July 12 - 15 2018 Home port to Astoria

July 12 – 15 Home to Astoria 2018

We left the house around 0730 for our short day trip to one of our favorite places to tie up, the relaxing, small Longview Yacht Club.  After a nice visit with Dave, their friendly welcoming committee, we enjoyed a relaxing evening followed by a 0630 departure for Astoria the next morning.

We always enjoy seeing different vessels along the way like this research vessel and the Stern Wheeler.

The last leg of the Astoria trip was slogging into the incoming tide.  We also noticed that the alternator seemed to stop charging the batteries.  With our trip off to a “normal” start, we then spent 12 hours over the next two days installing our spare alternator.  We were quite thankful that we had had Barb and Craig bring us the spare years ago when they drove to Ladysmith B.C. to join us on the boat.

People sometimes ask us how do you keep busy and/or stay fit on a boat for so long.  Our alternator issue meant a 2 mile round trip walk to Napa to get troubleshooting gadgets.  Once Carl determined the issue with the alternator we broke off a bolt trying to remove the old alternator.  No amount of PV Blaster and pounding with a hammer would budge the bolt.  We had to drill it out.  That meant a 4 mile round trip walk to the local hardware store for more bolts and other miscellaneous items.  This is but one example of how we combine staying busy with staying fit! 

We finished drilling and pounding and Carl successfully installed the new alternator.  Thankfully our 3 mile round trip walk the next evening was for some great BBQ and a movie!

As you can see the old bolt is quite dead, beheaded and drilled.  One of the items purchased at the hardware store was the Goop since the Gojo was not cutting through the grease on our four grease monkey hands.