Dear Friends;
***First and foremost***, we will not be renewing our Sailmail subscription this year because we will be sailing only inshore waters for now. This email address will be invalid in about two weeks. If you wish to reach us after that time, please make note of the address we will be using: philipandleslie@sv-carina.org.
A number of people have contacted us to find out how we are adjusting to life "on land" in the USA. Well, it's been about 9 months since we pulled into a slip on C dock at the Port of Kingston and a lot has happened, most of it good. We remain liveaboards and are now being ruled by a teenage orange tabby kitten named Halyard. He is quite the little character and is carving his own place in our hearts to help fill the big hole left by the passing of the fat cat, Jake.
A little catch up: we left Pohnpei in Micronesia in May of 2017 and arrived in Sitka, AK on July 1st. After cleaning the boat up a bit we sailed (read motored) down the inside passage and arrived in Kingston in September. It was a bit of a delivery since we needed to get back to deal with a number of issues. A pity we had to rush; Alaska and BC were so incredibly beautiful and we didn't get to enjoy it as much as we would have wished.
Carina suffered cosmetically on the journey across the north Pacific and then down the inside passage. There wasn't a speck of intact varnish on the whole boat. She was also t-boned by another sailboat while at anchor in Comox BC. We were ashore at the time and came back to Carina to find broken lifelines, ripped life line netting, stanchions bent like pretzels, a three foot section of the teak toe rail shattered and ripped out, a seriously bent bow pulpit and damage to some of the paint on the starboard bow top sides. Who would have thought so much damage could be done in such a short period of time? But the two men on the sailboat left their cell phone number and, when they later stopped by to apologize, agreed to put in a claim to their insurance company. We appreciated their honesty but dreaded the ordeal of getting bids for the repair: a shipwright to repair the teak toe rail, a welder to fabricate new stanchions and stanchion bases and to repair the bow pulpit and finally, a painter to repair the top sides. We decided we would replace the lifeline ourselves.
All the repairs are done except for the top sides painting which we hope to complete once we haul out for bottom paint in Port Townsend in mid-June. The last time we applied bottom paint was in 2015 in the Philippines and Carina is in need at this time. We have hired a diver to at least clean our propeller so we can effectively drive a seriously fouled hull the twenty-five miles to Port Townsend. Oh, almost forgot, we also had Carina's engine removed for rebuilding and we hope to break in the engine on the way to PT and during a little vacation to the San Juan Islands after that.
We have been very busy giving presentations about our trip and sailing topics in general, working on plans for a smaller home, tending to our vegetable p-patch, and just trying to adjust to a US which seems so foreign to us now. On and off we are working on a book. Now that most of Carina's repairs are nearly complete and the weather seems to be improving, we hope to spend some quality time exploring the watery byways nearer to our home port.
Your friends of the yacht Carina,
Philip, Leslie, Halyard and the spirit of the fat cat, Jake
website: www.sv-carina.org
At 4/25/2018 and 16:34 UTC (GMT) our position was: 47°47.68'N / 122°29.92'W
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