Touring our home city…
Since Wednesday we’ve been tied up at Bell Harbor Marina in downtown Seattle. We’ve seen three different cruise ships so far right here at the marina, first the smallish ultra-luxury Seabourn Soujourn with 450 passengers was here when we first arrived. Then on Saturday we saw the 2376 passenger Norwegian Jewel followed by the 2394 passenger Norwegian Pearl on Sunday. I spoke with a guy who was boarding the Pearl for an 8 day Alaska cruise and he was super excited.
There’s an Anthony’s restaurant here at the marina (Pier 66) which has happy hour every day from 3 to 7. It’s far too convenient, especially since we haven’t yet filled our propane tanks since my work to fix the leak. More on propane later.
Since we’ve arrived, we’ve walked the waterfront a few times, visited the fantastic Seattle Aquarium on Pier 59, the “Great Wheel” Ferris wheel on Pier 57, the Wings over Washington ride also at Pier 57, Pike Place Market, the Artists at Play park at Seattle Center, dinner at the Space Needle, a variety of visits to Anthony’s, and breakfast at a VERY French restaurant called Le Pichet (hard time finding food for the kids but the two eggs and ham was very good). Both the girls were apprehensive about the Wings over Washington ride, but during the ride itself, Morgan just repeated “This is soo cool!” over and over.
We’ve also managed to stow more of our stuff, getting a bit more organized on board, and I cleaned the dishes that had piled up for days. We’ve consumed more water and diesel than I’d like but since we are at a dock and refilling both is relatively easy I’m not yet worried about it.
Sunday, we walked to Westlake Center, took the Monorail to Seattle Center to take a Ride the Ducks tour of the city. Lots of fun of course, and the girls got to dance to the music a whole bunch. While the Duck was navigating in Lake Union we passed by the 62m Sea Owl and the 93m Mayan Queen. Both super yachts are just hanging out in Seattle for a while. Apparently silver mining and hedge funds are where it’s at. Last night our friends Aimee and Dustin came by for our first onboard happy hour which was great fun, complete with BBQ Chicken Thighs ala’Devon.
Monday, we got the remaining running rigging replaced (three new halyards, new main boom topping lift, and the mainsail furling inhaul) and our old mainsail reinstalled and furled. When the mainsail is not in the mast, the furling mechanism bangs around inside the mast and can be quite annoying and unfortunately our new mainsail is not yet finished.
The kids are loving the electric aft toilet, no more fights over going potty.
On the downside, the forward toilet is on my s@&t-list, and our new Webasto hydronic heater is acting up so we are seeing the techs more often than we had hoped, but I’m confident that they will get the heater figured out. Today the yard owner stopped by to fix some paint scratches on our hull that appeared to have happened while the boat was in the yard and to add some more exhaust cement to the boiler exhaust, to make double sure that there is no exhaust leaking into the boat. He also offered to take our propane tanks with him to refill them and bring them back tomorrow, which was super nice!
