Great Ambition, second year

This is the continuing story of our new life as River Rats on the Columbia River aboard our Catamaran Cruisers houseboat we named Great Ambition.

If you want to see how we got here (and hints on how you can do it too) see Great Ambition, the beginning.

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Click here to go back to our first year.

We've been visited by Wood Ducks recently, amazingly beautiful birds. I caught this pair of males while having my breakfast one Saturday morning.

In late May 2008 the water started rising after a short hot spell. It's funny watching the tree tops get lower. The water is so high that the ramps to the Marina are almost flat. Makes trips to the dumpster easier!

At the end of May 2008 we got word that our newest (and cutest) addition was ready for us to pick up. She's an Apex GillGetter 716 pontoon boat that we ordered from Crowley Marine in Denver Colorado. Yes, you read that right, we bought a boat sight unseen from a dealer in Denver. Dave Crowley was able to negotiate with the factory for some custom mods (like an additional gate on the starboard side) and quoted us a great price. He also had a top notch team to equip it with a 40HP Merc 4 cycle engine and other goodies just the way we wanted it. In this view you can see the pontoon bows, they have a very steep wave piercing entry with a reinforced leading edge, it really slices the waves!

Are you ready for the name? She'll be known as Lil' Ambition. She's rock solid and fast, topping out at around 18 MPH with full covers up, probably faster with the covers down, but we'll have to wait for Global Warming to take effect to find out (here it is June and we have record low temperatures in Portland).

Notice the top of the line swim ladder on the swim deck, this one has a guard to keep peoples fingers and toes from being pinched, same with the gates and the helm seat-back. The Arecales had these evil finger chomping seatback mechanisms that scared the crap out of us, yet here is a boat at much less than half the price with finger saving goodies everywhere. Other nice features include anodized aluminum rails, treated plywood everywhere and really comfy furniture throughout. The stereo KICKS BUTT, it's louder than my $1000 system on Great Ambition.

So how did we get it here from Denver? We drove out and dragged it back of course. It was a nice little three day road trip, and cheaper than having it shipped out to us.

Now with Lil' Ambition we can go out for our evening drifts again. We just putt out the South End and turn off the motor. That way we get a free tour of the river while relaxing to our favorite music. During this drift we watched the Queen of the West crawl up the Columbia, with the current running 4MPH, she was crawling along pretty slowly.

Here's a happy camper drifting along, sure beats sitting around watching TV.

If we want to go to the island, we use our Anchor Buddy to keep Lil' Ambition off the shore. It seems to work really well if we cleat the Anchor Buddy off the port cleat, then the current tends to make the boat track beyond the anchor keeping it further from shore which means keeping it safe from grounding.

In this shot you can see the interior of Lil' Ambition with Cottonwood Beach in the background. Very plush!

A great thing about living on the water is that you get to see people do lots of interesting things. This evening we went out for a drift in Lil' Ambition and found a dude kite surfing near Frenchmans Bar Beach.

Here he is getting a little air.

Here is one big reason we bought a pontoon boat to replace the Stingray. With the Lil' Ambition along side Great Ambition you can walk straight across from one to the other without having to climb down, or up. Also, the open gate on Lil' Ambition is the extra one we had to custom order. Note that with two gates, one on each side, we can mate the two together on either side.

While at Southend this weekend we got lots of great shots. One of the really neat things that happens every spring is the cotton storms, the cottonwoods release massive amounts of cotton into the air. In this shot you can see an osprey cruising through the cotton lit up by the sun.

Here's a nice shot of the Southend channel from the upper deck of Great Ambition. You can see a tug pushing a quartet of barges.

And did you see the cute little goslings from May 3rd (above)? Well, here they are almost 2 months later, they sure got big.

Here it is, Independence Day already. We got THE prime slip at Salpare Bay, H10, on the end. Most boats don't want this slip, too much wave action, but for a catamaran like Great Ambition it's no big deal.

We had a visit from our first Grandchild, Draco. He loves our house, but can't seem to figure out why it's never at the same dock! He's got his father's (and Grandma's and Great-Grandfather's) blue eyes. Also notice that there isn't a boat next to us, in slip H9. We were the only boat at Salpare Bay that weekend that wasn't flanked on one or both sides by another boat.

Here they are on the upper deck watching the Fort Vancouver fireworks show. Draco sure enjoyed it, although he fell asleep in Grandma's arms before the Grand Finale.

The cotton (from the Cottonwood trees) is extremely abundant this year. In this picture you can see the channel carpeted in cotton, it's looked like this every day for weeks.

In this shot you can see most of the larger chunks as the trees snow on us. Again, it looks like this anytime the wind blows, 24 hours a day, for the last four weeks.

And in this shot you can't see any blowing cotton, but you can see the cotton buds in the tree that this Osprey just lept from.

My commute by boat to Maxim is back in full swing since we got Lil' Ambition. Below you can see the route in black. The purple trace shows the route by land, it's 68 miles round trip, versus the 39 miles round trip going across Sauvie Island. Besides, the long route is just a horrible commute taking upwards of 90 minutes, the Sauvie Island trip always takes 45 minutes, because the route is not heavily traveled. Besides, the whole trip is through rural country, forests and farms and includes no freeway time.

Here is a nice shot of April heading back across the river after droppling me off at Reeder Beach where I keep the Buick. You can see the tendrils of fog rising from the water.

And here she is to pick me up in the afternoon. What a nice way to end the workday!

Vacation time is here! We started by returning to our spot on Lake River that we named Somewhere, Lake River. Turned out we were a little bit off (about 100 yards shy) so let's call this Somewhere Else, Lake River. Anyway, it was really nice. We got there on Saturday morning and stayed till Tuesday morning.

It sure was pretty there, here is a shot off the front deck.

And here is April enjoying this wonderful view.

On the first day we had our first visitor, a racoon found something to eat right next to our boat. He wasn't afraid of us at all, but he never did come back.

The water in Lake River is pretty nasty looking since the riverbed is hard mud, and the tide just washes the same water up and down day after day. Despite that lots of people water ski and tube down this river. Braver souls than me.

They come pretty close and make big wakes, but it really doesn't bother us. Great Ambition is pretty stable, the only thing that bounces us around is wakes exactly parallel with the pontoons, and that doesn't happen all that much.

These guys were having fun. Ten seconds later they were immersed in the nasty water.

Tuesday morning we followed the tide out of Lake River headed for Coon Island. On our way we passed the town of Saint Helens. We used to enjoy going to Sand Island, but it can get pretty windy and rough there. Sure is a pretty town though.

We got a perfect spot at the brand new Eastside docks at Coon Island. This shot shows us alone but we did share the docks with two other boats for our first two days there. They were at the other end of the docks. We could just barely hear their generators running. No one heard our generator running, since adding a third house battery, we've been able to run purely on solar indefinitely. That's with 4-5 hours of TV viewing and 10 hours of XM radio (Audio Visions, now called Spa, usually) along with lights, furnace (for those chilly August nights), water pump, etc, day after day after day. It's nice to be the quietest neighbor on the dock. You other guys get with it, solar is the way to GO!

This is pretty sweet, the current comes around the bend and hits us just right so that it drives us off the dock. As long as the tide was going out we just hovered like this off the dock. I guess we don't actually need all these bumpers.

Here is a shot of our living room view at Coon Island. Such a pretty place. One of the advantages of the East Side dock (apart from being a brand new, top of the line FREE facility) is that the sun goes behind the trees early in the afternoon, which helps keep us cool in the late afternoon.

Coon Island has a really nice walking path that allows you to circumnavigate the whole island.

At various places along the path there are picnic tables and fire-pits. The path is well maintained and well worth the walk. Just be sure to bring the OFF!

We saw a few deer on our walk, but couldn't get a shot of them. Here is where they were hanging out.

We have a new line we've been using on each other recently. This is the new official Great Ambition motto. "It's a rough life, but somebody's got to live it!"

And this is the view we were enjoying, looking almost directly North with Saint Helens and Woodland in the background.

Lots of people passed by and saw this view. We heard a lot of comments as people went by, one was pretty funny. A guy in a small boat motored past while we were on the top deck. He commented that "You could live in that!" We both responded "We do!"

We went back to the home slip so April could attend band practice for her upcoming gig. We refilled the water tank and headed back out Saturday afternoon for Southend. Monday morning we decided to leave after our local homo's started prancing around the beach naked. We ended up anchoring in front of Caterpillar for lunch and a swim.

The above picture matches the crude paste job I did to create one of our inspirational tools, to help keep us focused on our dream. I pasted a picture of the Aquacruiser we saw at the factory in Columbia Tennessee into a nice picture of river in front of Caterpillar Island.

A nice shot from the upper deck looking toward Pier One and the South Caterpillar Island beach.

We decided to go on to Hadley's Landing in Multnomah Channel as anchoring in front of Caterpillar Island overnight has too many risks (high winds and big ship wakes). On the way we passed the South end of Sauvie Island, here you can see a nice shot of the island and the West Hills behind the island. It's these hills, thrust up by volcanic forces that detours the Columbia from it's westward journey to the Pacific Ocean northward for over 30 miles.

As we passed under the new Sauvie Island Bridge we watched crews take down the old bridge. Here you can see two articulated jack-hammer devices (the yellow and red things in this picture) chiseling away at the bridge footings. Five days later, just minutes before we passed under again to go home, the red machine and it's operator tumbled off the bridge onto Sauvie Island. That morning, as we approached the bridge we noticed fire trucks coming across the new bridge to respond to the accident, but at the time had no idea what was going on. Only later did we hear about the accident on the radio.

We were warned by the Coast Guard that it might be dangerous to pass under the bridge during demolition, now we know how dangerous it was.

Again, these pictures were taken 5 days before the collapse.

We made it to Hadleys and found no one there. We took the North end of the docks on the outside.

Here is a shot from across the channel.

We had some spectacular sunsets at Hadleys.

And overall it's just a pretty place. As an added bonus we got to see the Perseid Metor Shower from here, where it's nice and dark, away from all the city lights.

We returned to Kadows for another band practice. On Saturday we saw this little houseboat drifting down the Columbia and found it was a Catamaran Cruisers Little Hobo, their trailerable houseboat. Laurie and Leon were out looking for a place to overnight, so we steered them to Southend. They look pretty happy in this picture.

OK, we haven't been anywhere lately because we were waiting for this little guy to arrive. Wolfgang is Draco's brother, so we had to stay "in port" so to speak so we could rush into town to watch Draco while Wolfee was arriving.

Now's a good time to do some gloating, we saw the Fall 2008 financial meltdown coming, we knew that all those 2nd and 3rd mortgages were going to blow up in peoples faces, that's another reason we dumped our house and are now mortgage free! If the economy goes to crap, fine, we'll just wait it out and have fun doing it, like this day when we took Draco to the beach.

He had a ton of fun digging in the soft sandy beach, making a clam corral, wading and exploring. In a few years Draco and Wolfgang will be running all over the island, swimming, hiking and exploring just like their Mom used to.

We see the greatest stuff living out here! In one evening drift in Lil' Ambition we saw both a "Goose" (flying boat) and a floatplane do touch and goes right near us.

How could I ever go back to subdivision life after living here?

OK, we made it out of the slip, yea! We did 4 days at Southend, including two workdays.

On Saturday our old friend the Sammi Herald showed up and parked in his favorite spot. If you look back on this page you will find that Sammi Herald was anchored in this very spot 15 months ago to the day. That doesn't mean she hasn't been here since, she shows up every couple of months, and it's fun to try to keep track of all the ships. They are like old friends that we know by sight. The bright light in the sky is a plane in the landing pattern for PDX.

I swear I can identify the Sammi Crystal from 2 miles away. Can you see how?

We had some awesome sunsets, this one was cloudless, still, this is a great view from Southend beach. It's amazing how hundreds of millions of gallons of water can be so still!

And on Tuesday morning I got this shot of the sunrise lighting the shore near the starboard bow anchor.

Since we live right next to the Shillapoo (Shallow Pool) Lake wildlife refuge we get to see an interesting phenomenon this time every year. Washington State releases pheasants for the hunters, which then end up all over the road, the island and the parking areas in addition to the marshes and fields where they belong. Usually on Saturday mornings we are awoken to the sound of shotguns going off. Since no regular guns are allowed we have little to fear from the blasts, except the occasional rain of steel pellets hitting the roof.

October is a foggy month, here on Saturday morning the fog was just amazing.

More fog, we spent the weekend at Southend and watched the fog take over Sunday morning.

... and five minutes later.

And amazingly, we got to see our old friend Sammi Crystal again!

Now for the most amazing story of the weekend, we watched an eagle kill a goose on the Washington shore near Southend. Shortly afterwards, another eagle landed and scared the other away, but he took his goose with him, as seen in this shot.

A goose is a big load, so the eagle decided to drop it on the beach, here you can see him watching to make sure it is going where he wants.

Then the eagle flew back to where he was to face down the intruder.

And there they stood, at least for a few minutes.

As for the goose, he just laid on the beach until the tide came in and washed him away. You can see the impact depressions from his head and wings.

We had quite a bit of rain in the middle of November, it had a rather bad effect on this boat. There's a big, previously noisey V8 engine down there, but the rain fixed it so we wouldn't have to listen to this guy destroy our peace and quiet again. See how things just take care of themselves?

With rain comes debris, this stuff is just rafted off Caterpillar Island up to 30 feet from the shore. Most of it will settle onto the beach and provide hundreds of hours of heat in the form of bonfires in the coming months.

Continuing with the theme of cool things to see out here, occasionally we see this guy tooling along in the sky, I'm sure it's a lot of fun, but don't crash in the water, the weight of the rig would take him right to the bottom.

As I mentioned above, with so much wood on the beach we decided to go out and add some C02 to the air. We roasted hot dogs and ourselves on this marvelous fire.

We also had a couple of ships go by, one was a super sized cargo ship. Quite a monster creaping up the Columbia.

A fantastic sunset.

First weekend after retirement, made possible by our decision to quit paying a mortgage, and of course a few other variables. This weekend we got a few inches of snow and temps into the upper 20s. with much lower temps to come. Life is good inside, but out here, blowing snow. We have to make 100 gallons of water last as long as the cold lasts, our water hose is frozen. We've also had issues with our water pump, but it appears to be a simple adjustment. Only time will tell.

First Monday of retirement, I walked the island beach nearly to the wingdam. It's a great walk, the beach is frozen solid except for the foot or so right near the water. I have a dozen excellent pictures, but this one has so many things in it. In this shot looking North, the hills of Woodland are visible, along with the Fazio Bros. dredge (the green and yellow thing in the water), and daymarker #26 on the left side. It's so quiet out here during the week, and of course a temperature in the low 20s tends to keep other folks away.

To get here I take Lil' Ambition, she's a sweet little ride, especially with all the covers up it's like a little hot-house on the water.

People want to know, what's retirement like? Well, it's a lot like shoveling snow 18 hours a day, at least it has been ever since I started retirement.

This is why I'm shoveling, the moorage is sinking under the 14 inch snow and ice load that the weather has thrown at us.

I can't take credit for devising this water cannon idea, this was my first time doing it, but it does work better than shoveling.

Of course you have to be careful, too much water can cause a catastrophic roof collapse, like this (Yikes!) We were just happily hosing the ice down and BOOM, the roof just fell in. Oh well, it dumped all the ice in the water!

OK, the snow stopped and the sun came out so I took a walk on the beach, almost all the way to the North end. One thing I always watch for are dogs. No, not the cute barking kind, but the steel spikey kind that are used to secure logs to each other. These things show up on the beach occasionally and they are pretty easy to get out, just whack it with a stick. Gee, wonder where I can find a stick?

In addition to the dog I also found a dock section with a bumper held in by stainless steel screws and a good sized lead fishing weight. Not a bad haul for the day.

I keep the interesting treasures and toss the rest, that's how I keep my island clean. Maybe this stuff isn't worth much but there are some cool things here. A few pieces of fossilized bone, pumice, petrified wood, a motor brush, sunglass lens, melted aluminium, an antique screwdriver, and of course plenty of fishing stuff. The strangest thing I ever found on the beach was a dildo, that went straight into the trash, but of course a question arises, where did it come from?

It's a new year and we got 4 inches of rain in 24 hours, then snow and freezing rain. The Columbia has taken notice, most of the beach is gone and most of my wood has been washed away. That's OK, there will be more to replace it, and with it new treasures, and maybe a few more dogs.

I went out to the island for a stroll and ended up bringing back 30 pounds of trash, but that's OK 'cause most of it was in steel. Might bring me a few bucks. Also I found a pair of kiddie shovels. This summer Draco and Wolfee can dig up the whole island looking for treasure. Wm F Buckley used to bury Saint Gaudens gold pieces on an island for his son Christopher to dig up, maybe I'll follow suit with something a lot cheaper.

Also a ship with an interesting name went by, sounds like Great Ambition isn't such a crazy name.

Another day, another stroll on the beach. The high water took all the wood I wanted to burn and in return deposited this giant tree on my favorite beach. It will take years to burn this thing up, and it has to be burned, to see why click here.

And a stroll means more treasures. This was a pretty good haul, too bad the shiny deck rail base is just chromed bronze, stainless steel would have been nice. I already own a pair of these sheet metal shears, in fact I had to double check to make sure these were not mine, now I have two pairs. A quick buff on a wire wheel and they look like new. The green mess is copper wire that was burned to remove the insulation. A neighbor here supplements his income by selling copper so I gave it to him, it's probably his anyway.

Another floatplane out for a little fun, here he is just landing. He'll take off again in a minute.

The moon sure is pretty this morning, the sun is just starting to rise. This is nicer than hanging out on the test floor.

It's a beautiful night for a beach bonfire, despite the fact that the overnight temps will be below freezing.

Tonight we are going to establish a new tradition, the post retirement "burning of the work shoes". These shoes have been all over the world, which makes them more disgusting than the floor of a Shanghai bathroom (which they have been to as well). Actually they look pretty nice in the sunset light.

Here they go, can't go to work anymore, unless they allow bare feet.

It just gets prettier by the minute out here.

These things really got the fire going!

Toasty!

That was fun, now it's time to look at the stars.

We've had some super nice sunny days, but the temps are subfreezing every night, so we fall into the habit of turning off our water after dinner and living off the water tank, or just the residual pressure in the water hose till daybreak. Still, its all worth it given that we get days like this to saunter up and down the beach.

This is a good shot of the big tree that washed up on our beach during the last high water. Damn big tree, I'm not sure my chainsaw will be able to do much to this thing.

Another snow storm, only brought us an inch of snow, but that makes 20 inches so far this winter. That's the most snow I can remember falling since I have been here. Sure is pretty, good thing we don't have anywhere to go.

The view downriver, very pretty.

For weeks now we have been visited by these guys, they are Pied Bill Grebes, cute little guys. Years ago we had one swim past the ZissouCam. The video of that encounter is here

Whaddya know, more snow, in fact two more inches, makes 22 inches total this winter! Maybe Al Gore ought to hear about this. Sure was pretty, and since we did our weekly supermarket run yesterday in the sunshine, so we can just sit here and sip hot chocolate and enjoy the snow, although April can't resist the urge to go out and shovel the docks off.

Out for a putt in the dinghy and here comes our daily gravel barge magically materializing out of the fog. You gotta watch this guy, unlike the ships he can come in close to shore which he does to cut corners to get home sooner. He's bringing gravel up from a quarry somewhere on Sauvie Island to the Glacier concrete plant near the Expo center. I think the tug pushing is Maverick, we know her well. The pilot is running his RADAR, but does he see me in my little 10 foot plastic boat? I'm not betting my life on that!

This is a similar unit that plies Multnomah Channel which is even scarier as that channel is very narrow. When we hang out at Hadley's landing he comes within 100 feet of us! In this case the tug Nancy Ann is pushing the barge. We can spot her a mile away, can you tell how?

She's the only tug out there with a camp trailer on the stern deck. It's a dead giveaway.

Just like the ships, getting to know the tugs is handy. You never know when you might have to hail them on VHF, and you pretty much have to know their name to hail them. Can't just say "hey, you, tugboat!" when everyone for a 20 mile radius can hear your hail. Plus, unlike the ships, different tugs do different jobs every day, so one day Nancy Ann is pushing this barge up Multnomah channel, the next day she might be pushing the other gravel barge up the Columbia. That's one of the things we love about the river, there's always so much to learn and memorize and be proud of the knowledge we have accumulated. Every day is like 14 hours of Jeopardy!, trying to beat each other at identifying a ship, or a bird or a sea lion or whatever. It's so stimulating and it's not like the price for failure is nothing, it's actually pretty high in some cases. For example, there is one Shaver tug that has a hull shape that creates a really nasty wake. When he comes by its best if you can either get off the river or at least orient yourself properly, and certainly don't be trying to beach when his wake arrives! Price for failure to notice him? Could be death. How stimulating! Another thing that's very useful to know is the light markings for tugs. A lone tug shows a single mast light, a tug pushing a load shows two mast lights and a tug pulling shows three mast lights. In the picture below I zoomed in the light mast so you can see that he's towing a barge.

This is important knowledge, expecially if a tug is pulling and you don't notice his load behind him and try to slip past his stern. Getting run over by a 1000 ton load of wood chips would probably ruin your day. We see the river as a Darwinian Filter (a term I coined). In our minds the water is a filter to eliminate stupid people, which is a good thing for the future of humanity. Like the dragon boat team a few years ago that got run over by a barge around dusk because A. Dragon boats don't show up on RADAR and B. Dragon boats don't have Navigation lights on them. It seems that Feng Shui was devised before the invention of RADAR and the electric light. Darwin sez you lose! Sometimes Final Jeopordy is just that, final.

Oh and by the way, here is a wider shot of that tug pulling. You have to look very close just to the left of the sunset to see him and his barge.

Out for a drift on a sunny February day, the groundhog says we have 6 more weeks of winter, but you can't convince me of that. So here comes the Shaver tug I mentioned above, her name is Portland. She's here to help a ship anchor, but since she's near her destination she's slowed down and not making a nasty wake this time.

Here's the ship, with her starboard anchor hanging, (they all deploy their starboard anchors here).

They shoot water on the chain to lubricate it, and of course to clean it when it comes up.

And there it goes! The ship was moving very slowly upstream but this will stop it and set the anchor. You can see Mount St. Helens in the background.

Now the Portland has taken a line from the ship's stern and she's just going to hang out here for a while. Not sure if she's here to make sure the anchor is going to hold, or what. Occasionally ships here will deploy a stern anchor, but this does not seem to be going on here.

Here comes another tug, the Henry Brusco. How many lights are lit on his mast?

That's right, three, and we all know what that means don't we? He's pulling a barge, a log barge in this case with no logs apparently. Notice the distance between the two, you might not see the barge if it was dark.

And I love the name of the barge, that's the same name as the beer I used to drink when I was poor, you could get a 12 pack of Lucky Lager bottles for $2 back in the 80s.

Boy it's busy out here! Another gravel barge, no surprise, they seem to come up every day.

And guess who's pushing it, our good friend the Nancy Ann!

If you look back you'll see that we started our new life coincident with a full moon, this is our 21st full moon aboard. Nothing special, just a beautiful night to be on the water.

The next morning was just as pretty as could be. This is my view as I eat breakfast at the dining room table.

And our little Pied Bill Grebe is having breakfast as well.

Another walk on the beach. Just an amazing shot.

Another walk on the beach. This ship comes by once in a while. Global Sentinel is a cable laying ship, she is just returning from Hawaii (how do I know that?). Click here to see a map of her latest endeavor.

Another day, another walk on the beach. It's about a mile to the wingdam, so two miles round trip, a good walk without having to chase a little white ball. Got to see the Nancy Ann again pushing a barge full of gravel and some other ship traffic. And while driftwood doesn't often impress me, this piece sure did, WOW! I used it to create the background you see on these pages.

Today I did some chores in town as it was mostly cloudy all day, but when I saw the sunset starting to get pretty I jumped in Lil' Ambition and slowly cruised to Southend to get a shot or 50. It only takes about 5 minutes to get there, but in that time you can lose the best shots so it's best not to daudle.

After the sun set I crept through the channel (the water's low again) out into the Columbia to keep shooting. Here's the 5PM FedEx plane coming in to PDX on its final turn. What was sweet was that we were at slack tide, so I had no current. I could just drift without worrying about where I might end up while I snapped pictures of this sky.

I know this guy by his shape, he's obviously a McDonnell Douglas DC-10, even in silhouette you can tell. And virtually no U.S. carriers use DC-10s for passenger service. Besides, I've been watching these planes come in for years, most often I would see them on final approach crossing right in front of me as I approached the I-5 bridge on my way home. Always reminds me of the movie Castaway, a big plane full of goodies, some might even be for me! That's how I got this camera, and its damn fine 10X optical zoom!

These Pied Bill Grebes are so cute!

This Pied Bill Grebe has caught a big (relatively) fish and his pals chased him around to try to steal it. Here he is in full flight, running away from them as fast as he can. You can see the fish in his mouth, it's a little to big to swallow quickly.

I've walked the beach at least once a day for the last week, today I got another ship picture for ShipSpotting.com. But this picture is much better, much prettier.

For the last few days we have had a troup of racoons migrating between the marina and the island by taking the short swim across. Here is the one of four coons intending to cross today with a water temperature of about 36 degrees.

Here he goes!

Slow down buddy, this is a No-Wake zone!

And here is the last one, he's testing the water, too cold! He decided not to cross with the other three and stay behind. Smart move pal, I fell in last February, it was DAMN cold!

Two days later while having our coffee we saw one roaming the island shore looking for breakfast. What a cutie!

The wife took a shot of me walking the beach, I've customized a walking stick with some flotsam I picked up. The stick is great for retriving trash just out of my reach in the water.

Here is a shot of my "take", the trash I picked up in one stroll on the beach. There is glass, melted aluminum from beer cans, and some rusted steel. I've been picking up this stuff for about 12 years on the island, every walk, up to six times a day. At times I thought I had it all, then the water goes down and more appears, albeit a little less every year. I'll keep picking it up until I can't walk, which hopefully by then there won't be any more of this stuff on my lovely little island. Am I crazy for doing this? I don't think so, but I'm biased.

Just sitting in the sun in the aft computer room looking out the window at my handywork. I built a rail around the piling to keep the grandkids from falling in. Also the wooden chair is new. It floated to us and I retrieved it from the river and fixed two of the seat back boards. It's nice having our own deck, and our own piling. If the worst happens, we'll still be here thanks to that piling.

We got away from the slip for the first time in a few months (except for a short trip to spin the boat around). We went to Southend and spent the night. The forecast changed enough that we decided to come back the next day. It was nice to get away from the dock for a change of scenery. One of those changes is the light level. Out on anchor we are away from all lights, and at night it is dark, I mean like you can't tell the difference between having your eyes open or closed. In this shot you can see our new flags, we are now flying the Gadsden Flag along with the Star Spangled Banner (15 stars, 15 stripes). These flags were flown when America was a country of patriots, not pansies, so we fly them because we ain't pansies and we're none too happy about having one as president.

Here is a nice shot of this flag, it's much bigger than our other flags, and it's especially important to us because it was first flown by the the newly formed US Navy in 1775.

I caught a racoon coming back from the island, cute little guy.

I took a stroll on the beach after dinner, and while I missed Larissa on Jeopardy I got to enjoy "Golden Hour".

Here's the sunset.

We left the dock again and went back to Southend. Fishing season took a two day hiatus so we were quite alone out here and the weather was fantastic. Here we have tied up Lil' Ambition to the stern so it doesn't obliterate our view, Later I moved it to the other side.

After a glorious day of warm sun, here's the sunset.

I made April a nice big steak and baked potato dinner for her birthday (sqr(7)).

We just had to jump into Lil' Ambition to run out can catch this sunset.

And since this was a Friday night, there are folks taking off for the weekend (I sorta remember something about those being special). This guy is crossing a barge wake kicking up a good amount of spray. Have a good time, see you again on Sunday!

We decided we just couldn't stand it in the slip anymore, so off we went to Lake River. We didn't encounter a single ship on our way down, it was glass all the way.

April made me a sandwich (missy) and took over driving so I could eat lunch. You can see the Radar and GPS in split screen mode. It might seem silly to run Radar in clear weather, but it's a sure fire way to make sure no ships sneak up behind you without noticing. It also doesn't hurt to get re-familiarized with its operation once in a while, you don't want to be forget how it all works then get stuck in a fog bank and fumble about.

And here we are after a quiet and slow putt up Lake River. Kinda gloomy but so pretty!

It's so dark out here, but my camera can capture the city lights of Portland projecting onto the cloud bank. You can also see a jet leaving a trail of lights in the sky as it climbs out of PDX.

The weather just kept getting worse and worse at Lake River so we made our way back to Kadows on Thursday. Encountered five ships this time, one ship's wake scared us pretty good, covered the front deck in a foot of water and washed our welcome mat away, otherwise no damage at all. We also had fairly high winds so we were happy to get back to Kadows and get ready for a new adventure closer to home.

On Saturday morning we headed for Southend again, the weather suddenly was GREAT, clear and warm by day, only down into the low 40s at night. After lunch we watched this guy cruise by the island, looks like a fun way to get around.

We saw a lot of eagles this time, here's one directly overhead.

Later in the day a Coast Guard helicopter flew by while we were on the upper deck.

Saturday night we had a bonfire made of freshly cut dry pine from a nearby log on the island. I used my handy chainsaw to cut it up and my big wheeled dolly to ferry it to our campsite at Southend. We listened to our old favorite radio program, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy for the thousandth time. In this version, Arthur explains to Ford Prefect that he used to dream about dying, and "All my friends went to heaven or hell and I was sent to Southend!" I'll take that choice Arthur!

Sunday night we had another bonfire, then went back to the boat. I took this shot off the front deck looking out onto the Columbia. Looking left to right you see the Global Forwarder anchored in the river, the bright star is Sirius, then Orion is to the right, and finally our campfire is still going on the beach. There's no danger, everything is still very wet and our fire is in the sand anyway.

Then on Monday we were again having a bonfire before "House" came on and took a walk on the island waiting for the fire to heat up and watched this young Bald Eagle land in the top of a tree. You can see that the leaves are just about to burst out.

Then as the evening progressed we caught this awesome sunset.

The next day it got warm again, but later the clouds moved in. I got this shot from the dinghy looking almost directly North. You can see that Caterpillar Island is really very narrow. You can also see how exposed to South and West winds we are, a few minutes later we got a bit of strong wind and that was enough to scare us back to the slip, 4 days and three nights on anchor, it was glorious.

We have been seeing wood ducks again, here is a pair swimming right in front us (the female is in the brush).

We took a walk on the beach and came across this old fellow. He probably already had all the sex he can take (they only get to have it once). Now he's just waiting to die.

In case I gave the wrong impression of our slip, here's a shot of our moorage as I came back from a run to the island. It is a wonderful place, but sometimes we like being even more alone than we are here.

We decided to run out to the river in Lil' Ambition to watch the sunset, and WOW, what a sunset it was! With the waves of rain moving through it's nice to have full covers on our little boat.

We watched the movie Twilight which had some scenes filmed at the marina. In the movie, the marina scene is very short, but the entire credits is run with river reflections in the background, basically viewing our islands trees upside down for several minutes. Plus, Lloyd and Bev are credited as "Boat Wranglers".

Got the itch to try a new anchoring technique at Southend. I wanted to try being at a 45º angle to the shore. This creates problems because our stern ends up poking out into the channel, and anchors going out from there could make the channel impassible. I used a bit of physics knowledge and made it work really well.

Parking this way does several things. First it points our front deck at the meadow and the hill on the island. This way, if someone decides to spend the day at the Southend sand point, we don't have to look at them all day. Gives them and us a little privacy. Secondly, it gives us better protection from the wind especially a North or West wind.

It gives us a wonderful view of the woods on the island. Here is the view from the living room.

Here is the view from the front deck looking towards the woods.

Here is the view from the bedroom.

Finally it aligns us exactly East-West so that the sunrise comes right down the hall from the back door. Here you can see the sun casting the shadow of our radar arch and flags onto the shore.

This also means we get to watch the sunset from the living room, however, we never did that. We would sit on the front deck with XM Spa playing "Hearts of Space" eating Tillamook Udderly Chocolate ice cream or Jiffy Pop while the sun sinks over our island.

The woods during Golden Hour.

We sure saw a lot of wildlife. Here are some shots. First, an Osprey hovering, looking for a meal.

Next, a male wood duck. What a great shot!

Next, a bald eagle.

Next, a mallard pair swimming in the morning light.

Next, a blue heron fishing right off our front deck.

Upon returning to the slip we noticed something different about our view. Hover over the picture to see the difference between now and back in December 2008.

Of course what happened is that while we were at Southend this huge tree fell due to the winds and we were lucky enough to be gone when it did. It would not have hurt us, it fell towards our neighbors, but it sure would have scared the crap out of us.

Folks 'round these parts like to hunt for morels. While taking a walk on the island I came across some, boy are they ugly! But we'll give them a try tonight. This could be my last entry...

Yea! We survived the morels, and they were pretty tasty but also a little gritty. The pits tend to capture sand particles, which isn't as yummy as you might expect. So...
We took a little cruise in the Lil' Ambition and saw these good sized trees floating down the Columbia. Any time the water level goes up lots of stuff starts floating down. When I was in San Nicolas Island we used to have huge beach bonfires made with trees that floated down from Oregon. These fires were so big the SeaBees would use bulldozers as fire-pokers. Crazy CBs...

Went out to Southend to escape the Mexican flu. We had a great time, had some great sunsets. This is a ship we have never seen before, Idefix Bulker. Note the tree in the channel, that becomes an issue later.

We also got to see our old friend Sammi Crystal again!

I climbed up the stump of the tree that fell over last week and got a shot of our home slip from the island. We are the biggest boat at the marina, but we are not the smallest houseboat at the marina.

I'm sure people wonder what I do with myself now that I don't work. Recently I've been writing my memoirs, sometimes spending hours and hours working away in the computer room. When I need a break I go out to the island for a walk on the beach or through the forest. Today I decided to take advantage of the very strong winds and fly my two string stunt kite. It was fabulous! I flew for an hour and a half, and had five kinds of birds check me out, osprey, golden eagle, red tailed hawk, vulture and arctic turn. I also got to watch two bald eagles play fighting in the sky while flying my kite. The wind was really strong and it made for a great workout.

We were getting ready for a road trip to Minnesota and as we watched the river rise, I worried about the log in the Southend channel floating free and getting under Great Ambition while we were gone. Then one night, we saw it coming down the channel. I jumped in the dinghy and "shepherded" it out of the channel. Later I enlisted Lloyd to help, as the 3HP motor on the dinghy is a little small for this task. Notice I'm running in reverse, this is the best way to tow, a trick I learned from a kid down here years ago.

We've been gone for nearly two weeks, missing the river something fierce. We went out in Lil' Ambition and watched the sunset, so pretty!

Continued...