It could have gone the other way

We spent the weekend in Savannah a while back. Another gorgeous town. In fact, we couldn't decide which we like better: Charleston or Savannah. Both beautiful and historic, both on the water.



Savannah has a very planned feel (because it was very planned, as it turned out) - but the most gorgeous overhanging trees and parks throughout town.





And we saw the greatest cop car...





And there was a really cool (modern) tall ship that we could tour - for free!



Granted, it was run by a conservative, bible thumping commune, but they were super nice.



It turns out that Jason almost went to school in Savannah instead of Oregon.



He was chatting with his mom about this and I overheard this:

"Imagine Mom, if I had gone to SCAD, I probably would have turned out Republican"

Go Ducks!!

Charleston

When we moved here, I didn't really know the difference between Charleston and Charlotte...nor did most of our friends. Oh, I suppose I knew there were two different towns, in two different states, but I had no idea which was on the water and which wasn't. Turns out we landed at the land bound town. So we had to go check out Charleston while we were here. We needed a water fix!

Charleston was absolutely gorgeous. And so, so different than Charlotte. Charlotte is a banking town. The only old buildings are random churches dotted throughout downtown (excuse me, UPtown is the proper name). It's mostly giant high rise buildings. Charleston, however, has kept that historic appeal and we had a grand time wandering around



I got Jason to take a carriage ride there (and that will never happen again, so I have to enjoy it while I can). That said, it was a great tour of the historic district.





For our water fix, we took a ride on the ferry to Fort Sumter, the spot on which the civil war started (oh yes, I've been learning lots more about the civil war than I ever thought I would while living down here - it's been fun though!)





Overall, Charleston gets a thumbs up. Maybe some day we'll come back here on a boat. I think we could take Fort Sumter...

Happy anniversary to our biggest fans!

Happy 65th anniversary to my grandparents!!



Most of you don't know this, but my 88 year old grandfather is our most faithful reader. He needs no RSS feed, he just reloads our webpage every day (how else do you think we pad our page view hits??). This means I also get reminded regularly when we haven't updated the blog in a while :)



Happy anniversary Naunie and Poppops!

Kidnapped in Kansas

I land in some fairly random places for work once in a while. Like Kansas for example.

A client had me out there for 4 of the past 6 weeks. At first, it was just Kansas - I wasn't getting out a lot and it seemed pretty flat. Sometime through my 3rd week there, someone mentioned something about the boat show coming to town. "Ha! Who sails in Kansas??" I thought to myself. And then it occurred to me...I know people that sail here!!



Know might be a fairly strong word for Tom and Sabrina since we'd never actually met. But you know that never stops me. And as it turns out, it wouldn't ever stop these two either. My first time at their house for dinner, I was there for 5 hours, just chatting boats and cruising. SO FUN. Turns out I miss boating people.

Tom and Sabrina also own a Caliber 40, s/v Honey Ryder . We've been following each others blogs and emailing about the finer points of Caliber ownership for years.

We got together for my last week and they invited a few other sailors in town - and yes, I was asked for an autograph. I'm quite famous. Jason is equally famous, but unable to sign autographs since he didn't want to come to Kansas with me. Too bad for him.

Almost the entire crew (Pat, Joan, Michael, Kimberly and Tom) and of course, Larry the cat.


My groupies

Winter decommissioning

I know you all have been wondering "well jeez Christy, if we leave our boat in Alaska, what would we have to do to get it ready for that cold, hard winter?"

Don't despair, Christy and Jason are here with our winter decommissioning list! Special thanks to Wayne and Betty for forwarding on their list, without which we might have forgotten a lot of stuff.

You can breathe a big, giant sigh of relief now...here you go :)

• Pull off running rigging
• Sign up for boat watching service
• Interview candidates
• Decide on checklist
• Remove stern anchor and rode - store in anchor locker
• Move chain to top of anchor locker
• Grease windlass
• Look into shrinkwrap options
• Get insurance approval
• Clean deck
• Chafe gear on all dock lines
• Gardenhose flush the scuppers
• Clean canvas
• Washdown anchor/chain with fresh water
• Clean anchor locker out
• Stow dinghy on deck
• Remove all misc items from deck (jerry cans, crab traps, etc)
• Fill fuel tank
• Add biocide
• Winterize inboard engine
• change engine oil and transmission oil
• blow out raw water
• close through-hull
• Turn on utilities
• Stow all sails
• Main - tie down
• Jib and Staysail - remove and stow
• Winterize outboard engine
• drain gas
• blow out raw water
• tef-gel on handles
• stow down below
• Empty holding tank
• Put plastic bags on winches and windlass
• Winterize bilge
• clean out bilge
• put a layer of RV antifreeze in the bilge
• turn the bilge pump on to draw in the antifreeze
• Remove dodger and bimini canvas
• Add helm cover
• Remove portable GPS
• Book flight out!
• Stow dinghy gas can and oars
• Stow canned food below waterline, in plastic
• Clean diesel heater and replace chimney with cap
• Set up utilities on autopay
• Hardware store:
• RV antifreeze
• sandbags for companionway
• tarps
• Clean the boat
• Drain both water tanks
• Winterize:
• washdown pump
• fwd head sink drain
• fwd head inlet
• fwd shower drain
• aft head inlet
• aft head outlet
• aft shower drain
• galley sink drain
• freshwater pump
• hot/cold faucets in galley, aft head, fwd head
• hot water heater
• freshwater foot pump
• Winterize watermaker
• through-hull to boost pump
• boost pump to membrane
• membrane to watertank
• hot water heater to carbon filter
• Clean out and turn off fridge (pull fuse and leave open)
• Clean the finger pier
• Hang cockpit enclosure/dodger/bimini panels in salon
• Move sails into salon
• Move cockpit seat pads into salon
• Open all doors/cabinets
• Pull off doors in starboard side hanging locker
• Open vanity locker door
• Pull off hatches from settee lockers
• Close propane canisters
• Lock cockpit locker
• Remove cushions from side of hull and cover with tarp
• master bed
• quarterberth bed
• settees
• nav desk
• Take out garbage
• Install wood hatchboards
• Put all remaining clothes in a garbage bag
• Put sheets, pillows and linens in garbage bag
• Batteries
• Check water
• Double check that both switches are open on the batteries
• Check starting battery voltage
• Verify electrical
• DC panel is off
• only outlets and charger are on on 120V AC panel
• fridge fuse is pulled
• bilge pump is working
• Close all through-hulls
• Take photos of winterization
• Run oil radiator heater, dehumidifier and fans
• Leave extra antifreeze for boatwatcher to add to bilge if necessary