The guy comes across as a horder but in reality he just wants to do so much but with an ADD type attention span.
Right now he's going balls to the wall rebuilding an old wooden ketch sailboat. He's also working his land so as to build a giant root cellar where he'll do everything from storing food and aging goat cheese (he raises his own goats, sheep, pigs, chickens, and turkeys) to aging a bit of hooch he makes on the side for friends (like me).
His property is full of stuff and often in piles. Some of which are industrial stainless steel kitchen appliances as he wants to start a restaurant. He also wants me to help him rebuild his very first bike which is an old 250 BSA that he's had since he was a teenager. It's sitting partially assembled in an old and cluttered shed. He has an old but very modified Norton frame with wheels which is unfortunately way beyond any chance of restoring and he's using it as yard art... I think.
Anyway he's a bit of a character but I like him.
We are surrounded by salt water but it's just not the kind of climate where salt air is a problem. We get a constant wind stream that blows anything off and it doesn't stay warm long enough to cause any humidity issues.
In this part of the NW as things warm up in the daytime a high pressure is created over the Pacific and westerly winds typically blow in from the Ocean and up over the Cascades. When things cool off in the evening the cooler ocean now creates a lower pressure system than the warmer mainland and
it's high pressure system creates the opposite action and blows winds back up over the Cascades and out to the Pacific.
Meanwhile the Olympic Peninsula acts as a ramp and casts what is called a rain shadow over the northern islands. During the warmer months we get little rain because it usually skips up and over us because of the Olympics while in the cooler months we get hammered by winds and rain from either the cooler north or warmer south. This area is full of very strong atmospheric and tidal elements.
The map below shows typical annual precipitation. You can see how the islands in the north are protected by the Olympics and the Cascades. What it doesn't show is how Vancouver Island and it's mountains and the (Canadian) Coastal Range also affects the area.
http://cses.washington.edu/cig/pnwc/pnwc.shtml
