The Tamarisk will cruise at last!

If you look closely at the two pictures you will see Tamarisk’s engine minus its head in the first picture, and sporting its pretty blue refurbished head in the second. We had a successful install of the “new” head this morning, the engine ran like it’s supposed to, and we are scheduled to launch on Monday at 2:30. So we will see our cruising grounds after all. We’ll get over to a bay in the San Juans on Monday and then Tuesday head to Canada to clear customs and begin making our way north.

We’re celebrating this evening by going to a well-known small café near the little town of Edison—The Rhododendron Café. We’ll toast the new engine and all of our patient friends who have been waiting and hoping to see us off. Over the weekend we’ll turn our project boat back into a proper ship for cuising and be happily on our way Monday. Stay tuned for the real cruising adventures to come.

Exploring around Anacortes (& a new head for our engine)

It's Tuesday the 27th and we're still in Anacortes. The engine head is indeed cracked. Since our Perkins 4108 boat engine is no longer in production, we are getting a refurbished head done by a shop in Seattle that specializes in used Perkins engines. We pick it up in Seattle tomorrow, stay overnight to touch base with friends and return to Anacortes on Thursday where Phil will get started putting the engine back together. Hopefully Friday the mechanic will join him to complete the job and give it an overall inspection. Then we’ll test it and see if it works!

If all goes well (and at this juncture I’m not holding out too much hope), we’ll try to get in the water early next week and be on our way. We now hold a personal record for time spent in the boat yard. It will be a month this weekend.

On Sunday Phil declared a “no work” day and we drove to Bellingham along beautiful Chuckanut drive, enjoying the scenes of water and trees. We spent the day exploring the Fairhaven district of Bellingham, which has taken the original old town buildings and rebuilt them. It’s much more upscale than it was on my last visit, with LOTS of coffee shops, restaurants and shops. Our favorite find was a great used book store called Eclipse, which has so much inventory that in additional to what’s on the shelves, there are stacks of books (organized by subject area) all over the store. Today’s picture gives you an idea of what it looks like. I found a couple books on Vietnam and one on the Philippines, to provide background for next January’s trips. And Phil found a couple books too. Altogether a very nice day.

Tamarisk Cruise Summer 2010 - The Beginning

I ought to be sharing a pretty picture of a cozy harbor somewhere in the San Juans or Canada, but instead we find ourselves camped out in the Anacortes boat yard where we store the Tamarisk over the winter. Notice the lovely surroundings for our evening dinner!

Why are we camped here in our boat? Because the engine has a problem that Phil discovered two weeks ago, just a couple days before we were to go in the water and leave. The mechanic we called looked at it and diagnosed a problem with the head—either a crack in the head or a split head gasket. And a week and a half wait before he could get to it!

So we’ve been waiting. We spent several days doing boat work (there’s always plenty to do), then went over to Lopez Island for six days, using the cabin of our friends, Nancy Taylor and Fritz Levy (see second picture, if it posts). We returned to Anacortes last Tuesday, ready for our mechanic to appear on Wednesday. He didn’t come. He didn’t call. Didn ‘t come on Thursday either. Finally called Thursday night, just as we were lining up other mechanics to contact, to say he’d be there Friday morning. And this time he did show.

The head is now being closely examined for a possible crack, and we are waiting to see how much longer we will enjoy the gravel boat yard with its splendid porta potty facilities. I have just completed a first coat of paint on the cabin sides, after spending 3 days in preparation. Why is it that it always takes five times as long to prepare for painting as it does to actually paint (especially masking everything and removing all the little fittings that boats have)? We are also sporting a new coat of paint in the cockpit, covering up the repairs that were done there to remove some dry rot.

The balance between boat work and pleasurable boat use has tipped a little too far towards the “work” side this year and both Phil and I are beginning to suffer from the deprivation. Hopefully our patience will last a little longer. Will keep you all posted when there’s news to report.