Tower park

We're at Tower Park on the boat with Matt's coworkers in their RVs. Having fun! Got here Friday afternoon and hung out for awhile, then rode from the RV check in (right by the guest dock) down to the campsites in Matt's friend Dave's RV. It is quite a large park and we passed many camp sites, some rental airstreams and prefab cabins, two pools and a kids playground before we got to the area Matt's coworkers were in. I walked back up to our boat for plates and stuff before dinner and was surprised it only took ten minutes. We had a great dinner with the group and walked back to the boat around ten.
Saturday we were walking over for breakfast when we saw one of the guys on his scooter. He offered for both of us to hop on but I don't think the scooter was designed for that much weight! He gave us each separate ride. :). Sounded like he and Matt were a challenge to the scooter but it wasn't too long a ride.
Once we got there, Matt helped scramble the 15 dozen eggs for breakfast then we dug in to a big feast that included I believe 22 pounds of bacon that they smoked on traegger grills the day before. after breakfast we cleaned up the egg pans using a big bucket and hot water from a spigot on the side of one of the RVs. Then we headed back to the boat to set up the dinghy.
Several of Matt's coworkers launched their boats as we were getting the fight ready. We had a nice little motor up the river and we saw the guys tubing and knee boarding. Looked fun. Ish.
Back at the boat we had a few guests from the group and got a ride back down for dinner. They didn't need any help cooking so we just socialized before enjoying prime rib (smoked on the traegger of course). I found out Matt had given the last Dos Equis that we had in the boat to a coworker who thought the Lions will beat the Niners today. Really?!? I want my beer back!!
We need to head over now for breakfast, then get back to Willow Berm so we can hit the road and be back in the bay area in good time to get to the game tonight. What a great weekend!

Lunch in Old Town

We didn't end up taking the boat anywhere this weekend as we needed to be back in the Bay Area early Sunday. However we got side tracked Sunday morning and ended up driving to Old Town Sacramento for lunch and to find a place to dock the boat for Labor Day weekend. I don't believe I'd ever been to Old Town before. It's quite the faux wild west tourist trap but it was fun and there will be lots to see when we are back in two weeks. We had lunch at Rio City Cafe (www.riocitycafe.com) which is right on the river with good food and service. It is right above the Old Town docks, where we were able to secure a spot for our visit. Looking forward to our long weekend cruise!

Esh

I think it 99 is as high as it goes! We're out at Commodore Island with Ox Bow Yacht Club and it's a bit warmish.

Fourth of July Photos

I finally downloaded the photos from the camera...  This is just a small sampling!

Coasties.  Obviously.

I'm not sure what kind of propulsion this beast has.  Amazing.

We had to get a photo of the pineapple flag.

There were several fly bys, but I only got a picture of this plane.

We were surprised that people would beach their boats.  This wasn't even taken at low tide.

The house boat is beached as well; this is just down from the photo above. 
These are the folks that had the full on party, complete with DJ and live band.  Dude.  :)

New Shelf!

We finished installing the shelf in one of our under counter storage areas in the galley. This was done with material we had on hand and gives us more convenient storage in what seemed like a bottomless pit before.

A Poem for Friday

I saw this on Trawler Forum (thanks Steve W) and had to share.

From the Swedish Ocean Racing Club - Sailing Poem - Poet Unknown


A small boy heard the ocean roar,
There are secrets on my distant shore,
But beware my child, the ships bell’s wail,
Wait not too long to start to sail.

So quickly come and go the years,
And a young adult stands abeach with fears,
Come on, Come on the ocean cussed,
Time passes on. Oh sail you must.

Now its business in mid-aged prime,
And maybe tomorrow there will be time,
Now is too soon, it’s raining today,
Gone all gone - years are eaten away.

An old man looks, still feeling the lure,
Yet he’ll suffer the pain, than go for the cure,
The hair is white, the steps with care,
The tide has turned, he is aware.

So all too soon the secrets are buried,
Along with him and all regrets he carried,
And it’s not for the loss of secrets, he cried,
But rather because he’d never tried.

Back to the Boat!

Matt and I are so ready to go to the boat tomorrow after work! We didn't go last weekend as I was in Hong Kong for work. Matt's brother Mark stayed on our boat with his family and they had such a good time they are going to take their boat up next summer for a cruise.

Last time we were up there was July 21st and 22nd for a work weekend.

I don't think I blogged that Friday the 13th we were at Coyote Point for a Bon Voyage party for Tiki J, the boat we sailed to Hawaii in 2010. Our former boat partners kept the boat and they went this year with a bunch of top notch sailors, namely our former partner Kim and her two brothers. They also let Kim's husband come along. :) just joking Scott. Plus two other crew. They were fourth in their division, as we were in 10. I figured they'd win with the hot crew they had aboard but i think conditions out there were tough this year with an abnormal wind pattern. Once was enough for me doing that trip; I'd rather take my vacation anchored out in the Delta! But to each his own... lots of people do the Pac Cup every time (every two years).

So back to our project weekend last trip to the boat. Two (of four) of our engine room lights had stopped working. We'd tried new bulbs with no success so we bought two new lights. Luckily one light just needed the wires tightened but we did have to replace the other one. It is MUCH more pleasant down there with light!

We also replaced the shaft packing on the port shaft. That is one of those frustrating projects that causes crankiness on my part so Matt mostly worked on it by himself. Luckily we started off with the correct size shaft packing this time, thanks to the helpful young man at West Marine. The size I'd written in our log (see photo) did NOT look right once we picked up the package so the clerk looked up our previous purchases and helped us get the correct size, smaller than what I'd written down! I ran to the grocery store while Matt started on the project and he found we were missing a necessary wrench. Luckily I was right by the Ace Hardware in Rio Vista so I popped in to get one. I was measuring how far it opened by using my iPhone screen to gauge it, then texted Matt to ask how big it had to open. He gave me a measurement in inches so I asked the clerk for a tape measure and measured my phone, then told the clerk that the wrench would work. He looked at me like I had three heads and asked what I planned to do to my iPhone with a wrench. LOL.

So once I got back with the wrench Matt was able to get the gland apart and get the old packing out. There are normally three rings of packing and one ring was pretty much loose and was exposed as soon as he loosened the gland. He then started digging around with whatever sharp pointy things we could find to try to get the next ring out. At first he didn't think there was one and he asked me to try. I agreed it didn't FEEL like there was one, but logic dictated that there was and Matt finally got it out. Obviously this is not something one can see into. At all. Even with trying to take photos of it. This is where my crankiness starts to rev up. We gave up on trying to dig out a third ring and figured replacing two was good enough. Matt then cut the two new rings, stuffed them in there and retightened the gland.

In case you are wondering what this thing is and why we had to replace the packing, aka stuffing... So in layman's terms I shall attempt to explain. As I have only a layman's understanding, hopefully this isn't too far off. So the transmission drives a shaft that spins the propellor. There is a "gland" along this apparatus where I think the two are joined and there is friction there between the spinning shaft and the not spinning pieces from the transmission. Or something. That's not spinning. But anyway, friction causes wear and heat. So the shaft packing is this greasy material stuff that is kind of squared off and is 1/4" (in our case) on each side. It helps with the friction and the whole thing is cooled by water that comes in through the hull where the shaft goes out from the engine room to the propellor. The nuts of the packing gland have to be adjusted such that a little but of water gets in to keep things cool but not so much that the boat is in danger of sinking. When you get to the point you can no longer adjust the gland properly or you start hearing funny noises, it's time for new packing. We got to the funny noises part... We'll find out Saturday if the new packing took care of the issue!
What happened was we were leaving the marina to get fuel at Village West on July 7th. We were passing a boat on the guest dock and we wondered what kind of power tool they were using that was making the high whining noise we were hearing. Except we kept hearing the noise just as loud after we passed the boat. We finally realized that OUR boat was making the noise and we tracked it down to the port shaft when we put the motor in neutral and the prop stopped spinning. We idled in the Mokelumne for awhile as we assesses whether to continue or turn back. We'd already previously realized we needed to change the packing as it was dripping too much. After a quick call to a very knowledgable friend we decided to continue. The noise was gone by the time we got to Village West, before we even changed the packing but we still needed to do the project. Hopefully the noise won't be back on Saturday!
After that project we started in on setting up a shelf in the storage area in the galley to the port side of the sink. There is a very large space under the counter but it is too deep to get much practical use out of. We put shelf supports fore and aft and plan to use some wire closet shelving material to span the space and provide more practical storage. I'll post a photo when we have it done.
After that it was all about cleaning and organizing so our guests would have room when they came up. We use our vee berth for storage so we had to clean it all out for Mark's girls. It was amazing what all we had in there and we were exhausted (not to mention hot and sweaty) by the time we were done.
This weekend we hope to be at a Willow Berm in time to see Vicky's son's concert. Vicky is the harbor master and her son is a guitarist/ singer who has been making his way in Hollywood and is visiting home for awhile. Then Saturday we are taking the boat to Ox Bow marina to go to a luau at the Yacht Club. We are thinking of joining so we can go cruising with them. They have a lot of members from Willow Berm, many of whom are on our dock! Should be a fun time Saturday night.