Bon Voyage Party!!

With our departure date set for Monday May 17th at 9:00am, we've decided to have a little bon voyage party at the apartment on Saturday the 15th.  Should be a fun get-together.

If you cannot attend, send your wishes of "Fair Winds and Following Seas" through email, telepathy, or whatever means you see fit.

Where did the name "Talofa Lee" come from?

The Talofa Lee's name was inspired by a passage from Joshua Slocum's Sailing Alone Around the World. Joshua Slocum was a Canadian who was the first person to, er, sail alone around the world in the 36 foot "Spray" – but only when he wasn't busy fighting off pirates, surviving cholera and smallpox outbreaks on his ships, or sailing through hurricanes.

(His book is public domain and the text is available via the Internet Archives .)




On the 16th of July, after considerable care and some skill and hard
work, the "Spray" cast anchor at Apia, in the kingdom of Samoa, about
noon. My vessel being moored, I spread an awning, and instead of going
at once on shore I sat under it till late in the evening, listening
with delight to the musical voices of the Samoan men and women.

A canoe coming down the harbor, with three young women in it, rested
her paddles abreast the sloop. One of the fair crew, hailing with the
naive salutation, "Talofa lee" ("Love to you, chief"), asked:

"Schoon come Melike?"

"Love to you," I answered, and said, "Yes."

"You man come 'lone?"

Again I answered, "Yes."

"I don't believe that. You had other mans, and you eat 'em."

At this sally the others laughed. "What for you come long way?" they
asked.

"To hear you ladies sing," I replied.

"Oh, talofa lee!" they all cried, and sang on.

(Image and text from Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum)

We have a departure date!

With a week to spare, we've firmed up our plans somewhat. We'll be leaving the morning of Monday, May 17, 2010 with Captain Speck, Jerry ("Admiral Brewer"), Garrett and myself. Alan will hopefully be joining us soon. There's still some work to be done before we leave, so until our next post, here's some websites with nautical terms.

Preparing the boat

On Sunday, Nick, Alan and myself went over to the dock in West Vancouver to do some prep-work on the Talofa Lee.

We spent the first hour or so doing some general cleaning/dusting.  One thing about a 30+ year old boat, there's always something that needs to be cleaned...

After cleaning, we applied teak oil to some of the woodwork in the saloon.  I've always found applying teak oil to be such an unsatisfying job (going back to oiling my mother's dining room table when I was a kid).

When you first put the oil on, it makes the wood look all nice and shiny, which is satisfying.

But when you look at it 5 minutes later, all the oil has been soaked up and the shine is gone.  Not-satisfying...  Also, it's definitely a job you try to finish as efficiently/quickly as you can since the fumes get a little intense in such close quarters. 

  
The linens from the bunks, which had been sent away to be dry cleaned last week, were back and needed to be put back in place.  Stuffing large foam mattress pads back into tightly fitting linens is about as difficult as it sounds.

We had originally planned to take the boat out for a sail after we finished our chores.  However, by the time we got everything done, we were much more content to just have a picnic on the bow, enjoy the sunshine and laugh at the ridiculous names of the boats motoring past (our slip is right at the entrance to the harbor; perfect for people/boat watching).

Notably ridiculous boats names (here's a website with some other winners): 

      - Ten Ton Rhino 
      - Debatable 
      - Kidsmoney
      - Just Ducky

We also saw a boat called Vitamin Sea and one called Nauti-Lass, both of which I'm in full support of.

Getting excited for our departure...