The pilot house and the settee are taking shape as well. We've not made many change there.

Normally the guest stateroom has open shelves above the desk. We've instead specified cabinets with locker doors to give us more enclosed storage space. We widened the desk slightly to make up for some of the space lost to the cabinets. And we widened the guest stateroom bed to give more room at the foot of the bed.

The engine is in place under a tarp, with the fuel tanks on either side, but not much else has been installed in either the engine room or the lazarette. The lazaratte has a ton of space, but we'll soon have it and the engine room stuffed with equipment. Jeremy Henderson, our project manager at Nordhavn, jokes that we're trying to sink the boat.

We spent July 4th this year at the Tacoma Freedom Fair. This was the first time we'd attended--it was a huge affair. The fair extended over two miles along the waterfront adjacent to Ruston Way with all kinds of booths and exhibits along the way.

We landed the dinghy and climbed ashore at the Fantasy World Hobbies track. Scale model cars whipped around a small track. The drivers controlled their cars via radio from the top of an adjacent school bus. Surrounding the track were pit areas where the drivers worked on their cars, making adjustments and fixing any broken parts. The cars themselves were complex, some electric and some gasoline powered, and used surprisingly similar technology as real race cars. They had fully adjustable anti-roll bars, shock absorbers and suspensions, and people were applying traction compounds to the tires. All the same chassis tuning rules apply as would to a full-sized race car. We spent quite a while watching the races and talking to various enthusiasts. Most were hobbyists, but at least one was a professional who was paid to drive.

One of the reasons we'd come to the fair was to watch the air show. We lucked out and selected a great spot to watch from that was right where the planed flew the lowest. Navy planes included an F/A-18C Hornet, an AV-8 Harrier, a lumbering C-17 and A/OA-10 Thunderbolt II. We particularly enjoyed the acrobatics of Tim Weber in the GEICO Extra 300 S. 

Vendors, exhibits and various bands were setup all along the waterway, including a high-jump exhibit. Big groups had come for the day, equipped with full-sized barbecues and tents. The crowds were thick along the shore--the organizers claim 150,000 attend, but because the road was closed to traffic, moving around was easy.

We had anchored off Neill Point on the south end of Vashon Island and brought the dinghy over, but there was plenty of room on the log boom during the day, although lots of boats were anchored off inside the boom. It seemed to have less of the party atmosphere than we were expecting, except for one large tug. Those big black boxes mounted on deck in the right hand picture below are speakers.

The grand final of the day was the an impressive fireworks display. We watched on deck from Neill Point, and got a bonus display from Quartermaster Harbor. Quartermaster Harbor used to have a big display, but it had stopped a few years back. It would seem they've started up again.

We'd originally been planning to spend July 4th at Penrose Point Marine Park, as we'd done last year. There aren't any major displays there, but all of Case Inlet is part of unincorporated Pierce County. Fireworks seem not only allowed there, but encouraged. Everyone was setting them off and we had a great time lying on the bow and watching fireworks in every direction. This year, a few private displays were set off on Vashon Island near our anchorage, but mostly the two big public displays at Tacoma and Quartermaster. Next year, we might anchor inside Quartermaster and enjoy their display up close.

We started living aboard early this year at Bell Harbor Marina as an experiment. We hadn't planned to live on our current boat--our initial plan was that we'd eventually live aboard on the new boat. We'd been on the waiting list for Bell Harbor for ages, and weren't expecting a slip to come available for a few more years. But we popped to the top of the list as James was taking a job in downtown Seattle. The opportunity was too good, so we had to try it.  

We made one big trip from the house with the car stuffed with everything we could think we might need. And in four months, the only thing we ended up needing from the house were international adapters for a trip James made to China. We had previously spent most weekends on the boat, and had been about as close to live-aboards as you could get without actually living aboard. So the boat was reasonably well setup already, and about the only modification we made was to add a couple of towel racks in the aft stateroom.

After a couple of weeks, we were hooked. We loved the downtown lifestyle, and didn't miss the house at all. And we'd almost completely stopped driving our car. We'd been planning to buy bicycles when we got the new boat, but decided to get them right away that first week at Bell Harbor. We wanted something that would work well around town, but also that we could take on logging roads along the coast. We spent ages talking with Aaron at the excellent Velo Bike Shop in Seattle and left with two Giant FCR 2s. James rides his bike to work downtown and Jennifer rides & buses to Redmond. Parking downtown is expensive, so we kept our car at Elliott Bay Marina, and just biked over there when we needed it. (Bell Harbor doesn't have permanent moorage through the summer, so we kept our slip at Elliott Bay Marina and have to move around a bit over the summer months. That's a minor hassle compared to the reward of living downtown.)

Within two months, we had spent a day interviewing real estate agents to start the process of selling the house. We chose Mary Lee and Jeff Shaffer, who did an astounding job in preparing the house for sale, creating marketing material, selling the house, and managing the offer and closing process. We recommend them without reservation. They are real professionals who made the experience efficient, successful, quick, and easy, especially given the current weak housing economy. Our house went on the market on April 16th, we accepted an offer on May 21st and the sale closed on June 23rd. Amazing.

We sold most of our furniture not required for staging on craigslist prior to going to market, and the remainder after. And last week, we sold our car, also through craigslist. So now we're down to just the current boat and a 5'-by-5' storage room that is stuffed solid. When the new boat arrives, we'll empty out the storage room, sell the current boat, and be down to just the boat and our bicycles.

We often get asked, why do you boat or what do you do out there?  Our answers revolve around experiencing nature and exploring new areas. We enjoy talking about what we have found in our book, Cruising the Secret Coast, and in the blog we maintain.

Recently John Marshall, who owns Nordhavn 55 Serendipity, posted one of best answers we’ve seen to “why we cruise?”  With John’s permission, it follows.

The remarkable thing about cruising on a boat like this is that we can go to truly isolated places and enjoy nature in its rawest and most primal (and beautiful) form, and still have every comfort of home.

Sometimes when I step outside the warm, bright confines of the boat at night and stand out there just listening to the wild, with the boat completely silent, the contrast gives me goose bumps. Inside is 5-star elegance. Outside is wild, cold, primal, uncompromising wilderness. It's a very bizarre but wonderful kind of transition that occurs in seconds, allowing me as much of either as suits my mood at the moment.

I've turned off the TV after watching a movie with the HD plasma screen and sound system delivering a performance that's as good as any theater, and then stepped outside the boat to find myself standing in the absolutely silent wilderness, without another human being around for tens of miles. A largely untouched wildness of wolves and bears and nature at its finest.

The closest equivalent would be a cabin in the deep woods or high on a mountain side in a wild area. Except you can't build cabins in places like national parks or many other wilderness areas, and you can't push a button and move them to someplace else.

Anyway, it’s a mix of perceptions and images and sensations that carry me away every day we're out. I've journeyed many places in the world, lived in far-away lands for many years, traveled in RV's, backpacked through the Rockies, climbed many peaks in my younger years, and the closest analogy to this feeling is when I was an avid backpacker and could carry my "house on my back". A snug tent and warm sleeping bag.

Inside my tent, reading a book with a flashlight, I was largely protected from the elements that might be raging outside. Yet one step outside my tent, and the wilderness I had to walk through to get back to civilization was uncompromising. There was no 9-11 to call if I got in trouble.

This boat in Alaska or northern BC is kind of a 5-star equivalent of that. What is common to my backpacking, however, is that despite all the comforts and the gadgets, you can't let yourself forget that you are on a little boat in a big sea and a deep wilderness far from anyone who could help you, and that piece of chain that leads to the bottom is never completely secure.

That's where the comparison to a 5-star hotel or cabin in the woods breaks down. On a boat, we are always voyaging, even when we're anchored in a snug cove. We might turn off the DVD and shut down the cappuccino maker and go to the comfort of our warm bed, crawling under the down blankets, but toss in 40 knots of unexpected wind, fog and driving rain in the middle of the night, and combine that with a dragging anchor, and that DVD and the plasma TV and the surround sound are suddenly completely meaningless toys.

Now its engines and rudders and windlasses and working on deck in the violent conditions and you are suddenly a seaman fighting the cruel sea for your very survival, just as sailors have had to do for millennium.

You have awoken from being cradled in 21st century luxury to find yourself in the midst of an adventure, and only your own skills and those of your mate or crew will take you to safety.

I truly believe that its adventures and unexpected challenges like this that keep us alive and young at heart.