Sailing Vessel Karma

One year ago on THIS VERY DAY BUT A YEAR AGO May 16th, Karma was launched in the water! We started getting the boat ready on the hard mid April after a winter sitting alone in Anacortes. Liam and I were saving money working down in California at casa de Liam’s parents who kindly hosted us. We started the process of looking for a boat over a year before and finally made moves on this Doug Peterson 37 late summer/early fall. We got the title squared the day before we packed all our belongings into Liam’s 2000 Miata and my much more spacious 1986 Volvo 240, Beulah. Our folks did not know about our big live aboard/cruise boat project so as we slept under Kate and Grant’s roof and enjoyed the Bruger’s bagels freshly delivered after Kate’s morning walks every Wednesday, they surely had questions about our ~trajectories~. My parents were asking vaguely pointed questions now and then. A big zoom call with his fam and mine revealed our secret-no-more plans with a very informative and comical slideshow presentation, properly utilizing our freshly obtained educations. Things made more sense and his folks didn’t side eye us as often 😉 The reason for the smoke and mirrors was simply so we could get things squared before questions begging details came.

Karma meanwhile was being checked up on by kind friends such as Ethan, Shaheen, Kiavash, and Tristan with offers from many others! Honorary thanks to those friends and fam in Seattle willing to make the drive, mainly to drain the bilge and ensure the boat still exists. The bilge was a secondary issue to getting on the boat apparently. Ethan broke into the yard in a manner befitting by making friends with an employee who happened to be around after hours. Good report back, he replaced the damp rids and enjoyed lunch on us. On Shaheen and Kiavash’s trip up, they discovered a common occurrence of boat yards – missing ladders. They then discovered Karma’s deep draught when they tried to board by standing on Shaheen’s Subaru and failing. Eventually they found our ladder which had the previous owner’s name on it but the bilge was full of “murky water” and the “pump sounded angry.” The next victim was Liam’s brother Tristan. He reported many a mold inside Karma and water infiltration on the bulkhead that the portside chainplates attach to! Shoot dang that was not fun to hear. He kindly endeavored to eradicate the mold as it was his very own nemesis spending hours cleaning and bailing away water since the bilge pump still didn’t work. He visited again to do a more thorough job for what could only be hours dilated by a factor of 7 scrubbing the boat to a less terrifying state. Thanks ❤ We came back within the month and started our own clean! Days and days of it.

Refit

During the refit in spring, we had only a few goals. The umbrella over these goals was simply to get the boat to float. This was so we could stop with the monthly bills and have a place to live. We borrowed a large tent from Liam’s folks and a cushy queen blow up mattress from my folks to hunker down for estimated few weeks. The only RV spot used for those few weeks at Cap Sante was our humble abode of a tent. When the sun showed itself, we made french press on the single burner propane stove and blasted Eye of the Tiger on the mile drive to the boat yard. When the sun tucked away for the night we started wrapping up projects and crashed just hard enough to do it again the next day. Add-water mashed potatoes and once, a half eaten pizza from the lady in the laundry room nourished us. Projects to get the boat floating included:

• Replacing the port side lateral bulkhead
• Power the boat with solar and a beefy lithium battery bank
• Acquire and install a ground tackle/anchor set up
• Replace two halyards
• Run the engine to see if it explodes or nah

Boat yard friendlies

The boat yard was a magical place full of friendly strangers sometimes turned un strange. Kyle and Ashley, rare young cruisers, offered diesel assistance, fiberglassing advice, tools, and many a shared beer. Another Nick, his angle grinder and additional fiberglassing advice. Terry who managed the yard offered things like a ball peen hammer and fun stories. Michael who lifted our boat had funny stories too but most importantly, he had a calm demeanor which reassured us as he launched Karma into the big blue on May 16th and later plucked our mast off. Patrick at the yard gave us his San Juans cruising boat and his story about loading up a catamaran alongside his wife with unponed boxes then immediately sending it to the Sea of Cortez where they got “stuck” for 10 years. A naval architect ripping apart his steel Bruce Roberts sloop in the yard informally approved our fiberglassing job but advised to beef it up with unidirectional carbon fiber which we heeded and later finished on the hook. There were copious friendly faces at Ace, Sebo’s, NW Rigging, and North Harbor Diesel who offered advice, anchor chain, support, manuals, and o-rings. Could not have launched within a month without all these kind people.

LAUNCH day shenanigans

The first thing that happened on the very exciting day we finally did launch Karma involved the impeller and a its then-mysterious counterpart called an impeller key. It was like post laundry day having underwear in the arm of your sweater – you didn’t know it was there, but when you found out it was there, you really are thankful it didn’t drop throughout the day. We were less thankful. The morning of LAUNCH DAY we discovered that we did in fact have an impeller key at some point. The same morning, we found out we dropped it at some point. The reason we planned to change the impeller last minute on the day of because we were 1) dumb 2) new 3) naive in thinking a new boat task would be quick and sans hiccups 4) didn’t want to have the rubber impeller go dry hence launch it right after installing. So we are running around stressed to the nines looking for this tiny piece of metal to make our engine run. Like 1/4″ x 1/4″ x 3/4″ small. For this entire operation and life to work we needed this little key within 3 hours to meet the planned launch. After running around I remembered though, in one of my twice daily visits to the hardware section at Ace, I had seen what is called a Woodruff key that looked it could fit in the slot. It wouldn’t but the piece NEXT to the Woodruff keys were rectangular prisms and those looked killer. I snagged all the closest sizes in both and in the cockpit 1 hour before launch, we hacksawed these tiny things down guessing what length would work. We found out soon enough that it did work! We have many back ups now from that box at Ace.

The second maybe less ridiculous things that happened on launch day revolved around the sea strainer, where critters and seaweed are filtered out of the water that cools our engine. My aunts and uncles who live in the area all came down to assist with the launch and celebrate with us. Joanne and Michael who used to cruise the Pacific aboard their Waquinez Centurion 42 kindly pointed out that we needed a painter for the bathtub and snagged us one beloved black and white painter, as well as MUCH advice and even lodging for a few days on Guemes Island after the tent self destructed! Steve and Mary hosted us for a much needed fantastic meal and engine advice/troubleshooting when things looked wrong. Michael lowered down Karma like the professional he is and as we checked for water infiltration, Liam made a negative remark indicating a fountain of water stemming from our sea strainer. Hm. We closed the sea cock and diagnosed a bad gasket. To North Harbor Diesel! Howard and Greg pointed us to the right gasket to use and after some inevitable and I suppose wanted discussion from Howard about, this time, having this specific type of sea strainer, we trecked back and slapped it on. Bam it worked and no more salt water inside the bathtub. Under the much needed guidance of the Destiny crew, we spun the boat around so Liam and I could avoid having to drive in reverse out of the very large but seemingly very tight area. A proper champagne rechristening and celebration followed.

TO day

We sit in Desolation Sound one year later aboard Karma. After the refit and a summer of mostly motorless cruising and other major projects around the San Juans, we trekked to Canada for a month of sailing! The day we had the rig back from the shop, we sailed to Canada and spent time in the Gulf Islands. October through May had us based in Friday Harbor saving up moolah for the cruising kitty where we met the loveliest of friends we will hopefully see soon & completed a looooonnnnnng list of boat projects. We started this big Canada trip telling customs that we plan to be in the country for 105 days with our vessel. The plan is to circumnavigate Vancouver Island and get up to the Haida Gwaii Islands north. So far so good! We are big time fans of the warmer waters. More updates on the Canada thing to come!