Surprise Surprise!

To our delight on Thursday afternoon Stewart announced that Jubillee II was anchored inside the Harbor!

Joyce and Barry made the journey down from San Francisco bay to Half Moon Bay....mainly to see the puppies I asume! haha.

It was so nice to see them in person and they got to see the pups, feed, and love on them for a while. There for a while Joyce became the Puppy Magnet as Daisy and all four pups climbed inside her shirt and jacket making a "Joyce Fort."

We had a good visit and a great dinner and were sad to see them leave this morning.

The puppy's are doing better but are very time consuming. They feed the heaviest after midnight so we have been taking shifts in order to keep up with them. This leaves us a bit confined to the boat for now, but I am not complaining. One more week should help and Daisy should be dried up enough to babysit her own pups, leaving us with the freedom to get the important things done.

For now, while "house bound" for the time being, I am thankful to the local library for Cd's,DVD's, and Books to keep the sanity while in "Puppy Lock-Up."

This next week will prove to be a busy one...so we are enjoying the rest while we can get it.

week in rife

We have all settled into life on the hook. We can go a full week without heading in to pump out the potty and almost 3 weeks on water. (cooking and cleaning, not drinking). Later the water will be closer to every 2 weeks.

Since we have been out here on the coast we have taken a few test sails with the new gear. We ran the watermaker, tasted the results and I am amazed at how fresh it tasted even before we dumped it into the brita filter. At 3 gallons in one hour I think that as long as we are offshore, far enough away from all the pollutants of "people and other", that we will do just fine. I have always been a little paranoid of the lack of fresh water...I am a fish! So this relieves alot of the anxiety associated with having 4 on board..plus pets.

Speaking of pets.....

Wow. You know there was a time recently when a friend of mine (Jada) announced that she was preggers again...and I felt a little, well weird for a lack of a better word.
Neil and I made the decision long ago that having a boy and a girl was a perfect compliment to our family. Having one of each and only one of each, would allow us to be able to spend more time, and well, just more, on them!

We had decided before this announcement, to go ahead and look for a "suiter" for Daisy as she is family...yes Tracy,(my sister),I finally understand why you did what you did for Chester long ago...and we want to have Daisy live on....clearly stated in previous blogs...blah blah blah.

I am leading up to the following for those of you who are reading this and thinking, "My goodness, whatever is she talking about?."

We almost lost Daisy early Tuesday morning.

We had gone for a sail. The sea was perfect for a close hull sail straight out. We went out about 15 miles to run the watermaker (you must run it at least once a week or pickle it, otherwise the membrane will be shot and that is a huge expense to replace). We were thinking of going out for 24 hours, turning around and heading back in to get a taste for the 4 hour shifts we will be doing when going long distances. This would allow for the kids, myself and Neil, to plot, follow, and deal with any issues before we head south for the long haul.

We decided instead, since the winds were so light, to turn and run downwind and test the new ginnaker. Oh my goodness! That sail is Awsome!! We jumped her up from a crawl of 2.3 knots under full sails and oversized genoa, to a substantial 5.3 knots! (4 on average). It made the expense of purchasing this sail seem more justified when you consider 60 miles a day in light wind verses 100+.

We got back in at dusk. Daisy's pups were wild with appetite. They seemed to be stimulated by the movement of the boat and were famished. A couple hours after sunset, she started to pant. Than shake. Than tremble. Than her legs stiffened. Than she was almost paralized. All within about a 10 minute period.

We got in the skiff and headed for shore. We drove as fast as I have driven over highway 92 for the emergency vet hospital.

After a couple of tests they said she was dangerously low in calcium. I knew this was an issue for small dogs and had been giving her extra calcium in her diet..long story short..with 2 pups she would have been fine. With 4 pups and one nicknamed "chunk", there was no way would have been able to keep up.

They kept her overnight. Gave her all kinds of shots, and drips, and we were able to take her home later that morning with one condition. She may NOT feed her pups, Period.

We will be feeding them with formula and bottles. She doesn't understand. It is so hard to tell her no, and than try to keep a close watch for them to feed. She is engorged..I know this will not last too much longer. We have to do 2-3 hour shifts to feed these little devils. They were very reluctant at first to accept the bottle. I was thankful that the first night we were having to shift things over that momma wasn't there.

Last night we had to take ace bandages and wrap her up so that the little ones wouldn't be able to latch on, but she will be able to snuggle with her pups. We have to literally "watch" her, 24/7 for the next week. By then she should be dry. Then 2 to 3 more weeks of bottle feeding.

I tell you what, the kids will not want to have kids anytime soon! It has taught us a lot on taking shifts. This time it is for puppys, not for navigation, but we can do it!

Life is certainly not boring, that's for sure! I am so thankful that she is ok. I am more thankful that we were not taking one of our kids, or Neil into the ER..or did we? (just kidding Katie..daughter of mine, she is not human...I know).

Here's to late night feedings and the constant wiping of things....to my friend Jada I say...good luck....and try to hire a Nanny!!(an ugly one of coarse!).

My internal clock is officially on the fritze...Neil is thankful.....haha...so am I!

PUPPY'S!

Ok OK. If you are not around us that often in person you may not have known our little secret....Our "third child" and masscot, Daisy, just had puppies! We love her so much that we wanted to continue her blood line. My husband, Neil, who grew up mainly in Montana on a horse and cattle ranch, was never an animal lover. They were more or less to serve a purpose. He would humor me with our countless pets over the years, but never really felt too strongly either way about pets in general. I, on the other hand, had my pets take the roll of best friend and sibling (it sounds weirder than it is...long story short, we moved alot, and I was the youngest of four with a 12 year age gap to my youngest sibling...). My pets kept me company, yet, we moved so often (often times across the planet) that I never had a pet for more than a year or so. The next time we moved, we would find a home for the old pet, relocate, than get a new pet....yadda yadda yadda.. Enter Daisy. The exception to the rule. She started out as Katie's Christmas present back a few years ago. She soon became a family member. Even Neil, whom I think loves her the most, was smitten by this little gem of a pup. So she has us all duped. We're hooked! Even our friends have a soft spot for this little Chihuahua, who is not the typical Chihuahua. She is her own. So, we found her a "suiter", aranged a "doggy date", and 2 months later we have a proud momma and 4 healthy pups. 3 boys, 1 girl. We will keep the girl. I hope you enjoy the pictures of these little tykes and I will try not to babble and bore you too much with ooooo's and ahhhh's. Except this: PUPPY'S!!!! YEAH!!!!! PUPPY'S!! (hehe!)

Life and Relaxation

It occurred to us the other day that we really have not had much of a vacation time with the whole family together in quite a while...so to take advantage of "being free", we really have not made a whole lot of progress on the boat this week other than getting the gen set and Neil put an exhaust fan in the bathroom...just like Joyce and Barry's, solar powered....now that we are on anchorage and not always running to the "head" onshore as often as we would like, this adds to the ventilation needed for us all to co-exist aboard. haha(it makes the foul smells disapear...not to mention it helps remove moisture out of the bathroom whose door is usually closed anyway).

We had some old friends pop in this week and went "crabbing" and scored a very large crab that will be in addition to clam chowder for dinner....I am enjoying the fresh caught cod and other fish freely available here in Half Moon Bay and may pick up an Abalone tomorrow, mainly because I am curious of the taste.

Before, I was never a "huge" fan of seafood..before meaning when I was in the mountains...if it wasn't beef, chicken, pork, or game??? Fresh fish was hard to come by unless you had the time to river fish for say, trout or lake fish for perch and pike....We never had time...Now, I am all over it!

We have enjoyed the freedom and comfort associated with our boat. It is so different to be living on the hook, away from everything, but not really. It is hard to explain. It does, however, remind me of living in the remote areas of the mountains in various Northwest States, and just enjoying the simplicity and seclusion of being so far from anyone or anything, yet close when you wanted it to be so.

I have traded my mountains on land for mountains on the sea and am very content with the decision!

Bernard and the long way...

I have been reading Bernard Moitessier's "The Long Way." I have had this book for a while. I have only ever realy read and than re-read the first few chapters...giving up as he seems to be so whiny in these first few chapters. That and I thought maybe he was a little dry....but now, I have had some time, two weeks or so, to be off the boob tube and have had some good sailing time in...and well, I am enjoying it. He goes a little too far into the Budhist approach for me, but I love reading his descriptions of seas, moons, life on, and in the sea, the wind, the noises, the stars, the clouds, the simplicity....I love it and finally understand it better than I did before. As with reading anything on the spiritual side, one must take into account that it is never read the same way twice. (all this and I know I am jonesing for a bit of televison and am happy as can be to have a fully charged PC, but hey...I get it!). I am looking forward to more reading and am a little paranoid about not having enough literature on board to soothe my inner librarian.

I will sink us with books, if given the chance, but I will settle for a select few, plus the good book, and a few just for fun...at one point I shall read Homers Odysey once again and take notes and this time try to remember more detail. I have a few lovely Impressionist's art books along with several sea novels and spiritual journeys to read about.

I will take donation and reccomendations on a few good ones to take with me....

Gen Set Bizzniss

Well you would think that it would be as easy as 1 2 3, but nope. After doing some quick research we decided to go with the Honda 2000 suitcase generator. We needed it for those days when we are only getting a few hours, if any, of direct sun and no wind.
Since leaving China Camp we had virtually no sun and very little wind so as stated in an earlier post we were able to keep the priorities going but not the luxuries.

Sure we could go without alot of those luxuries, but if we don't have to? Well enter the Honda stage left.

On our way down the coast we ran a big systems check. We had all the electronics being tested, auto pilot, plotter, AIS, radar, and the fridge on high. We were able to see exactly what the draw was going to be and how it was going to handle. I would say that unless you are in a power boat or have ample batteries stores, more than likely one would not be running quite so much. So we ended up using the radar and AIS in the thick fog leaving the gate. Shut it down and turned on the auto pilot while we had to motor sail away from the current of the gate for about an hour as we appeared to be going backwards and the city seemed to cry "come back."

After that we turned most of everything off and reverted to the hand held GPS and the wind vane auto pilot for the remainder of the trip until we were within 1/4 mile of the Harbor.

Back to the gen set:

For those who have not done this yet, or would like to remember this, if your boat is not grounded properly you will receive a reverse polarity signal from your panel if you plug it straight in. After scratching our heads for a bit, we realized that we are grounded for shore power and not for a gen set. Neil wired a ground into the chasis of the gen set and presto, no more reverse polarity and now we have power to every outlet and the batteries are being topped off.

We could have run them down a bit more but with 6 volt you must always try to keep a good balance of input/output as it takes much longer to recharge after a discharge.

If you use it hard for a day or so and it dips below 12.2 it will take about 2-3 days of decent charge to top her off to 13.5 again....if you don't make that much juice, you are looking at keeping it around 12.3 for almost a week and that is where we were at.

We have enough to keep the important things running well but not our fun stuff..and after all Neil is a big kid who loves to play video games with the kids, and we like to occasionally watch a movie together. We have set aside a large collection of videos that we have not seen so that when we pull into a port after a long stretch we can watch a movie over dinner...We also want this option available to night watchman.

Now we can recharge in no time. Most vessels have their engines as their alternate source of energy but we have made it so that no matter what, if the emergency were to arise, we have a dedicated system to the engine only...and we want to keep it that way.

So we will put up with a little noise from time to time in exchange for the comfort we have come to know. After all, this is our home, not a toy, not a vacation, but our water condo (it has also been reffered to as the "escape pod"), and we want it to be as comfy as can be; especially with kids (mom and Daisy)on board!

Some highlights

Here are a couple of pics from our trip down. For all of those who may have doubted Neil when he said he was going to sail the boat from the hammock....well....yeppers it can be done in the right conditions! haha. Be sure and click the video below!

How long?

Well we have transitioned to being on the hook full time rather well. In the last couple of days it feels like we have never slept before and have returned to that of a child....reading, playing, napping, eating, playing some more, and more napping! It makes me feel as if I am 8 years old again. We do have a few issues as far as power consumption goes. Since we have been on the coast and away from the Delta, we have not seen the sun and the wind has been light. This is keeping the fridge and lights going with a few bursts to charge cell phones but not enough to charge the pc's and other devices..no gaming systems or tv...I know I know...we could live without but it would be nice to watch a movie with the family or catch the local news..or NCIS..Criminal Minds...Seinfeld....haha! Our solar panels kick out so much juice but...yep they need, well, Sun! Our wind generator will also crank out the juice when the wind is consistent. Right now in light ans sporadic winds it just gets going with a good rythm to charge and the wind peters out. Our engine is isolated from the house so no chance there of charging....what to do? Go south for the sunshine or suck it up and buy a portable generator. I would like to just go south and soak up the big stars rays but we must stay in the area a little longer as to finish a few things up. So after some thought I think we will be buying one today. Other than that, Everything is excellent and being free from the dock is the best!

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safe in the harbor

We just made it in to Pillar Point Harbor and are ready to devour the yummy roast that has been cooking for the last 4 hours...Tomorrow we will find out how long we are going to stay..today was a wonderful sail!

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Heading south

Currently we are about 18 miles offshore and to my amazement we still have cell service! We are headed down to Half Moon Bay to anchor out from one day to a couple of weeks.We are still not sure. The wind is pretty light and we are making slow but steady progress. The winds should kick up a bit this afternoon and that will help us make port by dark..if not than we hope it won't be too foggy when we roll in. I will post more later...and oh yes, the water looks to be a lovely shade of blue!

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Fun in the Sun

China Camp has been a lot of fun! We have gone hiking and swimming and have enjoyed playing board games with the kids. It feels like a step back in time to when they were little and enjoyed just sitting around listening to the radio and playing with their “Ma and Pa.” Stewart, Neil and I went swimming yesterday. Stewart practiced with his paddling and got out his surf board. I, not having swam in a while, thoroughly enjoyed being in the water and am really looking forward to warmer and clearer water. I think it’s a great way to get the exercise you will need after spending a few days barely moving. We are also glad we put up the hammocks. They were great to just sit, swing, drink your coffee, read…you name it! The only problem there is it is hard to get out! Haha. The panels are terrific for wind and sun break. I am really happy that all of our “theories” have been tested with great success! We still have a few issues to tend to, but for the most part it has been just lovely! We still have all the amenities of shore. Food, water, electricity, tv, games, internet card, and cell phones. Only now we have to limit the electronics to just a few hours a day. This may not sound like much but you really don’t realize how much power you use while on shore. So if we want to watch a movie we have to make sure we will have enough juice to sustain the anchor light all night. (that and I must have enough juice to grind my coffee in the am.…..to that note: a year or so ago, our batteries went dead on a sail back from Monterey and I had to take a hammer to the beans..we were desperate! Haha it worked). It is nice to see everything working well, especially after you, like most boaters, have spent a year’s worth of salary getting your “escape pod” ready! We are going to sail back over to Pt. Richmond later today or first thing in the morning as we need to move the car and the kids have a dental appointment. We haven’t sailed Hand Full as much as we would have liked but the two runs we gave her were pretty good! I think if we were worried about stressing her to test, we certainly got a good first couple of days to do so. One thing for sure is that we cannot sail with the dinghy on its davits. We sit a little too close to the water nowadays, but always did in this vessel. Hand Full, being an Islander 34, has not ever been very tall. She is more like a canoe. She is the only boat that doesn’t need a step to get on her dockside. When we are sailing with the dinghy on back, she is fine, until the boat heals over more than 15 degrees or the waves grow over 3 ft. In anchorage it is great to have it ready to go off the back and Neil made it incredibly easy to hoist her up and down. So, when we get ready to leave we will have to put it back up on the bow.*******check out the video***

China camp

We made it into china camp. the wind is better today..only 15 to 20 knots..crossed under the san rapahel bridge and sun came out...maybe we can dry things out a bit and have a good time going to and from shore..will post pic and video later..sending this message via cell phone.

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4th of July - D DAY

We left a little after 2 pm. The boat was loaded for bear. The boot stripe was under water a bit. She was heavy but she pulled out of the slip like she was ready! We took great measure to distribute all the weight evenly. We weren't able to take everything we wanted to, but that may be a good thing. We will see in a few weeks if we even want or need any of those "must haves" that were sent up to the car last minute.

After a sad goodbye to our great friends, we left the slip and off we headed for our first voyage since the re-fit. This boat of ours is a real gem. With all the weight she handles even better. Slow to start she pushed through the 25-30 knot winds and 6-8 foot seas here in the bay. We made slow progress across the slot in front of the Berkely Flats as the wind and wind waves wanted to push us sideways. We didn't want to push her over 25-30 degrees, so it was a slow and laborous process to get her past Alcatraz. The waves, although small, were close, steep, and choppy. We were thankful to have the dodger and small side panels up. It helped alot, but since we didn't take into account to get our foulies and just left in our shorts, that after a few breaking waves, we were soaked anyway! They hit over the bow, but the majority smacked our sides and blew in and over the bimini and right in the side cockpit, where there was no shelter. The skirts did alright, but they did tend to help scoop the water to the rear. I think everything got a good dose of saltwater.

The steel frame Neil built did not budge! We had a few gusts that layed us over 45 degrees, and she didn't wiggle once! Nicely done! I have a few things to re-do. My netting I put up under the stove for pots and pans blew when the force of the wave layed us over and my new pressure cooker that Joyce and Barry bought for me went crashing across the floor. We had a bit of water on the floor, mostly from just filling the water tank before we left. The smell of fuel was just as noticeable when we would lay over. My fruit hammock gave up on me which was my fault for overloading her and sent mango maddness all over the nav station.A few other things lost their balance but all in all it was a decent first run.

The new main was wonderful! It took a little while to get a good balance of sails since this one is so much bigger than the old one. We had a bit of trouble with the head sail and could only get her to roll out half way. This was ok since it was too windy anyway and we will look at her today and see where it got twisted. The boat handled very well. Very sound, very stout, and very comfortable. Daisy was much more content to sit on her own this time since there was more shelter. So was I!

We made it into Aquatic Park around 6:30pm. We put up the side panels and that allowed us to block the wind and warm up a bit. (Love those panels). We invited Katie's friend from school and his dad to come aboard to watch the fireworks. They had come in just for the opportunity to be in the city for the 4th of July, and they had never been on a sailboat before. They got the experience of riding in a dinghy back and forth to shore and see what it like to be self contained. It was a neat experience to see and hear all the "wows". The kids went inside and starting playing X box while waiting for the show to begin....ya they are not hurting at all!

The city put on a great show dispite the fog and wind. The boat felt great sitting on anchorage and the flopper stopper made it especially nice when the rollers come in from time to time. All in all, it is going to be a nice and well awaited for transition into giving up land and becoming full time cruisers!

getting ready to go

I, like most women, do not mind a little shopping, but when you are having to think of what to eat, drink, and stay clean with for months at a time it can be a little daunting! It was kind of humorous to see me, in my grubby clothes, pushing a cart (barely) filled to the rim with cans. We went to inner Richmond to one of the cheapest grocery stores to get most of the canned foods. Costco is great for most, but we like to have a little more variety than 50 cans of corn!! I got plenty of stares walking around with 2 carts, especially in todays economy. I felt like I was glowing green! This was in addition to a Costco run for ample supplies of wet ones, ziploc baggies and other things. I wonder just how long it will take to go through 1500 Q tips? Altogether we brought down 6 cart loads to the boat. I know that we still have the car for a little while longer but I wanted to get the biggest majority of heavy bulk on now.

The boat was sitting heavy afterwards. Since we will be getting rid of everything else after our haul out in a few weeks we went ahead and got the big stuff done. It has been a pretty exciting event to know that we are going to be on the hook from here on out, for the most part.