Waterfalls, bald eagles, seals, and a 5 knot current

The boat finally left the driveway!  After months of working on the boat, making updates and waiting for winter to be over we went on a sort of shakedown/relaxation cruise. Since we currently have the mast lying in the driveway awaiting the install of a new LED anchor light we took Webfoot out as a motor boat. We just couldn't wait any longer. The forecast was for a beautiful weekend and we took advantage. Saturday took us half the day to load up and finish a couple of projects, and then we drove to Rooster Rock State Park to launch.  One of our guidelines for boating on the river is to always go up-river as we set out. The thought being that if all systems fail we can always float back down-river to where the truck and trailer are.

 

By 5pm on Saturday we were anchored in 3 feet of water just off Pierce Island within view of a Elowah Falls and Beacon Rock. After we cooked a nice dinner on the BBQ we played Scrabble until fairly late. 

Captain Mike and Beacon Rock

Elowah Falls is in that (seemingly) small valley

 
The next day was spent exploring the around the shoreline of Pierce Island and reading in the cockpit. The island is inhabited by a variety of animals including elk and deer. Currently, Pierce Island is managed by the Nature Conservancy and this time of year the island is off-limits to visitors to protect native species and ecosystems.

We had noticed that the river had been steadily rising since we arrived. This made for a fun ride back to the boat launch. When Bonneville dam rapidly releases a lot of water it can lead to very fast currents just below the dam. We had over 5 knots of current pushing us back. Along the way we came across some hungry seals and bald eagles fishing for salmon. Unfortunately they are too quick to photograph.

For you Twilight (movie) fans out there, here are a couple of photos of Cape Horn seen from below. In this scene Edward and Bella were in the tree canopy, overlooking the river and forest.

Note how small the fishing boat appears under the falls

Webfoot's New Gas Tanks

Webfoot's gas tanks are located in the cockpit in open compartments on both sides of the steering station. Due to their size and shape they are partially exposed to the environment causing the plastic to break down quite rapidly. 

We replaced one tank by necessity during our trip to the San Juan's last summer and have since bought another to replace the second tank as well.

One of the aging tanks in the open compartment. Note the damaged corners.

You can see the red tanks on both sides of the steering station

One of our winter projects was to build enclosures which would protect the tanks as well as look nice. We purchased some marine-grade polymer sheets to fabricate the enclosure and cover. The polymer is as easy to work with as wood and should not warp or get discolored. To cover the edges we purchased angled aluminum and of course we used lots of stainless steel nuts, bolts, and screws. The tank is vented via a hose leading to the vent you can see in the top left in the photo below.

New port-side gas tank cover simply slides up and out to remove

Do you need more info about this modification? Leave us a comment with questions and we'll add the answers to this blog.

About our Head

Our boat toilet that is!

When we purchased Webfoot it came fully equipped with a used(!) porta-potty. Some of the parts were missing, so the blue liquid (also kindly included) would slosh out if the boat rocked too much. Luckily for us, the compartment that holds the "added" liquids was well sealed.

Needless to say the potty had to go. But now we were left with the question of what to replace it with. The male captain among us voted for using the back of the boat and simply using the head-room for storage. I would not hear of that. Sailing does not need to be uncivilized. So we debated getting another porta-potty, but after learning on our old boat that one has to walk to the pump-out station carrying the entire potty and then very ungracefully dump it into a hole covered in... you get the picture. This would not do.

We thought about a regular marine head, but after having worked and lived on many a boat with marine heads those were quickly vetoed due to lingering, highly unpleasant smells. Not to mention having to drive the boat to the aforementioned station and this time ungracefully pumping said refuse into a similar hole. If you've ever read Janna Cawrse Esarey 's book the Motion of the Ocean you would know what can happen during a routine pump-out. I don't want to ruin it for you, but it's not pretty. If you have a marine head or have been reading these blogs for some time you will know that there is an endless stream of maintenance issues and repairs involved with heads requiring many gloves and cleaning products.

So after much research we came across another alternative: The Composting Head. This nifty device separates the "solids" from the "liquids". By doing so it allows the "solids" to become a healthy (usable) compost by composting it with a material such as COIR. The liquids are stored in a semi-transparent bottle that can be safely transferred to a regular toilet in a grocery sack. Since the "liquid" is non-toxic it can also be safely disposed of in areas where it is legal, without any harm to the environment.

Speaking of being environmentally friendly: The average American uses 7,665 gallons of water per year just to flush the toilet. That is 21 gallons per day! 

So by installing a composting head we not only got rid of many unpleasant tasks, we are also doing a small part in saving the earth!

Oh, and by the way, if it's working correctly, it doesn't smell!

TECHNICAL NOTES
We have gotten a lot of questions regarding our Nature's Head and I hope to answer some of them here. Since we live within their area we were able to get free shipping and we found them to be very responsive and helpful. There is also the AirHead but we like the molded in seat in the Nature's Head - no seat to slide around in seas. We also thought the Nature's Head just looked sturdier and it really is a very sturdy and well built unit with all stainless parts.

Remember, if it smells something is wrong. We spent over a week in the San Juan's and it started to smell towards the end. I'm fairly sure it was due to to high a moisture content and we should have added more composting material, which we hadn't thought to bring along. For this season we have bought some enzymes (called DrainCare) to speed up the composting process in cooler climates. 

For composting material we use small bricks of coconut pith (COIR). Since the bricks are very compact they are easy to store and much better than using peat since peat cannot be as sustainably harvested.

We installed the solar fan as well as the supplied fan, the latter seems to draw a lot more air and uses hardly any power at all. We could easy do without the solar fan.

The install was straight forward.  We cut a 4" hole into our head window to add a vent, removed the old potty and drilled two holes to secure the new head with supplied screws.

All in all we spent around $1000 on the project and still think it was well worth it.

Why did we choose Webfoot?

This is a question that I have wondered about many times while spending yet another Saturday working on the boat in the driveway. It was around this time last year that we were narrowing our choices of boats to replace our beloved West Wight Potter that we had sold down the river the previous fall.

The old saying that the happiest day of owning a boat is the day that you sell it or is it the day that you buy it?
This had some truth to it in our circumstance. We were very happy with our 19' West Wight Potter and we pretty much got everything out of the boat that we had hoped for, so it was time to sell. We bought a small "pocket cruiser" because we wanted a boat that that we could learn to sail on, would be fairly forgiving, and not cost a fortune. We also wanted adventure and we got that, sometimes a lot more than we had bargained for.

We certainly learned a lot of hard lessons from that boat, even a demasting... While nobody got hurt there was plenty of pain to our pocket book. That is one lesson that is going to stick with us though.

Our WWP19 Prudence on the beach in the Columbia River Gorge

After selling we looked at everything... and I mean just about every type of sailboat that you could come up with on the internet. The constant internet searching was very time consuming and frustrating at times. We finally decided on the traits that we were looking for in a boat and we also came to terms with what the near term looked like in our sailing careers.

We decided we needed to go bigger but not that much bigger. We both have a lot of experience with boats however, the first boat that I had ever sailed was our Potter. We still had a lot to learn about working as a team on a small sailboat...

The Potter had a lot of characteristics which we did not want to do without in our next boat: 

1. Shallow draft. The Potter had a dagger board while the Macgregor has a swing keel. This is extremely advantageous in the Columbia River where large sand waves are known to migrate on the river bottom and sandy beaches beckon on a hot summer day.
2. Trailerable. We like the option of going beyond our "backyard" and experience different areas with the limited time that we have for our outings. This puts a size limit on the boat.
3. Affordable. We drooled over some very pretty boats...Like the $40,000 Seaward in the dealers lot. If it were to be the last boat that we were going to buy then maybe. However this boat is a stepping stone to "The Big Boat".

Webfoot with her feet in the sand in Hood Canal

So far, owning Webfoot has been a great learning experience. These boats come with very limited options from the factory and as one other MacGregor owners put it "Think of a MacGregor as a canvas on which you may draw any type of boat that you would like". Check out MacGregorsailors.com there are some definite artists there. Our own artwork is going to be a subject we revisit regularly in our blog.

Our library contains some of the resources that we found helpful in buying our boats. We encourage your ideas on what was helpful in deciding on purchasing your own boat as we are in a never ending search for "The Big Boat".