Day 233 The Blizzard of '08

I sit here in the middle of what Seattle is making out to be the "Blizzard of '08".  Now for Colorado natives, this is just a normal Winter storm.  Colorado is prepared to what we are getting right now.  Seattle on the other hand is not and that is where the differences lay.  We have winds of 20 to 30 knots(24 to 35mph for you landlubbers) with snow--or should I say sideways snow.  It is setting up drifts anywhere it can.  While not big drifts, they are drifts none the less.  

We sit all snugged in and tied safely to the dock with electricity to run our heaters with the occasional bump from our Webasto diesel heater.  We're not going anywhere for a while.  If we had already moved to the Port Of Brownsville as we plan to in January, it would be a bit different.  They are set to receive anywhere from 6 to 18 inches of snow over night.  I think I'll pass on that.  We are set for only about 2 inches.  No problem.  We'll see what Mother Nature brings over night.

I spent the day cleaning up and putting things away that I have been using over the past week or so while installing things on Zephyr.  I'd made quite the mess on my workbench and nav station and all those tools, nuts, bolts and screws and "stuff".  It took a while, but the mess is gone--at least for the most part.

Sea Marine had their Christmas Party this afternoon.  Lots of people showed up for the festivities.  A great catered affair with plenty of food for everyone.  They even had smoked a salmon for the party and prepared two other fillets of salmon--one with lemons slices and one with onion slices all wrapped in aluminum foil and done on the barbecue grill right outside the back door of the office.  Add in a huge chunk of ham and sliced pork and you have a great meal.  They had lots of other dishes whose name I had problems pronouncing so I won't even try to spell them here.

At the close of the party, we had a sort of gift exchange.  Everyone picks numbers and then picks a gift from under the tree.  You could either keep what you picked or take whatever some one before you chose.  The only problem was that you couldn't open the present you chose before you swapped gifts with the other person.  You might give away something great to get something not so great.  I got one of those "8" ball fortune telling toys.  Ask a question and then turn the ball over to see what is the answer to your question.  A perfect gift of me.  Tracy got a big jar of homemade spicy pickles.  

We've been  monitoring the DuoGen to see it's output of amps.  So far, it is no where near what the manufacturer claims it should be.  We get only 8 amps at 25 knots of wind.  The factory literature claims we should be getting anywhere from 12 to 15 amps.  I checked it with three different gauges and sent them an email about my findings.  We'll see what their response will be next week.  I continue to monitor it as the weekend unfolds and the wind continues.

Tomorrow--into the bilge.  Just couldn't face it today.