The Westlake Pirates

The temperature dropped to about 26 F last night, and remains below freezing as lunchtime approaches. We had a dusting of snow and the docks were dangerously slick and iced-over. The water line is turned off for safety, and the heaters are doing the best they can, but that still had us at a chilly 56 in the front room this morning. Luckily we have a very, very warm comforter on the bed.

This could be the proverbial snowflake that broke the camel's back, as we assess the future of full-time living aboard after an all-time record rainy month capped by a bitter cold snap that's likely to remain in place for at least two more days.

There's a lot still to be done with the boat (both in terms of repairs and enjoyment), but everything comes at a price, and this month that's been a damp chill, fifteen inches of rain, and now a layer of ice.

Posted by Steve at 11:31 AM | Permalink

November is barely half-over and we've already set a record for rainfall in this month. The webcam is once again down due to saturation, so apparently my little plastic hut wasn't sturdy enough and it needs some more protected side shielding as well.

If we get another inch of rain at the airport (where they keep such records), we'll surpass the third wettest month on record there, which was January of this year... the last time the poor webcam needed a toweling off. Four more inches and we set the all-time wettest month record, as measured downtown.

Good thing we don't have to worry about flooding, and instead just deal with a few drips and drops while the elevation goes up!

Posted by Steve at 12:15 PM | Permalink

It's been absurdly nice here in Seattle for the past three weeks, if not longer (I'll have to check the weather blog archives to verify this.) We nearly reached 90 the past two days, and there hasn't been a cloud to be seen in at least seven days. Thankfully, there's also been very little humidity, so it's been nothing short of spectacular (although the cats may beg to differ, but that's what a fur coat will get you.)

Of course, the lake is up to nearly 70 degrees, so the cold water pipe isn't very cold anymore, but that's a small sacrifice to make for such beautiful conditions.

Naturally, it's a great time to do a little hard labor!

Continue reading "Lake a'boil" »

Posted by Steve at 12:48 PM | Permalink

It's spring!

Okay, so really this is just that usual late-winter tease that we get (and if you notice, the flowers are actually inside because it was below freezing for a few nights in a row two weeks ago), but now the sun has been shining (mostly) and the temperatures have warmed back up and spring is in the air!

Continue reading "Hello, we are tiny daffodils" »

Posted by Steve at 1:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We're in the midst of the most violent windstorm Seattle has seen in about seven years. We've had sustained winds in the 20-30 mph range, with gusts into the 55-65mph range around town. Here at the boat we're somewhat sheltered due to Queen Anne Hill and the large houseboat next door, so the weather station has been recording sustained winds in the 10-20 mph range with gusts up to about 35 mph. It's an incredible sight to see whitecaps frothing on the Lake and tarps being bandied about like fallen leaves.

Jasper has been anxiously pacing the boat since 4 am, less-than-thrilled by the wind whistling through the sailboat rigging all around us. The howling of the wind, groaning of the lines, and rattling of cables and accessories has given everything a somewhat eerie ambience, as if we're in the middle of a haunted house with a floor that is constantly pitching and yawing. The boats on the outside slips are pitching to and fro like small bath toys in the hands of an excited two-year-old. It's times like these that having an inside spot is very advantageous.

Continue reading "Not quite hurricane-force... yet" »

Posted by Steve at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As mentioned in a previous post, I purchased a dandy little personal weather station (The Vantage Pro 2 Plus) from Davis Instruments. It does all sorts of nifty things like measure temperature (inside and outside), humidity, barometric pressure, rain, wind speed/direction, solar radiation, UV radiation, and probably a bunch of other things that I haven't figured out yet. I also got an add-on that lets me measure the lake temperature (which not surprisingly doesn't change nearly as much as the air temperature), and a cable that sends all the data to the computer for further processing into shiny graphs and charts.

I mounted the station this morning on the radar arch, so I can tell you that right now it's 46F outside and there's very little breeze, without even needing to step outside. What's cooler, though, is that now you can see all the data we see in nearly real-time! Check it out here. That's the permanent link to the weather at the boat (it's also now included in our link list in the left column, so don't worry when this post eventually leaves the main page.) At the moment I'm using one of the default templates included with the software, but in the near future I'm going to spruce that page up quite a bit, so it will include all sorts of historical data on the conditions here. Stay tuned!

Posted by Steve at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

If you're looking for the Octopus Cam right now and you're noticing there's no video feed, it's probably because the web camera came in the house to be hung upside down and drained of the five gallons of water currently floating around inside of it. We kind of forgot about it on the upper deck. And it's kind of raining. A lot. Hopefully we'll have it up and running again soon.

For now, see if this wets your whistle:

Posted by Kristin at 11:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So it's been a bit rainy lately. Actually, that doesn't do the precipitation justice - we've had more than half our normal cold November rain already, and we're only five days into the month. It's been cold, breezy and above all, damp. There's been a few adjustments needed: windows need to be mopped down hourly, the bilge needs regular pumping (though that's mostly due to a clogged drain hose that I simply haven't been able to get out and clear yet), and the outside plants need their overflow pans dumped every four or five hours. Plus, the webcam got a little over-precipitated on, so it's unplugged and inside for now to dry out (it was working fine yesterday, but today apparently put things over the top!) We may need to find some alternate accomidations for it during the winter.

On top of all of this, the forecast calls for quite a bit more rain through at least mid-week. It looks like winter weather has arrived with a vengeance. There's already lots of snow in the mountains (and the ski resorts are open for their earliest season in 28 years!) and we're at least ten degrees below normal temperatures. This is more like what we should be seeing in January, not early November. At least we now know we can handle the cold temperatures with a space heater and a nice warm comforter!

Continue reading "Nothing lasts forever..." »

Posted by Steve at 11:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)