The Governor imposed many restrictions on social activities over the last two months due to the Covid-19 pandemic, as did the rest of the world. Recreational boating has been impacted by these restrictions as many marinas have closed their guest moorage and reciprocal yacht club access. Onshore activities are severely reduced by closure of restaurants and non-essential businesses. Furthermore, many locales are discouraging all visitors in order to slow the spread of the virus. Boating is essentially restricted to anchoring out and not going ashore, which we did after I got caught up on maintenance and other projects.
The biggest lockdown activity was getting a puppy. His name is Moby and he is a cross between a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and a poodle, aka Cavapoo or Cavoodle. We have not had a boat dog before as our past dogs barked all of the time and shed a lot. We left them at home but hope to take Moby along with us, at least some of the time. He may bark but he won’t shed. He has kept us very busy and helped to pass the time in a fun way. He will grow to around 20 pounds. We look forward to introducing him to boating.
I happened to come across a web service called PixxiBook that will convert a blog to a book, like a coffee table picture book. It takes the blog posts from a certain date range and makes a new chapter for each post. You can also exclude posts within the range. But their format is fairly rigid beyond that. You title the book, add optional forward comments, and choose the color of the cover. The book is viewable online so you can see exactly what it will look like in print before you order. I decided to use our trip to Alaska in 2017 that I wrote about in this blog and to see how it looked in a book. It turned out so well that I gave copies to everyone that went on the trip.
Cathleen is a very good organizer and planner. Her lockdown boat project consisted of converting a little used locker located in the guest berth into an overflow pantry and organizing the contents of another one by hanging several of the longer items on the side wall of the locker. The Container Store has some amazingly useful ideas for organizing in a small space like a boat. We forgot to bring the label maker with us, so the handwritten ones will do for now. There is a similarly organized and sized cabinet in the galley with frequently used food items. She also keeps an inventory list so we know what we have on hand.
Here is a list of the maintenance and other projects completed in the last 60 days:
- Replaced the leaking seal on the low pressure pump on the water maker.
- Changed the oil and filters on the main engines and generator.
- Changed the transmission oil and filters on the main engines.
- Replaced the sacrificial zincs on the main engines and generator.
- Changed the raw water impeller on the port main engine.
- Took the life raft in for its three year service.
- Had the 5 year battery replaced in the Personal Locator Beacon.
- Found a new insurance carrier.
- Replaced the fresh water pump.
- Replaced windshield wipers.
- Replaced several non-working LED panel lights in the breaker panel.
- Sanitized the fresh water system
- Cleaned and scrubbed the only teak decking on Fiddler, on the flybridge.
Here is a picture of the teak decking, not quite dry:
Finally, after all of that we took Fiddler to Liberty Bay near Poulsbo and anchored for a couple of nights. We were very happy to get away. There were not many other boaters out, despite the nice weather, due to the lack of access to marinas and shoreside services. But we were happy to drop the anchor and enjoy the bay.
Fiddler 