At my last blog post, we had set a closing date for the house, the boat, and the going away parties.

There's nothing like a hanging in the morning to concentrate the mind, so we shifted into the mode of continuous activity to meet a deadline. The date to have the house completely empty was August 12th, the party was the 11th, and I got a rental truck and a couple of helpers on the 9th. Linda had kept the kitchen intact to bake for the Benton County fair, and we'd been living in the house, so there was plenty of work to be done. As we packed frantically the house moved toward maximum chaos, then maximum emptiness. Some of our furniture went into storage, and Danny agreed to take a few other items off our hands.

The going away party the night of the 11th was the big deadline. The truck had to be loaded and the house empty before we went to the party. We made it with a half hour to spare. The party was successful and we're glad we could host our friends for a fun evening.

The 12th we walked through the empty house with the new owners, signed the closing papers and drove away. Linda moved to our friend Ann's house to help Leo (our cat) with his transition, and to live and work in Corvallis until her retirement date 9/6. Danny and I headed north in the rental truck with the furniture for him and the things we planned to take on the boat. I planned to couch surf at Danny's apartment in Seattle until I could move onto the boat.

At Danny's I spent a couple of day's cleaning his apartment and organizing things so we could fit, temporarily. In parallel, I pushed on the boat mover to get me a date for the truck. On the 14th he gave me a date with a truck a week away, in Annapolis. The plan for leisurely disassembly of the rig and all the above deck parts, carefully inspecting and labeling all the parts went out the window. Once again there was a tight deadline. I flew out as soon as possible, and worked with a rigger and a helper to disassemble the boat. The disassembly and packing actually went quickly, and the loading on the truck was also smooth. The truck headed west and I flew back to Seattle.

We'd decided to deliver the boat to Port Townsend because I'd met and been positively impressed by the rigger, Dan Kulin, of Port Townsend Rigging at Boat Haven. One of the known big items of maintenance was a thorough rig inspection and reinstallation. The boat is not a "project boat", but it had been cruised extensively in the Caribbean for 12 years since it was new. Several items showed up as needing attention in the survey, and there's a large marine trades community in Port Townsend. The boat yard, and the people we've engaged are also very supportive of me doing as much of the work as possible, to help come up the learning curve. Also, it's possible to live on the boat while it's on the hard.

The boat was delivered on 8/26. I lived in a hotel in town that week and started the process of getting the boat back to seaworthiness, and to a point we could live aboard. I'll be working with Galmukoff Marine on the engine and system work, and they suggested that emptying the boat first would save money in the long run. The overall order of operations: empty the boat, clean, reassemble and fix items best done on the hard, re-rig, bottom paint, splash, fix items best done in the water, reload with safety items, sea trial, reload the boat with everything else (accurately inventoried), sail to Shilshole Marina (Seattle). It'll be a lot more complicated, and some Project Management Fundamentals will be applied. My 20 years of project management experience should help, but I'm dependent on the skilled professionals for domain knowledge and judgment.

Galmukoff also organized a set of stairs, which was a huge improvement over accessing the boat with a rickety ladder. They're so steep you have to back down (like a ladder), but the handrail and wide non-slip tread are huge improvements. With the boat on the hard, the deck is about 10 feet above the ground. It took two days of continuous work and uncounted trips up and down the stairs to get the boat emptied into a storage unit. I'm also a day and a half into the cleaning process, which will take quite a while. The bilges, in particular are a big job, and needs to be done before Galmukoff will start working with me on replacing the flexible hoses (mostly original from 2000, several checked and cracked).

I'll be living aboard starting tomorrow; pretty close to our original estimate, and almost exactly a year since I retired. Linda will retire next Friday, 9/6, and she'll be on the boat the following day.