Alaskan Sea-Duction: April 2016

Monday, April 25, 2016

Following Alaskan Sea-Duction (ASD)

Folks if you want to follow our tracks while we are on this great adventure, as they say there is an app for that. Well sort of. We have a SPOT satellite GPS device that reports our position and you can follow it by the link below. We will switch it on each day that we are traveling. There may be a few days in which you may not see us move as we have found a place to hang for a few days.

We will update this blog when we can and as cell service is available. The further north we get the less cell service we will have. For our FB friends, you will also have the added feature of us posting a daily "We are OK" standard message and in that message is a link to see where we are located.

Remember to save this link to your internet browser. If you click on this link today (4-25-16) you can see our track from Astoria back to our dock. If no tracking occurs after 7 days, then this page will show now tracking.

Have fun sharing our great adventure with us. I will let everyone know the actual day we leave. For now we will be on weather standby starting may 1st.

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0nFfVKzQcEPBWrISXhqYlZ6LsSd7evQYI

Prepreations are as competed, now the waiting game

We go on weather standby on May 1st. We have hired Omni Marine weather to get us through our first leg of the journey from Astoria to Neah Bay starting May 1. Omni Bob as most call him is a marine weather expert who does weather for many shipping companies and recreational boaters like us. He will watch the weather off the west coast of Washington, then advise us when a good weather window opens.

So we have 5 more days to finish packing and get ready to go. 3 years of hard work have finally come down to hurry and wait, but the nice thing about being retired is there is no schedule.

The Dingy and motor all strapped down for the trip around the horn!

Monday, April 11, 2016

Almost Ready. Prep Continues

It is just amazing all the prep work you need to do before going on a trip like ours. You really have to think of everything as there will be places where there is no place to pick up a bolt or a part.

So far I have accomplished the following:

Painted the cockpit and swim platform
Got all my flags in order
rigged the dinghy tow line (this required unpacking and floating the dink)
installed a new freezer
Change the engine and gear oil for the dink.
Rig the tie downs in the cockpit, so I can strap down the dink and motor
update all my electronic charts
get all my paper charts in order
unpack the storage shed and put all that stuff on the boat (these are things like spare parts, lines, and anything else you might need)
I had to troubleshoot my trim tab indicators. One is broke and found out it was a coil, which can't be fixed until the boat is pulled out of the water. Item for next year!
Always cleaning the boat
Start watching the weather.
Fuel boat
Double check everything

We have the Astoria Crab and Wine Fest yet to attend on April 22 with my sister and her husband. Will be a blast and look forward to it. After that we should be ready to go. The plan is to leave our dock, stay in Astoria for the night and leave on the next morning flood/slack tide for the 190 mile run to Neah Bay.

Before we leave we will post our SPOT tracking so you all can follow us on our journey. When we are in an area with cell service, I will do my best to update this blog.

Dang just remembered I have to put new screen material in the window screens and install them.....never ending