Last night we got back home from a trip across San Pablo bay to Napa Valley Marina. “Back home” … but didn’t we take our home with us? Has our slip in Sausalito become “home”? Is the boat “home”, wherever we take it? Do we even have a home? We’re not yet really travelling – we’re based in one place, I’m commuting to work, and yet we’re living on a vessel that can take us almost anywhere we want to go. It’s a strange place to be, and we both want to continue the path we’ve started on; seeing new places and “getting out there”.
So anyway, it was a great trip. As part of the new instrument install, I needed to replace the original 1985 depth sounder with a new unit that was a little larger, and since the sounder is plugged into a hole through the hull, the boat needed to come out of the water. The costs involved with a haul out weren’t justified by just the depth sounder replacement, but since the boat hadn’t had a bottom paint since maybe the end of 2010, that was also due. The local yard here in Sausalito doesn’t let you do the work yourself (citing environmental reasons), and were quoting a chunk of money I wasn’t really prepared to pay. We’d not yet visited Napa, and there’s a marina there which was supposed to be a great place to haul out and do your own work.
It took a day to get up there, leaving at 0530 to push against a falling tide across San Pablo bay, getting to the entrance to Napa river just as the tide was turning around midday. The rising tide then took us swiftly up the river, under a series of bridges, to arrive at the marina with (just) enough water under our keel to get in. We did have two attempts to get into the marina, the first attempt ending in a strong bump into the muddy bar across the entrance – nothing a quick burst of max reverse couldn’t get us out of though.
The yard guys hauled us out that afternoon, with a trailer and tractor, jet-washed the green weed and algae off, and left us on some stands at the back of the yard, overlooking dry, arid fields just as the sun went down. It was so peaceful. A range of small birds were coming back to roost in the trees just behind our transom whilst we enjoyed a rum’n’coke in the cockpit, ten feet above the dusty gravel.
Next morning the work started in earnest. The existing paint was sanded down with a rented sander, Rose getting nice and blue in the process. Holding a heavy power sander above your head for hours on end is hard work! Think of all the people paying hundreds of dollars a month for fancy cross-fit sessions and gym memberships – I’d be more than happy to take that payment for them to come and work on the boat 🙂
In the same day we managed to get two coats of copper-based antifoul paint on; a red underneath a blue – the idea being that by having different colours you can tell when the outer coat has worn off. Two gallons of paint just managed to cover the whole bottom twice. It’s a bit thinner than I would have liked, but it looks like there’s a fair bit of paint still there from before which is in good shape. This paint is nasty stuff, but it has to be to keep the little critters from latching on and living on the bottom of the boat. The hull itself is also in excellent shape – just a few small blisters on the keel that I ground out and epoxied.
Getting the old depth sounder out and new one put in didn’t cause any trouble. Whilst Rose was charging ahead with sanding and painting I also managed to get a bunch of other jobs done; including replacing the flax packing in the stuffing box; the useful bit that stops the water coming in through the propeller shaft hole. Whilst I had a tube of sealant open for the depth sounder, I pulled out one of the portlights that had been leaking – above the chart table – and replaced all the goo that is supposed to keep the water out. Fingers crossed it’ll work, ‘cos I sure don’t want to be taking that out again …
We pushed hard to get it all done in a day so that we could get put back in the water on the next morning’s high tide, rather than Monday morning, which would mean we could travel back over the weekend rather than me take another day off work on the Monday. So, back in the water on Friday we did a few other jobs, including filling the port side stanchion hole with epoxy – the one I tore apart the other day to get the rotten core out.
Over the other side of the visitor’s dock was an English chap called Steve. A round-the-worlder from Norwich who was about to head south to Panama when his crew dropped out last week. So he was on the hunt for someone to join him on the trip. I helped him troubleshoot a problem with his masthead lights, me being a good few decades younger and more able to scamper up and down his mast steps (which are super useful, wish we had some).
We’ve been wanting to rename the boat ever since we bought her. In fact we’ve already registered our MMSI number under the new name. But we have been keeping schtum until the old name is off. In order not to upset Neptune you need to be very careful about these things, or so I’m told. So yard man Dave spend a couple of happy hours sanding off the old name and buffing up the gel coat all nice and shiny, like.
The three of us headed into Napa for dinner, as Steve had a car. Nothing special to see, really – just another American town, perhaps a little cleaner and upmarket than some people are used to – but nothing to write home about really. Makes me wonder what about a town would make it special. I’m not a town or city person, and I don’t really have a scale to mark these things against. As long as there’s somewhere nice enough to buy food, it doesn’t smell*, and feels safe, I’m OK with it.
We hung around on Saturday to meet an old friend of Mum’s who lives in Napa – he took us on a tour of the valley, into Sonoma for a coffee, and out for lunch by the river. Rose is really into her “proper” coffee now. We don’t have the paraphernalia on board to make it “just right”, so any opportunity to visit a coffee shop is jumped at with great enthusiasm. Whilst I’m just as happy with a fresh coffee brewed in our stove-top espresso maker, I’m a sucker for cakes so am more than happy to make a trip. It was really good to get a taste for meeting new people in random places, and a good reminder that we need to get “on the road” again.
Sunday morning high tide at 0900 meant “time to go” just after dawn, with the plan being to ride the ebb all the way back to Sausalito. The plan worked out just fine, and we were back at the dock by early afternoon, Rose having done a load more rows of knitting, chatted with family on Skype, and me having munched a bit more through my latest book. We even got some wind, so didn’t have to use the donkey all the way back.
* San Francisco often stinks of rotten cabbage, but more about that another time.
Road and Ocean 