Walldog's Journeys, Willie's Tug

[walldog]

Happy Hour at La Conner

Roger and Janet joined Willie's Tug for happy hour last evening in La Conner. Roger and Janet are from Sequim and own a C-Dory Tomcat.

Clair and Richard also stopped by, they recently purchased Restless, a R27 that was formerly at Bellingham, now based at La Conner.

More on the subject in our Walldog's Journeys blog post.http://walldogsjourneys.blogspot.com/2012/06/happy-hour-at-la-conner.html

 

[walldog]

Anchorage at Fishermans Bay

We slip into the narrow channel that leads to Fisherman's Bay on Lopez Island.  Our first trip here, we look for a suitable spot to anchor.  We are at about half tide and find 9-10 feet below our hull all over the bay.  Lots of private mooring buoys taking up space as most of them are empty.  We see a nice open area out from the Lopez Islander Resort and stake our claim.  The Rocna sets perfectly tugging our bow around smartly as we back away.  Pushing the throttle up to over 1000 RPMs in reverse holds steady, we are home.  After a bit we hear a seaplane taxi out into the bay.  We watch in awe as he pours the coals to his throttle and lifts off just a few feet from us on our starboard side.  When another lands and takes off on our port side, we wonder if we have broken some unwritten rule about anchoring in Fisherman's Bay.

After speaking with the Marina attendant, we find that it is suggested that you anchor East of an unmarked line.  So our second night here, we move a bit East just to give Kenmore Air plenty of room.  I am glad they do not fly at night.

After moving in closer to a dinghy dock for Jake's ferry, we find an anchorage that appears we will not bump into adjacent boats.  During the night the weather picks up with rain and winds.  In the early morning I hear a crash bump bump and jump out of bed.  After assuring myself that we did not in fact bump into another boat, I find that a case of Diet Cokes has tumbled over in the cockpit.  What a noise!!  Scary!!

Anyway after daylight we determine that the Rocna has again held fast and it does not appear to have dragged any at all even with the wind and waves.  Looks as if the weather will improve as the day goes on and this afternoon will bless us with drier conditions.

 

[walldog]

Willie posted a write up of our first day of the Desolation Sound Cruise. If you are interested, you can see it here:
http://andwilliesaid.blogspot.ca/2012/07/ganges-salt-spring-island-canada-7272012.html

Lots of pictures of TugNuts having fun.

 

[walldog]

Desolation Sound 8-1-2012
Willie's Tug was cruising up the Homfray Channel, destination Homfray Lodge, a new remote wilderness lodge that just happens to have a nice dock. Since Homfray Lodge is only accessible by water, this is a necessity. What a pleasant surprise to arrive and find that 3 C-Brats had arrived ahead of us and were already sampling the wonderful hospitality of the Macey brothers. Katmai, Dreamer and Sea Pal were proudly lined up on the dock.

We spent two nights visiting with old and new friends before moving on to continue our tour of this fabulous area.

Left to Right: Roger of Dreamer, Bob of Sea Pal, Betsy of Sea Pal, Mary of Katmai, Casey of Katmai, and Herb of Willies Tug.
Jake, Sleeping on the dock.

 

[walldog]

On the Water Again

http://walldogsjourneys.blogspot.com/20 ... again.html

 

[walldog]

Willie's Tug spent a couple of days in Traveler's well equipped shop.

Master Cabinet Maker Russ made her some doors for the upper helm shelves and installed some doors for cave access. And generally helped me clean up my installations and modifications. More pictures are in our TugNuts ablums under R27 Modifications.

Many thanks to Russ and Toni for the expert workmanship and hospitality.

 

[JamesTXSD]

Looks good!

 

[Don and Brenda]

Some beautiful work there, I just want the shop!

 

[walldog]

Check out Willie's post to her blog:

It's Been a Hard Days Night

http://andwilliesaid.blogspot.com/2012/ ... 02012.html

While you are at her blog, look around at a couple of the past posts for some Lake Powell pictures.

 

[walldog]

We made plans to cruise to Port Aransas to visit some friends who have their boats moored at Island Moorings Marina. We had done this trip before about 120 miles, but broke it up by stopping at Port Mansfield, El Jefe Marina Y Cantina about 40 miles up the ICW from Port Isabel. El Jefe now closed we made other arrangements to stay at the municipal marina. We planned to leave on Wednesday afternoon for the short run to Port Mansfield and then have a long but do able leg on into Port Aransas on Thursday. Well the best laid plans of mice and men. Weather was really bad on Wednesday, so bad that we did not even make a necessary run over to the fuel dock about 5 miles away by water to top off. But come Thursday morning we awoke to a beautiful day, so up early and finish loading Willie's Tug. By 8 am we had pulled away from our slip at home and headed to the fuel dock. Since we had missed the on the hour opening of the Long Island Swing Bridge for pleasure boaters, we took the long way around to South Point and fuel. We then missed the next on the hour opening by about 6 minutes. We took a chance and made a very business like call to the bridge operator on Channel 12. Commercial boats get an opening at anytime. The operator is familiar with us, he quickly opened the bridge and we scooted through thanking him profusely. We saved about 5 water miles by making the bridge opening.

We set a course up the ICW due North....even though at this point the Gulf ICW is considered running Easterly as you travel from Brownsville toward Louisiana. We decided to run about 12 knots and see how we felt about continuing at the turn off to Port Mansfield. Arriving at the turn around 1130, we decided to continue East Bound (North). A very uneventful trip, we met no tows and only past one before we arrived in Corpus Christi Bay. We hailed him on 16 and he suggested passing him on the 2. In ICW jargon that means we will overtake him on his Port side leaving him on our Starboard side. We had plenty of room on that side and never had to adjust our speed.

After passing through the "Land Cut", we saw that we would not make it into Island Moorings until just after sundown. Not wanting to travel the busy ship channel after dark, we kicked it up a notch to about 16 knots making our arrival time just after 5 pm.

We were met by Skip and Nancy of the Nancy G on the transient docks and escorted to a slip across from theirs. They have kept there boat here for about two years now. Coming up from Harlingen every other weekend. Our friends Joe and Pearl keep their boat "On Your Mark" here also. They will arrive today.

Nancy had drinks and supper ready for us when we arrived. Making a perfect end to a long day.

From the fuel dock at Port Isabel we figure we traveled about 125 Nautical miles (138 statute miles), burning 56.3 gallons of diesel in about 8.5 hours.

Find Willie's Tug

Walldog, Willie and Jake

 

[walldog]

We did not take many pictures during our ICW trip to Port Aransas, but here is an interesting one.

This coyote was trotting along, he stopped to check us out or maybe it was Jake in the cockpit.

Note the windmill in the background. There appear to several hundred along this stretch of the Texas coast.

 

[walldog]

We did a bit of puttering around the bay and ship channel in our Ranger Tug today. We have been working on a couple of projects to get Willie's Tug ready to travel back to the San Juan Islands in May and we wanted to check out our work.

We had a two day window of winds lower than normal for this time year here on the Gulf Coast of South Texas. We decided to anchor out at favorite boat watching spot off the ship channel called Barracuda Cove. We tucked as far in as possible and tried to settle down for the late afternoon and evening. After about an hour, between the swells and the chop from the winds, we decided that we would find a more sheltered spot to spend the night. After checking out a spot near Pirate's Landing, we made our way to the Port of Port Isabel's turning basin. I had seen a US Coast Guard ship anchored out here on occasion. We eased in as close to a barge and drill ship as we thought prudent and set our anchor in about 35 foot of water. This was a bit deeper than the 7 foot of water in Barracuda Cove, but the Rocna held firm. The wind was still blowing, but we were a bit more protected from it here and gently bobbed tethered to our anchor. A perfect rhythm for a great nights sleep.

We are early risers, so about 5 AM we were up and checking email on our iPads, when out of darkness appears a large vessel very close to us. It appears we were in a favorite spot for the local shrimpers to drag their nets.

As daylight came, the fog settled down giving visibility of about 200 feet. Did that stop the shrimpers? No, even without radar they continued to circle us with their nets. We turned the radar on and watched them coming. We were tracking as many as 6 in our range at one time. With our radar, we could tell their distance from us.

By mid morning as the fog thinned to about 8 or 900 foot visibility, we headed back to our home. As we passed through the swing bridge, the fog settled back down around us closing the visibility back to around 200 feet. We continued motoring in the ICW until we passed under the causeway not seeing it until it was directly overhead.

Leaving the ICW at this point, we took up a course for the entrance to the "Fingers" and our home. Before going too far, the fog lifted a bit and we docked at our dock. A short trip, but a good Date Night for Willie and I.

Walldog, Willie and Jake stayed home.

 

[Don and Brenda]

Sounds like a great mini trip, what were the changes/additions made to the boat?

 

[walldog]

Sounds like a great mini trip, what were the changes/additions made to the boat?

Our little tug does have a tv in it, but we have not used it for a couple of reasons. One, our antenna for over the air reception does not work very well. In the San Juans, the only station it will pick up is a low power station on Orcas Island that only broadcasts black and white reruns of "I Love Lucy" and similar vintage shows. The other reason is that the boat is small and we do not have a comfortable place for both of us to sit and be able to see a tv at the same time. For two summers now we have not felt the need to have a tv, we have occupied our end of the day time in other ways mostly by reading. We read books on our iPads, we get our news from our laptops, keep up with our friends on email and go to bed early most nights.

This winter I (not Willie) decided that I would like to have television on our boat. After looking at various alternatives, I decided on the Intellian i2. The i2 has a 13" dish which is a bit larger than the KVH M1 which has marginal reception in the Northwest. We also added a Samsung 19 inch HD receiver to the berth area. I am not much for watching tv in bed, but in a R27 you do not have much choice. An undercounter mount for the tv allowed placement at a great viewing angle for both of us. Jake does not care. I fabricated a bracket from stainless angle and flat bar. A local speciality welding shop stainless welded the bracket for me at no charge. A very interesting local craftsman that lives in our neighborhood. Placement of the interior boxes and routing of the cables took a lot of thought and time. We have two GPS antennas, one for the Chartplotter and one for the AIS. I relocated them to the grab bars one on each side of the boat behind the navigation lights. This cleared the mast for better satellite visibility.

A trial of the setup in the choppy bay and 4 foot swells offshore gave solid reception thoughout. We never expect to have the system running while underway, but it is designed for such use and we wanted to see how it performed.

We also replaced the 2.5 inch Costco Gel Memory Foam pad for the berth with a new 3 inch version. We had cut the original one into pieces to fit the top of the cushions (mistake). So this winter we bought a new one and cut it to fit in one piece. Much, much better.

More pictures of this job and other modifications can be found in our R27 Modifications photo album here.

https://picasaweb.google.com/1166802598 ... directlink

 

[baz]

Thanks Herb&Willie. Nice short mini overnight adventure. I also would like to hear what changes/mods you were motivated to do. Photos please. 😉

[EDIT 1]
Whooops.... I see that you've posted some pics.... while I was posting. Thanks... 🙂

[EDIT 2]
I hope you used an electric knife for shaping the 3" gel/foam mattress... when I did mine this worked as if I was cutting through butter and the cut surfaces were ultra smooth. Even with a Queen sized foam mattress size I found the bow end could not be accommodated, so had to make a special piece for that. Did you have to do that as well, or did you spring for a KING size... :roll:

When TV not in use does it fold up to be under the V-berths ceiling and does it block the V-berth hatch ?

That's an IMPRESSIVE looking dome.... Very intimidating... :lol:

 

[walldog]

Willie's Tug came out of the water today in preparation to travel back to the San Juan's. Our friends Jim and Joan helped load her on the trailer.

http://captnjim.blogspot.com/2013/04/me ... boats.html

 

[Cocoa Gold]

As I am about to fit a memory foam into our v berth can you share the issues with matching the foam to the individual cushions? Vs one slab of foam?
We wrestled one slab in and out of a former boat and thought that making custom sheet 'pillow slips' for each mattress/foam piece (3) would be the solution.
Please share as I'm tackling this next week!

 

[baz]

I will outline what I did and with advice from David Baker (if I recall correctly) on how to best cut and shape the foam mattress as one piece.

1) Lay the foam mattress on the dock side
2) Remove the V berth cushions and lay them onto the foam mattress in same position as they are in the V-berth
3) Run a black marker pen around the V berth cushions to make an outline onto the foam mattress
4) It maybe that if you have a Queen size foam mattress it will not be a large enough piece and you will not be able to accommodate the V piece by about 12" to 18" -- but don't worry too much about this.
5) Now (this is important) using an electric carving knife cut the foam mattress about 1" to 2" outside of the black marker line. Do not attempt to cut the foam with scissors as more than likely you will make a real hash of it... especially if the foam is 4" thick.
6) You should have some left over mattress so use this to shape and fill in the 12" to 18" you could not accommodate in step 4).

The reason for cutting 2" outside of the black marker line it because the foam mattress will pull in some when you lay down on it and if its cut on the black line you will have a 2" gap all around the mattress outer edge.

The foam mattress is quite dense and quite heavy and quite awkward to wheel about so take your time and be careful carrying it about.

I assume if you want 3 pieces then simply use the V-berth cushions to guide you for each piece. For me, I would not go this route even though it probably means it's easier to make special fitted sheets for them. I used a regular queen size fitted sheet to cover the foam.

BTW -- I used a 4" Queen size foam mattress bought from COSTCO for $98 on sale. Laying on it is almost as good as my home bedding and it's a pleasure to leap into/onto the V-berth after a long cruise. 😀

Hope this helps.

 

[walldog]

As I am about to fit a memory foam into our v berth can you share the issues with matching the foam to the individual cushions? Vs one slab of foam?
We wrestled one slab in and out of a former boat and thought that making custom sheet 'pillow slips' for each mattress/foam piece (3) would be the solution.
Please share as I'm tackling this next week!

We cut individual pieces from foam for the first summer aboard. It was a disaster, comfortable but did not help us with access to the compartments below as I hoped it would. Constantly shifting and always had a gap between pads. Maybe the slipcovers would help. We enventually put the cover over all the pieces to hold them together. When I found that the new Costco gel foam was half inch thicker, we bought another Kingsize pad and cut it to fit in one piece. In the 27 a kingsize pad is necessary to get one piece coverage. The extra makes cushions for other things. Jake has a very nice bed now. Yes, Baz, we did use an electric knife for very clean cuts. The only problem with using the cushions as your pattern is that they fit under the bolsters at each side. It is neater if you cut it fit inside the side panels not under. Just my opinion.

I also like the gel foam rather than the plain memory foam, again just a matter of taste...or feel.

 

[Bruce Moore]

As I am about to fit a memory foam into our v berth can you share the issues with matching the foam to the individual cushions? Vs one slab of foam?
We wrestled one slab in and out of a former boat and thought that making custom sheet 'pillow slips' for each mattress/foam piece (3) would be the solution.
Please share as I'm tackling this next week!

I'm guessing you're talking about your island double berth. Has it proven to be uncomfortable? We enjoyed 62 nights aboard our 2012 R-29 (same bed, I believe) last season and were quite comfortable. We haven't felt any need to enhance the mattress, especially considering it would add a layer (no pun intended) of complexity to our berth.

Cheers,

Bruce