In less than three weeks we expect to have made “the big left turn” and be out in the Pacific ocean for 5-8 days nonstop heading to San Francisco. Compared to many we know who are also planning to do the same, we don’t have a lot of lost minute boat preparations to do as we did a lot of it over the past year and I quit my job in March and he quit his about 5 months prior to that.

However, we still have a big checklist that we share in the Notes app on our phone of last minute things to take care of. And each day we seem to find a few non-essential things to keep us busy. Yesterday we removed our headsail and mainsail and drove them up to the Doyle sail loft so our sailmaker could give them a look-over for any minor repair needs that might make sense before we leave. We’re still working daily at optimizing the boat storage areas and inventorying where we put critical items. We need to empty out our dock box at the marina and decide what to do with all that stuff. There is still stuff on the boat that needs to go to storage and a few things in storage that may need to come to the boat.

We want to organize some spares we have in storage just in case we need someone locally to ship us something. We are sending in our application for health insurance and doing things like getting our wills witnessed and deciding whether to get a year of key medical prescriptions or hope to be able to refill at a pharmacy in Mexico.

We want to reinstall a new deck unit for our windlass because when I was doing something with anchoring in the San Juans the chain bunched up and the bolts holding the cover on sheared and it would be easier to replace the unit (motor part does not need replacing) than to try to get the sheared bolts out of there.

There are a variety of boat-related manuals and procedures we’ve been refining that we plan to print up and have in a binder for easy reference if things get stressful and we can’t immediately recall the best way to do certain things or if our crew needs a reference on how to do it on our boat with our equipment in our preferred way. Also need to print out a copy of that boat inventory – what’s on board and where is it stored in case we need a certain type of tool/equipment or want to see what we can use to make some repair.

We need to look ahead at whether we should be securing early reservations for moorage in some popular ports that allow early reservations in Mexico. We want to do a test of raising our spinnaker since we didn’t have occasion to use it at all this season and don’t want any nasty surprises (we’ll need to wait until we have our sails back to do that).

We have found too many times that using iBooks to store important pdfs on the iPad is a problem because it will suddenly move the file from the device to the cloud and we’ll need the file when we’re out of cell phone range so we need to download copies of all those pdfs into a files area (and make sure they are all latest versions) and then print a handy reference guide of what is in there. If you’re not big on boating you may not realize what a wealth of publications the US Government makes available for free on pdf… Light Lists, Coast Pilot, and more. And not just for US waters. Many countries charge for their versions of these resources (although some are worth it to pay for in some areas where the US coverage is not as detailed).

We also have a special list of “last week or so items,” things we don’t want to do until the very end such as washing, rolling up and stowing our dinghy (so its not up on the deck during our big passage), updating to the latest software on the chart planner, buying and storing the food provisions for the trip, and filling our fuel tanks and spare fuel jerry jugs.

We have already done a lot that isn’t listed above in the last two weeks since returning from the San Juans, but every day it seems we think of one more key thing. We do have an “optional or can wait for SF” section on the list where we move stuff that we feel is not necessary, although sometimes a few of those items get done because they line up well with other tasks we are doing.

So, it’s pretty busy here. We also want to have some sort of gathering to be able to say goodbye to our Seattle friends. So far the best we have been able to do is just start meeting up with them one by one.. but maybe it will happen?

We are super-eager to get out of here though. The cruise ship terminal is back (you can see the “lovely” Ovation of the Seas in the background of the photo for this post) and the heat of August is in full force. Marina is not much better than land on a hot day and having the boat in project mode means its not easy to just head out for a quick cool-down sail. And as I run out of things to focus on getting done, I start drifting to new things to worry about like “will the wildfire smoke get to Settle before we leave?” and “how bad will the wildfire smoke get in SF bay this fall?” which results in some nights where I start researching small HEPA filters that would be reasonable to run on the boat.

The preparation really never ends and many of these things we could leave without doing, but I hope we don’t procrastinate too much and our last couple weeks here before the big sail south are restful.