single-handing the boat on the voyage (i.e., going solo without a crew), we also mentioned that we’d like to have Dana Bower, our wonderful boat detailer (she does a monthly wash, a twice-a-year wax, and cleans the interior twice a year), go along as crew. Dana maintains at least a couple dozen boats in our marina, but has never had the opportunity to go on a cruise, so she is extremely happy and excited about this adventure.
Dana Bower, our boat detailer who will crew on the adventure north to Port McNeill.
In our initial discussions with Mike, we settled on a possible departure date of Wednesday, the 18th, but that soon proved impossible. Then we thought about the 20th, but it didn’t work for Mike. Finally, the 24th looked workable for everyone, giving Kap and me the chance to spend the weekend before departure loading everything aboard that we’d need on our arrival.
The plan was that Mike and Dana could get Flying Colours up to Port McNeill near the north end of Vancouver Island in two days – maybe three days if they didn’t hit good currents and good slack times at the various rapids. That would put them in Port McNeill on Thursday, and they could fly home on Friday. Kap and I would fly up on Saturday, then spend two weeks aboard Flying Colours.
Our plan was to leave Gator and ZuZu at “the spa”, the boarding facility called Hillrose Pet Resort near Sea-Tac Airport in South Seattle, but that hit a snag when we found the suites they always stay together in were fully booked. We managed to get Gator into Camp Kelly (it’s actually Kelly’s Creature Comforts in Bonney Lake near Auburn) where he’s stayed many times before, and after scratching our heads decided the only thing we could do is bring ZuZu with us on Kenmore Air (which she absolutely hates, but gets over it).
We planned last weekend for two full days to get everything all set aboard Flying Colours – Saturday to inventory everything, such as galley supplies, engine supplies, our clothing, and all the other “stuff” we’d need aboard for a couple of weeks, and Sunday to actually move stuff aboard. We also met up with Mike to make sure he was familiar with all of the systems he’d need for the cruise (he’s very familiar with Flemings, but the systems aboard each one are very different). After our extensive inventorying, I spent most of Saturday evening at the grocery store getting our provisioning done, while Kap made certain all of her paperwork was in order. Sunday ended up being mostly a wasted day – due to a plumbing problem at our house that was flooding a downstairs bathroom, which necessitated that I stay at home for an emergency meeting with a plumber friend who agreed to come out to look things over (and discovered it was actually a rusted-out condensation pan in an air conditioning unit on the opposite of the wall, which was leaking water through and under the wall). Kap went up on Sunday and got a few things done, but there was still a lot more to do. Luckily, we could rearrange a few things on our schedule for Monday, and we spent a very long day in Anacortes getting provisions loaded aboard, the kayak out of storage and hoisted to the top deck, and a zillion other things.
At the end of the day, I had a thought – why not set my SPOT tracking device to automatic messaging and I’d be able to “see” their progress as they cruised north without us. I pushed the various buttons necessary for this, then tucked it under the flap of the LifeSling bag on the stern of the boat (a safety line that you can throw if there’s a man overboard) where it would have clear access to the satellite above that it talks to. I didn’t mention it to Kap (nor to Mike), and figured I’d tell her only if/when I knew it was working.
Mike and Dana were scheduled to leave at 6AM Tuesday morning. As usual, Kap and I were up at 5AM, commenting that both Mike and Dana were likely aboard Flying Colours by now, and if they could, would probably try to get away early. For some reason, a thought crept into my mind that one thing we hadn’t done in our preparations over the weekend was . . . start the main engines to see if all was OK. A moment later the thought was out of my head.
Shortly after 6AM I sneaked away to my laptop and brought up the SPOT tracking map. It still showed Flying Colours under the roof of our marina slip. 6:10 went by and no change. 6:20, and still no movement. Knowing how precise Mike is to detail, I began to figure that something might have gone wrong, but with no direct word we had no way to know.
A couple of minutes later the phone rang, and we both knew it was Mike before we picked up. It was, and he explained that when he turned the ignition key to ON and pressed either one of the engine START buttons, nothing happened – it was just dead. He was stumped; we were stumped. The only thing we could think of was to call Mike Radding, our Fleming technical rep in Newport Beach, CA who we call on for technical assistance at least once on every cruise. Luckily, when we did, he was already at work before 7AM, and his instant response was, “I’ll bet the engine start batteries are dead”, (which are a separate battery bank from the house batteries that run everything else on the boat) – “and you’ll need to join the house and start battery banks”. We asked him to call Mike Johnson and talk him through this, and when he called back, sure enough, that was the problem and solution. Within 15 minutes, Mike and Dana were away from the slip and heading for Port McNeill.
SPOT tracking of Flying Colours at 5PM, Tuesday, July 24, 2012. You can see this in more detail by clicking on the Current Location link at the top right of the home page at www.ronf-flyingcolours.com, then zooming in on the map control + and - buttons. I'm afraid you won't see her movements beyond this point, though, as it appears the batteries are dead on my SPOT device.
Now the only concern is, what caused the start batteries to go dead? The boat has been on good solid shore power for eight months, and every battery on board should have been at top charge. The only possibility is that the charging unit for the engine start batteries is toast, the start batteries themselves are toast, or more likely, someone inadvertently flipped off the breaker switch for the charger at the helm AC panel. We won’t know until we talk next to Mike Johnson.
By 7:15AM, I could see Flying Colours on the SPOT map as she maneuvered through the shallow channel at our marina, then turned north to cruise along the east side of Guemes Island. Throughout the day, I’ve been monitoring her progress, and now, at 5:10PM Mike and Dana are halfway up the Georgia Strait, heading along the east side of Texada Island. Mike had told us his plan was to reach the Desolation Sound area that first day and anchor out somewhere just north of it. Then on Wednesday he was going “the back way” through the Broughton’s and into Port McNeill.
Unfortunately, my SPOT seems to have quit recording just after 5PM, and as hour by hour went by without any laterCheck-In/OK messages received on the tracking map, we had no further idea where they were. I finally had to conclude that the batteries in my SPOT were weak – damn, I should have known to change them out for fresh ones, but I didn’t think of it. Oh, well, at least we got to “watch” the first day of the cruise without us.
I’ll write more when we know that Flying Colours is safely at Port McNeill and we’re there, ready to go prawning – and to get that all-important water under our bums.
Ron