Yesterday was a long day of travel due to weather. We left Connecticut, just as a winter storm hit. It delayed our departure and we missed our connection in Chicago, flying standby on the last flight to Seattle and arriving there about 7:30 pm. On the drive to Bellingham, we stopped at a nice Mexican restaurant for dinner. We were so tired, we decided to grab a hotel in Bellingham rather than unpack and set up the boat. We were pretty tired by the time we went to bed after a 21-hour day. As we fell asleep, Deb felt an earthquake. Later, we heard it was a 4.5 quake, located just north of Victoria about 30 miles away. Me? I fell asleep right away and felt nothing!

We had breakfast at the hotel and headed to the storage shed to pick up the sleeping bags we always use on our winter trips. Not only do they keep us toasty warm on cold nights on the boat, but they reduce all the bedding issues of sheets, blankets, etc. We still have those but only use them minimally, sleeping on top on the bed cover in our sleeping bags.

We arrived at our boat and loaded our gear aboard and sorted things out. We met Rowan, working on the final touches to our new swim platform and putting on the swim step. The new swim platform looks fantastic. Next, we checked our heating system, always important on our winter cruise, when temps sometimes drop into the teens on cold nights. Our three-zone system and our Hurricane heater seemed to be working fine. Our good friend Trevor had given it a tune up and checked things while he installed a new HD TV with a larger screen and reset our sat antenna. Hooray!! Our old TV was on its last legs. The new screen is much larger and the picture is really sharp.

We also noticed the exceptional work done by Northwest Explorations on maintenance. Our boat had its semi-annual haul out for new bottom paint, zincs, cleaning the props and shaft, and new varnish on the exterior wood work. In addition, our doors had been showing signs of wear and were cleaned and 6 new coats of varnish were put on. NWE also put on a brand new swim platform, a charterer having crunched the previous one. The boat was also completely cleaned inside (by El and her team) and outside. It really sparkled!

We saw our good friend Brian Pemberton who just had rotator cuff surgery. We also saw all of our good friends at NWE: Chris, Rich, Christina, and Jenna. They are like family to us and take such good care of everything.

We had a few hours before dinner so we made a quick run for two final items we wanted to get. First, we stopped at LFS to pick up a new gizmo, a low energy dehumidifier to reduce condensation in our boat in the winter. Then, we went out to get a special popcorn popper. Our good friends Irwin and Mary Kirsch had given us a WhirlyPop popcorn popper for Christmas a year ago. It is the best popper we have even seen. No kernels are ever left and the popped corn is giant and fluffy. We picked one up for the boat.

Then, we took Chuck and Rita Kinzer out for dinner at Keenan’s at the Pier. Chuck has just retired as Professor at Columbia University in NYC. He and Rita have built a retirement home in Birch Bay, just north of Washington and had also come out for the holidays. We are long time good friends, from Berkeley days, and Deb and I wanted to congratulate them on their retirement. Some retirement, though! They were leaving for a series of talks in Singapore! We had an exceptional meal together and lingered over desert, talking away. Chuck and Rita drove us back to our boat afterwards and we headed to bed.