One of the seals on a finger pier across from us checks us out as we walk by.
Thankfully, last weekend’s storm is history. This week’s weather was more typical of fall—cooler with off-and-on rain. But we had enough dry periods to finish waxing the important parts of the boat…important being those places that are most exposed and likely to have more abuse from the winter weather. So we can move our waxing supplies to the storeroom until next year!
On a recent morning when the weather was more settled, we were treated to a spectacular sunrise, and snapped this photo of Mt. Baker. Very inspiring!
Wow! We’re having quite a storm today! Strong winds are howling through our marina and we’re listening to the clanging of halyards on nearby sailboats, as Western Washington is being hammered by a strong fall storm. Our boat is rolling around a bit in the wind gusts, but we feel the boat is secure. We already replaced our summer mooring lines with the winter lines, and to help secure our boat during this storm (and all the winter storms yet to come), we have doubled up the mooring lines that take the most force from the prevailing southeast winds in Anacortes Marina.
The storm clouds built Saturday evening in advance of a strong windstorm that blew through on Sunday. This photo was taken from the Anacortes shoreline looking east. Cap Sante is on the far left.
Last Sunday we had a rather intense windstorm blow through Western Washington. Winds of 55 mph were reported on Whidbey Island, but even though we had strong wind at Anacortes Marina, it wasn’t quite as intense. Most of the wind seemed to average between 20-30 mph, with some gusts approaching 40 mph. The strong winds lasted from early morning until mid-afternoon, and were accompanied by rain squalls and some much cooler weather.
Tonight’s sunset at Anacortes Marina really lit up the sky above the boat houses. Gorgeous!
Our plan was to get varnish on the exterior teak and then, weather permitting, start on waxing the cabin and hull. As soon as we finished varnishing the cap rail, fog and mist set in. It lasted 4 days, and ended with a thunderstorm on Sunday night. We got the varnish supplies put away, but have not been able to get started on the waxing.
After all the charging problems we had on our June cruise, we decided to replace all our house batteries. Here are the six new Dyno batteries sitting in the main cabin of Phoenix, ready to be lowered to the engine room.
As readers of this blog know, we had continual problems with charging our batteries on our June cruise due to a few worn-out batteries in our house bank. It goes without saying that we should have replaced the 5-year-old batteries before we left Anacortes, but we thought we’d be able to get by a little longer before we shelled out our cash. Batteries are one of the major expenses on a powerboat. At any rate, Jim recently made a trip to Anacortes to buy new batteries and replace the bad ones.
The glow of the morning sunrise was a stark contrast to the dim early morning light on boats in Anacortes Marina.
Due to some of the issues on our Dent Island cruise, we got back to Anacortes Marina a few days later than we planned. Because we had to be back in Bend, we had only a few days to clean up the boat and get things in order after our cruise. The item of highest importance, needless to say, was doing more serious testing to determine the status of our house batteries.
Cruising With Phoenix 