The sailing adventures of SV Meriwether and her crew
August 2018 – May 2019
From looking at boats, shopping for our own, purchasing Meriwether, learning to sail, outfitting for our own adventures, and our first few times sailing our own boat.
– Highlights –
How it all began | Survey day | Moving in | First sail | First sunset at anchor | Final day-sail
Before leaving Bellingham at the end of May – literally, the day before – we finally got our solar install finished on Meriwether. It took so long as we waited to have a frame built for the panels to be mounted on to. It was something that I was originally going to do myself, but once I started dropping a...
Only a few miles away from our marina in Bellingham is Lummi Island. On Lummi is a small anchorage – Inati Bay – that Kerri and I have wanted to explore for weeks. I’ve mentioned it a few times in previous posts, but we had yet to get out there. This time we were going to do it no matter...
My son (also a Tim) flew out from Colorado the week leading up to Memorial Day weekend. He and I spent much of the week a few hours south, visiting with my Mother while Kerri stayed on Meriwether by herself. I am not sure what she does in her alone-time but I think it has something to do with cocktails...
In our land based travels we did all that we could to stay away from established RV parks and their crowded and over priced lifestyle. Marinas are the equivalent in the boating world, so obviously we hope to spend most of our time outside of them. What is known as “boondocking” on land is referred to as “gunkholing” on the...
Following our third ever sail of Meriwether, and nailing the docking that day, our confidence the following weekend was high enough to attempt a late afternoon sail with an evening anchoring to watch the sun set while on the water. With the boat packed up and our checklist complete, we pulled out of our slip and started motoring out of...
It has been six weeks since arriving in Bellingham. Six weeks is an extremely long time for us to be stationary – matching the longest time in our four years together; six weeks during the van rebuild back in late 2017. During these weeks neither of us have taken any time off – just hammering through as much work as...
Following last week’s rough docking we really needed a confidence booster, so we took Meriwether out once again – getting back on the horse and all. I had rebuilt the winch that was not working properly during our last sail and were both anxious to try it out as well. Our route was basically the same triangle path with a...
The legend goes that if you change the name of your boat, you risk angering the sea and wind gods, and your boat will take on bad luck if you don’t appease them. There’s a big long name-changing ceremony meant to purge those salty records from the depths that has about as many versions as there are boaters, but all...
Kerri and I were able to get back out on the water this past weekend, for only our second time on our own boat. I had an eighteen nautical mile sail planned for the day which would take us to an anchorage just to our South and to Lummi Island where we wanted to take a peak at another anchorage....
We hadn’t sailed since the last day of our sailing lessons back in January. We desperately wanted to get out on the water, partly to remember (hopefully) some of the things we learned and partly to give the boat a shakedown run. I wasn’t even 100% confident I had the sails rigged properly after re-installing them the past week, so...
