Cold weather has been chasing us for two months, lapping at
our transom, and it’s beginning to catch up. Last night the temperature fell to
the low fifties. For the first time since we’ve left Portland we decided to
fire up our little diesel stove and keep it lit through the night to take the
chill off. When I awoke this morning I discovered that the stove was only able
to increase the temperature from 54°
F to 60° F, which
isn’t exactly warm.
My Tuesday attire. These shorts won’t be making another appearance until we get further south.
We’ve been running from cold weather for awhile now and have
seemed to luck out pretty much everywhere we’ve been. In Ilwaco, WA, which is drizzly most days out of the year, we had plenty of sunny (or at least
partially cloudy) days (where the sun would at least make a guest appearance). Oftentimes (with the exception of maybe 2-3 days during
the month we were there) the fog would burn off by mid-day. Newport, OR was
sunny and 75 for the full week we were there (unusual for the Oregon Coast).
During our trip south we had many cloudy days, but no rain. San Francisco has
been sunny and 75 for the most part. We’ve been moving South with the sunshine. Until this week. The first winter storm, Brutus, has ushered in cold weather across the west. It’s time to move.
Cold wouldn’t be such a big issue if we were actually
prepared for it. Jeff and I were both a little too optimistic about how quickly
we would make it to perma-warmth in So. Cal. I have just a couple of pairs of
pants and two jackets that are getting exceedingly dirty. We’re ready to cycle
through clothing that takes up less space in our respective ‘closets’.
When we heat up our little Dickinson diesel stove there’s usually
some diesel smoke for the first couple of minutes. Jeff slid open our hatch,
stood on the top stair so his head was protruding from our cabin and breathed in
deep.
“You should come up here and smell this.” I joined him through the hatch.
“What am I smelling?”
“The cold, crisp air. It smells so good. We’ll miss it when
it’s gone.”
I hadn’t really thought about it, but I will miss it. This will be my first winter without the crisp cold and I find that to be both exciting and unsettling.
Jeff woke up smelling this. Ugly but delicious banana oat chocolate chip pancakes on our diesel stove. They took about 20 minutes to cook all the way through.
Update: I might need to eat my words…or at least nibble on them. Today ended up being sunny and beautiful in San Fran. Still cold…but sunny.
Update to the update: Still sunny but the temperatures at night keeps dropping. Last night it was 48 degrees in our cabin and we couldn’t get the stove to start. Hard to get out of a warm snuggly bed when it’s that chilly! When we look at the weather report there are waves of winter storms projected for he North coast. I think we picked a good time to head out.