Murphy's Law

Matt and I went to the store for all the perishables.  For whatever reason we decided to use the self checkout.  We scanned, bagged, scanned, bagged.  The scale kept getting annoyed and telling us we hadn't bagged something or there was an "unexpected item in the bagging area."  We had so many bags (we brought four HUGE tote bags plus needed to use the grocery stores bags) that we have to move bags off the scale, which of course caused the recorded voice to scold us.  The customer service girl standing there kept having to override the machine.  So we were finally down to one last item.  Our total was $298.10 and we weren't sure if the last thing would put us over $300.  Matt scanned it, the machine made the normal beep sound but the price didn't come up.  We asked the customer service girl to come over and see what was up and she said the machine was frozen up and we'd have to start over.  Matt and I looked at each other and our faces fell.  Matt said, nicely, "we have to start over, oh boy" and she looked at me, looked at Matt, looked at our bags and bags of food and said since she knew what total we were up to she'd just ring it up as miscellaneous and scan the last item.  THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.

Ha ha, you probably thought that was the "Murphy's Law" story.  Not quite.  So when we got home I texted the boat owners and told them the story.  Kim responded with something along the lines of, "I've got a better story.  The forward water tank failed."  So the boat is supposed to have two 50 gal H2O tanks but the original owner replaced one with a huge battery bank.  He had the forward 24 gal holding tank repurposed (in the factory!) as a water tank and the forward head was plumbed to go overboard at all times.  A few months ago we had the head plumbed to the 24 gal tank to use it as a holding tank as J boats intended and had a custom 35 gal water tank built just aft of it.  This is the tank that "failed" today.  Kim was not clear on the details of what went wrong.  I got the impression it was catastrophic and not fixable.  Last time I talked to Kim she was on her way to get some big water jugs so we would still be able to take enough water.  We are REALLY glad this happened today and not after we left.  That could have been a race ender right there.  Tiki Blue has something similar happen on the race last year but I they were able to make it to Kaneohe Bay without having to use their emergency water.

I keep promising pictures; tomorrow is the day.  I will take a bunch after we get the perishables stowed.

More Prep

I finally have SOME pictures, more to come.  Our Bon Voyage Party at our yacht club is tomorrow night so I will try to get some pictures of that, plus more of the boat.

The all important item being brought down!  You would not believe how much debate there was around how much TP we needed.  Come to find out Mr. "I only need four squares per poop" (love you man, :) YKWYA) relies on baby wipes for the rest of the job.  We have LOTS of baby wipes aboard!

We got a second spinnaker pole.  We are still working out how we are going to rig it but we are close!  We plan to do dual pole jibes.  Hopefully figuring out how to use the set-up won't be too difficult! 

We had to buy new cowls for the dorades after losing one on the Spinnaker Cup return. Aren't they pretty?

We also had to rerun the roller furling line so we could use the eyes and block it used to run through for our second foreguy for that second spinnaker pole.  We managed to find three of these at one local West Marine and we have two more on order, due in today. 

We had to finish installing the latching handles for the reefer lid.  They turned out pretty well.  The latching part JUST clears when we open and close the lid.

Last pictures for today show how we have some of our food stored.  The cupboard on the left has dinner and lunch food and the cupboard on the right (behind the oven mitt in the first photo) has breakfast food.  This space held the microwave, which we decided not to bring.  We gained a bit more space by sawing out the false bottom.  We then had to come up with something to go across the front to hold everything in.  I came across this eagle creek bag at the Container Store.  Not only does it hold things in the cupboard but we can also stick stuff in it.  So far it is the home to the lighters for the stove and the all important kitchen timer.

I am at the point now that I need to relax and not freak out that I need to go buy more food or clothes or ...whatever.  I need to trust in all the planning we have done and believe that WE WILL BE FINE.  We are going to have plenty of food., water, baby wipes, TP, sunscreen, ETC! 

Weights and Measures, things left to do...

Tiki J is being motored over to Berkeley right now to be weighed. Getting the boat weighed involved taking most everything off of it, including the sails. We spent five hours unloading it yesterday and moving everything to the owners' garage.  The owners left the marina around 9:30 this morning and will meet the "official measurer" at 2 pm to have the boat hauled out of the water and weighed.  At least now we will KNOW what the boat really weighs and we can stop the endless speculation on how much the radar arch and all the other "extras" added by the original owner put us over the book weight of 19,500.  It was amazing to see how much higher she was floating after we took everything off!  We have had guesstimates ranging all the way up to 25,000.  We should have done a pool on what the weight will really be.

There are people coming out the boat every day this week to work on various thing, including installing a new refrigeration system. Saturday we hope to organize everything in the garage and decide what goes to Hawaii and where it will be stowed, then stow it all by Sunday. We also have most of the non-perishable food in our spare room which all needs to be organized and stowed. Then on the 4th we have to buy and stow all the perishables...

Here is the schedule:

6/23 - Wed - Autopilot repair

6/24 - Thur - Autopilot Repair

6/24 - Thur - Alternator Regulator reprogram for AGM, install temp sensor

6/25 - Fri - Reefer install

6/26 - Sat - Reefer install

6/26 and 6/27- Sat and Sun - Organize gear and load boat

7/3 - Sat - Skippers Meeting and Pac Cup Bon Voyage Party

7/4 - Sun - Purchase and stow perishables

7/5 - Mon - Any last minute items, stow personal gear

7/6 - Tues - DEPARTURE!

Running Out of Time

Just in the past few days I have gone from feeling that I have all the time in the world to finish getting ready for the Pac Cup to feeling like there is not enough time!  For instance, I was grocery shopping for home last night and thought I'd pick up a few things that I know we need for the trip.  This morning I was marking them off the Pac Cup shopping list and realized I have barely made a dent in the list.  WHEN am I going to buy all this stuff?  WHEN am I going to figure out where to stow it all?  WHEN am I going to make and freeze the dinners for the first three nights?  WHEN am I going to pick up and stow all the perishables?

I am not panicking (quite yet) but the reality of how little time we REALLY have left is starting to sink in!  Less than three weeks!

Baling Wire and Chewing Gum

I received a comment in an email from one of my readers:

This boat sounds worse than my Dad's old '41 Ford that he held together with chewing gum and bailing wire. But you people are paying big bucks for these repairs and are going across the Pacific Ocean in this thing. My sister and I only drove the old Ford around town! I guess you're feeling confident about the condition the boat will be in at departure?

My readers that have a boat will probably recognize that this comment came from someone who doesn't.  :)  Honestly, if this was a power boat I probably WOULD be nervous but since it is a sailboat and we have had ZERO problems with anything to do with the sailing aspect of the boat (well, other than user error) I know we can get to Hawaii.  Not having a refrigerator is a bit of a bummer but certainly not insurmountable.  We already have a plan for that and since we still have a working holding plate in the reefer box it actually stays quite cold if you put something in there (i.e. dry ice) to freeze the holding plate's eutectic solution.  I anticipate having no problem keeping the box cold into the second half of the race.  Then we start eating spaghetti with canned meat sauce, snickers bars and stuff like that.  If you have seen "Morning Light" (the Disney movie of the young people who did a Trans Pac race a few years back), we will be eating MUCH better than they did!

The managing partner made a significant discovery through this latest boat yard experience.  He was continually being told that he was better off repairing what we had instead of replacing the troublesome items because the equipment we have on board is "the best."  For example, we have "the best" refrigeration system, "the best" electric heads and "the best" autopilot.  The reefer is now kaput, the electric heads are currently working after MANY visits from "the head guy" and many parts being replaced and the autopilot has NEVER actually worked despite numerous expensive parts being replaced. So the discovery Scott has made is that when the shop tells you the thing you have is "the best" and you should repair instead of replace you MIGHT want to consider ripping the damn thing out immediately!!  What it is actually "the best" at is lining the repair man's pockets and not actually WORKING!!!  Or maybe we just have bad luck!  All the items that ARE new (where Scott went ahead and ripped out the old and put in new) work just fine.  But it IS a boat so it is only a matter of time!  Hopefully a LONG time though.  We are running short on baling wire and bubble gum!

This weekend we slummed it on a friend's power boat on our yacht club's cruise out.  Here we are setting up the lounge chairs on the top deck.  It was such a hassle to go up and down the steep ladder to get more beer but we managed somehow.  Before long we had four plastic chairs up there along with the steamer chairs as we had so many visitors.  One person jumped in to swim back to his boat.  :)  Tons of fun.

Sail Mail for Blogging / Pac Cup Prep

We sent ourselves some test Sail Mail emails last night when we are on the boat.  Sail Mail attaches a LOT of information to the bottom of the email, including the email address the email came from.  Sail Mail recommends closely gaurding your Sail Mail email address so I certainly don't want to post it on the internet!  I will have to recruit someone shoreside to post to my blog for me.  Maybe my dad, since he is a blogger as well? I believe the skipper is planning to blog on sailblogs.  If so I will post a link to that so my avid fans can follow our progress across the Pacific.

We have the Spinnaker Cup tomorrow and are still short a spinnaker sheet.  I have arranged for the rigger to leave it at a marina a bit North of here and for one of the crew to retrieve it this afternoon.  I hope it all works out.  This time last year I was picking up guys and a foreguy from this same rigger the day before the race.  I was imagining the foreguy would have blocks with it but it didn't.  Luckily I had enough time to pick up blocks at West Marine.  Nothing like the last minute!  The good news for our Pac Cup prep though is that we knocked a bunch of things off the list last night and even more is being done today.  We are looking fantabulous for the race.