Diapers On Board

When sailing with two one-year olds, diapers, LOTS and LOTS of diapers are a fact of life.  This post is about diapers and may not be interesting to many of you, but when we were getting ready for this trip, I scoured the internet looking for information on sailing with kids in diapers and didn’t find much.  This is my contribution to others out there looking for tips on sailing with kids in diapers.

Since our boys came home from the hospital they’ve been in cloth diapers.  Cloth fits with our philosophy on minimizing our impact on the environment, as well as our pocket book.  When the boys first came home they were really little, so we used regular old preemie sized cotton pre-fold diapers (what you think of when you think of cloth diapers) with waterproof covers.  We washed them ourselves and they worked pretty well…particularly since you change diapers so frequently with newborns.  Once they were big enough, we started using a higher tech option for cloth diapers, Fuzzi Bunz and we adore them.  Strong words for diapers, but they truly are miracles, especially since we had the experience with the cotton pre-folds at the beginning.  The Fuzzi Bunz consist of a nylon cover with a waterproof coating that has a polar fleece inner shell.  The fleece and waterproof nylon create a pocket for an absorbent liner to be inserted.  The absorbent liner is microfiber and holds a lot of fluid, and with fleece next to the baby’s skin, the moisture is wicked away similar to a disposable diaper.  The pocket configuration also allows for customization in absorbency, because you can put more than one absorbent liner in, or you can use liners made of different materials like hemp or cotton.  For overnight we use one microfiber insert with an additional hemp liner since hemp absorbs an amazing amount of liquid. 

Hand me downs of enough fuzzi-bunz for one kid and baby shower gifts of enough fuzzi-bunz for a second kid made it possible for us to have a full set of fuzzi-bunz for two kids.  We were really fortunate, since they aren’t cheap.  Though even if we bought all 40+ fuzzi-bunz we have by ourselves, we’d still be lots of money ahead over disposables.

When it comes to washing cloth diapers at home, it is as simple as pulling the absorbent liner out of the pocket and scraping any solids into the toilet, since we have a front loader washing machine at home that doesn’t agitate the diapers as much as a top loader would, we do an added scrubbing step with a dish scrubber (used only for this purpose!) to get most of the solid residue off.  Then throw them in the washer with half the amount of soap…it’s VERY important to avoid soap residue since it will cause the microfiber inserts to repel as opposed to absorb liquid.  We also use a special soap, called Country Save for this very reason.  Wash on hot and toss them into the dryer on low heat.  Bing, Bang, Boom you are done.  Between the 2 boys we go through 14-16 diapers a day, and we have enough diapers to go 2-3 days between washing.

On the boat we were committed to continuing to cloth diaper, for the reasons stated above (environmental impact and cost), but also because we simply do not have enough room on the boat to store disposable diapers, both clean and dirty, and in some of the remote places we have been and are going, there is no way to dispose of the diapers so we’d have to hold onto stinky dirty diapers for a long time.

So, how do you deal with washing diapers on the boat?  When we are in a town with a Laundromat, it’s easy, just wash them like we were at home.  However in Northern B.C. and SE Alaska, towns with Laundromats are few and far between, so that leaves the only other option of washing them by hand.  This is where I searched high and low for information on sailing with kids in diapers and didn’t have much luck.  When you are living on a sailboat (particularly a small, simple sailboat like Yare), you live a life constrained by what you can carry.  When it comes to freshwater and electrical power, you need to be very minimal in your usage.  We carry 55 gallons of freshwater and though where we are cruising now you can fill up just about any time you get fuel, you still have to be mindful of your usage.  As far as electrical power goes, we have a 330 amp hour house battery bank.  To put that into context, the lights we have on our boat are very efficient fluorescent lights designed especially for boats.  With our battery bank, we could run 5 of those lights for 33 hours before we would need to recharge.  Try and run something like a hairdryer and you would go through those amps faster than you can say jack rabbit.

Now the question is, how do you wash diapers with minimal freshwater, next to no electricity, and have them dry in a rain forest setting that gets something like 14 feet of rain a year?  That is a huge question.  It seems there are very few people out there who have cruised with kids in diapers in this area who have put information about it out there.  I did get in touch with one couple who left Kodiak, AK with a 10 month old and ended up in Australia to ask what they did about diapers.  They very helpfully put together a post on their blog, read it here.  Their method of keeping the poop and pee diapers separate and dragging them behind the boat and then soaking the poop diapers in napi-san works great for them (and they are in the middle of doing it with their second kiddo on a new boat).  They are using cotton pre-fold diapers.  Since we are using the high tech fuzzi-bunz, we can’t use napi-san as it is a chlorine based sanitizer and that can’t be used with the synthetic fabrics.  So, we had a choice, go with the pre-folds we have and leave the fuzzi-bunz at home, or come up with a method for the fuzzi-bunz.  We decided we just couldn’t leave our beloved fuzzi-bunz behind for a couple of reasons:   the diaper rash we experienced with the cotton pre-folds when the boys were super little, and the fact that you would need to use more diapers per day per kid with the prefolds (since prefolds keep the wetness against baby’s skin and need to be changed more frequently to minimize diaper rash)…times two for twins! 

I did some research on hand washing gadgets and bought a hand washer and a spin dryer.  When they were delivered to the house, they both looked kind of hokey and the spin dryer looked WAY too big.  I bought the wonderwash and the spin dryer from the Laundry Alternative.  The spin dryer looked so huge that I was planning on sending it back, but that was one of those chores that didn’t happen in the whirlwind before we left, so we threw both gadgets on board with the idea that we would try them and if they didn’t work, we would get rid of them at some marina along the way…hopefully someone would want them.  So far we’ve been using the washer, but we probably could get away with a bucket and a plunger just fine, but man oh man are we glad we have the spin dryer!  It’s turned out to be worth the space it takes up, and the power usage is minimal even when you take into account the inefficiency of converting our 12V DC battery power into 120V AC power with our small inverter (we really only have DC power on the boat…we just have a small inverter for charging our computers since we haven’t sprung for the DC computer chargers, and now for the spin dryer).  The dryer doesn’t have a heating element, so the clothes aren’t completely dry when they come out of it, but things stand a chance to actually drying in this damp climate.  It also helps with rinsing the soap out of the clothes since we spin them before the final freshwater rinse to get as much soap out as possible.

All that said, here is our method for washing diapers aboard Yare:

1.       Scrape solids into head (toilet).

2.       Scrub poopy diapers with dish scrub brush in salt water.

3.       Rinse all diaper shells and absorbent liners in salt water an additional 2 times.

4.       Heat salt water for washing (since we have the diesel stove going most of the time to heat the boat and for cooking, though slow, this doesn’t take any more energy than we would use anyway)

5.       Load pre-soaked diapers in wonderwasher with hot salt water* and small amount of soap.

6.       Rotate wonderwasher with handle for about 5 minutes.

7.       Spin wash water out of diapers and liners with spin dryer.

8.       Use 1-2 gallons of fresh water for rinsing salt and soap out of the diapers.

9.       Spin rinse water out of diapers and liners.

10.   If it’s nice out, pin diapers and liners all over the boat so you look like the Beverly Hill Billys.  If it’s not nice out, pin the absorbent liners on drying rack (made by Tor, more on this below) and string bungy cords all over down below to hang the shells on.

* Quite honestly the salt water is usually only warm.  By the time we get enough water hot, it has usually cooled down to pretty warm, due to the logistics of heating large amounts of water on board.  As I was making our plan for washing the diapers on board, I was worried about sanitizing them.  In general, the three ways to sanitize diapers are using a sanitizer like chlorine bleach (not an option for our diapers), UV radiation from drying in the sun (not something we can always count on in this climate), or washing in hot water.  To keep from leaking, the wonderwasher requires warm or hot water so I was planning on using hot water to wash the diapers in order to sanitize them.  It hasn’t worked out that way, but we haven’t seemed to have any problems with the diapers or the boys bottoms, probably because we dry them in the sun when we can, and we wash them frequently in Laundromats with hot water.

We have a cubby that we built specifically for the cat litter box and since we left them at home for this trip (sniff, sniff) we had a cubby we weren’t used to using and it happened to be close to the engine.  Tor installed an engine driven heater from Sure Marine REAL heater (much like the heater in a car, if the engine is running, you can turn a fan on and it will blow hot air out because engine coolant is running through the heater) and put a duct right into the cubby.  He built a rack that looks an awful lot like an oven rack and we can pin the absorbent diaper liners on it and after a few hours of motoring, they are bone dry.

When we aren’t anywhere near a town, we need to wash diapers about every other day with two kids. Washing every other day works out to two loads in the WonderWasher.  We will however go out of our way to find a washing machine!

It’s a lot of work, but we are happy with our system and haven’t had any major problems.  We do have a couple of packages of disposable diapers on board in case diaper rash ever gets out of control.  But we haven’t used that many, even when Odin got diaper rash from hell from one dirty diaper.

Fuzzy Bunz, the white rectangle is the absorbent liner, the other parts are the waterproof shell

Tor washing diapers, to be completely honest, he is usually the one to wash the diapers...what a guy!

Alaska Trip Day 49

7/4/11

Gustavus, AK

Miles Travelled:  23

We were worried about weather when we left this morning.  The trollers came in to Hoonah last night and one of them told us it was because a blow was supposed to come up.  We watched the weather report (so easy on my iphone when I have service!) and based on the forecast for 20 kt winds from the SE today and only supposed to build tomorrow, we decided to get a move on this morning and made tracks for Gustavus.  Fortunately the winds were very calm, and actually by the time we got to Gustavus, it looked like the winds had died even further out in Icy Strait.  I don’t know if the weather they were expecting didn’t happen, or if it got delayed or what, but we’re not complaining!

By the Porpoise Islands we were visited by 2 Dahl’s Porpoise (I know, how appropriate!) and it was SO much fun to watch their acrobatic antics.  We typically don’t go fast enough for them to be interested in playing in our bow wave, but we were the only boat out there, so maybe they thought we were interesting enough.  It sure was fun to watch them!  We were also buzzed by a hummingbird when we were 3 nm from any land, and it was headed across Icy Strait.  I don’t know what it was doing, but there isn’t any food out there for a hummingbird, so I hope it was okay!

Our arrival in Gustavus coincided with nap time.  It was great to know we would be at a dock and the boys wouldn’t be interrupted in their sleep by boat handling maneuvers, but a current kicked up and slowed our progress just enough that we arrived at the dock about 5 minutes after they should have been in bed, and Lars let us know it!  We got them to bed as quickly as possible, but not after our arrival in Gustavus was announced by a screaming toddler.  Lars needed some help falling asleep because he was so worked up, but they ended up having a decent nap, not great, but enough to keep them going.

While they were napping, a local guy named Vince arrived at the dock on his skiff and he was interested in our boat, so we had a nice long talk with him.  He was a long liner fisherman, though it sounds as if he is mostly retired now.  Last year he bought a sailboat in LaConner and brought it up and he’s planning on being a “yachter” now.  It was a real pleasure to meet him.  He was so friendly and welcoming and even offered to lend us a car when we got into town after the boys woke up.  He gave us his 4 digit phone number to contact him.  Gustavus is feeling like a great place to be.

Once the boys woke up, we loaded them up in the carriers and headed to town.  Well, we didn’t realize quite how far town was.  Due to the retreating glaciers and their massive weight, the land around Gustavus is rebounding 1” a year or more, so land keeps being added, and after being in SE Alaska where everything is built on the side of a cliff, it felt like we were in the prairies of Canada.  So much flat space!  And what beautiful space it is!  The lupine and grasses and wild flowers with the mountains surrounding glacier bay in the background, wow.  Just beautiful.  The setting caused a feeling of elation, but so did the fact that we were here, one day from Glacier Bay made us practically giddy.  Then a guy pulled up in an antique pickup truck and offered us a ride in the bed.  The truck was all decked out for the 4^th of July parade (which we had missed, but we understood there were lots of other festivities to enjoy).  We are in a friendly place for sure!

We walked over to the park where the party was, and man oh man did we come to the right place for 4^th of July fun!  There was a fundraising BBQ at the volunteer fire department, and the boy scout troop had homemade root beer for free (it was gone by the time we got there, too bad), there was a booth to buy bling for your XTRATUFF boots as a fundraiser for the Gustavus community center (the idea being so that you would be able to distinguish your pair of XTRATUFF boots from a pile of them at a party), an ice cream booth (best ice cream we’ve had this trip!), and lots of other fun things.  The main attraction were the games, when we got there they were hot and heavy into competing in races where 2-4 people stood on 2 planks, one for each foot, the planks had lines on them to hold onto and as a team you needed to be coordinated enough to move forward, and then turn around.  We saw lots of falling over and lots of laughing.  Then I looked over and saw someone I used to work with.  What a small world!  On the walk from the boat I told Tor about this guy Dave who I used to work with who had told me that his dream was to do the same sort of trip we were doing with his family, but in addition he had family in Gustavus.  I couldn’t believe it when I saw him in Gustavus and I was there after making the trip on my boat.  It was so great to see him, and meet his family.  They come up every year for the 4^th of July and amazingly enough we ran into him here.  If I ever run into someone I hardly know in a similar situation, I only hope I can show them half of the hospitality we were shown. 

Dave and his wife Bobbi talked with us, introduced us to friends and family, shared their beer and insect repellent with us, offered us snacks for the boys and showers at Grandma’s house, and when it was all said and done, gave us a ride back to the boat.  It was truly a spectacular day, and I can’t think of a better way to have spent the 4^th of July.

Tomorrow we go into Glacier Bay park!  We will go to boater orientation at 8:00am and hopefully find laundry facilities and wifi to post, then we will have 6 days to enjoy the park.

WIDE open spaces in Gustavus

Walking into town

Riding into town

The 8-legged race!

That empty beer bottle was the BEST toy for Odin most of the afternoon!

XTRATUFF bling

MASSIVE ferry dock at Gustavus, note the light at 10:15pm, there is no flash in this photo!

Alaska Trip Day 48

7/3/11

Hoonah, AK

Miles Travelled:  23

We had a lovely morning chatting with Katie and Carl and seeing their wonderful boat, MOM.  It was designed by Brent Swain and is an origami boat…flat sheets of steel are cut into shapes that, when welded together properly, make a boat without frames.  Cool design and beautiful execution.  Katie and Carl were fun people to chat with.  They left down south (Lopez Island , I think) on Earth Day (April 22) and the only plan they have is that they don’t have any plans.  Sounds just wonderful to me! 

We left Funter Bay around 10:00.  For lunch we had smoked sockeye that we picked up in Petersburg and it was yummy!  The boys had a good nap, but Lars woke up a little too early when things got quite rocky and rolly on our way to Hoonah.  We were in an area where the wind and tide must have been opposing in Icy Strait and it got pretty uncomfortable.  Fortunately it was short lived and soon we were outside of Hoonah and tried to reach the Harbormaster on the VHF radio, but no one answered.  No problem, we have cell service and a phone number for the Harbormaster’s office!  Tor got someone on the phone and was assigned slip B10 which was a bow in starboard side tie.  Due to the way our boat backs up, we prefer a port side tie and so Tor thought we would see if we could back into the slip and left the fenders and lines set up for a port side tie.  We pulled in behind the breakwater and couldn’t see any labels on any of the docks or slips…what the hell?  I had been on deck to help dock the boat, but the boys had just woken up from their naps and are used to getting milk, so they were unhappy and screaming about it.  Tor told me to just go down below and he would take care of it.  There still were no labels on any of the docks or slips, so eventually Tor pulled into what he thought was the correct one, beautifully reversing into it singlehandedly I may add, while I was down below breastfeeding the boys.  However something wasn’t right…we were hanging out into the fairway by about 6 feet.  So he decided to call the harbormaster back on the cell phone…that’s when he noticed that he had called the harbormaster in Skagway, not Hoonah!  They were expecting us at a marina about 89 miles away!  The wind must have flipped the page in the guidebook and he dialed the wrong number.  I made sure to call Skagway back to let them know we wouldn’t actually be there.  Oops! (Tor’s note:  embarrassing. But precisely why VHF radio, which is line of sight, has advantages over the ever increasing cell phone use on the water)

We got it all figured out and finally pulled up to the correct dock.  Then we went walking to see town.  While we were here we wanted to have a halibut pizza at one of the local restaurants, and experience the 4^th of July festivities which we have heard include a parade and a multi-generational egg toss.  We went walking into town to find the place to get the halibut pizza and try and get the skinny on the 4^th of July festivities.  Turns out that the restaurant was closed because it’s Sunday, and that they celebrated the 4^th of July yesterday on the 2^nd of July!!!!  They changed the schedule to accommodate cruise ships, originally I misunderstood and thought they changed the 4^th of July to the 2^nd of July because a cruise ship would be in on the 2^nd, actually, it was moved to the 2^nd because NO cruise ships would be in town and all of the families would be able to partake in the festivities and not have to go to work.  We were SO disappointed to miss the 2 reasons we came to Hoonah.  There are supposed to be fireworks tonight (might I point out on the 3^rd of July!), but they are quite a ways out of town and by the time it actually gets dark around here, they must happen at 11:00 pm or so.  Needless to say we aren’t going.

We were definitely feeling like Hoonah was a bust, and we were hungry and so were the boys.  We all got a little snack and Tor stayed at the boat with the boys to cook dinner.  I went to wash a load of diapers and get a couple of things at the grocery store.  I got a chance to chat with a couple who live in Port Ludlow and have been coming up here for 9 summers on their 32’ Nordic Tug.

We all felt a lot better after dinner and can laugh about our disappointing day in Hoonah.  It does seem to be a neat town and hopefully we’ll see it again and can try that halibut pizza!  We will head out of here tomorrow and head toward Gustavus.  It’s actually a good thing that our plan to stay in Hoonah for the 4^th of July was stymied, because if we stayed here it would make our day getting to the park and into the first anchorage a very, very long one.  Gustavus apparently has a 4^th of July celebration, so we hope to partake in that.  We do however have a backup plan, because we have friends who got seasick tied up to the dock at Gustavus, ugh.  Gustavus is not a natural harbor and they don’t have a breakwater.  If Gustavus doesn’t look like a good place to stay the night, we will head into Excursion Inlet, or anchor on the north side of Pleasant Island.  We shall see what happens tomorrow!

Alaska Trip Day 47

7/2/11

Funter Bay, AK

Miles Travelled:  49

The destination today was an anchorage in Auke Bay, but by the time we got close, the conditions were good and our arrival in Auke Bay would have been during nap time, so we decided to keep going.  Once we made the decision to keep going, the wind came in from behind, so we put up the main and motorsailed which gave us at least another 3 kts of push!  I got the boys down for their nap, and the wind piped up to the point that Tor was fighting the tiller, so we reefed the main and things got a lot more calm.

The transit to Funter bay was pretty uneventful, but seeing the Mendenhall Glacier from the water was definitely impressive.  The boys had a good 2+ hour nap and when they woke up I started cooking dinner so the spaghetti sauce would have time to simmer.

Funter Bay has a couple of public floats in it, but when we pulled up they both looked full.  Fortunately a red steel sailboat (no, not Baraka) invited us to raft up to them.  We briefly met Katie and Carl from SV MOM and it was time to get some dinner in the boys so that Katie and Carl didn’t regret asking a boat with screaming kiddos tie up to them!  Fortunately food helped matters and we got them to bed as happy campers.  The bugs came out in force, so we stayed down below.  It’s too bad, because we would like to have a chance to talk with Katie and Carl and learn about their beautifully built steel boat.  Hopefully we’ll have a chance tomorrow.  We plan to go to Hoonah and we’ll stay two days so we can be there all of the 4^th of July for the festivities.  Hoonah isn’t very far away from Funter Bay, so we won’t have to make and early start.  Hopefully we will have a chance to visit with Katie and Carl in the morning.

Alaska Trip Day 46

7/1/11

Juneau, AK

Miles Travelled:  0

We didn’t get much done yesterday other than laundry and getting the GPS cord corrosion problem fixed (thanks to Steve and Elsie’s friend Gary!), so we decided we would spend another night in Juneau to get groceries, more wifi time and showers.  We also wanted to see the Alaska State Museum, so the plan was that when the boys woke up we would have breakfast and then walk to the museum and go grocery shopping on the way back to the boat.  We were planning on the boys waking up at 7:00…well they woke up at 5:45, and there was NO way I was getting up at that time, so Tor and I stayed quiet in our bed and they actually fell back asleep!  Then they woke up at almost 8:00.  I was so happy they fell back asleep, but it certainly compressed our time before lunch and nap.  We hurried with breakfast and walking to the museum, and though we didn’t get as much time at the museum as we would have liked…that is our life right now.  When the boys got squirmy we were able to let them crawl around in the children’s area so they could get some of the wiggles out.

After the museum we rushed to the grocery store and bought a rather random assortment of fresh food and hurried back to the boat.  Lars was trying to fall asleep in the carrier on Tor’s chest, but we just couldn’t have that happen, because a 5 minute nap will sometimes take just enough of the edge off that it can be very difficult to get them down for a real nap.  We must have been quite a sight…totally overloaded with food and block ice, walking as quickly as our VERY heavy loads would allow and singing and trying to pump Lars’ arms to keep him awake.  Fortunately it worked and we got a quick lunch and then put them to bed.  Whew!

While they napped, Tor went up to shower at the Laundromat and to buy beer at the liquor store.  We simply couldn’t have carried any more from our grocery trip.  I rested my very tired legs.  Harris Harbor in Juneau is as close as you can get to downtown, but it still takes a good 25 minutes to walk all the way into town.  Add carrying 22-25 lbs. of boy and diaper bags, and you are talking some really good exercise.  Yesterday I walked into town twice, just for wifi at the library. 

After their nap all four of us walked into town to get more board books for the boys, since I’m a little tired of reading our current selection.  We also went to the library so I could get online and do some bill paying while Tor played with the boys in the children’s section.  They really enjoyed the puzzles, stuffed animals and books, not to mention a large area to crawl around!

Next we got dinner at a pseudo Italian place.  It’s kind of funny how our criteria for restaurants have changed, instead of worrying so much about the food, we want 2 high chairs and food to be delivered quickly.  We originally found a Pilipino restaurant we wanted to try, but they didn’t have any high chairs, so we moved on.  Oh well, the food wasn’t bad at the pseudo Italian place and it wasn’t terribly expensive.  On the way back to the boat we stopped and got gelato, yum!  Unfortunately it meant that the bus driver wouldn’t let us on the bus back to the boat.  Oh well, the savings on bus fare went a ways in paying for the gelato, and the exercise of walking back helped burn some of the calories we consumed.

After we got the boys to bed I went up to the Laundromat for a shower (kind of skanky, but not too expensive) and a last couple of loads of laundry, diapers included.

We will leave Juneau tomorrow morning and probably head to somewhere near Auke Bay.  As the crow flies Auke bay is only a few miles from where we are moored in Juneau, but the water way between is too shallow for us.  It is silted in by the Mendenhall Glacier and hasn’t been dredged in a long time, so the run to Auke bay from where we are is about 20 miles.  We have 3 days from tomorrow to get the 90 miles to Glacier Bay, our permit begins on the 5^th.  We’d like to spend the 4^th of July in Hoonah to experience the festivities in a small Alaska town.  It will mean a long run on the first day of our Glacier Bay permit, but we’ve heard there are fun things to see in Hoonah on the 4^th of July, so at this point we think it will be worth it. 

Hanging out at the museum

Reading at the library

Alaska Trip Day 45

A busy day in town for us.  Nothing much exciting but laundry and walking into town in the rain for wifi.  We got some cute pics at the laundromat with my phone.

Based on the weather and stuff we still need to do, we plan to stay in Juneau tomorrow night as well.

Fun riding around in the clothes basket

Lars, will you help me fold too?

Alaska Trip Day 44

6/29/11

Juneau, AK

Miles Travelled:  22

Southerly winds were forecast to build through the day, and we learned from yesterday’s nap debacle to try and avoid interrupting nap time, so we decided to get a move on as soon as the boys woke up.  Odin had a rough night last night (gas pains), so he was sound asleep and we actually woke him up at 7:30 this morning.

We pulled out into Stephens Passage to 15-20 kt winds and uncomfortable 3-4 foot seas.  We were bouncing around enough that I decided it would be unsafe to boil water for our usual breakfast of oatmeal on our Colman stove (we usually cook on a diesel stove, but since we turned it off last night it would take too long to heat up and boil water for coffee and oatmeal, so in cases like that we use a Colman camping stove but there isn’t any way to secure it or the pots on it if there is significant swell).  So I boiled water in the jet boil for coffee (yep, we have 3 ways to heat water on this boat, coffee is very important) and we had a cold breakfast. 

Soon we were in the lee of Grand Island and things got a lot calmer…we could have had oatmeal afterall.  Oh well, peanut butter on bread and fruit was just fine.

We were concerned about getting a spot at the dock in Juneau since it’s a popular place to stay.  Juneau is 8 miles in on Gastineau channel and for a boat like ours, Gastineau channel is a dead end.  If there wasn’t space for us in Juneau we were worried about having to make a 16 mile detour, 8 miles up Gastineu and 8 miles back so that we could head to another marina in Auke Bay.  As soon as we had one very weak bar of cell service before getting into Gastineau we were able to call the harbor office and though they wouldn’t reserve a slip for us, they assured us there would be space.  Whew.

We pulled in and got our slip assignment just before 11:00.  We passed Hey You on the way in and Rory helped catch our lines.  It was lunch time for us and then nap time at 11:30.  Lars slept for an hour and 15 minutes, and then Odin slept for two and half hours!  I got to catch up on the blogs I read on my phone while they slept and Tor took a snooze too.

After the boys woke up we went to visit on Hey You and enjoyed the social time.  Rory, Katy and Madison fly home tomorrow and we were glad to have a chance to meet them.  One major difference in our cruising with the boys is that we just don’t have time to socialize.  On every other trip we’ve taken, we’ve had lots of opportunities to meet other people and talk about boats or itineraries or neat anchorages.  Since the boys eat dinner around 5 pm and go to bed by about 6:30 pm, our chances for rowing around an anchorage and talking with people on other boats are gone.  After having a chance to socialize with Rory, Katy and Madison I’ve realized how much I’ve been missing it.  We’ll have to figure out to get out and meet new people during the boys’ awake times.

After visiting on Hey You we walked into town to get some dinner at a Mexican restaurant.  We love it when the wait staff at restaurants are parents themselves…they totally understand what it’s like to have kiddos at a restaurant.  Our waitress tonight was quick to bring some orange slices while we waited for food and we were grateful!

On our way back to the boat after dinner we stopped by Osprey and visited with Steve and Elsie Hulsizer who we know from Seattle and the Puget Sound Cruising Club.  It was really nice to see them!  Elsie has written 2 books, one called Voyages to Windward about cruising the West coast of Vancouver Island that we really enjoyed reading when we did our Vancouver Island circumnavigation.  Recently she published a new book about cruising in SE Alaska called Glaciers, Bears and Totems: Sailing in Search of the Real Southeast Alaska, we were able to buy it directly from the author and are really looking forward to reading it now that we have the context of actually being in SE Alaska.  They were able to give us some good advice about anchorages between here and Glacier Bay as well as in Glacier Bay itself.  We hit the socializing jackpot today and it felt really good to spend time with other people, I’m really glad we got to see Elsie and Steve.

We got the boys to bed about 45 minutes late and it was rough.  They were over tired and crying, but as soon as I helped them get to sleep all was okay.  It was a good reminder to keep things consistent…they thrive on consistency and sleep!

We plan to be in Juneau for at least 2 nights, maybe even 3.  We’ve got to do laundry (surprise, surprise!), get groceries, find wifi and deal with a sometimes faulty connection on the back of our handheld GPS.  Thank goodness we are in a city.  Steve Hulsizer got us in touch with a friend of his who lives here and it sounds like is an electronics guy.  My Dad also has a friend here who we can contact for help getting around town if needed.  We’ll be busy here.

Lars and Papa snuggles while Odin was still napping