Perched on the edge of the world, I'm still scrambling to gather loose ends. The autopilot remains non-functional, the VHF radio has developed a temperamental display screen, the wind instrument is with Raymarine back in Nashua, New Hampshire for repairs, and my venerable old White sewing machine has proven itself incapable of making the lee cloths. Solutions for these challenges are staged for the next few days, so I'm hoping for the best.

One success I'm especially pleased with is Mabrouka's new sails. They look great and draw great. She got new sail covers, too, so here's a pic:



Mabrouka's shakedown cruise in the San Juan Islands with the southbound crew went very well. Everyone gets along amiably enough, considering we're four old coots that will be confined together on a forty foot sailboat for a couple of weeks. I expect a personality clash or two, but everyone is positive and eager to share their experience and unique skills with one another. I was entertained to find that I'm the youngest of the crowd at just shy of 62 years old. Jim and Robert are both 64 and Ed will celebrate his 79th birthday a few days after our scheduled departure. Here's what I know of them.

One of the first things I said to the Coho Ho Ho group (a few of us now refer to ourselves lovingly as Hos) was that I wanted to take on volunteer crew for the transit to San Francisco. If Ed wasn't the first to express his interest, he was the most eager. At that time I was still thinking I'd be able to make my shakedown cruise a circum-Vancouver Island affair and Ed touted his resume of having already done it six and three-halves times. That's six full circumnavigations, two half-ways, and one trip up into Alaska that included sailing up the east coast of the island.

Attracted by the salty old guy's exuberance and the sea miles he had under his slickers, I invited Ed to sail with me over the July 4th holiday from Eagle Harbor to Poulsbo and back. Of course, sailing provides plenty of time to get acquainted and our various conversations included some good story swapping sessions. He had me intrigued from the beginning when he announced with a twinkled eye that he had a new girl friend, but "...I haven't slept with her yet!" Okay! Moving right along!

(Post script: JoAnn's made an honest man out of him. Ed, in a somewhat coy-proud way, let on that they're getting married! "For heaven's sake," we said. "You've only just met her!" "I know," Ed said, "but she makes me feel like a kid all the time." What a character!)

Ed was as spry as a billie goat on the trip to Poulsbo, handling lines with ease and enthusiasm, skillfully steering the boat, and generally being a good shipmate. Trudging around town and sharing a couple of meals convinced me that his vigor, experience, and good humor would make him good crew for the trip south, so soon after we threw off the dock lines from Poulsbo Yacht Club I invited him to join me. Before answering, he fessed up to having some health issues. He didn't give a lot of details, but they involved some circulatory problems that he has since addressed by taking a phalanx of natural supplements and modifying his diet to what he referred to as a "flexitarian" regimen. I was a little put aback by this, imagining how I might deal with a heart attack victim while 100 miles off the Oregon coast. I hadn't planned on installing an AED and didn't know how much space to allow for a stash of body bags, but assuming he'd take care of his special needs, decided to let my offer stand. Half an hour later he announced that he liked Mabrouka and would agree to sail to San Francisco.

We put up the gennaker after we rounded the northern tip of Bainbridge Island and when the colorful sail blossomed above the foredeck, Ed and his camera were drawn forward to the sprit, levering himself out over the water with one foot hooked into the bow pulpit so he could lean back and take photos looking up the mast. He spent fifteen minutes up there, craning this way and that, generally enjoying the sight of the sail and Mabrouka's movement across Puget Sound. When he finally came back to the cockpit, he amended his acceptance, saying he really liked how the boat sailed and he'd sign up for the trip to San Diego, too! How flattering.

Now having spent several more days sailing with him, Ed's demonstrated a couple of quirks that, while they remain a source of some entertainment to good natured people, may rub a bit after a while in close quarters. We'll see. One is to repeatedly call me Joe, but he even used Honey once. I don't know where the heck THAT came from

Another is that he's a strong proponent of labeling our cups and mugs, maintaining that it cuts back on the amount of rinsing required. Okay, that's easy! Jim and I humored him on our trip to Port Ludlow with blue masking tape and a Magic Marker, but I removed the tags the following week to reclaim a little bit of my personal space. It was only a few minutes after coming aboard in Kingston on our way to the San Juans that he promoted his idea once again, so the name tags were reinstalled. This time we used white duct tape and, excepting Ed's, the monikers on our mugs evolved to nicknames. Somehow the duct tape doesn't hold onto the marker as well, so they had to be rewritten a couple of times, devolving a little each cycle. Yesterday I institutionalized Ed's idea for the cruise south by getting out an actual label maker and semi-permanently assigning tumblers. Ed is now the Ed-meister, Jim has become Sparky (I can't remember why) and Robert is Le Chef. I'm Captain Joe.

The quirk that threatens to irritate is that, in situations where the data seems to be of particular interest to him, Ed will continually read out the boat speed or the depth to everyone. Well, not just read it out, announce it in increasing decibel levels as he approaches what he considers a critical value. Sometimes the increase works in both directions, getting louder with the excitement of approaching the goal, then even louder still as the goal recedes. How is that possible? Monday, as we were fighting north against the southbound ebb current out of Guemes Channel, he'd found a back eddy that was contrarily helping our progress. While our speed through the water was around 6 to 6-1/2 knots, our speed over ground had been down in the three-points. Ed's helmsmanship had taken us over nearer to shore where we'd sky-rocketed up near six. As it increased even more he began, "Six point one, ...six point TWO, ...SIX POINT THREE!"

Jim escaped to the bow of the boat and I laughed. Robert was oblivious down in his usual station cooking up a storm in the galley.

Well, I'd intended to do profiles on Jim and Robert in this post as well, but I've used up too much of your time on Ed alone. He's just provided so much fodder. Stay tuned. I can't promise as much entertainment with the rest of the crew, but time perhaps will tell.