Washington State Ferries in Friday Harbor

We have been in Friday Harbor for over a week now, and we have been enjoying it very much.

We like our spot on the breakwater, straight ahead on the marina webcam, and close to the open water where we can watch the seals hunting breakfast and the gulls diving for the leftover tidbits, and where we can easily watch the ferries arriving and departing.

We do not mind the ferry wash where we are located. Arriving ferries will give us a gentle rise and fall, but departing ones don't disturb us at all. Al says he likes the quiet rumble of the diesels as they pass - it reminds him of his days of rail road's enthusiasm.

We are learning to identify each one by sight, and have the ferry schedule open and available so we can check 'where that one is going now'. Al has done quite a bit of reading on the various ferries in the system and can tell you stories about many of them. (one great site here: www.evergreenfleet.com/current.html)

Evergreen State is perhaps our favorite, being the smallest, and the oldest, of the fleet. She now has a gold stripe as a crown to show she is 50 years or older. (Al says we should figure a way to add some gold to Viking Star, who reached that milestone this year!) Evergreen State is the inter-island ferry and there is no charge to walk-on traffic. Al read that the bicycle surcharge has been removed also for the inter-island routes. I am not clear if that is a permanent change, or seasonal.

Gold Stripe of  honor

Evergreen State

As she turns, you can see 'clean through' and check out the load!

At first glance Sealth looks like Evergreen State, but she is bigger--longer and taller.  

Sealth

Here are the 'Big Boys', Elwha and Yakima. These two we have NOT yet learned to tell apart, except that Elwha tends to smoke a bit upon throttling up.

Elwha

Yakima

The other day both Elwha and Evergreen State were at dock. However, the second ramp can only accommodate pedestrian traffic, so the smaller ferries off-load who they can there, and then move over to the vehicle ramp after the larger ferry leaves.

Elwha on left, Evergreen State on right. Yes, that is a tanker truck going onto Elwha.

Evergreen State moving to the main dock, Elwha departing around Brown Island in the background.

Evergreen State comes in at night.

House of the Lord

Yesterday, my Facebook status read:


Stupidity is often painful, and I just did something really stupid. Tried to go down the stairs to the aft cabin, but the stairs were removed to change the engine oil. I may get a fat ankle out of this...


Yeah, the ankle is a little fatter today, and it is blooming into a pretty picture (I'll give it another day or so). It COULD have been a so much worse outcome! It is basically a 3-4 foot drop straight into the engine compartment, and would have been even further if I hadn't stepped onto the oil can. Basically jammed the ankle, skinned the opposite knee, and my neck and shoulders are a bit sore today too.


It was bad enough yesterday that I was questioning whether I would be able to follow through on our plans to attend church this morning.  Regular readers will know that I have been missing church. So this morning when the ibuprofen kicked in, we started out real slow.  We allowed over an hour to go what I believe is about a mile, starting with those 75 steps! We made it in PLENTY of time!

This is a busy building! THREE services held here on Sunday mornings, and a day school during the week.


And here you can see what I mean about 'House of the Lord':

The building had an extensive remodel in 2008, which transformed it from a more 'traditional' church building to this much more 'home' looking structure. The sanctuary features gorgeous windows, upholstered chairs rather than pews,  warm woods, and brass adornments on the altar. The people were very friendly and welcoming, especially at the fellowship after service, a harvest celebration featuring apples!  AND we saw a 'familiar face'--Carolyn Haugen, secretary of the local Power Squadron, whose meeting we attended last Thursday.

After church we hobbled to the store, passing the Catholic Church, which I also photographed because it reminds me so of my childhood country church:

I was happy to return to the boat for another dose of ibuprofen.  Tomorrow should be the worst of it, the second day usually is. Then my ankle will probably look much worse than it feels!

Boat Face

Doesn't he look happy?! Grease mustache and all. He said 'It feels SO GOOD to be 'doing things' again!

'Things'---pickling the water maker, changing the oil in the generator and engine, bleeding the fuel line to the Hurricane heater, so far.

Web Cams and Window Views

I forgot to post the link to the marina web cam here! I posted on Facebook, and we have had fun waving to friends, since the web cam is basically 'real time'.  If you go to the site, we are just below the red +.  http://www.portfridayharbor.org/marina-webcam/

Here are the stairs just above the marina office. Yesterday we began our three-hour walk by going up these steps. I only began counting once we had already gone up the two flights of concrete steps. Four more flights above them run 12-14-12-14 for 52 steps. Last night, we attended the monthly pot-luck and meeting of the Friday Harbor Power Squadron, held at the Grange, that tan building at the top. This time I also counted the concrete steps (23) which makes 75 in all!  Once we arrived at the top, we realized we had forgotten the crackers to go with the curry chicken spread we had brought as an appetizer, so down and up I went again! It is quite the cardio workout!

                                        

ALL we met at the meeting were very friendly, welcoming us to the meeting AND the island. Every day we feel a bit more at home.

This morning, Al had an assignment to do for work, so I set out on an independent morning coffee excursion. I began again with the stairs.  It seemed easier today. I will have to continue climbing them daily, if I can! 

I first run an errand, dropping medical release forms off at the doctor's office.  Then I go to 'The Doctor's Office', a coffee shop on the first floor of this cute building:

It is a very inviting-looking building, with a big porch and the 'right' color (green is my favorite). Inside, I find the seating a bit cramped, and not much counter space is available for ordering or taking care of transactions. Only paper cups were visible, and when I asked whether there was a ceramic 'for here' option, a mug was brought out. A taste improvement over paper, it just doesn't seem very 'elegant' however. My latte and chocolate croissant were fine. The best feature of this location? The view straight onto the ferry lane:

The upper two stories of the building are taken by the Ferry Landing Suites.  Visit the website at www.ferrylandingsuites.com, one of SEVERAL places offering fine accommodations for groups larger than Viking Star can house comfortably. 

The Quest

In the quest to find 'our favorite coffee shop in Friday Harbor', today we visited the Churchill Coffeehouse. It is just across the street from the ferry lanes. Though a bit more 'rustic' in decor from The Bean, the coffee was excellent.

Though the air temperature was quite cool, today was sunny and dry! We did many errands and walked for nearly three hours.  We did find that the animal shelter is further than we wanted to go, and so, it is unlikely that I will be volunteering there after all. We DID find a friendly cat near the post office that allowed a few rubs.

Cost to Cruise: October

Already an End of Month!  Wow, does time always fly.  Ok, below is a summary by month of our cost to cruise.  And October was a bit of budget buster.  Main reason?  WE KEPT GOING INTO THE CITIES!   Looking at the Moorage costs (way up) is perhaps the 1st indication.  (Another is how little hours we placed on the generator).  So what happened?   Well, I needed to fly out for a week for work.  So we moved Viking Star to Bainbridge Island where I could easily get to the ferry and SeaTac airport.  This also meant Viking Star was in the city . . .


After returning we moved over to Bell Harbor in Seattle for 2 nights, more $$$

THEN we spent a night in Coupeville, more $

Cities are basically evil, they tend to have moorage fees, and Kristi and I tend to visit too many coffee shops (plus a dinner, and breakfast here and there).

COSTS	July	Aug	Sept	Oct	Average
Maintenance:	$        1,267	$            378	$            184	$              73	$                475
Fuel:	$        1,195	$            (15)	$                 9	$            554	$                436
Moorage:	$            190	$               -	$            136	$            558	$                221
Groceries:	$            633	$            619	$            428	$            807	$                622
Dining Out/Entertainment:	$            244	$            275	$            390	$            414	$                331
Personal:	$            299	$            297	$            161	$            118	$                219
Insurance + Medical:	$            314	$            314	$            314	$        1,142	$                521
Transportation:	$               -	$              24	$                 8	$              15	$                  12
Communication:	$            140	$            166	$            138	$            302	$                187
Miscellaneous:	$               -	$               -	$                 5	$              25	$                    8
Total:	$ 4,282	$ 2,058	$ 1,773	$ 4,007	$    3,030
HOURS					Average
Main Motor:	77	33	26	42	44
Generator / Water Maker:	4	67	54	7	33
Hurricane Heater:	28	61	60	37	47

Now, it was not all City Life.  A couple of other areas which were higher than should have been:

• Maintenance:  Purchased a $68 pump I really did not need -  turned out to be the float switch.  To be fair, the old sump pump wiring did not allow for easy checking of the switch (it has been all changed), and now I have a spare sump-pump pump!  But I already had spare float switches, and could have fixed the issue for free.
• Groceries:  For some reason, all those cities seem to also have lots of wine shops.  Nuff said.
• Insurance reflects the addition of the yearly cost for marine insurance on Viking Star - due to an unusable survey (poor quality of survey, not status of boat) at Ilwaco we ended up purchasing a policy that cost about 2x of what we had planned... 
• Communication:  in October we switched over from T-mobile ($150 / mo) to a combination of Verizon and Sprint (Nextel) prepaid cell phones, plus a Verizon Mi-Fi.  New cost going forward will be around $65/mo, but with much more reliable service.

I also have included the number of hours placed on the main motor, generator, and heater.  Should be interesting to watch these numbers change as we do slightly different things each month.  Example, Main Motor for October was much higher – reflecting the 3 day trip (each way) from the islands to and back from Seattle area.

Going forward:  we will need to watch it, now that we are tied to a DOCK in Friday Harbor. . .   Can only hope RAIN keeps us inside more.   But that also has dangers, I have already been looking at perhaps a new refrigerator (current one is a bit of a problem), Solar panels have come WAY DOWN in the last year!  And that bothersome Dickinson BBQ is starting to rust out – not sure I want to put in $45 stamped metal parts back in vs. dump the whole thing.  Arg:  Seattle Boat Show is January this year, watch out!

Friday Harbor

Well, here we are on our last evening as Cruisers. The sun is shining. We are at one of our favorite spots of the past summer, Blind Bay, on Shaw Island in the San Juan archipelago.  We are finally modelling the Pacific University sweatshirts given to me by co-workers when I left my position to enter this lifestyle. It is Halloween evening, but we don't expect any trick-or-treaters, unless you count the seagulls, who are always looking for a handout..

WHAT?! You are going to give up cruising already? I'll share with you a couple of definitions in the boating world. A Liveaboard is someone who makes their primary residence on a boat. A Cruiser is someone who uses their boat to get from place to place. Not all liveaboards are cruisers, and not all cruisers are liveaboards. For the past four months we have been both.

However, for our first winter 'up north', we are seeking the comfort of a slip.  For a couple of months or so.

Al has shared some apprehension of this plan. His innate frugality is cringing at the MONEY it is going to cost. Not simply from moorage fees. We have said previously and heard from other blogging cruisers, if you don't want to spend money, STAY OUT OF TOWN! And what are we doing? Going to town.

Coffee shops! Grocery stores! Hardware and marine stores! Restaurants! Bookstores! The place is just filled with opportunities to drop a few bills from our wallets.

And we are off to a good start.

I forget what these creatures are called, but they are attached all along the dock / breakwater. These are just behind where we have secured Viking Star. They are big and flowery / feathery, and gorgeous.

After we are settled, we head to the port office to sign our contract and pay the first and last month's moorage. Al lets out a small sigh of relief--it is lower than he had recalled! We return to the boat for lunch and a work call for Al, then we go exploring.

King's Market is just a couple of blocks up the hill from the ferry landing. We have shopped for groceries here before, and I would describe it as, perhaps, gourmet.  We knew there was another grocery further away, and today we find it to check it out.  This one is more 'everyday'. Prices are more reasonable, and we pack our own bags.

We locate the medical office where we have appointments with doctors in the next couple of weeks.  We are keeping our eyes open for dentist offices, and eye doctors. We need all-around health maintenance.  

And we find the church we would like to attend.  St. David's Episcopal is past the school, maybe a mile or more walk from our slip. It looks like a 'house' of the Lord.....I'll have to post a picture later so you can see what I mean. We also walked past St. Francis Catholic. It is TEENY, especially for a Catholic church. It seems smaller even than  Amo Methodist, the small country church I attended in my childhood on the SW Minnesota prairie.

This morning began with a very pretty sunrise to welcome us to our new home. Al has another work phone call, we fill our water tank, and we are off again into the community.

Today, we begin the coffeehouse sampling. Carma at the port office said she likes 'The Bean' the best, because it is quiet. There is free wi-fi, a spacious seating area with large windows, and a monitor viewing the ferry lanes. The coffee was fine. I would return, but there are a couple other shops I want to sample first....