The LIST

We have successfully lived on our boat for 3 months now. It has definitely become our home. We are very ready to be relieved of the responsibility of our house!!! Though we do miss our neighbors, we have new neighbors who are great. There is a real sense of community on the dock and it is shared by all.
But I digress, the original purpose of this post was the LIST. In about 5 months, we should be headed South. As you can imagine, there is a significant amount of preparation involved in undertaking an adventure like this. In my life, pretty much anytime there is more than 3 things for me to remember I must write them down. Well, preparing the boat and ourselves has a few more than 3 things to do in preparation, so we started a list.
Ready or not, Brad had the advantage (or disadvantage) of delivering the boat home to Seattle from Hawaii last summer. The Cordill's had sailed it north from New Zealand, so Brad figured, CAPAZ had come that far, she could probably make it the rest of the way. Fortunately, he was correct and got quite a little shake cruise on which he was able to identify many things to which attention should be paid before we take off.
We sat down one afternoon in August with an Excel spreadsheet created a list and categorized and prioritized all the items. Thus, the LIST was born. The good news is that in the intervening 7 months we have made significant progress o most of the major items. There are two fairly major items left (three if you ask me) and a couple that are in process and just need to be finished. This winter's financial crisis did slow us down a little, but Brad has been good about focusing on smaller, time- (not money-) intensive items.
When we made the LIST, the sky was the limit. We put everything we could think of on it. Some of the non-essential wish things have fallen to the very bottom of the list and may never get marked off.
Being able to focus on just work and the boat once our house sells should speed up the progress of things being completed on the LIST. There are also things on the LIST that can and will probably be completed en route. You know the old saying: Cruising is just routine maintenance is exotic location. Whatever "they" say, I can hardly wait!
Next thing to work on from the LIST: Get the mainsail and mizzen back on the boat. One more item to check off!!!!

Live-Aboard Exercise

Scooter Kids

Talking to Mr. Blue Heron

One question we get is about living aboard is how we get exercise. Well, first of all, the car is NOT parked in the driveway. I would say that we get a bit more exercise walking up the dock to the parking lot. Even with the weather being less than conducive to being outside, when it is nice like yesterday, we are ready to take advantage of it.
As we drove down the road above Golden Gardens on the way home from school, the boys lobbied for a "scooter" down to the beach. We called our dock neighbors who also have scooters to see if they were game. Of course, they too, were ready to take advantage of the beautiful afternoon. After a quick stop by the boat to grab scooters and for Mom to change her shoes, we met up with the Ghostsailors and headed for the bike trail. The kids used more than a little energy cruising those scooters to Golden Gardens while the moms got in a nice brisk walk.

Finding Critters

Once at the beach at low tide, the kids couldn't help but find all the critters they could: crabs, eels and snails. The sun went behind a cloud on its way down and suddenly, it was much too cold to be playing in the water. We scootered back to the boat and warmed the kids up with some hot chocolate. I think we all got a pretty good a pretty good workout and maybe even a little marine biology, too!

Beach JOY!!!
Brought to you by
Bryce
Austin
Ellie
and
Zak

Capaz Crew Cooking

First flip

The Capaz crew worked hard in the galley today.

It started this morning with Bryce making breakfast for us all. There were directions to be read and improved upon and a new stove to learn how to use. (Bryce figured out Grammy-Sue's stove in Portland last week.) I think Bryce has been secretly studying his G-pa's technique for years. Anyway, he prepared scrumptious blueberry pancakes and grapefruit halves getting Brad out the hatch in plenty of time to make his 10 am showing this morning. Bryce has discovered that the flipping thing might be easier than it looks, but he is willing to try again to get more practice. This could work out well for the parents who actually love to sleep in.

Austin enjoys pancakes

Careful chopping

After a quick laundry run to the house I made it back home in time to take enjoy Austin's tuna salad sandwiches at lunch time. It is his favorite meal and he feels that it just doesn't come his way often enough. So today, he took matters into his own hands. He located the ingredients and so carefully (for his mother's sanity) chopped up the celery and onions using the really big sharp knife. Austin served up everyone a semi-custom order (Mom likes a pickle slice on the side, Bryce likes only the barest of minimums of mayo and Dad eats pretty much anything you put in front of him). Austin even made himself and Brad seconds on the sandwiches. I can tell now that the boys are going to be great helpers when we are cruising.

The last meal of the day was cooked by Mom. Nothing new there, but I sure appreciated that I didn't have to really go into the galley (except for a little advice, when asked here and there) until almost 6:00PM!

Chowing down on tuna salad