Rigging Survey

The morning arrived and it was raining! Big surprise we do live in the northwest. We check our dock lines and head out to the bathroom and breakfast. Both of us were sore from the tension of the sail/motor to Port Townsend. We had breakfast and set out to find Brion Toss (world renowned rigger).


Brion can be a little like jello, hard to nail down and delightful when you get it in a bowl. Brion came over and began our survey with a lovely conversation about what we wanted from our boat. I was really upfront. We had had a survey and other riggers look at the boat and my question was always, "I don't know what I don't know so is this a boat we can blue water sail with an investment of $35,000 to refit her"? Brion did the rigging survey and said yes.


Now up til now I have been tentative about falling in love with the boat. The original plan was to lipstick and rouge the boat and sell it, more about that on another post.


With Brion giving us his thumbs up we had to address the issue of the batteries. As I said earlier, we had to get a new battery to make the trip. The morning after arrival the battery was dead. Joe noticed the amp meter reading negative on the trip over. The local wonderkin, "Owen" came to the rescue. We had the engine serviced and the the wiring redone recently so this was a concern. When you have work done on your boat, babysit the project. The mechanic who rewired our engine used and existing red wire for a negative lead which should have been black. Joe, thinking red is positive, put this wire on the battery in that position not knowing it was the wrong color. This shorted the battery and drained both the starter and house batteries. Thank goodness it did not ruin the new alternator. Owen fixed everything and got us up and running for under $100.


I left Joe in Port Townsend because I had a job interview. This involved walking to the Port Townsend/Keystone ferry, about a mile away. Then I hitched a ride 35 miles down Whibey Island to the Clinton/Mukilteo ferry. Next, the bus I used to take was cancelled so I took 2 buses to get about a mile from my house. The whole trip only took 4 hours, not too bad.


I made Joe promise to get fuel before he left Port Townsend and it has become a joke between us. One of most sailors favorite movies is "Captain Ron" and there is a line in the movie that goes something like this, I new we had to be close 'cause we are almost out of gas. Needless to say we are getting a lot more fuel capacity.