A boat is reborn.

We spent almost 2 weeks living aboard on Aialik (then still called Seawife, I know, can you blame me for wanting to change the name?) at Martin Marina in Olympia, WA before casting off on our passage north. Needless to say, weeks and months of preparation were spent before we arrived back in Oly at the beginning of April (FYI: we put our stuff in storage at the end of Feb. and then drove to Copper Mtn, CO for a month of skiing and friend/family visits). Surprisingly, the weather cooperated and we had almost a week of sunshine to organize and stow our belongings and some provisions, get a new AC/DC power inverter installed, new GPS chart plotter hooked-up, rig a "sail net" for lashing down our brand new headsail, sew a new companion-way cover, take the dinghy AKA "R1" for an evening cruise, replace a holding tank pump which we "raptured" one midnight, change the engine oil and oil filter, and most importantly re-christen our Yankee 30 sloop to "Aialik." A local artist, Vince, hand-painted the new name just a couple of ours before our Open Boat on Apr. 17 which was attended by over a dozen of our Oly friends - 10 of whom plus 2 dogs crammed in our cabin when strong winds blew us off the docks. A champagne toast to the North and South as well as East and West winds appeased the wind gods, so we hope.


Taking shelter in the cabin during our Open Boat.


A toast to the wind gods.