The two week cruise to the San Juan Islands and southern Gulf Islands was challenging and great. For us, cruises are a series of evenings when we decide what door we will enter the next day, and then the next day is all about getting to that door and then going through it and seeing what is on the other side. Sometimes we end up going through a different door then planned the next day, but it's usually a similar to the planned one, such as picking a different anchorage with pretty much equally spectacular view because we wanted to keep sailing past the first anchorage with a spectacular view because we were having too much fun to pack it in.
As an example when we were forced to pick another "door", there was the time on our first boat Tatsao when we came into a long bay that our recently purchased cruising books showed containing a ferry terminal, a public marina and a restaurant. At the end of that bay, where the marina was supposed to be, there was a sign saying the entire marina had blown away in a spring storm. Nearby there was a smaller private marina with fishing boats. But it looked full of boats and nobody seemed to be around. We did circles out of the way of the ferry while looking at the charts for another "door" to go through. The mud flat was too shallow to anchor on and the ferry wash probably wasn't a good mix for that anyway, the nearest real marina was 10 miles away in Sidney, which would be difficult to navigate for the first time in the dark, and we had about an hour until dark. Then a woman came out and invited us to tie up to a fishing boat. We gratefully accepted, and then we found the terrific restaurant with organic food and great views down the bay on the other side of the ferry terminal, so we could look out to where we were going to go tomorrow.
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| Tatsao tied up to a fishing boat, Saltspring ferry terminal in the background. |
Generally, we had a really smooth time cruising with Tatsao, because she was so well sorted out by Jarred, and we were somewhat sorted out as cruisers, with over maybe five years owning the boat before we ever went on a cruise. We had gone on overnights, we'd raced, we'd cooked at the dock and at anchor. So, our only real constraints were ourselves, weather and, occasionally, out of date information.
Elixir was potentially different. Jarred went through a lot of her between April and September, but we had never really sailed her. But we knew that getting to know the boat was to be part of the adventure.
As it turned out, the sailing parts of Elixir were always good and almost always downright dreamy. We went through a baby gale (30 kt winds) for the first time on it, and while the old mainsail flapped like crazy, the boat took the waves well and kept us going towards Friday Harbor. We didn't know we were sailing into a gale. The morning's weather forecast said 10-20 knots. But, the Coast Guard helicopter circling around us and the other few boats out, followed by a Coast Guard fast boat buzzing us all out soon after, should be a clue to the rest of you to check the weather again when this happens to you. We had almost made it to Friday Harbor in decent style, with a ferry going by, when almost simultaneously we saw the dinghy was unattached to us and then the mainsheet separated from the boom. The dinghy incident was funny to me almost immediately, since Jarred spotted it about 200 yards behind us, upside down, and we knew we could retrieve it. I'd like to imagine it breaking free and rising up magnificently from the water like a flattish short red orca, glistening wet oars waving in the wind like flippers, before it landed flat on its back. The bridle (the rope around the boat that the line was attached to) had busted clean through, so there must have been an impact, maybe with a floating log (of which there were many that day.)
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| At the short term dock at Friday Harbor after the baby gale. The mainsail is bunched around since Jarred had to bring it down after the mainsheet separated from the boom (which is held down temporarily with some dock line.) We had four hours free at the dock, and in exactly that amount of time we walked into town for breakfast at 1 pm (finally), and then I provisioned while Jarred bought the new alternator that we had ordered two days ago, installed and tested it, and spliced up a brand new bridle for the dinghy. |
So there was the gale, and there was a ton of light wind, perfect for the
first real sail with Jarred's dad, raising the spinnaker for the first
time, and messing around with all the new things.
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| first sail off Port Townsend. |
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| first flight of the spinnaker, a mile from the US/Canada border. |
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| sailing in small wind. We are in Canada, and the RCP came roaring up a minute after I took this shot. I was worried they'd give me grief about getting towed in a dinghy, but they just wanted to check our customs number. They were really cool. |
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| Jarred resplicing the mainsail reefing line while we sail all the way back across the Strait of Juan de Fuca on our way home. |
And then there were the quiet evenings in places we'd been once or twice or more before.
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| at a state park buoy on the south side of Jones Island. |
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| Conover Cove, Wallace Island. It's small, so we have to stern tie when we anchor. Some pretty big winds came through that night, and the stern swung around with the gusts, and we didn't sleep that much, but our anchor held. |
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| Sunset at Conover Cove. |
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| Port Townsend. |
The only downside to the trip was our alternator. The old one didn't work, which means when we motored, we weren't charging.
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| motoring through glass, not charging any batteries. |
We didn't need an alternator if we plugged in at a dock every other night. We have two batteries, one for navigation electronics, lights, and the little car fridge we had just bought, and the other to start the motor. But Tatsao had an outboard that was pullstart, so having to save battery to start a motor was new to us and our planning style. The inboard diesel motor on Elixir came with a hand crank, but it looked like something dug out of a pet cemetery. So, first, we tried ordering a new alternator, which was flown from the east coast and then brought to Friday Harbor via the ferry. We waited around two days for it, feeling like we were on a leash. It was shiny new, and it looked like it worked after installed, but the batteries still didn't charge. So we docked a total of four nights when we would rather have been on the hook.
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| what, these guys are blocking our view! |
And we always made sure Battery 2 was not being used for other things besides motor starts. But this meant no fridge. Which is fine if you're a vegetarian eating dried stuff, veggies, and tofu and fake sausage and cheese. We just couldn't store leftovers for more than a day, and, well, the beer wasn't that cold. But it also meant only one night of anchor light and one day of navigation software. And that's what stopped us from going through a few doors we wanted to go through. One evening, sandwiched between a huge fancy yacht (above) and a large crappy yacht, we sort of lost it for a bit. There were small kids on the next dock, yelling and catching small fish and jellies and stomping on them, who really, we felt, belonged down below playing quiet games on their large crappy yacht while we sipped $12 bottle white wine from stainless steel wine glasses. And that night, instead of an unobstructed view of the sunset, we got a partial view of the sunset and a direct view of the skipper of the huge fancy yacht, who at bedtime got busy with his Sonicare toothbrush for a full minute in front a window that was directly across from our cockpit. But at some point I realized that Jarred and I were dangerously like
Todd and Margo of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, seeking the perfect private experience when others around us were just seeking and sharing the same joy differently. And, it didn't matter if we did the same thing twice. And, we'd be back soon, even more sorted out.
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| what, this crummy old dock at Port Townsend, again? | |
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| Looking south from our northernmost point on this trip: the north tip of Wallace Island, which is a two mile trail run from Conover Cover. |
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| The fall vacation burka, AKA the Burkalounger, at Spencer Spit. |
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| panoramic cheers and a half from Spencer Spit. |
