After our six week trip across the country, we arrived at Island Girl on Thursday, May 4. We moved all our food and clothes from Nitro to the boat, and settled in to live primarily on our Girl for the summer. We’ll have several camping trips with Nitro, but the majority of our time we’ll be floating.
It has been really super fun getting to know our neighbors in the marina. We kept the Girl at a friends dock in Florida, so we never got acquainted with any other boating neighbors there. It has been delightful to just hang out and get to know some peeps here! And of course, we are closer to our kids now, and we get to go play with them, too!
First up adventure was a Mariner’s baseball game on Sunday afternoon, May 7. They were giving away free plastic wine tumblers to moms as an early Mother’s Day gift, so that was fun! “Geno Grigio”…. for Eugenio Suarez, 3rd base – I think. It’ll probably be useful in one of our traveling homes. AND, the Mariner’s won, which was even better!
We had great Club level seats along the first baseline, which is my most favoritest place to sit. We were with our son, daughter-in-law, and grandson, plus one of his best friends and girlfriend that we’ve known for years. I don’t know anybody on the team, and we haven’t watched a single baseball game yet this year, so it was a good time. Of course, I also kept watching the score for the Tampa Bay Rays… it was a close one, but they won in the bottom of the 10th against the Yankees. Their record so far this season is astounding… 28-7! Wowza!!
Back home at the marina, we had asked around for referrals to get someone to come and clean Island Girl’s belly and put new zincs on. We called two different places with no luck. The first place (Dave’s) never returned our call, and the second place isn’t taking any new clients. Hmmmm. We were sitting outside on Tuesday, watching people come and go. A new friend, Thomas, asked us “how’s it going?”. Kenny said it would be better if we could find someone to clean the boat bottom. He said he uses Dave’s, and that he’d give them a call for us. OK? Sure enough, he came right back with Dave’s scheduler on the phone, handed Kenny his phone, and we got all set up. She said she could get us in on June 14, which we were fine with. Through conversation with her, Kenny told her how long it had been, and that we’re hoping to go cruising in this nice weather coming up. She said their divers would be in our marina tomorrow, and she’d put us on the list in case the divers had time to squeeze us in. Sweet! Thank you Thomas!! It’s great having new friends who know people!!
Guess what? The diver showed up at 10:00 the next morning and got us all spiffed up and re-zinc’d. YAHOO! That worked out fantastic!! The weather was really nice with temperatures in the upper 60’s and sunny. We decided that it was perfect for washing the boat and getting Stuart in the water to see how he’s going to behave this year. So we got out the pressure washer, a brush and a bucket of bubbles, and got to work. Kenny tried starting Stuart, and he started without much problem, so that was good news. We moved the boat forward so that we could flop the lil dude into the water. Kenny worked on him for a little while, and the electric start still wouldn’t work. But he pull-started and seemed to run pretty good, except that he’d start to cut out with higher throttle. Oooooh…. 🤨 – Kenny found an air leak in the gas hose fitting! The little pumper-upper bulb wouldn’t stay firm. Uh-oh. When he tried holding the air leak, it ran better. Alrighty – he got a new fitting on order with the ol’ Amazon. Hopefully that will solve that problem.
Doesn’t she look pretty?
We’ve had some really pretty sunsets. Directly west of us, across Commencement Bay, stands the Olympic Mountain range. We can’t always see them, but when the Olympics are out, it’s really pretty. I took this picture of us sharing one of our favorite beers from our favorite local Calusa Brewing in Sarasota. We’re just about out of our stash that we brought cross-country with us!
I have a fun project that I’ve been working on. For Christmas, our son & his wife gave me a map of the U.S. along with a bulletin board and colored pins. I bought a variety of colors of embroidery thread, and I’ve been mapping out our multiple cross country road trips! It’s been really fun, and it gives a good visual of which states we’ve neglecting! I’m pondering putting in the Great Loops – that will liven up the entire eastern seaboard and Great Lakes. That’ll leave the north and New England states, which we may try to hit this fall as a looong route home. And then there’s California, which Kenny refuses to go to. 🤷♀️
The part came for Stuart’s gas hose, so Kenny got that installed. We have plans for that little guy this summer, so we need him to run good! He still has a corroded head that Kenny will replace, but one thing at a time. Anyway, he installed the new doodad, and guess what?! Stuart runs way better, Aaaaand….. his electric start works now!! Who knew?! The whole issue all last summer was probably this air leak! (Well, on top of the corroded head.). Anyway, we’re really happy that he’s running again. And I can even start him by my own self now!
Ah – such a beautiful sight!!
All of this prep and work has been because good weather was coming! Like temperatures around 90?? Wait. We might not want to leave our dock that has power and a/c to go out and be somewhere without any cooling options. Plus, the weekend was so nice that we figured a bunch of people would be out taking up space at places where we want to go. So, we stayed home for a couple more days, which was fine. The winds were a little gusty, with a chance of thundershowers, and we’re in no rush, so we postponed our departure until Tuesday May 16. Good decision!
Tuesday was PERFECT out on the water! My plan was to go scope out a state park in the South Sound. We haven’t cruised there for a long time, and never over-nighted, so I figured we needed to get off the dock and go scope it out! This is us heading south to go under the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.
The water was just beautiful today, very little breeze, and we timed our departure to go south with the incoming tide.
Island Girl has been a real Smokey Joe when we’ve started her at the dock. She doesn’t like this cold water, and she hasn’t even left the dock since last December. Today was a good opportunity to crank her up and let her horses run for awhile. 23.6 MPH top speed, and we went fast for 10 about minutes – she did great.
Here is her go-fast jet-stream. Looking good, Girl!!
There’s those Olympic Mountains, and the South Sound was splat flat as a pancake. What a great day to be on the water!!
Here is our route today. There are lots of islands and peninsulas to navigate around in the Puget Sound. At least it is familiar water to us, even though we haven’t been out here for many years.
We arrived at Jarrell Cove State Park about four hours after departing from our marina in Tacoma. There are probably a dozen mooring buoys, a small dock with a pump-out station, and a longer dock farther into the cove. When we got here, all of the buoys were open, and the small dock had space for us, but we were hoping to go to the big dock. I saw this map on Active Captain, so I knew that we would want to be toward the deeper end of the big dock. We’ll have a minus 1.6’ tide at noon on Thursday, if we’re still here, so we’d like as much depth as we can get. (Island Girl used to live in five feet of water all the time, but that shallow of water around here makes us nervous.)
As we pulled around the cove, we could see two sailboat masts, so we figured the end spots were taken. Yep. As we tootled in closer, we saw that there were several boats, but a nice big spot for us to go bow-in, starboard tie. Several folks from neighboring boats came out to catch our lines, and Kenny slid us right in there like a pro. Who could tell that he hadn’t docked this Girl for several months. We actually haven’t been to another dock since last AUGUST! 😳 It’s about time we took an adventure!
The dock here is in really great shape, with normal cleats. Some of the Washington State Park docks only have a wooden beam thing that you have to wrap the line under and around. Normal cleats are so much easier, especially if you don’t have help on the dock.
What a beautiful day and setting! And the neighbors are all super duper nice and friendly!
We purchased the Washington State annual marine parks pass for the Girl this year, which was $5/foot x 39 feet = $195 for the year. To stay at a State Park Marina facility is $15/night on a buoy, or $.70/foot per night on the dock. So one night on a dock for us = $27.30. If you do the math, after your seventh night on a dock, you’re staying for free. 👍🏼 We plan to stay more than seven nights on a variety of State Park docks this summer! There are a half dozen in the south sound, and more than that in the San Juan Islands.
This dock had a pleasant surprise that we’ve never seen on a State Park dock…. POWER! There is a $6 charge per outlet per night, so we plugged in one line so that we can run the stove and even the a/c if we need it. BONUS!!
I went up the dock, paid our power fee, and did a little walk-about on some trails. It looked familiar, so we’re both pretty sure that we’ve been here in one of our smaller boats, sometime in the waaaay distant past.
The walk was beautiful. I really do enjoy the woods and nature here in the Pacific Northwest!
Of course, my blog wouldn’t be complete without some flowers to make you smile. At least these little beauties made me smile. ☺️. Tomorrow looks like it will be toasty warm and very calm winds, so maybe we’ll be super brave and take Stuart for a tootle.
I fixed us some psketti and salad for dinner, and we ate outside in the cockpit. What a beautiful evening! The weather is very calm, and this cove is even more so. Pretty sure we’ll sleep fine here!
