This post is not about sailing Mintaka. It isn’t even about working on her. In a few days, we will fly back to New Zealand and Mintaka, and start posting again about our adventures, but first, I’d like to share with you how I spent this past (northern) summer.
I got it into my head that I would like to make some sort of progress in developing our land on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state. The travel trailer we stay in when we are there is comfortable enough, adept as we are at living in a small space, but even so, there’s no extra indoor space to do anything, the shower is tiny, the holding tank needs to be emptied every couple of weeks, and the nearest laundromat is seven miles away. We weren’t ready to build a house there, yet, so we settled on building a “workshop”, a multi-use structure with bathroom and laundry facilities. The plumbing required installing a septic system, too, which we would eventually need with a house, anyway. We included a garage door in the plans so that we could store our two cars inside when we are gone for long periods.
The required permits took much more time than anticipated, so when we finally got to nailing things together, the remaining time was getting short — only about two months left before flying back to New Zealand. Working rather hard and fast, we managed to complete the project.
I didn’t do everything by myself, to be sure. I did the excavation, about half the carpentry, most of the plumbing, roofing, siding and painting, all of the electrical, and the bulk of the labor for the septic installation. Whew! But I had some welcome help from Robyn, a number of friends, a neighbor, and a couple of really good contractors. The concrete is the only part I hired out completely.
The excavation was actually fun. I had never run a heavy machine like that, but the learning curve was steep, and I was soon ready for the forms to be set. I had intended to do the plumbing rough-in for the slab, but after wading through the rather byzantine plumbing code, I decided that any mistakes would be costly after being cast in concrete. So, I hired a plumber. After I saw how simple it really was, and expecially after I saw his bill, I wished I had done that part myself, too. The concrete pour, I simply watched.
I found a local contractor, Dave Kreps, that was willing to work side-by-side with me on the cost-basis of “time and materials”. He was fantastic — super easy to work with, generous to a fault, and very reasonably priced. I am happy to consider him a friend at this point. Together, we framed, sheeted, put up the trusses and closed in the roof. I enjoyed all of it. Robyn and I then wrapped the whole thing in Tyvek, and installed two windows, a door, and two skylights.
Roofing (i.e. nailing asphalt shingles) is just a chore, one I’ve done before, but the experienced help of a local friend, Chuck Lamb, along with Robyn, made it go quickly and painlessly.
The septic installer (Jason McGee, of Robin’s Nest Excavation and Landscaping) was also great. He was willing to let me do whatever I could. He ran the excavator, installed the tank and distribution box, and made the more important connections, but I provided labor with the excavation, and installed the pipes (with help from Chuck) and the electrical controls. Putting in the drain field was interesting. Utilizing a laser for guidance, we were able to lay the four fifty-foot-long drain pipes within a quarter-inch of dead horizontal.
Old friends Deb and Jim Custer, and their granddaughter Keira, came out for a weekend to help. We immediately gave them shovels to begin filling in the over three hundred feet of trenches for the pipes running between the shop, the drain field, the septic tank, and the well house. They made great progress, but I finally came to the conclusion that a rental tractor was needed. The other chore they helped with, pulling heavy electrical cables through two hundred and thirty feet of conduit, I’m sure I couldn’t have done alone, or with just Robyn. It took both of them at one end, and Robyn, Keira and I at the other end, plus a half gallon of wire lube and a lot of grunting, but we did it.
The trench for that conduit deserves special mention. It was no great labor to run a machine to dig the four-inch wide trench some twenty eight inches deep. What I didn’t count on was that in our sandy soil, the machine would backfill the trench at least six inches as it went along. Since the top of the conduit had to be twenty four inches deep, we had a problem. I wound up narrowing a garden hoe to rake the loose sand up into piles in the trench — four inches wide is too narrow for a shovel, and twenty seven inches or so is as deep as one can reach. Then Robyn and I spent an entire day on hands and knees scooping said piles out with plastic cups. Brutal! We were both sore for days.
My neighbor, Ron, was a great help with the siding, and with a few tools (most of mine being buried in the shipping container). Eitan came out for a weekend visit, and happily wielded a paintbrush. Robyn was unfortunately away working in Minnesota for most of the summer (I went out there to visit a few times), but was a great help for the couple of weeks she could come back.
I have not worked that hard for such a period in a long time, but it was satisfying. Both cars are stored inside, hopefully safe from the field mice this time. Everything is mothballed, winterized, drained, etc. as we’ll be far away on Mintaka for the next eighteen months. Anyway, here are some pictures of the project.
Oh, I did actually get some sailing in this summer, just not on Mintaka. Visiting Robyn in Duluth a couple of times, I got out on Satori with old friends and shipmates. Always a pleasure to visit Duluth.
