Everybody asks me how I am eating here on the boat. Since it’s been a quiet week, not much exciting to write about, I will fill in you in. I eat pretty much like I did on land. I have always been a pretty basic eater. “Bohemian” you might say. Many of you know that I ate a Power bagel (from Einstein’s) every day for breakfast for over 15 years. I finally got tired of them and haven’t had one in over a year, but it underscores the point that I am a simple man with simple tastes. Ve...

OK you guessed it, it took a bit longer than 3 hours to get to Newport. 30 hours actually. It usually takes 3. My buddy Jon had his boat here in Dana for some service and needed to move it back up to Newport where he lives, and invited me to come along. His motor wasn’t working so we knew there was a chance of not making it in one day, but we both like a good adventure and prefer to sail rather than motor anyway so we were game for whatever might happen. Or not happen, as it turned out. N...

Making good progress on re-doing the bathroom on the boat. I have been putting several coats of paint on all the wood and had to let it be drying, as well as adding a layer of epoxy fiberglass to the tank that leaked, and re-caulking the seams. I think it is going to turn out great.  Whatv do you think of this possible new configuration?

Today I helped my dock neighbor friend Mike and his wife Suzy finish moving stuff out of their apartment and into the new town home they bought.

When we last spoke I was telling you about my hanging out in the Long beach area. I had been noticing a slight VERY SLIGHT leak coming from the base of my toilet. (On a boat the toilet is the “head.“ probably a play on words about the captain…). On my boat the head is a nice porcelain throne perched atop a square fiberglass holding tank. It is plumbed into the boat with a fresh water flushing supply tank, and a hose to a deck fitting to pump it out at the sanitation station at the ...

As usual, a simple “day sail” led me up the coast for an over-night in Newport. It had been a long hard beat against the wind andI was pulling in to anchor at Newport just before dark at 7:00. I had pulled out of Dana fairly early but spent almost 3 hours bobbing about going nowhere with no wind until the winds picked up about 11:00, allowing me at least to start the “beating…

The forecast for the next many days is for solid moderate winds from the west /northwest. I woke up ear...

As much as I want to be able to sail everywhere I go without an engine, I admit I am glad I have one. It is certainly convenient from time to time. The engine on No Bad Days is an old 2 stroke Nissan 9.9 horsepower. It has been kept in good shape, and runs pretty good but seems to be hard to start. I crank and crank sometimes to no avail and end up giving it a squirt of starting fluid which usually does the trick and it roars into life.

Today a guy was at the boat next door working on his...

This weekend has been the Tall Ships festival here at Dana. tall ships refers to the big multiple mast big ships. These are restorations of old ships or new replicas of famous old ships. 7 of them have sailed into our harbor for this festival celebrating the big old ships.

The local Ocean institute here at Dana is the permanent home of 2 of them, the Spirit Of Dana, and Pilgrim, which is a replica of the ship that Richard Dana sailed on from Boston to So Cal back in 1833. His story is so v...

My buddy Jim Frankenfield came to visit me here on the visit. Jim and I go way back. He has been living in Oregon for many years, but he used to live in Utah and we climbed a lot together back in the day. He is a hard core mountaineer, pulling off very hard climbs solo “ at night because the snow was safer then.” One of the highlights of my climbing life was with Jim, climbing the north arete of Mt Ellingwood in the Wind River range. It is a spectacular high angle rock route, very clea...

It was a idyllic scene. Big cliffs surrounding a sandy beach, Waves lapping on the beach, big cliffs, picnickers picking and nicking, people jogging with dogs, Kids were sliding down a steep sand hill on boogie boards as I pulled in and dropped anchor last night. The day had been pretty quiet, very light winds, and I didn’t make it to Newport like I thought I might, but Emerald Bay seemed just right. Emerald Bay is about 7 miles north of Dana, (about halfway to Newport) a small bay prote...

What was so bad? I sailed out and I sailed back. That is the problem. I intended to NOT sail back! I left Dana with the intent to got to Newport and spend a few days there, but after 5 hours of sailing in the fog I ended back at Dana!

It was foggy all morning and I sailed for 5 hours without seeing much. Every few minutes I blew on a fog horn, sort of like that South African zuzu-vela soccer thing to let everyone know I was there. Funny though, in all that open nothingness I did come prett...

It has been a bit cooler here on the water this week. There has been a thick fog roll in as the cooler air flows across the water. It burns off by noon but is thick and cool in the mornings. Visibility less than a mile or so. No problem with bumping into anything, but navigation is by the compass and dead reckoning, or the GPS. It can be a bit freaky when you can’t see anything in any direction!

I got my new additional solar panel installed and it seems to be working great. The 2 panels ...