Building a kayak

We've been busy at The Roost! The featured ongoing project is a Pygmy kit double kayak that Jeff broke out of the box in mid-February and has been working diligently on twice a day.

This evening Soren joined Jeff in the garage to help "pull" the wires that temporarily hold the wood panels together in this "stitch-and-glue" technique. (Note the Pygmy single kayak on wall brackets that Jeff built in the late 1990s.)

After a month of working on the hull--it's already been fiberglassed--the boat has been flipped over and the deck is coming together. This simple yet beautiful kit was created by an acquaintance of ours, John Lockwood, right here in Port Townsend. The company website is www.pygmyboats.com, and has lots of beautiful pictures, many of them taken in and around PT.

Soren took his job with the pliers very seriously. I was shooting pix with the goal of a 2014 calendar page. What's the "S ' ing" word, you might wonder? Why, "stitch-and-gluing," of course!

Hey, Dad, is this still fun? I just want to take this thing for a paddle!

Spelunking and sailing: The latest adventures

Today Soren accomplished his biggest cave exploration to date. He made it all the way to the pitch-black and somewhat scary end of an abandoned mining tunnel in the Anacortes Forest Lands. He and his grandparents had tried to explore it before without proper lights, so this time (with his mom and Aunt Jill along), we brought multiple flashlights.

Soren showed his characteristic caution for new situations, but once he made it timidly to the destination (not wanting to be in the lead), his confidence perked up, and with his own flashlight he made several solo trips in and out, laughing and singing and shouting echoes and collecting rocks--all the things that make spelunking so much fun.

It's very nice to have rendezvoused in Anacortes with Auntie Jill, who is visiting us from Portland. She's starting school (again) this summer to become a nurse practitioner, at OHSU. Congrats, Jilly!

In other adventures.... On the last day of March, we were honored to be aboard the first public sail of the 2012 season for the schooner Adventuress. She schooned around Port Townsend Bay in the rain, testing out her new mainsail (the biggest one on the west coast!), and Soren got to check everything out. (He'll be volunteer crew in no time.)
Soren's favorite activity? A close second to dogging down the watertight doors in the fo'c'sle bulkhead (just like in the Nautilus submarine in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea!) was viewing fresh-caught plankton with a video microscope in the deckhouse.
Now, when I was crew in 1999, we didn't have such fancy equipment. But no way could we have ever spotted an urchin larva with those old magnifying boxes! With this, we could even see diatom chains. Way cool.
Too bad Jeff couldn't come with us; he was manning a booth for Power Trip Energy Corp. at the Sequim Home Show. But my boy and I had a memorable sail together. Here's to many more.

P.S. If you're not a subscriber to Soren Talks, he also posted today:

http://sorentalks.blogspot.com/2012/04/im-all-boy-and-i-can-drive-tractor-too.html

Regaling our relations

We have been delighting our relations (as well as the other way 'round) with many visits this summer. Above, that's Soren and Jill in Portland in June. Here are some recent snaps of Soren with other relatives:

Canoeing on Heart Lake with Papaw Bill, in an aluminum Grumman. We've taken the canoe out twice this summer.

Sharing chocolate milkshakes with Daddy, Grandpa Jim & Grandma Gloria in the Steamboat Rock Cafe and chatting with the proprietor, who attended Soren's baby shower (!).

I would've photographed Soren at the Banks Lake beach, where he clamored to spend most of our visit, but I dropped my point-and-shoot camera on a visit to a friend's farm and broke the LCD screen. Jim set me up with a spare camera of his right as we were leaving, after the beach action. (Thanks, Jim -- my documentary work can continue!)

Soren was not the youngest at a Garrison/Rees family reunion at the Vashon beach property. One generation was represented by my mom and her brother, cousin, and cousin-in-law. The cousin-in-law's son (my age) attended with his partner and two-year-old. The elders were Soren's Great-Grandpa Gerry and his first wife's sister.

Here's Soren with the sister, Margie. The closest we'll come to knowing what his late great-grandmother (who died before I was born) would have looked like at 90. (Pretty good, I'd say -- Margie went for a paddle in the sea kayaks after enjoying ice cream!)

And the hand-cranked ice cream master passing on his wisdom of this time-honored family tradition to the youngest generation... A Vashon picnic wouldn't be the same without it.

Soren spent his first night in a tent after this reunion picnic, as he and I camped out on the beach afterward, accompanied by Ann & Bill. He slept like a log in the tent we shared, and was brimming with excitement over the activity every moment he was awake. Will have to do that again!

In two days, we're taking the train to Portland for another visit to Jill. It's a bit of a trek to take public transport, which starts with a bus ride (or in this case, a carpool) from PT to the Bainbridge ferry, a 30-minute ferry ride across Puget Sound, a 20-minute walk thru Seattle's Pioneer Square to the King Street Station, and a 3-1/2-hour Amtrak ride. We're riding south with another family with a 3-year-old, but coming north it will be just the two of us. Wish me luck!

Beach & more: What we've been up to this summer

This summer has felt too busy already! Suffice to say this blog has suffered. Sorry to all our loyal readers, but who wants to sit indoors at a computer during the only two warm-weather months of the year??

That said, it has been unseasonably cold and even rainy. Our June-bearing strawberries didn't merit a first harvest until July, and who knows if our tomatoes will ripen?

But we've gotten to the beach on many, many lovely days. It's such a joy to be past the sand-eating, sand-throwing stage Soren was in last year. He even willingly wears his sunglasses now.


And we occasionally use the rubber raft we acquired at a garage sale. It's just big enough for me and Soren. He's not quite adept enough to row yet, but just wait!

One new commitment I made this summer was to run a toddler story hour at our Maritime Center -- every Thursday in July and August. Well, the first three Thursdays of "Sea Squirts Storytime" were cold and rainy, which no doubt helped boost attendance. We've had a fun time of it, with our first session focused on the cruising pet "Salty Dog" (a book series by Ted & Gloria Rand), the next on lighthouses ("The Lighthouse Cat" and "Comet's Nine Lives"), the next on fishing (Robert McCloskey's "Burt Dow, Deepwater Man"), and the most recent on competitive rowing ("My Mommy Rows"). Here's a photo of Soren and friend from the fishing Thursday, when the kids tried on foul weather gear sized adult XS!

For a silly publicity photo of me, see the poster created to promote "Sea Squirts."

Now kids come up to me saying "Ahoy, Shipshape Shelly!" Volunteering to do this kids' program has awakened the teacher in me. And reminded me to practice my sailor's instruments: the pennywhistle and the bones. Both have made appearances at story hour. I even sang "The Eddystone Light" -- the non-racy version, of course, where the lighthouse keeper marries the mermaid.

Soren and I have been biking all over town with our handy-dandy bike trailer, and trying to attend every Free Friday Concert at Fort Worden associated with Centrum's summer festivals. One time Soren fell asleep on the way home, so I unhitched the trailer, propped it back against our driveway retaining wall, and let him sleep.
I'll close with a pic of Jeff and Soren. They really are two peas in a pod, my goofy boys. Look how long Soren is growing! Jeff estimates he'll match my height by age 9. Probably.

Aug. 19: Shelly's first "show" opens!

If you're in PT this coming Thursday, you're invited to attend the 5:30-7:30 p.m. opening reception for my first "show" -- that is, the first photo exhibition in which not one, but two, of my photographs will be shown. These are them!

I've never entered an art or photo contest before, but was inspired to do so by one of my colleagues in the fabulous Work-At-Home Moms support group (see prior entry), who is busy getting her video installations shown at galleries around the region while mothering a four-year-old. (Yay, Jess!)

The call for entries of maritime scenes in the arts section of our local newspaper caught my attention, and while selecting three photos to enter (two were selected) was not difficult, I have to say that getting the digital files printed and framing them on the cheap turned out to be more work than I thought!

"On the Water: An Exhibition of Maritime Photography" will be on view through the Wooden Boat Festival in the upstairs of the new Northwest Maritime Center.

And if you can't make it in person, just enjoy "New Brunswick Lobsterman" (above -- see lots more photos of this day on the water from our 2006 travel blog, here) and "Frosty Stem, Point Hudson" (below).