July 24^th Left Auburn

            With the rental van and Hank’s car loaded to the gills, we left our home in Auburn for Seattle.  The house hasn’t sold so a friend will be living in it until it does.  We are so happy that she was able to help us out!

            It was a long drive with only a stop for gas and lunch yet we made Seattle in about 13 hours.  Our daughter was not home when we arrived at her house so we played with the dog and then headed for some rest.  Our first thought the next morning was how was the boat doing since we left her on June 19^th.  We knew the name had been applied to the back of the boat and that the dodger was completely installed.  So we drove to Yacht Masters on Lake Union to see our new home.  We were again thrilled to see how beautiful she was and how nicely everything had been done.  Although there was still more commissioning work to be completed, we were able to start bring things aboard.  This bringing aboard process continued for several days.  Our plan was to stow our gear and then make a complete inventory of each locker so were knew where things were placed. 

 July 27^th Sea Trial

            Don Cameron from Passage Yachts had flown in to check out the boat and to give us our introductory walk through.  We looked in to every nook and cranny, discussed the commissioning process, and then signed the final papers.  The boat was now ours!  It had been a long time in coming and many hours of study on Hank’s part. 

            That afternoon we took our new boat out for her sea trial, or should I say lake trial!  It was rather anticlimactic to sail in such light wind on such a small body of water.  It seemed as if we had such set the sails when it was time to come about again.  The good part of the trial was that we had Don there showing us a little more about the bow thruster and backing this boat.

 July 28^th Moving Aboard

            We finally are living aboard the Equinox!  The bed is fantastic and we are learning to appreciate the space.  We splurged and got a fantastic mattress from Handcraft Mattress during the boat show.  Wow what a difference a good mattress makes.  The location of the boat is called China Harbor by the locals since it is right below the China Harbor Restaurant.  We were invited to be part of the resident dingy races and pot luck for the following day.  Also when shopping at Fishery Supply (for about the umpteenth time) we ran into Chris Gouan who was in our ham radio class.  He invited us to a Bon Voyage party, the next afternoon, to celebrate his and his wife’s departure into the cruising life style.  The party would be out at Shilshole.  He also said that we could use a slip out there until the 12^th of August.  This was great news for we had been looking for a place to put the boat before we actually shove off. 

            We had a great time with the China Harbor folks.  We even won two prizes for our dinghy oarsmanship.  We ended up the competition by going to one of the house boats and having lunch.  Lucky I had picked up a baguette of French bread for I had nothing else to contribute.  Lunch was fun and so were all the friendly people.  They continued to stop by our boat and see how we were coming right up until they were saying goodbye and wishing us well.

            The Shilshole party was also great fun.  We talked to so many people who had experiences sailing down the coast, or living aboard tips.  One person had been living aboard his Island Packet for 15 years.  They had it down pat!  We also got to see several boats and observed different storage devices.  We wished Chris and his wife Dani well, knowing that we would again see them in the Baja Ha Ha. 

 July 28^th Work Continues

 We continue to work on the boat which includes daily visits to West Marine and Fishery Supply getting important things that were needed on the boat.  Betsy worked on her new Sail Rite sewing machine making the cushion covers for the main saloon.  Things are starting to come together and we are finding that we have more space than we thought.

August 4^th Help take a friend’s boat through the Ballard Locks

            We met Kevin Guilfoyle at Yacht Masters; he was having work done on his boat at the same time that we were.  We volunteered to help him take his boat back to Elliott Bay, for going through the locks single-handed is quite an experience.  We got our daughter to help so that she would know what to do if she came along to help us.  To get to the locks you must pass under three draw bridges, contacting the bridge tender with one long blast and a short.  They usually responded with five blasts, meaning that they know that you are there and will get to you when they can.  In this manner it took quite a while to reach the locks.  On a Friday they were using the small lock, which meant that we would be tying up to a moving wall.  We would not need to be feeding out line as the water lowered.  The lock attendants were so pleasant and it was a great learning experience for us.  Upon reaching the Sound we decided to sail across the bay for a late lunch at a pub.  Our daughter wanted to be home by eight; unfortunately we made her run a little bit behind.

 August 7^th Our turn through the locks

Monday morning was bright and sunny and there was an air of excitement on the boat as we know that we would finally be leaving Lake Union.  Kevin came aboard around 11:30 and we decided to head off for lunch since there was one little thing that was still being done on the boat.  Our daughter arrived at 1 and we were off.  The bridges seemed to take even longer than they did on Friday and when we arrived at the locks there was a large line of boats.  They were using both the large and the small locks so it was wonderful that we had 4 people aboard.  They loaded us along the wall and then rafted two boats deep on our side.  Using our 50’ lines we slowly payed out the line as the water dropped.   After waiting for the railroad bridge to be raised and motoring a short distance, we were finally at the Sound.  Shilshole marina was just to the right.  We slipped into our loaner slip and tied up.  We thanked everyone for the help, drove them back to their cars and then came back to Ray’s Restaurant for an early supper. 

 August 10 and 11^th More Major Boat Work

            The boat was torn up again to try to solve some very minor problems.  The SSB radio was not working correctly and at times would activate the bow thruster.  The chart plotter would also cut out when we were under sail power.  Mark spent all Thursday till 7:30pm and Todd and Anthony were back in the morning to continue trying to solve some minor problems. We thought everything was ready to go about 5 that night when Hank decided to test the engine.  To everyone chagrin, the engine made no sound! Back to work, what had they done in threading the wires that could have caused the engine not to start?  Finally after thinking at all the possible logical reasons and seeing no connection, Hank asked if there could be some type of kill switch on this engine.  So now the pedestal was taken apart and vola  there was a micro-switch on the throttle.  Problem solved, now lets put all things back together.  Time 7:30 pm.