I started a new project. The starboard wall had some water damage in several places from various leaks. For example, the fresh water connection developed a leak that dribbled water into the wall, which rotted out some of the one-by-four framing and the plywood and paneling. I've moved the bed into the second bedroom and placed all the stuff that was in that room in a storage unit which makes doing the work a lot easier. It would be impossible to work on the wall with the bed in place.
A Wood Duck came by for a visit.
In this photo I have replaced the framing and plywood in the bedroom, then I replaced the styrofoam sheets with Polyiso foam which, unlike styrofoam is polyester resin compatible. It"s also very stiff, so I tore off the slippery foil coating and used construction adhesive to glue the foam to the plywood and framing members. This not only improves the strength of the wall, but it also seals the wall against air and moisture infiltration.
A Bald Eagle flying so close it seems I can reach out and touch him!
Sunset over the Columbia River.
Our geese brought their chicks by!
We call these Zebra Dragonflies. So pretty!
Our geese and goslings came back for some cracked corn, but note the difference from the photo above. Yep, they are one gosling shy, probably taken by an Otter.
The goslings snuggled under the dock. If only they knew that the otters like to frequent this area too!
The Rose Fleet is arriving!
Now we are down to just two goslings. Boy, those Otters are mean!
The bedroom is coming along nicely. I added a second layer of 3/4" Polyiso foam and framing, then used some nice paneling I found at Mr. Plywood in Portland. One of the great advantages of using the Polyiso foam is that it is compatible with all fiberglass resins including polyester resin. Styrofoam just melts when you apply polyester resin. For the three penetrations in this wall I fiberglassed them all the way through, so any drips I get will not get into the wall and destroy it like last time.
Only one gosling left, the otters have taken three already.
Rose Festival in Portland is over, so off they go into the deep blue sea.
Over the years I have found shards of plates like this on the beach, but today I found a complete plate! I"m quite certain that someone used these plates for skeet shooting and this plate was a "miss."
Here is an interesting boat being towed by another boat. Half a canoe. I didn"t know you could get canoes in fractional sizes.
We have a new friend, a homely looking Muscovy duck we have named Mugly.
Someone gathered up a bunch of wood for a fire and left a bunch unburned. This is one of the beauties of camping on the Columbia, lots of free wood for a campfire just washes up on the beach continuously. Even if you burn every stick on the beach today, tomorrow morning there will be more wood on the beach!
The one remaining gosling is getting pretty big now.
The setting sun is casting a spotlight on Woodland Washington just north of us"¦
"¦and we are not quite as lucky as Woodland, we aren"t going to get to see the sun for this sunset.
A nice shot of the path out to the river.
The sun from deep in the forest on the island.
A young deer on the island across the channel from our house.
My friend Zita Podany recently wrote a book called Vanport about the doomed city of the same name just north of Portland. Zita"s description of furniture, including mattresses floating down the Columbia River during the flood that destroy Vanport got me thinking about this mattress that I found in the forest on the island. It must have come from some previous flood, but was it from Vanport? It"s hard to tell.
We finally enticed the other goose family into having dinner here. On the left is our original goose family that lost all but one of their goslings, the ones on the right on a family who likes to hang out with the other family, but they only lost 2 of their original 4 goslings. We have a long history with these two families. The female of the family of four doesn"t trust me because years ago I accidentally "beaned" her with a saltine cracker that actually drew blood. I didn"t mean any harm, but it"s hard to explain that to a goose.
Sunrise over Shillapoo Wildlife Refuge. This is a really lovely place to hike. Park at the boat ramp and bring an orange vest if it"s autumn, just to make sure the hunters see you.
A doe and her fawn.
My buddy Bill"s boat Time Out is stuck in the channel near the boat ramp. Gotta watch those tide charts Bill!
The fawn is back.
I haven"t gotten around to mounting the stern light and stern camera since I redid the roof last August. But I finally figured out how to do it using leftover pieces from the roof mounted rails that I removed when I re-roofed.
The view from the camera looks good too!
A buddy of mine has a shop with everything in it, including a welder capable of doing light aluminum welding. So we took pieces of the old RADAR arch that I removed from the roof last year and made a step for Lil Ambition.
So I took it over to Southend, laid on my back on the beach to drill holes in the frame members of Lil Ambition. Then I bolted it in with four 1/4" stainless steel bolts.
And here is how it looks on the beach. It"s so much easier to take two small steps into the boat rather than one giant step.
We finally got the pool in good shape. I left in the liners from the previous two years and added a third, clean medium duty tarp for the new pool inside the older ones. But then one day a big ship surge ripped my new tarp. So I went out and got a heavy duty tarp and put it inside the new ripped one. This is how it came out.
With low water we start looking for things that need to come up off the bottom. I"ve already pulled up a dead battery, but now we can see this old rusty steel barrel on the bottom. We hook it with a grappling hook, wait for low tide, tie off the line and let the tide lift the docks and slowly drag the barrel out of the water.
A nice shot of the slough as summer fades.
A view of our slip from the road.
We had a couple of drips from the roof over winter, so I cleaned up and re-glassed a few suspect areas, then I covered the whole roof in Heny TropiCool Silicone roof coating. It"s super sticky and tenatious, but super water repellent.
A Coyote on the island. There are plenty living there, we hear them almost every night, but we almost never see them.
The Moon.
A deer walking down the shoreline right in front of the house. It"s like a parade of wildlife!
Sunset as reflected in the waters of Fisherman"s Slough. Notice the half moon reflected in the water.
Out for a walk on the beach and I found another shard of glass. I"ve been picking up shards of glass from this beach for 17 years, and while it used to be covered in glass, now you can only find a few pieces while walking the beach. I used to come home with pockets full of glass, now I come home with one or two pieces, that"s quite an improvement and it shows that every little bit helps.
Sunset.
A cauliflower on the beach. How did it get here? The guys who load up the food on the ships heading back out across the Pacific often lose food over the side. I have seen every kind of grocery item out here, including a salmon fillet in the package, which seems rather ironic.
Now, notice the deer tracks on the beach. In the left-center of the photo you can see the head of cauliflower. The deer walked the beach looking for things to eat and totally missed the cauliflower, because on average, deer are stupid.
Another sunset!
And another!
And another!
A sternwheeler coming down the river.
Geese flying in the sunrise.
Sunset.
A couple of fishermen enjoying the sunset.
Lil’ Ambition on an Anchor Buddy at Southend. It looks like the wind grabbed her and kept her off the beach, which is fine by me!
Sunrise over Shillapoo Wildlife refuge.
The wind is coming out of the southwest.
The pool is still clean, thanks to the continuous use of chlorine. So clean, you can hardly tell you are looking at water.
A Pheasant hen walking the shoreline.
We had a magnificent sunrise over the wildlife refuge.
Fisherman’s Slough is beautiful this time of year.
A panorama of the river from Caterpillar Island.
And a single shot of the sunset.
A nice floret of Hericium ramosum. A standing, but dead tree that had a good amount of it last year fell down and boy, is it covered!
A cool spiderweb hanging from a sailboat’s backstay.
A nice beefy buck came down the channel. Isn’t he beautiful?
A nice sunset over glass.
And the moon afterwards.
A strange set of prints in the sand. What could it be?
They are Bald Eagle talon prints left by a bird that was skimming the beach and touching the beach as he flew.
A really cool sunrise over Shillapoo Wildlife Refuge. Notice the shadow of Mount Hood cast on the underside of the clouds.
While I was fixing the starboard wall issues I ran a 1/4” tube from the watermaker to the tank under the bed in the bedroom. I also added a UV sterilizer to kill any viruses and bacteria in the river water before it hits the Reverse Osmosis unit. Now when I make water I also filter the “brine” which in fact only has a TDS of 100PPM and send it automatically to the water tank onboard. Now we have unlimited free water, and since it all runs on 12 volts, that means all my water is made by the sun through solar power.
Here comes the fungus! A good crop of Hericium ramosum coming up in the forest.
A bunch of deer on the shoreline.
Sunrise over Shillapoo Wildlife Refuge.
Our Muscovy duck Mugly is so lonely, he keeps chasing around the wild Mergansers and other ducks and Blue Herons. What to do?
I went on Craigslist and found a rancher in La Center that raises Muscovy ducks. I asked them for a female and $20 later, I was the proud owner of Sofie, short for So Fine, a girlfriend for Mugly.
But will she find Mugly? They haven’t been formerly introduced.
Finally they meet, after a little baiting with Saltine crackers that is!
And now they go everywhere together.
Yep, she is a beautiful young lady.
A pair of Bald Eagles. Look closely, they blend into the tree pretty well.
A juvenile Bald Eagle at the cusp of adulthood. By next year he will have a fully white head and tail.
A salmon swimming by the boat.
Note the Adipose fin on this salmon, that means he is a natural fish. Hatchery fish have their Adipose fin clipped off before they are released and it never grows back, so the fishermen can tell if they have caught a hatchery salmon, which they can keep, or a natural solmon which they have to release alive if possible.
The Bald Eagle is back. Flecks of black still in his white hood, those will go away soon.
Sunset.
Our old marina. It's looking pretty decrepid but that's what happens when the State destoys wealth.
I converted the Wolfraft into a feeding station for the ducks. It kind of works, but now it appears there is no need, both ducks are missing. Did they leave, or did they get eaten?
The Sun, taken through cloud cover. Not a single sunspot!
Our first snow of the winter.
A rather muted winter sunset.
The full moon.
More snow.
Great Ambiton in the snow. So glad I don't have to shovel snow off the roof anymore since I added all that insulation to the roof structure.
No swimming in the pool today!
Sunset.
Sunset on Christmas Day.
Taking a cruise in Lil' Ambition. With Mister Heater running it's nice and toasty inside no matter how cold it is outside. And unlike a car, I don't need to work about chaining up!
A crane was brought in to clean up the illegal moorage at the south end of Fisherman's Slough.
Sunset on New Years Day.
Ice in the river. It's common but I don't really want it to lock us in. I'm not sure how much ice we can handle.
We have a lot of snow!
I took a cruise in Lil’ Ambition to see what a foot of snow did to the island, first up, Quinn’s Cove
Here is Pier One on the island.
A nice shot of Sauvie Island.
The north end of the island and Fazio’s Sand and Gravel.
The marina covered in snow.
A little garden shed just couldn’t take the snow load.
The next day the sun came out and wow, was it beautiful!
There is a little too much snow on this boathouse for its flotation.
The snowy road.
Our dock from the road. That’s a lot of snow!
As things warm up, the snow is slowly sliding off the roofs.
The boat ramp is pretty much unusable.
Sunset.
The Moon over the snowy slough.
Pintail Ducks.
Now freezing rain, and so our poor hummingbirds are going to have to go hungry.
A nice sky reflected in the slough.
Sunrise over Shillapoo Wildlife Refuge.
Mount Hood in the sunrise.
Sunrise over Shillapoo Wildlife Refuge.
Mount Hood in the sunrise.
A pair of male Goldeneyes.
A slightly skewed time lapse of the sunset at high water. The Columbia is really moving!
The water heater, which is now about ten years old quit working. I used a voltmeter to verify it was the propane valve that failed and ordered one online after giving up finding one locally. I scheduled Sunday delivery but the mailman was too lazy to deliver it so I had to wait till the day after President's Day to chase it down and install it. Until then we heated water on the stove and the BBQ out on the front deck. Finally, a hot shower after a week of going without!
Sunset.
After getting the water heater working again, the T&P valve failed on the water heater, now not only do I not have hot water but I had to shut off water to the whole house. Luckily these are stocked at every hardware store, so it wasn't hard to find one. But...
I tried removing the T&P valve with less than adequate tools and one of them slipped and I ripped my hand open. At trip to the emergency room and $319 later I came home with tetanus shot and was able to finally replace the T&P valve with the new one.
When we first ordered the boat, the timing was such that we knew that the next full moon would see us living aboard Great Ambition on the river. Now that we are coming up on ten years aboard we are counting full moons again. This is our 131st full moon aboard Great Ambition and we have never looked back to land, the place where sissies live.
Sunset.
The tug Mary B. heading up river.
The state has dropped off a fresh batch of pheasants for the hunters to go after. The problem is that they are so stupid they just walk down the road as the hunters drive by. Takes all the fun out of hunting if the quarry won't even try to hide from you.
A pair of Bald Eagles are having a conversation, or maybe an argument with three other eagles.
I was recording these two Bald Eagles when a Red Tailed Hawk attacked the eagles with a fly-by. The eagles sure got upset, and I was thrilled to have captured this on video.
The river is right at flood stage, 16 feet on the marker, so now we can watch the sunset from the front deck as we can see right over the island, in fact there isn't really much island left!
Yep, the water is pretty high, but unlike back in 2011, we are going to stay put and ride out the high water at the marina. It's not that bad since we have a second ramp that is dry.
Sunrise over Shillapoo Wildlife Refuge.
Another nice sunrise!
Yep, the water is pretty high!
A cruise out to the island shows it's pretty high. There is Pier One underwater.
I've never seen the sunset from the island with the river so high.
A Bald Eagle flying overhead.
Sunset.
A nice looking male Wood Duck.
With the river so high (about one foot over flood stage) we can now see sunsets from the front deck through the island. When the leaves on the island trees pop, we won't be able to do this.
Langsdorf Landing is seriously flooded. Good luck using the dock.
A Bald Eagle flying over. I can see him trying to figure out what I'm up to.
I'm remodeling some of the closets using ClosetMaid wire shelving. It's pretty cool, easy to work with and looks very nice when done.
Another sunset from the front deck. You can now see the leaves starting to come in.
Now that the water is dropping, you can see a big difference between the two sunsets.
Another Bald Eagle.
The next wire shelf job, under the sink.
And another closet done. I did this one in 6 hours including adding an additional layer of foam in the back of the closet along with a sheet of paneling.
An Osprey.
A Wood Duck, they are so pretty!
Sunrise over Shillapoo Wildlife Refuge.
A Bald Eagle soaring overhead.
The river looking north.
I wonder if it's on a five year mission...
After nine years, the roof of Lil' Ambition couldn't take the hard winters anymore, so I took it to a canvas maker in Longview. It looks pretty good this way!
A whole family of River Otters swimming in front of the houseboat.
African Piper on anchor with Mount St. Helens in the background.
African Piper.
A couple of male Mallards.
A male Wood Duck.
Bald Eagle, so majestic.
Caterpillar Island with very high water.
Ok, it's May, what's with the fog?!!!!
Left to right, my RO 2ppm drinking water, filtered (0.5micron) river water, pool water and well water. Please don't make me drink from the well!
A plane flying past the moon.
A MacGregor 24 from the marina.
Another Bald Eagle, wow!
Sunset, rather plain, but not bad.
Neighbors on the island.
Sunrise over Shillapoo Wildlife Refuge.
Kadow's Marina in the early morning light.
The sand on the Columbia River is an interesting amalgam of Quartzite from British Columbia, Basalt from the Cascade Shield volcanos, Pumice and Andesite from Mount Hood and other more recent volcanic eruptions.
The Moon with a cloud starting to encroach. This is our 123rd full moon aboard.
Ten years ago Great Ambition arrived at the Marine Drive boat ramp. We've survived 10 years aboard, can we make it to the "bitter end?" Stay tuned!
A Bald Eagle soaring overhead.
Our geese are back but this time they are keeping their distance and it worked! They have four goslings, where last year, when they kept coming by for free food, they had zero gozlings. Eventually they had 4, but then one by one they went missing till only one was left. Maybe staying away from free food is a better stratagy.
I'm using a new anchor aid that I invented called Boat Valet. It works better than the Anchor Buddy which tries to keep your boat off the shore.
A nice flower on a sunny day.
A solitary Wood Duckling swimming around the house.
Ten years ago today Roger's Marine Electronics finished installing all the electronics in Great Ambition and we started moving in.
We finally finished moving into Great Ambition and prepared to leave from Rogers Marine Electronics after they finished installing all the electronics. After a test of the RADAR, our salesman asked to get off, and of course now I have to dock this beast for only the second time in my life in a hard running river. I kissed the dock, he stepped off and off we went for Caterpillar Island.
We survived the passage to the island, then set two anchors, one on each side in 15 feet of water. My anchor didn't set, but April's did, so we were able to re-deploy mine and get a good bite on both sides. We had lunch and really enjoyed the start of our new life.
It's been quite a ride, lots of fun, lots of work, lots of problems, but overall I would do it again in a heartbeat!
Trimaran Transporter houseboat we named Great Ambition.
