Review of Past Week

Elisa flew off on Tuesday evening for business in Las Vegas.  Hurricane Irene disrupted her subsequent travel plans to Europe but she managed to get a flight out of Philadelphia and telephoned us last night from Frankfurt.  We have all been encouraging her to keep a log of her travels because she'll never be able to remember all of the places she's visited.  She is the "travelingest" person that I've ever known.  I was shown where an additional set of pages was added to her passport to accommodate all of the stamping going on.

Port Townsend Boat Haven

I made my first visit to Port Townsend on Wednesday and it was good to see Mark, Zee, and Seth again at Shoreline Marine Diesel.  While Mark was busy inspecting an engine for an insurance assessment I had a good chat with Zee then walked over to Port Townsend Rigging and said hello to Lisa and Shannon.  Unfortunately, Dan was out but I'll catch up with him later.

Kingston Harbor at Low Tide

Back at Shoreline Mark had the Red Dot R-254 boat heater waiting for me.  He included the two fitting required for the engine connection and will discuss the installation with me later.  It's a great little unit that is easy to install (thanks to Mark's inclusion of the heater option when he set up my Volvo engine) and is rated at 16,000 BTU/Hr@150F while drawing only 3.3 amps.  (http://www.thermokingmichigan.com/showcaseproductdetail.htm?ID=-23254)  Back at the house Arnold checked out the heater's electrics using a 12V motorcycle battery and confirmed that the unit has a 2-speed fan.


Arnold expressed concern about the risk of carbon monoxide asphyxiation, given my plan to have the heater fan extract warm air from the engine compartment.  On Friday we ordered an MTI 60-542 Carbon Monoxide Detector from amazon.com.  It is a hard wired  unit designed for RV and marine use with an 85 db alarm and a memory for reporting the CO level that triggered the alarm.  It draws only 60 milliamps of current.    The cost was $62.93 plus $5.41 tax (and free shipping). (http://www.pplmotorhomes.com/parts/lp-gas/carbon-monoxide-detector-rv.htm?utm_source=google&utm_medium=partsshopping&utm_campaign=partsfeed)

Open Market at Kingston

One of Many Interesting Stalls

Live Entertainment at Market

Elisa had taken me to WalMart where I purchased a Seagate 1TB external disc drive for $89 (plus tax).  It is such a compact unit that conveniently takes its power from the laptop's USB port that on a return solo trip to WalMart I purchased a second one.  I have named one of the drives "Backups".  Stephen helped me to back up an image of my little Acer computer's C drive on the Seagate drive.  When I return to La Paz I'll also back up images of the C drives of the two Toshiba laptops.  I expect to sail out of La Paz with hundreds of movies and lots of music stored on the other Seagate drive, appropriately named "Movies and Music".

At WalMart I also purchased several other items on my USA shopping list: two pairs of hiking shoes of reasonable quality, and two pairs of polarized sun glasses, and a USB hub. The big issue of the shoes is the half sizes available in the USA for my short feet with high insteps.  I was also very happy to find the same model of watch that I had been using since Hawaii, so I purchased two of them at $12.99 each.  (Sometimes it doesn't take much to make me happy.) 

I plan to visit Seattle next week to address my boating shopping list, which includes 2 x 80' spinnaker sheets, a fire blanket, and a couple of good knives.

Yesterday morning I accompanied Sandra to the open market at the picturesque Kingston waterfront and enjoyed the relaxed and jovial atmosphere under a blue and sunny sky.

Larry the Organizer at Left, Arnold at Right, Sandra in Background

Arnold and Sandra's Property at Left

In the afternoon I was privileged to attend the first "street" party in years of this community of 11 or 12 houses.  The venue was the public space at the corner of the Morales property which fronts onto the two dead end streets of the enclave. Arnold's neighbor Larry organized the event and also provided the barbecue meat if I'm not mistaken.  However, everyone in the neighborhood contributed food, drink, tables and chairs.  It was a lot of fun and I very much enjoyed meeting Arnold and Sandra's neighbors.