One week left until we plan to make the big left turn.

We decided 2019 was the target departure last fall, and have been working steadily toward that objective. About a month ago, we set an actual departure date and informed the crew. We’re subletting our slip, so we WILL be off the dock by August 17.

We’ve tackled the systems one at a time, and the last major system remaining was the steering. This year we replaced the steering chain, cables and bearings. We replaced the steering log packing with a dripless stuffing box. Weadded a Monitor windvane “Ginger” and autopilot “Maryanne”. Besides those big tasks, I finished the watermaker rebuild we started last year, and in my spare time got my 100 ton Captain’s license. We won’t really need the watermaker until we get to Mexico, but it was a lot easier to finish it with a great chandlery (Fisheries Supply) and hardware store (Stoneway) in the neighborhood.

Linda did a couple of big sewing/bosunry projects by replacing the mattresses and designing and building an excellent stack pack/lazyjack system.

Now we’re in the midst of the last-minute lists. We have lists of things to do, things to do later, things to buy, and potential crew. We’re doing triage of the storage unit in Seattle and purging the things that came with the boat that we’ve kept since 2013 because we “might need them”. Now, they’re either on the boat, or not. And if it’s not, either we give it away, or it goes in the trash.

Even this blog post will be a test of our satellite e-mail system (Iridium Go!, OCENs mail to Sailblogs. If it shows up, the system worked, and we’ll post more once we’re underway.

-- Sent via OCENSMail satellite email service. www.ocens.com