Wrapping up in the Pacific Northwest

We are once again parked in our "usual spot" at Infinity Coach, in Sumner, Washington (map). We arrived back here mid-day on Thursday, after I spent the morning with Patrick in Kirkland looking at the small air leak in our Yachtub. We just couldn't get it dry enough to repair it but we devised a plan for whenever we get someplace less humid for a few days.

Friday morning we got the freshly reupholstered love seat back into position; it looks nice, and, as a bonus, we had them re-shape the foam on the left side of the backrest so that it no longer conflicts with the window blind there. We also got the brush guard re-installed; it looks even more butch with the Line-X coating. We did have to coax it into position, sanding the bedliner material around the mounts a bit as it was much thicker than the original powder coat.



With these last two items taken care of, all that remains to get Odyssey into Bristol condition for sale is some light touch-up to the woodwork, which I will try to do myself once we get to South Dakota and take care of business there. As of the end of the day Friday, we had otherwise finished our to-do list with Infinity and were ready to head out.

One of the reasons we came all the way back here, though, for what amounted to some minor work and to pick up the aforementioned two items, was to see our good friends and Infinity proprietors Bob and Shirley, who were still en route back from their annual sojourn to Mexico when we left here for Trawler Fest. We had dinner with them Friday evening and enjoyed catching up on each others' travels.

That meant we were here for the start of Memorial Day weekend, and as anyone who travels by RV will know, you don't want to be on the road this weekend without reservations for a place to stay. So we opted to just spend the weekend right here. That gave us a chance to relax a bit after a relatively full week, and also get a few errands done.

After our let-down last week with the boat we really liked, I had gone back to the drawing board, expanding our search to encompass some larger boats than we had previously considered. That was how we ended up looking at one more boat last week while we had the rental car, for example. On Friday I came across a private listing for a Hatteras 58 LRC in Seattle, just a few blocks from the boat on which we rode down from Anacortes. Reasoning that since we very nearly bought a 60, we could certainly look at a 58, we contacted the seller about having a look.

He had plans to be gone for the weekend but allowed that his son, attending law school in the city, would be aboard for the weekend and would be happy to show us the boat. So Saturday morning Bob and Shirley lent us a car and we drove up to have a look. For a 37-year-old boat, she was in great condition and immaculately kept. We found only a few technical issues on the whole boat. But it was not for us.

Even though the boat we nearly bought was two feet longer overall, this boat was actually much larger in volume, and it felt huge. While we had already settled on the possibility of three staterooms, one of which would be mostly an office/workshop, this boat had three staterooms plus an additional berth in a passageway, and four heads. While the fourth head was a day head on the main deck, a nice feature, we were a bit overwhelmed by it all. I will say, though, that the extra space in the engine room was quite nice.

In any event, we've concluded that this model is off the list. Likewise, I suspect, will most 58'-60' boats. The 60 footer that we liked so much was really an outlier -- low slung, with a small house relative to the deck, and a sharp rake to the bow making the water line length lower than many boats with less overall length.

Now that we have refocused the search, I have a list of another dozen boats we'd like to see around the country. Three or four of them are in the Midwest, and the remainder are on the east coast, so I have come up with a roughly 3,000-mile route that will take us past most of them after we leave South Dakota. That will take us a while, and the list will no doubt change in that time as some boats are sold and others come on the market. But we have the makings of a strategy, and we are feeling the need to get started.

In a few minutes we will load the scooters back up and pull around to the dump. Our route today should take us counter to most of the returning holiday traffic, but nevertheless we have set our sights only on the Snoqualmie Casino just 40 miles from here. It will get us out of the shop parking lot so we are not in the way of their operations in the morning, yet still let us save the sometimes-challenging Snoqualmie Pass for tomorrow, when the holiday will be over.