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...

Nova Scotia and Driving Across Canada

As promised, here are a few pics from our visit to Nova Scotia and our cross Canada drive. Rani had met most of my friends in Nova Scotia on her last 2 visits. This time it was my turn to meet her many friends in Ontario and beyond.

We visited with my parents near Bridgewater and even got a brief sail in one day. Dad's boat is the yellow one in the background. I helped Dad put in the wharf and launch the boat.

Dad is expanding the vegetable garden this year.

Mum is working in the 1/3 acre vineyard - certainly the neatest vineyard we saw in our travels.

Patricia and Lucy Traves show us what they have planned for the garden this year. Mike picked us up at the airport after we rolled into Dartmouth after our 1.5 day flight from Phoenix (Thankyou, Thankyou!).




We also visited with Fraser and Jean Howell. The maple trees were productive this year and they gave us a jar of syrup from their own sugar shack to take home with us.

And with Curtis McIntyre - my old buddy from Unisys.

Next, we drove through Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, stopping to visit friends along the way before entering Maine. We stopped in the seaside towns of Camden and Rockport, where I got my fill of wooden boats and introduced Rani to this part of the world.

We also stopped at L.L. Bean to buy a new fleece for Rani and to drool over all the lovely camping and outdoors gear and clothing.

The camping part of this trip was not ideal. Heavy rain the first night showed us that my little 2 man tent is far from waterproof and we woke up floating on our thermarest mattresses. The next day, we did get a hike in and dried out in a hotel in New Hampshire.

We left the motel with all our gear dry and restowed and headed for Mount Washington, the highest peak in the Presidential range at about 6200 feet. Pictured here are a group of snow boarders headed for the cabins at the base of a bowl where there is still spring skiing.


Near the peak, the trail is marked by cairns and the flora is alpine.

It was very windy on the top of Mount Washington - nearly 60 mph and cold.

Rani makes sure the hut does not blow away.

From New Hampshire we drove through Vermont and up to Montreal, where we visited my friend Bruce McNab, with whom I played trumpet at McGill University 25 years ago. We headed to a cottage in the Laurentians where Bruce kept me out of trouble scrubbing algae off rocks and painting the boat house.

Dinner at the cottage with Olga, little Catherine, and Bruce.



" You missed a spot!" Bruce puts his MBA to good use.

Next we drove into Ontario where we stayed with Roxy and Patrick and their daughter Natasha at their lovely home in Unionville just outside of Toronto.

We visited Niagara Falls on our (somewhat convoluted) way to Hamilton, Sarnia, and Windsor.

The Maid of the Mist gives perspective to the falls.

There was a lovely display of hydrangeas at the botanical gardens at Niagara Falls.

We had little time to stop along the way, but managed to fit in a short hike or two, in this case around some wetlands along Lake Erie.

In London, we visited with Neeta and Nikita, friends from when Rani lived in Windsor in the 90's

In Sarnia we visited with Karen, another pharmacy friend.

And in Windsor we visited several friends, including Joy, Terry, and Terry's daughter Sarah. Rani lived in Windsor for several years, so on some days we visited up to 20 people!

In Windsor, we stayed with Rani's old friend Raj, whose wife, Kash was away on a course unfortunately.

After we left Ontario, it was back to camping. We drove through Detroit and across the US on the I-80n and I-90, enjoying less expensive gas, good highways, and great scenery. I finally waterproofed the floor of our little tent after another wet night.

Rani inspects the comfortable interior of a pioneer covered wagon in Wyoming.

We visited Angelita, another Ontario friend, in Sheridan,Wyoming.

Then a few more nights camping and we were back in BC! Note the triple tarp approach - one over the tent, one under, and one inside. Of course it did not rain that hard after we did all this, but at least we were bone dry!

Back in BC

Well, we have made it back to BC from Nova Scotia after a few days in the eastern states, a whirlwind tour visiting Rani's friends in Ontario, and then a quick drive across the mid and north western states, camping along the way. Some rain in Maine, which did not fall mainly on the plain, but ended up in our tent making Rani a bit unhappy. There were a few dry days of camping, thankfully, and we enjoyed some side-trips for sightseeing and hiking trails. More details and pics to follow.

Don't fly Delta

We made it back to Nova Scotia, despite Delta's best attempts to prevent this. Here is a little email I wrote to Delta during our return flight from Phoenix via Detroit and Delta's 'helpful' boilerplate response:

Dear Delta,

We were booked on flight 3564 from Detroit to Halifax last night at 5:25 pm. After two hours on the tarmac, we were told to disembark and scan our boarding passes. Your system then erroneously re-booked us on an Air Canada flight that was set to leave within one (1) minute from the scanning time! We saw an agent who supposedly corrected this and put us back on the original but now delayed flight. When we showed up this morning at 5 am to catch the delayed flight 3564, we showed our original boarding passes, the agents boarded us and our luggage was placed on board. After a delay of an hour we were told to leave the plane and our luggage was removed because our boarding passes were not showing up in the system. The flight was delayed and we are now delayed another day, waiting for an evening flight out. All this because of a foolish system error and an even more foolish inability to correct the mistake using common sense!

While Delta was kind enough to provide a hotel and meal voucher plus compensation for today's foul up, surely this could have been handled more sanely if common sense was used rather than slavish adherence to an obviously flawed 'automated' system? The plane flew with three empty seats that should have been occupied by three people who were obviously legitimate customers - each of us having valid printed boarding passes for the original flight. More than a hundred people were directly inconvenienced by this delay!

I request that you investigate why, following the delay of 3564, the scanning of our boarding passes resulted in an impossible re-booking for us and another passenger. Also, why was it not possible to correct this mistake when we notified an agent of it last night? Finally, why was common sense thrown to the winds this morning when it was clear from our boarding passes that we should have been on the delayed flight 3564?

If we do not receive some sort of assurance that you are doing something to address these problems, I will hesitate to fly Delta again or to recommend your airline to anyone.

Regards,
Chris Bennett

And Delta's response:

Dear Mr. Bennett,

Thank you for contacting us.

Our goal is to provide the highest possible standard of service in all areas of our operation, and we regret that we did not meet your expectations on this occasion. We monitor performance throughout our company, and your comments will be very helpful.

Thank you for giving Delta the opportunity to serve your travel needs.

Sincerely,

Mark Johnson
Online Customer Support Desk
http://www.delta.com

Haul out and home to Nova Scotia

We have now been in the Singlar marina in Guaymas for 3 days, making Ladybug ready for the summer. The summer here is very hot, particularly when your boat is pulled out on the hard. We put away everything that we can to protect from the sun, including the sails, dinghy (in our case the kayak), and even the various ropes, which get stored inside the mast and boom or bundled up in cloth bags with light sacrificial 'messenger' lines left to handle the UV. Inside, we make sure every locker is left open to allow circulation and we tape foil lined insulation on all the port lights. The head is flushed with fresh water and olive oil to keep the rubber seals lubricated, and the diesel engine is put to bed with fresh oil.

It has not all been work. The marina is very close to downtown and we visited the local market where Rani picked up 5 delicious canteloupe melons and 10 green peppers for less than two dollars in total. We have an open air disco in the marina, which lulls us to sleep each night and we watched some local lovelies preparing their runway walk for the Miss Guaymas pageant that was also hosted at the marina. Before supper tonight we wandered over to a stage on the malecon where dance troupes from all over Mexico were performing traditional and avant garde numbers. We recognized some mariachi favorites from our New Year's stay in Tlaxcala and I was particularly impressed by a bevy of beauties doing Tahitian style dancing and a young and incredibly flexible couple who acted out a story in dance involving copious draughts of tequila. In one traditional dance troupe, the men each wielded two machetes, clashing them together between their legs and behind their backs, at one point while blindfolded! They also crossed 'swords' with each other sometimes with one of their lovely partners in the middle of the fray. I found myself subconsciously ducking as they swung their blades around and around at head level, all the while performing complicated choreography. Another group balanced glasses of water on their heads while doing numbers that got progressively more animated – only a few glasses went tumbling and the ladies did better than the men in keeping their heads dry.

We haul out the day after tomorrow across the bay. The harbour is very shallow – less than 6 feet in places – so we will sail over tomorrow night at high tide. We take a bus to Phoenix after we haul out and after a night in a hotel, fly to Nova Scotia. From there we will drive Rani's Nissan back to BC.

North from Escondido and Across the Sea

Over the point the full moon is rising, reflected in the black waters of Catalina Bay. An occasional puff ripples the surface, scattering the reflected light. The friendly ruby glow of a chart table light reaches us from the far side of the anchorage where Plume, a stout Lyle Hess-designed North Sea 27 lies at anchor. She flies a Swiss flag and earlier over drinks and appetizers, we had enjoyed the company of the young family that sails her. The bright moon outlines rolling hills, white sand beaches, and the jagged rocks that guard the entrance to the bay. It is a tranquil and lovely scene and I feel sad to know that soon we will be far away from here and Ladybug will be like a fish out of water, propped up to rest in a dusty boat yard for the summer.


Cruising north from El Gato.


View from atop Isla Coronados over the anchorage.


Isla Coronodos - Rani is looking at ancient shells, which are found in the raised ocean bed below the volcanic peak.


Chris sits 'under' one of the dwarf trees on Coronodas - a Torote Blanco, the sign says.

The 100 mile crossing from San Juanico on the Baja took just over 24 hours with light north westerly breezes for much of the sail. Earlier that morning we said good bye to our friends on Speck. We had finally caught up with Gary and Beth at San Juanico and spent a few days there catching up on the goings on in their lives, hiking, and sharing meals. Speck headed south an hour or so after us. They had reached their northern turn around point and would return to La Paz where they would put Speck away for the summer and drive their elderly van back to Eugene, Oregon. Gary and Beth were expecting their first grandchild and they were clearly thrilled by the prospect.


Ladybug at anchor in emerald waters.


Gary and Beth visit us on Ladybug - no Gary does not (willingly) play the ukelele.


A slew of boats of all sizes were in the San Juanico anchorage, ranging from a micro tug of about 20 feet all the way to 'Ocean', a charter boat that carried two large fishing boats on her deck.

On this leg, we also met up with our friends Dennis and Lisette on Windward, when we sailed into the lovely beach lined anchorage at Isla Coronados, our first stop after leaving Puerto Escondido. We followed them the next day to San Juanico and Dennis and I enjoyed hiking an extended version of the ridge hike that we had all done the previous year when we had first met Windward in this anchorage. Windward will continue to cruise north before following us across the sea to haul out for the summer.


Beth and the ample spread at a beach potluck in San Juanico, organized by Rani.


Dennis and Lisette toasting marshmallows at the San Juanico potluck. Chris plays uke in the background with a little help from his friends.

One of the hardest things has been to say goodbye to friends, but knowing we will be back next year makes it a little easier. We are currently getting Ladybug prepared for summer storage, cleaning and oiling the teak interior and removing the stains from our 'stainless' steel (stanchions, winches, blocks, dorades, etc.). Tomorrow we will strip much of the deck and finish the stainless cleaning and the next day we will tie up in the Singlar marina in Guaymas to do all the things that are easier done alongside with access to running water.



Chris bakes ginger snaps underway on the crossing - note the angle of heal indicated by our gimbaled stove! We are close hauled and it was literally an uphill battle to work in the galley.