Time to wrap things up for the year…

Time to knock out some boat chores. Safety first !

9/24/2024 Vince and Suzy headed back to La Conner, WA and we took a run back to Anacortes to top off the fuel tanks. At $3.83 per gallon (tax included) it was worth the extra miles to save a few hundred dollars. After our fuel-up we went back across Rosario Strait and stopped at Friday Harbor on San Juan Island. We had a lot of fog earlier in the day and the weather forecast called for gale warnings the next morning so we wanted to get across while it was still calm. It was a good plan. We then spent three nights at Friday Harbor while a weather system passed. We spent time cleaning, sorting, and organizing.

Friday Harbor after the storm passed rewarded us with this beautiful rainbow

With some time on our hands we decided to try baking some sourdough bread using starter gifted to us by Sally. This was comforting while we waited for the rain to pass.

Success with the sourdough bread

It tasted as good as it looked

I was able to consolidate the frozen foods into one freezer. We still have five more dinners until we leave for the winter, but we will not get this emptied out before we leave.

Still so much food on board

Our salon windows are starting to show signs of needing to be re-sealed so that task got added to our pre- departure list.

Brad’s firefighter knots came in handy and allowed him to safely hang off the side of the boat

We have been plagued by a slow water leak for the past few weeks. Water is slowly seeping from somewhere and causing the forward bilge pump to cycle. Of course this happens at 3am, just to make sure we hear it. We finally found the leak with the help of a borescope, a long fiber with a lens at the end and a camera that transmits to his iPad for viewing. We have determined that the assembled all of the plumbing and then laid the floor in this boat because we can’t reach anything! Brad finally found the leak, a slow drip from a fitting that feeds fresh water to the toilet, but the bow-thruster batteries will need to be removed and someone will have to crawl into the space to reach the fitting. Brad spent a fair bit of time wedged down in the bilge just to diagnose the leak. Not entirely sure when we will repair this, it water will be off for the winter!

Brad down in the forward bilge area. It took some effort to get him out of this hole when he was done.

Found the leak!

10/9/2024 We have things buttoned up on St. Florian for the winter. Our next adventure is a trip to the Annapolis boat show. Phil and Annette Davies will be hosting us and tempting us to make some big changes. Over the winter I will be consolidating these posts and compressing them to make room for next year’s adventures.

Teaser…big changes coming as a result of the trip east.

Look forward to 2025. Cheers, Marya and Brad

Last week of cruising 2024