Category Archives: living aboard

Beryl’s Winter Perch

Posted on by under living aboard, photos

Beryl Ship's Cat on top of spare sail

In the summer, ship’s cat Beryl spends her time sprawled out on the boat’s sole, taking advantage of close proximity to the year-round cooling of the Pacific waters. This makes a lot of sense because typically summertime Pacific water temperatures are in the 60’s wherever we’ve been and winter temperatures much lower. Water in the 70’s beneath the keel is quite a rare situation aboard Mahdee.

In the winter, Beryl finds the sole a bit cool for her liking and she climbs to higher perches in the boat. The closer to the cabin overhead, the warmer it is of course. We have the old mainsail as a spare stored adjacent the main saloon in an area we call “the storage bed” because it does nothing but store various things for us. In theory, it IS a bed, but… Back to the sail! with all its bronze sail slides attached, weighs over 100 lbs and takes up quite a bit of space as well. We move it rarely since it takes both David and me both to get it to a new location in the boat. The top of the sail sits about 24″ below the overhead and it just so happens that a fan we have hanging high up in the galley behind the solid fuel stove, pushes air across the stovepipe and directly to the area where the spare mainsail resides. This is a prime warm spot.

This year, when it got cooler, Beryl began to hang out near the diesel bulkhead heater — the heater we usually run 24/7 if it’s cold but we’ve decided to not use this year. Instead, we’ve been keeping the solid fuel galley stove stoked with cleaner burning Anthracite from Pennsylvania. It only took her a few days to relocate to a better, warmer perch atop the spare mainsail. There she sits, hours on end, watching all the goings’ on aboard Mahdee.

The Marlinspike Christmas Decorations

Posted on by under living aboard

Mahdee Dressed for ChristmasMahdee Dressed for Christmas

The Westpoint Harbor Marina has a tradition of a Christmas decoration contest and winners are recognized at the Christmas party. Last year was our first Christmas here and our main goal was not to be a Grinch–so we needed to put something up.  Lacking any decorations, we purchased about 300′ of lights and ran them up halyards–fore and main–and also around the rub-rail.  And we got a couple of feature items–a baby Christmas moose (something that was probably a big seller in Minnesota, but not so much in California and therefore a pretty good deal) and a twinkling snowflake.  The net result was a big surprise to us, but was probably helped by us being newbies in the marina–we got awarded the 2nd place in the sailboat category.

Christmas lights on MahdeeChristmas Lights On Mahdee

Last January, we also retrieved some of our old things, from a faraway storage location, which included our Christmas decorations from when we lived in a house and decorated heartily for the jolly season of Christmas.  Last year it was too late to use those items by the time we had them, but this year we could.  One thing we decided to use was the old lights–at least 300′ more than last year.  This allowed us to run lights up both masts on flag halyards–about the only lines remaining after raising the other lights–oh and the canoe which is held up off the deck by halyards while in the marina.  Plus we had lights to go around the guard wires and lights for the charthouse and more to put around the cockpit.

Baby Moose for Christmas Really, that IS a baby moose at the helm of Mahdee!

Because the real Grinch this year is the BCDC government agency which is attacking the marina in a devious manner, there is an excellent spirit among the boaters who want to show that BCDC isn’t going to steal Christmas this year.  This meant the competition for Christmas decorating was intense.  Again, our modest goal was to be an “also ran,” and not stand out due to lack of spirit.  So we got out the lights–old and new–and got out the marlin and other ropes to take the tension off the light cords and started rigging.  We didn’t have the flashiest display.  The lighting impact was helped by the fact that none of our immediate neighbor boats had lights and the slip next to us is now empty making our lights more visible.  Our main mast is also one of the tallest in the marina and being on the last slip meant our lights had mostly dark sky behind them when viewing from the marina road.  Nice attributes, but not like some of the vibrant flashing light displays on the other marina boats.   We felt, however, that we had achieved our objectives.

Santa Stop HereSanta Stop Here! sign on Mahdee’s bow just in case Santa should have difficulty finding us.

Curious about how much load we were putting on our electrical system with all the new lights, I put the kilowatt device on the lighting circuit.  The lights alone were drawing the same power as a medium electric space heater–but of course without any of the heat benefit on the inside of the boat.  I mentally totaled up the electric costs considering the pricy local $.38/kWh electricity charges.  More importantly, we don’t want to overload our power connections.  Fortunately, Brenda has been dedicated to using the solid fuel heater on board Mahdee so we have the reserve electrical capacity to run all of those lights without risking an electrical fire in the shore power cord. Lucky us.

Mahdee's Christmas reflectionMahdee’s Schooner Rig Reflection.

The day of the party arrived and so did big winds replacing the calms of the previous and following week.  We had gusts up to 40MPH and as darkness fell the top section of lights on the mainmast above the spreaders were dark.  I lowered the flag halyard to check the plug and it was snug and there were no signs of a broken wire or loose connections in any of the bulbs.  Even though we had wrapped the lights around the flag halyard, I had been concerned about the weight of that light string stressing the copper electrical connections because it is nearly vertical for about 65 feet above the deck.  The judges were already doing the rounds, so I put back up the lights resigned to having the dark gap above the spreaders.

We went with the “more is better” lighting plan.

It was a complete shock then, that at the party in announcing the winning sailboat, they described the light display as visible from the international space station and then said Mahdee had won first place!  Wow! The prize was a very nice wireless printer/scanner that we will be able to use in our workshop.  But I was still curious about why we had won.  By chance, during the party, I ended up talking with one of the judges who complimented the overall lighting display on Mahdee and said the ultimate deciding factor was that the judges didn’t see a single zip tie in the rig–all marlin and knots holding up the lights–which demonstrated a truly nautical dedication to Christmas decorations and an environmental sensitivity that was absent on most of the other boats.  The funny thing is that I never even thought of using zip ties…  Oh, and two days after the party we had another wind storm and that night when the lights came on, even the section above the spreaders on the main mast lit up–fixed by the new winds–I consider it a Christmas miracle.

The Last Hurrah Before Christmas

Posted on by under anchoring, living aboard

Since we have had a busy autumn this year on land focusing on such things as Buttercup, Wesley, car parts, and the workshop–as well as Schooner Chandlery–somehow the sailing has gotten shoved to the side of the plate.  OK, perhaps back burnered so far that it’s fallen behind the stove and is in residence down there with the dust bunnies.  So it is appropriate that for a couple weeks in early December, David and I scurried around and cleaned up the dust bunnies whilst also preparing Mahdee for some time out on the water.  Last minute we found ourselves checking systems as well as putting the ground tackle in order for anchoring, checking shroud tensions, making sure the forecastle was organized and then digging out the autopilot tether from beneath the pile of unmanagable stuff in the engine room.  Oh, I thought “how quickly we fell into life in a slip where things can be in disarray without significant worry” and how quickly everything became a mess.  So after a bit of minor “stash and lash” for the Bay sailing we determined that if we didn’t get Mahdee out on the water the weekend of December 9th and 10th it would be a full month before we could do so again!  Our plans were to put on the Christmas lights after our jaunt about the Bay. Once the boat is dressed in Christmas lights, no sailing could be had.

The boat's wake


Motoring along with the solid fuel stove still heating the boat and the shorepower cord just coiled on the fairlead seemed the epitomy of “liveaboard” not “sailor” as we gazed forward over the less-than-tidy deck.

Tides were perfect with plenty of water under the keel for transiting our sometimes shallow channel to the marina.  The channel was to be dredged this year but the BCDC decided to flex it’s muscles and just say “no!” to that action.  So it will be another year before boaters with deep draft can breath easy during the zero or negative tides.  Ah, but depth was perfect on the 9th and off we went for our Bay adventure.  As we motored out of the slough and up the channel I wondered if we’d have any wind at all.  The answer: a resounding “nope,” and so we motored and contented ourselves with the lazy and sunny day.  Temperatures in the high 50’s and the heat of the sun with no winds made for sweater weather instead of windbreakers, too.  We meandered up the Bay and towards the Financial District wondering what we’d do with our weekend.  Here it was a Saturday with glassy calm waters.  We expected the power boats to be out and about but yet there was nobody on the water save us and a couple sailboats drifting about trying to find some wind but instead being carried by the strong Bay currents.  We’d considered anchoring at Clipper Cove (David’s choice) and Aquatic Park (my favorite) but lost our appetite for adventure along the Financial District and decided to turn back to the South and make Sunday a “decorate the boat” day getting the lights strung up in the rig.


One sure way to get a smile from David is to go somewhere on Mahdee. Anywhere will do.

We headed back towards our marina a few hours lazy motoring away.  An anchored ship to the East gave us the 5 blasts of warning — and we were nowhere near their anchorage or swing.  The anchored ship was pointed in our direction so it was conceivable they were about to get underway. With the binoculars, David scanned their hawse pipes and chains to see if they were making ready to leave.  No movement of the chains.  Not quite happy with the information at hand but yet not keen to hail the anchored ship on the VHF radio “um, why are we in Danger from you?..”, we upped the engine RPM and scurried on by remaining in the western edge of the channel and wondering what that was all about and the mystery still remains.

With no winds, it was easy to motor back into our slip for the evening.  Conflicting thoughts about “well that was nice to be on the water but now we need to put up the Christmas lights” and “now why didn’t we just go ahead and drop the hook up at Aquatic Park?” were dancing through my head, briefly, that evening.  The thought hit me after adding some Anthracite to the Shipmate and baking some banana bread — all of which could have been done at anchor.

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