Two short fall trips in 2023 after many upgrades

Following Braesail’s journey to Juneau and back between April and October 2022 (a trip cut a month short by the death of Walt’s 97-year-old mom), she has received a number of significant upgrades. Last Spring, we pulled off the old worn and cracking leather covering the furniture in the saloon and Walt replaced it with creamy ivory UltraSude, which looks wonderful and cleans quite easily. This involved the re-covering of some 26 individual pieces after the removal of thousands of staples!

Next came the very frustrating and arduous removal of the stained and buckling vinyl that had been glued around the port lights (windows) in the saloon. Once the areas had been cleaned, we sprayed them with paint matching the color of the new upholstery. The interior of that main cabin now looks SO much better! (Photos by Martin Knowles of Martin Knowles PhotoMedia, http://www.mkphotomedia.com/#vancouver-architectural-photography)

We spent seven weeks, between late June and early August, van-camping in Iceland, singing in a touring church choir from Berkeley (Walt was a member of that choir during his Ph.D. studies) that served as “choir-in-residence” at Wells Cathedral for one week and then at Durham Cathedral for another week, van-camping for 10 days with Walt’s brother and his wife in Scotland, camping for another 10 days with them in Ireland, and finally spending five days at a liturgical studies conference in Dublin, Ireland. Meanwhile, Braesail spent a good amount of her time out on charter.

After our return to Everett, Walt and I removed the old, heavily-gunk-encrusted sewage holding tank and installed a new one, Walt replaced the toilets’ pumps with new ones that are much easier to use, and Walt restructured the flushing system to use fresh water (the boat has a desalinator) instead of sea water. We were now eager to take the boat out into the San Juan and Canadian Gulf Islands to enjoy some of the predicted beautiful fall weather!