Thursday, August 26, 2010

Can’t Get Enough

Time on the water, that is. Since we bought the new boat 5 ½ weeks ago, we’ve spent just under 3 weeks, cumulatively over 4 trips, living on it. We’re becoming more and more expert at a lifestyle requiring us to live in very small spaces, as this boat offers about the same square footage as life on our Arctic Fox 5th wheel trailer, though the headroom in some of this square footage is significantly less.

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Tuesday morning dawned sunny and warm with a forecast high breaking 80 degrees, so we took off from Narrows Marina where the boat “lives” and headed north. Two and a half hours later found us in Kingston, Washington, a tiny community on the west side of Puget Sound known mostly as the “other side” of the Edmonds-Kingston ferry run. The Port of Kingston turned out to be a great place to spend the night.

For $28 (much less than we’ve spent many places) we got a slip with electricity and water hook-ups, free showers, and a very protected location inside the breakwater immediately adjacent to the Kingston ferry dock. The full moon rose over the breakwater casting a 5-mile long moonbeam across to Edmonds about 8pm – gorgeous!

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Wednesday morning we went for a run on a route that was more hilly than advertised by Port staff, but put us in position to go out for brunch with no guilt, so was worth it. “J’aime les crepes” is a cute spot on the water that serves delicious large, healthy, custom made crepes while you watch and doesn’t charge much in the process.

After brunch we took advantage of an unusual offering from Port of Kingston: free use for up to an hour of their tiny electric car! Never having driven one before, we thought it would be fun, so re-traced our running route for a short distance to check it out. It managed a fairly peppy 25 mph even going uphill, and was quieter than a whisper. We don’t think we’ll sell the Avalon or Silverado yet, but if we lived in a place where a golf-cart-style vehicle made sense, this would be a contender.

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Afternoon found us motoring back toward home, taking the west side of Bainbridge Island route this time and enjoying exploring the shoreline. We’re very much enjoying time on the boat and considering another longer trip over Labor Day weekend if the weather cooperates.

Next up: we’ll announce the new boat’s name!

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