Archive | November, 2009

Happy Turkey Weekend To All

Had a lovely Thanksgiving evening out at the lake with the whole family, including my mom and grandma. We played spoons, ate pumpkin pie, and Nity & I went kayaking this morning. She likes to just go out to the middle of the lake and float, which coincidentally enough, I also love to do. So we just hung out there and had very Zen mom/daughter time on the water.
It was good to have some Zen onboard, because we then headed down to Westlake Center for the lighting of the Macy’s Star. I had forgotten how much I dislike crowds…and pointlessly long extravaganza shows…and well, we had a good time anyway. Our friend Katy was singing with the Seattle Women’s Chorus and they were great.

It’s a decent start to another holiday season – not my favorite time of year, but one I generally manage to survive.

City Water

This week’s Magic Brock Project gives us a teed connection with city water which creates all sorts of cool things…
  • We have actual water pressure now. Showers are a whole new world with fantastic pressure.
  • We’re prolonging the life of KJ’s water pump, as now it will be used when we’re away from the dock and at anchor, but not for every day activities.
  • When guests are onboard, they won’t be rudely awakened by the water pump going off if somebody is up early trying to make coffee or shower. In the forward cabins, that’s LOUD. You’re welcome, NJ!
  • As the freezing time of year approaches, we can always have our onboard tanks topped off. Then, when they shut off the water at the dock without notice, we’ll be well-prepared to last a few weeks without having to find alternate water sources.
The potential downside? If there were to be a leak onboard, there is an unending supply of pressurized water & theoretically the boat could sink if the bilge pumps also failed & nobody noticed. Not so likely that all of those things would go wrong at once, but for best practice, we will make a habit of shutting off the water at the hose bib on the dock when we leave.


Well, Grainger is closed on the weekend, so that killed the project I had in mind for the day. We instead continued with further cleaning of the lazarette. Those big old 34″ diameter, 33″ props that were stored away don’t do this boat any good at all anymore. We haven’t found anyone we know who might need them (they’re awfully specific), so tossed them up on Craigslist (after hauling them up through the deck hatch, which wasn’t easy).

I can’t imagine that we’ll get someone who actually needs them for boating purposes, so we offered them up as yard art as well. If no one bites, we can at least scrap them at $1.30/lb. That seems a shame. Wonder if I could take a small bit and have it fashioned into some trinket (ring, tiny propeller pendant or earrings) as part of KJ history?

Large Locks Maintenance

The large locks are closed for maintenance for about 2 weeks. They’re completely empty of water, so we took the kidlets down to check them out last night. Unfortunately, none of my photos turned out. It was impressive though, so if you’re in the Seattle area looking for something to do today, that’s not a bad outing. Lots of water being released as well – 5 spillways are open.

There were a couple of small coho in the fish ladder. Nity found the eggs interesting.

And now we’re on to Project KJ Saturday – there’s always some way we can be improving this thing!