Off-line in Poulsbo

We are parked at the Suquamish Clearwater Casino (map), on the Kitsap peninsula just west of the Agate Pass bridge to Bainbridge Island. The casino issues free RV parking permits and requests rigs to stay in the northeast corner of the parking lot. Unfortunately, due to the extremely low look-angle of our internet satellite at these coordinates (just 23 degrees above the horizon, in the southeast), we can't get on-line due to a row of tall trees along the east side of the lot. Consequently, I am posting from an espresso bar in downtown Poulsbo with free wi-fi (and excellent lattés).

We left Infinity Coach yesterday afternoon just past 3pm, our absolute deadline to arrive here in Poulsbo during the registration hours for Trawlerfest. Fortunately, in the week we were there, Infinity managed to complete all the tasks on our list, with the minor exception of warranty replacement of the four brake/tail lights. (The manufacturer, Truck-Lite, managed to send us replacements for the three rear turn signals and two rear fog lamps that also had bad LEDs, which arrived just in the nick of time yesterday afternoon, but the four stop lamps were mysteriously not included in the package. We'll have Infinity send them to us when they arrive.)

So we now have eight new batteries, new battery racking, new wall covering in the bathroom (the original wallpaper was lifting due to water intrusion), new window coverings in the penthouse, and plenty of new sealant around the windows and the roof joints. We also had all the water-damaged woodwork refinished.

The bad news is that the Throttle Position Sensor (TPS) problem that was again rearing its ugly head as we were en route to Infinity has gotten much, much worse, and we were fearful as we pulled out of the shop that we might not make it to Poulsbo at all. We're somewhat at a loss to know what we are going to do about this -- it's quite possible that we will have to roll back across the sound to Kent after Trawlerfest to have the folks at Pacific Power Detroit/Allison take a look at it. We have one further data point now, though: the problem does not happen in reverse gear.

It was a little touch-and-go even getting out of the driveway, but once we were under way the drop-outs became a bit more manageable. On the highway, I was able to operate most of the way under cruise control, thus bypassing the problem. We arrived in Poulsbo just before 5, and parked across two parallel one-hour spaces on the main drag while we registered and attended the first half hour of the welcome reception. A little more touch-and-go to drive off from town, and then we were able to make it to the casino without much more trouble. We were in quarters by 6:30, and had an excellent dinner in the casino's steakhouse.

Starting this morning, and through the rest of the show, the casino is running an hourly shuttle to Poulsbo, so Odyssey will remain well-parked in a patrolled lot while we come here every day, allowing us to, umm, more fully participate in the evening cocktail hours. We'll make daily appearances to walk the dog, which is where Louise is right now.

We attended interesting seminars this morning, and so far have toured one boat (a 40' Nordhavn). This afternoon we will look at more exhibitor boats, and do the "trawler crawl" involving open-houses on visiting boats.

Given the logistics of getting on the internet here, I'll likely be limiting my posts while we are here.