Just spent a fun filled three days at Shilshoe in Seattle, further commissioning work. I'll have a post up soon with pics and details. In the meantime, enjoy this fun shot.

With Mahalo at her home dock (at least for a few days), this past Sunday it was time for our first cruise. I always like this view when I have been out on boats here. A real thrill to view it from our own.

Ron and Kim are our first guests! Other mutual friends, that happen to have their boat at our same marina, gave us a fresh caught crab on Saturday. So I made a crab and asparagus quiche. 

We cruised around Blake Island, and who do we run into? Red Rover! (comeonrover.com/) Kevin and Allison were ashore so we connected up via cell phone. 

Dream realized! Feeling very "Mahalo!"

We have been accumulating "stuff" for our second home, almost since the day we signed the contract. All the boxes took up the floor area of a one car garage. 

Now you should always check the tides before going cruising, right? How about checking the tides when you are loading a ton or more of goods on the boat, BOB?  I failed miserably, and had to deal with a dock ramp at about a 45 degree angle due to a -9 foot tide. Found out later some of the other folks there were kinda waiting for me to crash the dock cart, as it has happened before. (They don't know me very well yet, hee hee.)

Most important is getting galley squared away. Deb says "Bob, you know we do need room for food too, right?" Actually, the storage in the galley and adjoining spaces swallowed it all up quite nicely with room to spare.

We took a lunch/shopping break. While walking back to the car from the restaurant I got stung by a bee. Since my foot was kind of swelling, at the store I bought some Benadryl and took it, so I was dragging all afternoon.

But I did make time to play with my new tools. Love that built in tool box! 

We wanted to make dinner on board and wanted it to be super easy because we would be tired. Nachos seem to fit the bill well. Breaking in the new cookie sheet and oven.

Ah, the good life. Literally, Good Life beer! Life is a bowl on (Rainier) cherries? How apropos. Spiffy new melamine plates.

Dinner with a view of the Seattle skyline. 

The day was a good workout, lots of "boat yoga" as they say.  Bees really pack a punch in those tiny bodies. As I type this, it is the next morn, and my foot kept me awake half the night. 

​But enough of that, today we cruise! 

NOZAMA is our 14' Walker Bay tender.  This week we got the chocks mounted where she rides on the flybridge deck. 

Jeff and Chris of Yacht Systems getting ready to drill the first holes. On this day we mount the chocks, but not the padeyes for the tie downs. Everyone in the Seattle marine business is super busy right now. Through my review with Steve D'Antonio I found out there's a right way and a wrong way to mount padeyes in a cored deck like this. 

The wrong way is to just drill a hole for a self-tapping screw, put some 5200 on it, and screw it in. The 5200 is not designed to seal to stainless steel. (This is from 3M's website: "3M™ Marine Adhesive Sealant 5200 is a one-component, high-strength, moisture-curing, gap-filling polyurethane for permanent bonding of wood, gelcoat and fiberglass.")

The right way is to drill out holes larger than the screw, auger our some of the core around each hole, and fill with epoxy. The next day you drill out the hole, and thru-bolt screws.  This involves getting to the underside of the core, obviously (for the backing plate and nuts). Which is way the lazy guys do it the wrong way.  We have a guy scheduled to do it next week, the right way!

We figured out that given NOZAMA's mounting location, we can drill out the underside without making any more holes that show. Two will be above the salon headliner. The other will be where we already have a camera mounted so we will modify the mount for the camera a bit to permit being able to do the thru-bolting. 

I just need to add a longer painter and this is a one-person operation. 

Me bringing her aboard for the first time! I really like this Steelhead crane. I'll like it even better when the wireless remote starts working. NOZAMA is going to add lots of fun and utility to our cruising.

We brought her home yesterday, July 12. (No way we were doing it today, heh heh.)

Good trip with training Captain Bob Smith (fatcatmarine.com/) provided by Hampton as part of commissioning. I stayed on the boat for the previous four nights to help the commissioning process along. 

We have to go back next week for some more work but we are solidly in the transition phase now!  Sorry I haven't been doing more blog posting. I have lots of pictures, etc, just not enough time.