A Few Photos

O'Brien Bay

Young Ermine

Port McNeill

Setting the stern tie

Stern tie in place

Sullivan Bay Marina

A Breath of Fresh Air

I awoke the night before last to the dinghy banging on the hull: bambam...bam     bambam...bam. Competing impulses fought within me: ignore it or deal with it. Deal with it eventually wins of course, but it might not have if I'd known what was waiting for me as I crawled out the hatch in my tighty-whities. Rain. It was the first in our two weeks of travel.  But while it didn't do much for my mood in the moment, it, and the corresponding wind, did wonders for clearing the atmosphere.

So yesterday started calm and rain soaked, then cleared with a fresh breeze out of the northwest. We made the best of it and sailed in an open sound in the sunshine - tacking and gybing for the fun of it rather than to take us where we needed to go.  The wind finally exhausted its self, so we furled and motored on.  

Within a few minutes the wind was back up, but we weren't tempted to pull out the sails again because the wind was in our faces and building. It topped 30 knots before we pulled into our cove for the night and we were pushed around all evening. Two more boats joined us and a third poked his nose in the cove and made a hasty retreat. He apparently didn't like his chances of avoiding damage with three boats already dancing around at the ends of their anchor chains.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to include photos with these posts. Wi-Fi is hard to come by out here and when we do find it, there isn't throughput for anything more than text. Maybe we'll have better luck when we reach Port McNeill in a few days.

Potluck

We're in Kwatzi Bay tonight. It's a small marina owned and operated by Max and Anca.  The marina has room for a dozen or so boats of moderate size and offers filtered water and Wi-Fi, but no electricity or showers. Our book promised us showers, but according to Max, heavy wind destroyed the shack built for the purpose. 

We decided to tie up rather than anchor because the anchoring was reported to be marginal and we thought full water tanks would be nice. Wi-Fi and showers sweetened the idea in our minds as well, even if the latter didn't pan out. 

There was one additional unexpected fringe benefit in that they do potluck dinners on the dock during the summer. It was nice to get to know the other boaters. Most had power boats, but there were a couple of other sailboats. I made the macaroni-sausage dish we had planned on eating. It was actually very popular and pretty easy to make, so that's a recipe I think I'll do again. 

After dinner I rowed the dinghy to the head of the bay where the anchorage is located and found a half dozen boats stern tied to shore in a circle around the perimeter of the bay. 

Tomorrow is a short mileage day; we enter the Broughtons and head for Wadington Bay.

Smokey Business

This trip has been memorable and unique in one sense: since Campbell River the smoke in the atmosphere from wildfires in Canada have turned sunny days into hazy, cloudy, surreal days. The sun rises and sets as a dull orange disc and we've seen nothing of the mountains around us. Everything looks lifeless and grey. On the one hand it is cooler than it otherwise would be. The temperature today was predicted to be in the eighties, but couldn't have climbed much above sixty. On the other hand, we're missing a lot of nice weather and beautiful scenery. We're hoping it clears soon, though It has been uniformly dry, so that's something. 

Running Rapids

It's always a little disappointing to see so little fanfare when you time your rapids properly.  When you run rapids at slack, it has the feel of motoring across a lake.  It's satisfying, if underwhelming. 

After "running" the Hole-in-the-Wall rapids at slack current, we anchored around the corner and returned to the scene by foot to see the rapids at max current.

While we were watching the rapids build to over 5 knots, a small sailboat inched toward the rapids at a crawl with its engine going full tilt. A couple of times it appeared the little-engine-that-could would never make it. Forward progress ceased and the engine was just keeping up with the water velocity and no more. Then it slowly started to inch it's way forward again. It started to turn one way and righted itself, then slewed the other way and corrected, before slowly starting to make progress again. Eventually it was through the worst of it and plodded up the channel no apparent worse for the wear.

Today we had two sets of rapids to get through. Running the Okisolo rapids at slack meant getting up at O'dark thirty. Then we had to kill some time to hit the Blind Channel rapids around mid-day. That put us into Cordero Cove with plenty of time for lunch and a little shore exploration. 

Sailing Light

We've put a pair of longer legs under the keel the last couple of days. The wind has been blowing right at us, when it's been blowing at all, so we've been lucky to get some sailing in, although admittedly the distances achieved under sail have been meager.

As we work our way north, the press of boats have been slowly diminishing. Summer in the San Juan's and Gulf Islands takes a special attention toward crowd avoidance. As the summer matures and kids find their way back to school that should help.

We're in Campbell River tonight. Tomorrow we'll do the usual in port things:  wash the boat, fill the water and fuel tanks, reprovision and publish the unsent blog posts. It was nice to eat out tonight - no washing dirty dishes. 

We haven't decided whether to spend one night here or two. It will depend on the timing of our crew exchange. We say a fond farewell to Knute tomorrow and welcome the return of Kay, who was Quijote crew two years ago. Bob, another former crew member from the trip two years ago, will be delivering Kay by motorcycle. We have strict instructing to get a photo of the pair. 

Drunken Sailor

We suffered a minor mishap yesterday - thankfully minor. It could have been a lot worse. Slightly inebriated, one of our all star crew staggered into the propane locker, lactated his foot and destroyed the regulator on the propane tank. I don't want to name names or point fingers so I'll just say that Judy, Petar, and I have behaved admirably and expect to arrive in Campbell River uninjured and untainted by the shame and ridicule of our peers.

In other news, Knute's foot appears to be healing well and he's taking the loss of his gold star certification for time served on Quijote well.  And thankfully, the propane regulator has been replaced  from ship's spares. 

Clearing Customs

We cleared Canadian customs today. I feared giving up oranges, avocados, or whatever the restriction of the day happens to be. 

Two years ago there was a real live agent at the customs point of entry. He told us we couldn't take apples into Canada. Then he made the mistake of admitting that all he really needed was our apple cores. Can we cut the cores out and keep the rest of the apples?  Uhh... Well, ok. So Kay cored the apples and put them in a loaded garbage sack. The agent protested that when he agreed to let us keep the fruit of the apple, he didn't imagine he'd be taking out our garbage. Thankfully he was a good sport about it. 

The last couple of years we've cleared by telephone on a dedicated land-line.  Last year we stopped there in mid-May and the place was deserted. Now that we're in mid August, it was hopping.  All three telephones were in use. 

Northbound at Last

Great sailing today as we made our way north to Port Townsend. It’s been mostly cloudy and fairly cool on the water, but the wind kicked up to 12 kts out of the northwest.  We tacked our way up Admiralty Inlet and arrived in PT just as the wind was blowing itself out.

A hike into town, lunch at a pizza place (where we watched the Rogers Cup final), and then we made a quick trip to the market to supplement our wine provisions.  The crew was a little concerned that six liters for the first week was just not going to cut it.

Tomorrow we’ll make our way into the San Juan Islands and and find a small cove to anchor in.

Our path can be found at this site (password is apple): https://share.garmin.com/rgSVQ

Lake Union to Puget Sound

Knute, Judy, Petar and I moved Quijote through the Ballard locks to Shilshole today.  The trip from Lake Union to Puget Sound was made in record time.  The bridges opened quickly, we entered the locks immediately on arrival, and the Burlington Northern railroad bridge was standing open when we exited the locks.  It took us less than forty minutes from start to finish.  On a busy day it can take more than twice that.  Big thanks to Tina for the photo of Quijote transiting the locks.

New Rig, Wind Vane, and Pole

I can’t believe it’s August already - the last post was in May.  Plenty has happened since then: lots of travel and a bit of boat work.

I’ll take this opportunity to show off some of the bigger jobs completed on Quijote.  As noted in a previous post, the rigging was replaced.  Cliff at Evergreen Rigging did a great job.  The photos show the mast being worked on at the boat yard where a crane was used to lift it off the boat.  All the mast electronics - lights, wind instruments, radar - have to be disconnected before the mast can come off.  While doing that I discovered some corroded wires that I was able to clean up and fix a problem I’d been having with the radar.  I love fixing stuff!

While re-rigging we also took the opportunity to upgrade the insulated backstay and move the lower end higher out of reach, making it less likely that anyone will grab the antenna and be shocked while transmitting messages with the SSB radio.  If you have no clue what I’m talking about, it’s not important (unless you’re the one holding on to the backstay while we're transmitting).

The third photo shows the wind vane installation, sans control unit and rudder.  I hope to play with the wind vane a little on the upcoming trip.  I’ll try to post some photos of it in action.  It’s designed to steer the boat at a constant angle to the wind.

A couple more things that have been a focus of my attention lately are the provisioning and modifications to the spinnaker pole.  The provisioning was described in an early post and is mostly complete. I have all but the perishables purchased and stowed for next Sunday’s departure.

The spinnaker pole connection to the mast was improperly designed, according to the gentleman who did my rig survey.  So I replaced the pole end and the car that slides up and down the mast with a bayonet style that allows the pole to be rotated and keeps it from being damaged by twisting forces.  It’s hard to describe, but the bottom line is it works really well now.

I still have the control unit for the wind vane to install and I need to verify that we can send and receive email via SSB, but when that and the last of the provisioning is done I think we’ll be ready to head north.  Broughtons or Bust!

Cliff and Terry working on the mast


The boom truck lowers the mast back onto the boat


The new windvane without the rudder or controller - essentially just a rotating shaft anchored to the stern