Bitter Sweet Recap

Captain Kurt Lorenz and Jamie Orr on the approaches to San Francisco

I am just back from a delivery run from Victoria, BC to San Francisco. The trip was a repeat of the first long passage that Rani and I made on Ladybug in 2008, only this time we took the near shore route and did not stop until we reached Drake's Bay just north of San Francisco. It was a good trip both weather-wise and in terms of crew, but it felt sad to be closing a chapter in our cruising lives, since this will be the last long trip for a while.

Trawler passing astern

Here is a brief synopsis of the voyage, the purpose of which was to deliver Raven, a West Sail 39 owned by friends of ours (Kurt and Nancy) to San Francisco. We met Raven and her owners in Mexico a few years ago and cruised with them on board Ladybug in the Sea of Cortez and on Raven in the Gulf Islands. Nancy did not fancy the trip south, so Kurt asked me and our mutual friend Jamie Orr, to join him for the delivery.

We left Sidney around 10 am on Sunday, motoring south between James and Sidney islands, past the Darcy Islands, and through Baines Channel, past Oak Bay and Trial Island. Crossing the strait to Port Angeles, we cleared customs and bought fresh provisions at a nearby organic market. We departed Port Angeles at dusk and motored to Neah Bay, which we entered around 4 am and tied to the fuel dock.

Jamie piping us into Drakes' Bay

Monday morning we refueled, topping up 6 jerry jugs, which we lashed to shrouds. A fishermen at the fuel dock on a small wood double-ender said we were lucky with the return of summer weather pattern after weeks of lows. He told us that it was usually not a good idea to leave after Sept 15 on this passage.

We motored out of Neah Bay, but soon had the sails set and were beating into a south wind. The wind then died and swung into the NW and we reefed and proceeded south under about half sail. Crew were sea sick and not much cooking was possible. Much fishing traffic that night. Humpbacks and later, gray whales were sighted.

Tuesday
Wind continued N (NW to NE) as we rolled down the coast. We ran off to the south under main and jib, tacking downwind and sailing between 20 and 60 miles out from the coast. As the wind rose to 20+ from the NNE we struck the jib and ran down under prevented 2 reefed main. The 2nd reef line had come undone inside the mast so we tied the clew in with a spare mainsail tie. The below deck autopilot handled the small main well despite following breaking waves.

Morning coffee

Wed-Thurs
The wind rose to 28-32 knots sustained so we turned north into the wind under motor and struck the main. We rolled out about 70 sq feet of jib and ran off under this. Some rolling in seas to 3 meters but much better on the helm and less danger from an accidental jibe. The boat was quite dry with only a few breakers slopping into the cockpit. Took some spray through the open main hatch once. Boards were left in after that. Crew recovered from sea sickness and able to eat hot food and enjoy life again.

Approaching the Golden Gate

Motoring under the Golden Gate Bridge - Video by Kurt Lorenz

Fri-Sat
Wind died to 10 knots and less, directly aft, so after an initial attempt to sail, tacking downwind, we turned on the diesel and motored for 36 hours, hoisting sail near Bodega Bay. We sailed the last few hours into Drakes' Bay, which we reached on Saturday evening, anchoring in heavy fog in company of several boats. We made much use of AIS and radar on our approach.

San Francisco Bay!

Sun
Up at 4 am to motor in fog through salmon fishing boats and under the Golden Gate Bridge its fog shrouded piers just visible. We turned across the shipping lanes and ran to the Presidio area to avoid oncoming commercial traffic. Much use of radar and AIS. Fog thinned and we put out the jib alone to sail dead downwind past Fisherman's wharf, Alacatraz, and Angel island. We passed Treasure Island and ran down to the Berkeley Marine where we tied up in the early afternoon. Commercial shipping was light but there were plenty of yachts to avoid.

Raven safe and sound in Berkeley Marina

Summary
About 800 Nautical miles - Est 64+ hours (approx 3 days) of motoring, 15 hours at 2 docks and anchor, and about 90 hours (3.5+ days) of sailing. The passage from Neah to Drakes took from Monday at about 8 am until Saturday at 6 pm or 5.5 days. We were lucky with having good following winds and clear weather for much of the passage. The GRIB (weather forecast) files we downloaded on passage showed that a low offshore interacting with one below us was causing the stronger winds we experienced, but these disappeared when the Great Basin high returned. So we were able to sail behind the low and use the nice North winds at its top left edge for a few good days.

Food eaten - homemade granola, bread and cheese, pasta and beef/sausage, chili, roast potatoes and omelette, tortilla eggs, potato cheese hash, salads, porridge, chicken coconut curry, many energy bars and 4 large chocolate bars. One bottle of wine and a few tots of whiskey during the last 2 days.

Ladybug II For Sale

Sorry to say that we will be taking a break from cruising for a while. We need to go back to work and want to spend more time with our parents. Ladybug is for sale in New Zealand.

New Blog

I have started another blog to document some of what we are up to outside of the cruising world. It is called "Go The Wrong Way" and can be found here.

The first main thread will look at the building of a gypsy wagon on our lakefront lot in Nova Scotia. Actual construction will begin in June - I am currently deep into the design phase.

Coast 34 Owners web site created

Together with Doug Swanson of Ka'sala, we have started a new site dedicated to the Coast 34 sailboat (of which Ladybug II is an example). The site, which can be found at https://sites.google.com/site/coast34owners/ contains a list of Coast 34 owners and information about the boat. We may add a forum to allow discussion, but for now, owners and others are welcome to comment on the site or provide us with feedback via email.

Coast 34 Cutter

Installing a new tub

OK OK - not exactly a post related to cruising, but I thought it might be helpful to someone to share some of our experiences putting in two new bathtubs in my friend Ian's house. I am staying with Ian after having rented our house in Duncan on my way out to Nova Scotia.

Old tub - does not look too bad in picture but is quite worn and has been recoated once already...

 One thing that many articles and videos on Youtube neglect to cover in any detail is how to get out the old tub and how to put the new one in. Here are a few pointers I have picked up during the 3 tub installs I have done in the last year.

New tub - Ian with my niece's bear who assisted with the installs.

The order of destruction/construction is roughly:

Rip off tiles or old surround. Tile removal is therapeutic according to Ian...




Removing old tiles

 

Correct technique for removing tiles.

Cut away any wet drywall (we found that water had made its way behind the tiles (perhaps through unsealed grout). Scrape off old adhesive to make wall reasonably level.



Wall scraped to make even for installing the surround - note dry wall removed well above plumbing
to allow us to remove and install the tubs by swinging them up and into this space.



Cut away a piece of drywall at the tap end of the tub to a height of about 36 to 40 inches above the tub lip. Remove any insulation and vapour barrier and save to re-install later. This provides access to the plumbing and allows room for you to swing the new tub into place, allowing the skirt to clear the wall. You need room between the two end wall equal to the length of the diagonal of the new tub and this provides enough length, at least for a 20 inch high tub...



Measuring diagonal to see how much space we need to swing the tub through.



Cut away the drywall along the back length and foot of the tub up at least a couple of inches higher than the taller of the new/old tubs. Again - This allows you to tilt the tub away from the wall to help as you swing the old tub out and the new tub.

Old plumbing - Note drywall, insulation, and vapour barrier have been removed.
We will remove the valve assemblies to allow the tub to swing past.

Disconnect the drain by unscrewing the flange inside the tub. One way to do this is to insert a wrench or adjustable slip jaw pliers and use another pair of pliers or wrench at right angles as a handle. Unscrew the overflow plate. Turn off the water and unscrew the taps and faucet. You will need to remove the handles first...

You should now be able to lift the end of the tub beside the plumbing, tilting it slightly out from the back wall and wiggling it free of the drywall. You may have to work a bit to make it clear the old plumbing. If it will not clear this, you may need to cut the old plumbing taps out.

You will need to measure and put together a drain/overflow assembly for the new tub based on the dimensions and location of the drain overflow cutouts in the tub and the position of the drain pipe in the floor. The latter was a problem for us and required cutting old drain pipe (1.5" ABS plastic) and moving the drain location to line up with the tub overflow pipe. We assembled the plumbing at the tub and welded this with ABS cement and then attached the this to the newly positioned floor drain in the bathroom.

Now is also a good time to redo the faucet and taps, perhaps moving to a single tap installation. This required us to do a lot of copper cutting, joining, and soldering. We used an old baking sheet to protect the wood from being scorched and cut the old copper with a hacksaw. A pipe cutter would have been nice.

New faucet installed - lots of copper joints but quite easy to do it yourself with an appropriate torch.

The new tub may be quite a bit deeper than the old. This can make it tricky to install, but if you have cut away the drywall on the plumbing wall to a good height, you should be able to install the tub by swing it down from an on-end position with the high end swinging down into the cavity you have made in the plumbing wall. Again a slight twisting out from the wall may be needed until the tub is almost down flat.

Hook up the drain plumbing being careful to compress the gaskets evenly to get a good seal.

Finally, you will want to shim the tub's supports (for us this involved feet in one tub and rails in another. Because of the skirt, it is very hard to reach the feet to shim, so we cut an access in the drywall along the back of the tub to let us reach in and place a shim. You may be able to avoid this by initially cutting away at least 2 inches of drywall all around the top of the tub so that you can temporarily lift the tub to slide in the thin wood shims. 

Checking for leaks

Fill the tub with water and check for leaks (a long arm helps as you have to reach behind the tub for this. Fill up so the overflow overflows, too...

While the tub is full, secure the lip via drywall screws either through the lip or immediately above it, depending on the type of tub.

When replacing the drywall, use a product designed specifically for this purpose - not regular drywall. We found some very nice fibreglass faced panels that are 5 feet by 32" - 2 of these did the 2 bathrooms and are easier to fit in a car than the 4 X 8 sheets. We cut them using a knife and straight edge. 

We put in a polystyrene tub surround, too. Use a cardboard template to position cutouts for tap, faucet and shower and don't forget to cut out holes for the cover plate screws to go through.

PL 700 adhesive applied to back of new surround panel




New surround in place.

Preparations for the upcoming season

For the last few months we have been working part time and getting the house ready to rent out because we are planning a longer trip on Ladybug II. We hope to make the Pacific crossing in the spring of 2012 to New Zealand via French Polynesia and assorted South Pacific islands. There - I've written it, so now we have to do it! Well - anything can happen between now and the spring, but we are planning as if we will be away for two years or more...

Perhaps the biggest project we hope to complete before the spring is to improve the charging capabilities so that we can run a refrigerator. Rani sees this as a necessity to keep veggies for more than a few days in the tropics.

Even a well insulated small 12 volt fridge will draw 20-30 amp-hours per day. And to take this little power, we will need to add insulation and gaskets to make our ice box much more efficient at retaining the cold. The number of bits and pieces this project will require is amazing, because we have to make the power initially, store it during periods when we are not using the motor or the sun does not cooperate, and then draw as little as possible. Parts include:

• additional closed cell insulation sheets (5" total wall thickness)
• FRP board to re-line the icebox
• 2 gaskets for the lid
• new counter material for when we tear apart the galley
• fiberglass and epoxy to hold it all together
• 3 to 5 new batteries (our batteries are nearly 9 years old) 
• a smart regulator for a high output Balmar alternator (which the previous owners generously left as a spare)
• 2 extra solar panels and wiring + brackets + through deck glands
• ... and the list goes on. 

We already have an Adler Barbour compressor and plate that appear to work, but just can't keep things cold with less than 2 inches of insulation and an unsealed lid.

Carrying enough spare parts for the engine and other systems is also a concern, so in addition to the usual disposable items we are going to lay in a spare raw water pump, starter motor, shifting cable, and possibly a spare injector. We have a spare fuel lift pump and a good set of gaskets and miscellaneous bits from the previous owners.

Radar internals

We recently bid on and won the (hopefully) working guts of a Raytheon radar on eBay to replace the defunct one that did not work when we purchased the boat. Our EPIRB battery is out of service, so we need to replace the battery. The water maker has started leaking and the little parts to fix this are hundreds of dollars, so we will attempt a Mexican fix and failing this will retire it and rig up a system to collect rain water.

On a fun note - I just bought a little Singer portable sewing machine (1953 Featherweight 221) that should be very useful on the boat. We need to make new covers for hatches and repair the mainsail cover, among other stitching chores. The 'new' machines sews beautifully and is simple and well made (see picture). It has a zigzag attachment, so I may even see how it does with reinforcing our UV patch on the jib!

Singer 221 and attachments - the bed folds up and the whole things weighs < 20 lbs (11 lbs for the machine)

Much of this stuff, we have already purchased, and will have to lug to Phoenix, via the UK and Nova Scotia (visiting our parents). We will buy the rest in Phoenix and area or have it shipped to our Phoenix hotel. Then with a rental car stuffed to capacity we will drive the 7 or 8 hours south to Guaymas, returning the car a day or 2 later and busing back down.

Back at home, we need to move our stuff (again!) into storage, sell the car, arrange for someone to be a contact for our tenants, and work out the various flights and visits on our way back down to the boat.  Phew - it makes me exhausted just thinking about this!

Hardwood flooring and back to the job world

My idyllic life as a house husband came to an end this week. For the past 2 months I have been renovating our house, painting and installing flooring, cleaning, and making lunches and suppers for Rani. The projects are not done, but it's time to earn, what cruisers Lin and Larry Pardey call 'Freedom Chips'. I am back at the CHISEL research lab at the University of Victoria working for the professor who supervised my Masters thesis a few years ago. I will also be teaching a third year computer science at the university on systems analysis, starting in September. Meanwhile, the renovations continue...

After the vinyl flooring was finished, we moved on to the living room and hallway, removing the old paneling in the living room (2 layers of it on one wall!).

Living room exposed drywall. The back of the paneling is quite a nice mahogany like ply.

The walls under the paneling were dry-walled, thankfully, so all I had to do was fill in some unfinished areas and all the nail holes from the paneling. Note the delightful russet coloured carpet and the back of the old fridge.

We painted the living room ceiling (it was stained brown from cigarette smoke etc), the walls (a llight grey green) and the hallway (a lighter shade of the kitchen yellow).

Hallway with new paint and old carpet.

We also painted the living room floors after soaking various spots along the walls with vinegar and hydrogen peroxide to remove cat odours.

Painted subfloor - paint was recycled from an enviro-depot. Walls are painted a light grey green.

I could not find a second hand manual hardwood nailer locally at a decent price and renting an air powered nailer would cost $80 per day, but I managed to find one through craigslist in Winnipeg and the owner posted it to us for a total cost of $70, including a couple of boxes of nails.

The nailer is made in Quebec and is designed for the DIY crowd

because you can strike it multiple times to set each nail. 

The nailer did not come with a mallet, so I taped discs of vinyl flooring to my 2.5 lb pocket sledge hammer and another disc on the nailer face to cushion the blow. It takes me 3 or 4 blows to set a nail and I have managed to jam the thing twice so far, requiring a disassemble to free it up. However it works very well, driving heavy 2 inch nails into the tongue of each board at 45 degrees. The alternative, and what you do when you near a wall is to pre-drill for 2" finishing nails and nail each one by hand, setting the nail in with first the side of a nail set and then its point. 

Chris using the nailer.

Some of the hardest bits are around doorways and entrances. There are 9 of these in the hallway and living room! 3 Closets, 3 bedrooms, a bathroom, and the kitchen and dining room entrances. Each requires undercutting trim so that the flooring will slide under it as well as cutting complex threshold pieces. I picked up a nice old Rockwell table saw to do these longer beveled cuts.

Beveled piece bridging kitchen to hallway. The nails holes will be filled with

putty and the raw wood varnished to match.

The flooring job should be finished by the time Rani flies to th UK to visit he parents and relatives in a couple of weeks. 

Installing vinyl roll flooring in a moderately complex room

The new vinyl flooring (slate tile look) is finally complete. It took about a week longer than I had originally thought it would (almost like a software development project!)

For those of you who might be thinking of replacing your flooring in the kitchen or perhaps a laundry area, here is what we went through to DIY this:

We started by removing the old carpet, which was well glued down. Ironically, our carpet installer remembered installing this carpet in the kitchen a few years back. He did a very thorough job of it, using plenty of glue.

This is the old flooring - carpet with 1960's era tiles.

Next we peeled off the tiles. Opinions vary on this and it appears that most professionals will opt to level the existing tiles in place if they are pretty solid. This is partly a cost thing and partly because the old tiles and adhesive may contain asbestos, which requires special removal gear and permits. I am pretty sure our tiles do contain asbestos, so I was careful not to break them where possible. Here is a website that will help you identify if your tiles contain asbestos (isn't the Internet great!: http://inspectapedia.com/hazmat/Asbestos_Floor_Tile_ID.php)

I used Rani's iron to get each tile nice and warm to melt the adhesive enough to lift. It takes about 2 minutes per 1 ft square tile - 16 seconds at 6 different iron positions. The iron is at a cotton setting and I put a piece of newspaper between it and the tile to avoid marring the base of the iron or melting the tile. Fumes weren't an issue unless I got bored and let the iron sit for too long in one spot.

Iron set on Cotton. Note scraper used to get things started. The grey area has already been leveled (I did the tile lifting in stages and leveling the sticky black areas allowed me to move around the kitchen without getting stuck in the tarpit.

Half way through the tile removal and leveling process.

The 'cutback adhesive' is a black gooey tar compound, which may also have asbestos fibers in it. The reason I did not worry too much about this is that these fibers are pretty well trapped and unlikely to get airborne. This adhesive must be either removed (tricky and potentially messy) or covered completely to prevent any bleed-through into the vinyl flooring that will sit on top. To do this and to level the floor I used Planipatch with Planipatch Plus additive. The latter is used in place of water and apparently makes the whole thing more flexible and also a better sealer. It is certainly an expensive gallon of liquid - about $30 and appears to be a dilute white glue. I used close to a gallon and about 10 lbs of the patching compound to level the floor. It is applied thin in a slurry - much thinner than plaster and then spread with a trowel. Then you sand it (not too bad as it does not kick up a lot of dust) and then fill in the bits you missed to make the floor level. I did this a few times in selected areas where the plywood sheets did not quite meet evenly or there were defects in the wood.

When the floor is level and all baseboards and appliances removed, it is time to measure the room. Pros no doubt do this on the fly and dispense with a template, but I chose to make a giant paper template out of butcher paper taped together because the room is quite complex with two closets, a few doorways, and a jutting counter. The triangles in the picture are where the template is stuck down to the floor to prevent shifting.

Templating the first half of the room.

The room is just over 12 feet across and about 21 feet long, so to make things simpler, I decided to lay two pieces about 11 feet by 12.5 feet each and join them down the middle with a seam. This is tricky stuff to get just right, so I was quite good at procrastinating over the 2 or 3 days before I cut into the vinyl!

Vinyl roll laid out to template and mark on our living room carpet.

For marking and cutting, you need to lay out the vinyl on a large flat surface. Some people use their driveways but ours is quite wonky, so I used the living room floor. Ideally we would have taken up the carpet and done this on the plywood, but I was not ready to do this yet, so I very carefully traced the template outline on the vinyl  leaving lots of allowance for trimming later. It turned out that I should have trusted the template because in almost all cases I ended up trimming back to the template lines and this trimming added hours to the job.

 Here us the first half dry fitted. There is a closet around the right corner and one on the near right.

Try to do this with a real slate or ceramic tile!

The second piece was rough cut based on tape measurements and then laid over the first piece to cut the seam along a shared 'grout' line. The finished seam is shown below.

Seam is along the horizontal line nearest the top of the picture.

I then templated the second half by lining up the butcher paper with the first half and covering the rest of the room. I also allowed some tolerance here and did much trimming back to make the vinyl fit around counters and corners.

Ready to glue - the seam runs right down the middle of the room, so I was very careful when I cut and aligned it!

The next step was to apply the adhesive. This is done in two goes for each half, rolling back the bit to be glued and then rolling it out over the glue using a rolling pin and hands to work out bubbles and spread the glue. 

Installing adhesive. This tub cost about $40 or $50 dollars - yikes! The tile to the left is the 2nd piece that has been dry fitted.

And voila - here is the finished result:

Rani enjoying our 'new' kitchen.

View into the dining area. The air conditioner still has to go - a project for next month.

10 things to know before sailing to Mexico from Canada and/or the Pacific Northwest

We just visited a couple who are leaving from Comox on a Coast 34 to sail to Mexico. Before the visit, I tried to think of a short list of things I wished we had known before we sailed. Here it is, admittedly incomplete and uneven in importance :)

1. Checking in to the US. The coast is divided into different jurisdictional areas. If from Canada, you must check in to US customs and immigration (obviously), but you also need to phone in to each new area as you proceed down the coast. You can get a list of phone numbers and names for each area to call when you first check in. Carrying a cell phone is useful because otherwise you have to land and find a land line to call from.

2. Liability insurance is required in Mexico by marinas and storage yards. It is quite inexpensive and we have been told you only need the minimum (costs about $200) because the Mexican legal system is not supportive of huge law suits. You can buy liability insurance beforehand via phone or online. http://www.bajabound.com/boat/faq.php

3. When you sign in to Mexico and get a temporary import permit (TIP) you will need your engine serial numbers. You can also buy a TIP online, we have heard.

4. Almost all the paper and electronic charts are very inaccurate in Mexico - especially in the Sea of Cortez and south. They are off by miles and not consistent in their inaccuracy. Some newer GPSs allow you to correct for this and there are some electronic charts that have been corrected, but do not rely on your GPS position corresponding with the chart without verifying this. The detailed chart for Ensenada in the chart book we used was off by 2 miles!

5. You will need to clean your hull much more often in the warm, rich waters, particularly near river mouths. You can hire local divers who use compressors at marinas for about 1 US dollar per foot of boat length (or water line length in some cases). If you do it yourself, plan on becoming very good at holding your breath or use compressed air.

6. In some places small jelly fish are an issue while snorkeling. Wearing leggings and long sleeve shirts helps or you can use a full wet suit or lycra jelly fish suit.

7. Dental work and medical work is cheap and of decent quality. We had our teeth cleaned for $35 by a dentist who did a thorough job. We talked to cruisers who had mole removal and other minor operations for far less than they would cost up north. Quality of care varies so ask local cruisers for advice.

8. A reliable autopilot with back up or in addition to a wind vane make the long downwind sail less stressful. We were always worried that our little wheel pilot would fail.

9. There is an excellent newer guide to cruising the Sea of Cortez available from a lovely cruising couple who publish it themselves in Washington state:  See http://www.exploringcortez.com/  It is hard to buy in Canada, but can be picked up along the way (Downwind Marine in San Diego has them) or you can order it online. It is far superior to the other guides we bought that are more general (Raines, Charlies Charts).

10. There are a few food/drink things that are hard to get or very expensive in Mexico: Nuts, good chocolate (Trader Joes is a good place to stock up in California), good inexpensive wines (buy in California), black tea (the Mexicans seem to mainly drink herbal teas and coffee), sharp cheeses (most Mexican cheeses are softer and have a milder flavour).

House Renos

Rani is back working part time at a couple of pharmacies in Duncan and I am renovating our vintage 1972 house. A couple of weeks into the renovation my brother Mike, and his wife Wallapak, daughter Claire, and mother in law showed up and spent the weekend here. Everyone camped out on borrowed air mattresses - great fun!

Our new to us house on Carmel Drive in Duncan.

Sample of the decor - lilac fixtures in the bathroom

Louis XIV towel hanger

Multi-level beige carpet in living room

The kitchen needed a bit of cleaning. I used a kg of TSP, 3 tablespoons per bucket at a time to clean the walls and ceilings. It took 4 days of scrubbing to get rid of years of deep fat frying and smoking residues!

Painting the ceiling made the 'white' even whiter.

Kitchen paint finished. Carpet is being removed.

The vinyl roll flooring looks like slate but is easier to install and warmer on the feet. This will go in the kitchen/dining area. We will install real hardwood (on the left of the picture) in the living room and hall.

Our friends Del and Ann dropped by and lent us some portable scaffolding (very useful for painting) as well as a folding table. We will be in camping mode until we get the kitchen flooring installed and then plan to move in some furniture while I put in the hardwood floor.

My brother Mike and family visited. This is the first time I have seen Claire, who was born in Thailand last August.

Our wash basin is just the right size for Claire.

We have finally finished the bedrooms - new paint, light fixtures, and carpet. Here I am scraping off the underlay, which in the bedroom has decomposed and stuck like glue to the plywood underlay. Not designed to last 40 years apparently (although the better underlay under the living room carpet appears solid!) Note that my smile is fake.

Bedroom painted and floor painted. Ready for carpet install.

Completed master bedroom with elegant borrowed inflatable mattress. Will paint the gold ceiling fixture white.  (Our neighbors gave us 2 fixtures that they rescued from the recyclers).

I am currently removing the fairly recent carpet from the kitchen dining area and will level the old tiles before putting in the roll flooring.

We are re-using the carpet on our deck and entranceway. While it is not outdoor carpet, these areas are protected to some extent. Better than the green astro turf look anyway...