Reflections on Boats

For the past couple of days we have been on my brother's new boat on its maiden voyage. We went out into the San Juan Islands. My brother was in the Navy and for the past 10 years or so has been an avid boater. The new boat is 54' and quite nice. The San Juan islands are absolutely magnificent. One morning, because I have a problem with small spaces, I woke up early in our cabin and went up and watched the sun rise from right before first light. The transformation of the harbor we were in was subtle. The water went from glassy and then rippled as the tide began to come in. At the same time the light moved from pitch black to brilliant red in the space of about 90 minutes.

One would expect a new boat to be a finished product but there are a lot of complex systems on it and thus it is always a work in progress. Since this was a shakedown cruise there was a lot of tinkering. But because the boat has several electrical and hydraulic systems on it (from a couple of refrigerators to a shower to bow thrusters to radar to a sound system) there is a lot to get the entire set of systems to work together. My brother told me that part of the trick is to find a set of people who are willing to spend the time in getting to know the special qualities of the boat. He also said because of the way that people who work on boats work that it is always good to get a lead and a spare person - to assure that things get fixed. He argued that because of the specialized nature of the particular of the skills it was often the case that one expert would come in and suggest that there was only one way to solve a particular problem.

For the most part the weather was mediocre - it was cloudy a good part of the time although we only had light sprinkles. But that really did not make much difference.

The pictures here are from two locations in the San Juans - Roche Harbor and Susha island. More about the trip in a later post.