Mail Fail

We've had terrible luck with mail this year. Not having a fixed physical address for "home" we instead have a mailbox at a small copy shop in West Seattle. West Seattle is not particularly near to any of the places we ever keep the boat or lay our heads, but the shop owner is a terrific guy whom we have both used for various business services for years and his flexibility and service are well worth the extra distance when it's time to collect.

One of the services he offers is to bundle up your waiting mail and forwarding it to wherever you happen to be, a handy thing if you happen to be in Canada or some place unusually distant from West Seattle. Or at least we thought it might be handy when we headed north this year, so after about the first month we'd been gone, we had him package up our stuff and send it general delivery to a Canada Post office in a city we planned to be visiting in a few days. That was in late July. When did we finally get that mail? Yesterday, after the package finally cleared Customs both ways and skulked back to its point of origin, here in West Seattle. Turns out that mail to or from Canada isn't all that reliable, and isn't even remotely predictable.

The Canada Post folks told us a package could be held for up to two weeks in Customs, and that they would then hold something another two weeks in general delivery before returning it. If you do a little math on that, you will quickly realize that you have a window of about a month during which you must be near the place you hope to collect the mail from; if it comes through immediately, you only have two weeks to pick it up before it gets sent back, but if it gets hung up in customs, you may have to wait two weeks before you can pick it up. If you're only going to be gone for three months, that is not tremendously useful.

In the event, it seems like it got held up far longer than two weeks in Canadian customs, so it's a good thing we didn't hang around waiting for it.

Besides that, we tried sending a gift back from up there which never arrived (or hasn't yet, at any rate; maybe it come through in another three months).

But it's not just Canada; we're having as many problems here in the States. We sent a birthday card ahead from Friday Harbor which never reached the intended recipient, nor has it yet been returned. Maybe the mail boat sunk and we didn't hear about it.

And I've been having a run-of-the-mill streak of bad luck this past week, missing by hours or days a series of important letters or packages that have come in. Either Mandy or I have had to go collect the mail just about every day this week for something that came in the previous day that we need, only after we had already checked in. Twice, we've gotten the call that it showed up less than an hour after we had been there.

At least my e-mail is still getting through. I think.

Ordinary scams

But lately, it's just the sneaky, downright dishonest stuff that is bugging me. The Ballard Safeway commonly offers items that are marked down on special of some sort or other, but then does not honor the discount at the register. Because of the way the Safeway discounts work (you have to plug in a member card or number before the discount is given; the price rings up initially as the regular price) it is more difficult than usual to notice when this happens, and over the past year I have gotten home and gone to plug the receipt into our budget spreadsheet many times to find that I have paid more than I intended and more than was advertised for certain products.

It's possible that this is simply oversight of some sort, but I increasingly think that it is an intentional scam. When I have caught the discrepancy at the register, the managers make a production out of stopping everything, marching back and personally verifying what the price tag says on the shelf. Considering how often this happens, you would think they would either be aware, or be willing to take your word for it, instead of treating you like you are the guilty party, and not they. I am not much of a conspiracy theorist, but I do believe that where incentives are in place, employees will follow them, and corporate officers are well aware of how that works. I think that even if they haven't explicitly designed this system (and who does, these days? everything is more subtle than that... "will no one rid me of one troublesome priest?") it's not in their interest to fix it. Most people probably don't notice the discrepancy; those who do, and complain, are probably discouraged by their treatment, and don't bring it up again. Hey, it's only fifty cents, right?

I used to laugh at my mother for running down her credit card statements and comparing the charges against bills from gas stations and such. She said sometimes she found that the receipt she would get from the station wouldn't match what they actually charge the account. I am not laughing anymore; that seems like exactly the sort of thing corporations would do to squeeze a few extra cents per transaction out of people.

Overpromising and underdelivering seems to be the new norm. Mandy and I talk about this all the time with respect to boating gear. It's twice as expensive as anything else, and half as reliable. Money just doesn't buy quality anymore. Perhaps nothing does; maybe there just isn't quality. Planned obsolescence works for the corporations.

It often seems that you can't win, and maybe you really can't. The only way to come out ahead in such a system is to try to scam it yourself, but then you are just as bad as all the rest. I freely admit that I have long since joined those ranks. I try to conduct myself honorably and forthrightly with other individuals, but when it comes to large, or even mid-sized organizations, all bets are off. It's a business relationship on both ends. But it has to be asymmetric; I will only ever lose on their terms, and they set all the terms. So I have to take my advantages where I can. With Safeway, I don't have a lot of control over it, but you had better believe I won't be mentioning it if they happen to ring something up for less than it's marked; and I fully intend to check all my receipts while standing their in line, right in front of the checker, holding things up and generally inconveniencing everyone until I am satisfied they are correct. If they start losing more money because people are tying up their checkers than they are making by scamming us on prices, maybe they'll have to look for another scam.

Home

On a boat, when the boat travels with you, there is a dual concept of home: the dwelling, and the location.

Scott and I arrived back "home" in Seattle last Thursday. It felt good. Homey, you could say. As much as I try to not whine about the physical smallness of our boat, I will say I was really happy that, almost immediately, we'd be off for a few days of house/dog sitting for a friend. Their home is comfortable, and possibly even comforting, since we know it well. And we were still in the general area of Seattle, so we were still "home," if home is a location.

The first night of house sitting I developed an incredible headache. I went to bed early, and as I was laying down on a very plush, dry bed with my eyes closed, something unexpected happened: I began longing for the v-berth. The cold, damp, uneven, small v-berth. I wanted to go "home." I craved my most comforting nook in all the world.

Once I woke up the next morning, sans headache, I was more than happy to be anywhere but the boat once again. Tomorrow (Tuesday) night I'll be back on the boat, staying for much of the rest of the month. I have a presentation Wednesday and it will make the logistics of ride-sharing with my assistant much easier if I am at Shilshole and not in Burien. (Scott will come back to the boat Wednesday, since he'll have a late-night airport pickup to make.)

We have two upgrades to home (the boat), now that we're back in the land of big-box stores like Target. Both should make it more comfortable: a new heater (one that hopefully stays ON when it is turned ON, and turns OFF once it is hot enough) and a new 100% polyester blanket. The old comforter is going to the dumpster. Even with a bathtub to try cleaning it in, there are still mildew stains in the corners, and I simply cannot make myself crawl into a mildew-y blanket one more night. So, with prospects of being warmer (while not worrying that the boat will catch fire) and the feeling of a clean bed, I'm looking forward to home once again.

I suppose the boat being in Seattle makes it doubly home. It's good to be back :)

~M

You can't buy sunshine

I can't describe the degree to which simply having an affordable grocery store nearby seems like the height of luxury to me right now, but the one thing I am really left craving is something I can't find on the shelf (Florida oranges notwithstanding): the sunshine we were supposed to get today.

Apparently it's been delayed until tomorrow. I'll believe it when I see it.

We're in Friday Harbor now, tied up at the marina after a brisk sail down from Orcas Island on Wednesday. The weather, then and since, has been uniformly crappy. We reefed down before hauling in the anchor in Deer Harbor (fortunately, the anchorage proved sound, despite the southeastern exposure... in 25 knot gusts we didn't budge and in the cabin barely felt anything) and still managed to bury the rail tacking down through San Juan Channel. It only took us an hour, even going upwind. As Mandy said, that's probably why people come to sail here in the islands in the first place: all the destinations are close together. An hour of that is fun; all day, which is what it would have been up north in the Strait of Georgia, would have been demanding and tiring.

We are spending a total of five nights here, which is also quite luxurious. They are on fall rates now, though, and we were able to take advantage of our reciprocal moorage agreement with the San Juan Island Yacht Club, so it is affordable. So we're pumped out (sewage, that is, for the uninitiated... an empty holding tank makes Mandy happy!), powered up, and fully Internetized. And, I may have mentioned, there's a lovely market just up the street. It's practically like being back home at Shilshole. Better, even, when you realize that the nearest grocery store there is in Ballard.

The Huskies are on a bye this week, unfortunately, but Sunday I also plan to take advantage of the sports bar situation to watch the Seahawks self-destruct against San Diego. I haven't managed to catch a complete game yet this season.

We're also keeping a close eye on the weather. Our friend Maxx gets here on Tuesday, and if everything cooperates, we'll cross the strait that day. It was looking very promising in yesterday's forecast; today, they are predicting another system will be rolling in that day, but the forecast winds are still light (though from the worst possible direction) so it is still looking doable. It may be a long day, but probably not foggy or excessively rough.

We are both anxious to get back to town. We found out this week that our renters do not plan to extend their lease for another year, so we need to get to work lining up new tenants, and taking a look at the house to see what will need to be cleaned or repaired in between. The early response to our first hastily posted ad has been great, but we're not there right now to actually show the place, so that's a real disadvantage. Since Maxx is coming up anyway to help with the sailing, I'm considering putting Mandy on a ferry early or something so she could be around to deal with things, but it may not be worthwhile to gain only a few days. At any rate, we got plenty of notice, so we have a couple of months to get it rented, hopefully without losing more than a month of income.

Anyway, I suppose it is nice that there are compelling reasons for us to enjoy getting back to Seattle, because otherwise, I'm all ready to set up camp for the winter here in Friday Harbor. It's shameful what a simple little grocery store will tempt me into.

The end is nigh

We're into the home stretch, as it were, a period I always have difficulty with, and it's proving to be no exception on this trip. When it's clear that the going places and doing stuff is about wrapped up, I want to just wrap it up all the rest of the way and put a ribbon on it: done! But it's rarely that easy. So I'm trying to enjoy the time we have left between now and when our slip opens up again at the end of the month (actually, I'm concerned about that; this started out as the most difficult sublet we have ever done, and I am hoping that the end won't be as complicated--or delayed--as the beginning was).

The weather, at least, has cooperated. After a little rain the night we spent in Roche Harbor, the days have been clear and sunny, if not genuinely hot. We ducked up to Stuart Island and spent a couple nights in Reid Harbor there. Mandy made me hike all the way out to Turn Point, a prominence which we have seen often enough from the water but never before from land. It's a different perspective looking out on all the islands and vessel traffic from the lighthouse. The lighthouse itself is a bit of a disappointment... it's all automated now, but even back in the day apparently it was just a little concrete plinth about five feet high. The location, high on a bluff, provided all the height necessary without the grand extravagance of a tower. Now there is just a rather unimposing beacon and a steel frame festooned with antennas and video cameras used by the Coast Guard's Vessel Traffic Separation scheme (in which Turn Point is a prominent chokepoint deserving of great respect from boaters).

The lightkeeper's house and outbuildings are much more picturesque. On sunny days, I imagine it was a fine life up there on the bluff watching the ships go by. We didn't see it in the rain, but I can imagine it was less ideal through the winter months.

They managed to situate the place on the opposite side of every hill on the island from the marine park, so we got a good workout going back and forth. The anchorage in Reid Harbor was grand: well-protected, reasonably quiet, solid holding and convenient to the park landing. The one thing it didn't have was cellular service. Unless, of course, one hiked to the top of one of the many hills, in which case one could easily pick up a signal from... Canada. It's one of the more northern San Juan islands, and there are only about forty permanent residents, so I am sure it's not real high on T-mobile's list of places to cover. But as it happened, I had left a business conversation hanging on our departure from Roche, so we pulled back out after two nights and wandered over to Deer Harbor on Orcas. I am writing this from there on a quiet evening with light westerlies that have just about blown themselves out, but I have some trepidation about what the evening will bring. The next storm system is due in overnight, and with it strong-ish southeast winds, and we've never been in this harbor before. It looks pretty darned open to the south/southeast. So, we'll see how it goes. We may be pulling out early if it gets dicey. Fortunately, there are few other boats here and we have some room to swing.

How did that happen?

Somehow, we're suddenly back in the United States this afternoon. What happened?

Of course, if you don't have a a real itinerary, it's reasonable to ask, how can you ever really be surprised by where you end up, or rather, shouldn't you always be surprised at where you end up? While it may be a reasonable question, I don't really have an answer. I just thought we were going to be in Canada for another week, and now we're not.

We stayed too long in Ganges, was part of the problem, and the place just seems to have a bad vibe. The weather was pretty crummy, and Mandy demanded that if it were going to rain, she at least wanted a coffee shop she could go to. I had wanted to go to Montague Harbour for a couple of days next, but had to admit it didn't sound like much fun in the rain... trees and water in a fine mist look pretty much the same no matter where you are, and a convenient grocery store and shops to browse didn't seem like a bad alternative.

But by yesterday we were pretty well ready to be done with the place. My thought for this week had been to get down to Sidney, where we have a reciprocal moorage agreement with a yacht club and could stay for a few nights quite cheaply. We've never really spent much time there and the place is reputed to have a lot of excellent bookstores and a good grocery store. We didn't stock up on much in Ganges, since island prices for food are generally higher than elsewhere.

Unfortunately, when we got to Sidney, we found that the yacht club was sponsoring a regatta that weekend, and the guest moorage was restricted to vessels taking part in the event. Since we didn't think we could quickly disguise Insegrevious as a racer, we were out of luck.

There are a number of other places to stay in Sidney but Mandy vetoed that, and they were going to cost more anyway. The non-stop rain has really kept us from getting the boat dried out decently, and we needed a couple solid days of heat and ventilation to drop the humidity. So, we decided to just go ahead and cross back into the US. As it happens, there is no real advantage to our having done this, since we are now at Roche Harbor, which costs as much or more than those places in Sidney we might have spent the night, and it's still an island grocery store, and a small, fancy one at that (there is no real town here, just a resort). And since the cost is greater, we still can only stay one night and will be out anchoring someplace through most of the rest of the week instead of tied up somewhere with electricity and coffee shops. Hasty decisions are generally poor ones, particularly when you've already been up since six motoring through heavy fog when you have to make them. But on the plus side, it was perfect weather for crossing Haro Strait, since we got there right after the fog had cleared off, and a good fifteen knot southerly zipped us straight across. With the fog being as it has been, we might have gotten stuck over in Canada for longer than planned if we had waited.

The weather is, however, supposed to clear up a bit by Tuesday, so we might be able to at least enjoy some of the fine marine parks up here in the San Juans that we have been missing. The real issues now are groceries, Internet access, and reading material. I'd planned to have all three things taken care of sufficiently in Sidney, but now there is no bookstore to be had (and I am absolutely out of stuff to read), the groceries are probably going to be excessively expensive, and I have only one night to catch up on work with the Internet access here at the marina. I won't even have time to enjoy the pool here at the resort (access to which is complimentary with moorage, which is at least part of why the moorage is so expensive).

If there is a bright spot, it is that our experience clearing Customs back in to the US was actually quite pleasant this time. We have encountered the kinder, gentler Customs and Border Protection service. On our other trips back to the US this summer, we had been pretty impressed at the hospitable, courteous, and welcoming nature of the agents we had dealt with, but those crossings were all by means of conventional transportation. We've never had good luck on the boat.

But this time, we were cleared through quickly, with a minimum of questions, some basic respect and decency, and the golden ticket to a good Customs experience: the agents we talked to both said "Welcome home." It's not so hard to say, and it makes a world of difference to a citizen returning to his or her country to hear it, instead of the uniform suspicion and snide remarks that have characterized our return in years past.

Ganges: Not so quiet, really

I wasn't going to mention any of this, and perhaps I still shouldn't, since it may just be tempting fate. But reading Mandy's assertions about the relative quiet of Ganges Harbour in light of the events of the last twenty-four hours, I'm having trouble keeping it to myself. And no, it's not about the seaplanes that take off right next to us twelve hours a day (quiet? maybe if you have fancy noise-canceling headphones!).

I wasn't going to post about it because I make plenty of mistakes myself and don't like to point out those made by others; they are generally honest mistakes, and it's not always clear who is making them depending on conditions, experience, and a multitude of other factors.

Nonetheless, we seem to have some sort of magnetic attraction that compels people to anchor uncomfortably close to us even in absolutely empty anchorages. A couple years ago in Laura Cove, we were entirely by ourselves, anchored out with scads of open space around us, when in the late afternoon some guy chugs in and calmly parallel parks right next to us, like it's Manhattan and he has just squeaked into the last space within twenty blocks. There were probably fifty other prime spots around the cove he might have picked, but no, the place he had to be was right there, where I was going to have trouble sleeping thinking about our respective swinging radii.

One thing to understand about the anchorage in Ganges is that it's huge... probably half a mile wide, nearly two miles long, around 5 fathoms deep throughout over a sticky mud bottom. There is hardly anywhere in here you couldn't pitch the hook over the side and have a safe, secure evening of rest. And this time of year, the place is practically empty... there may be twenty boats here in the main part of the harbour, half those on permanent moorings. There is a good bit of space left over, even quite close to town.

So it came as some surprise a couple days ago when a forty-something foot Catalina came and anchored within about two boat lengths to windward of us. The owner seemed to know that he was a bit closer than he needed to be... I happened to be on deck at the time, and he struck up a conversation, and mentioned that since he was on chain, and I was using rope, I would stretch well out away from him and there shouldn't be a problem. Now, to my understanding, that's actually a bad thing, because a lighter boat on a rope rode will swing around faster than a heavier one on chain, and cause problems where two boats with similar anchoring setups might not, but this guy looked like the Ancient Mariner and I figured, hey, what do I know? Even though using the same logic, if the wind shifted, wouldn't we be more likely to collide? Anyway, he was old, and I decided not to ask him to haul up and move... something I do very rarely, even though my anchoring comfort zone is much larger than many people's.

Anyway, to make a long story shore, Mandy got up to use the head last night around midnight, and heard a funny noise coming from the lifelines. That was his anchor roller tangling up in them. It was pretty calm out, so there was no loud smacking or anything, we had just drifted together after a light breeze shifted us around a bit. I got up, rapped on the hull, and woke everyone up. His wife was very apologetic, but I had trouble understanding the resolution they chose... instead of letting out more rode and drifting further astern (out of our swinging radius), they started the engine up and backed away. That got us all clear for the moment, but I couldn't see how it was going to prevent the problem from recurring. Still, the devil you know and all, so I again didn't specifically ask them to re-anchor further off, preferring they come to that conclusion themselves, which happened finally around three hours later. So, not much sleep for me. They pulled out this morning with no further drama.

Fast forward to dinner time. I'd been laying around, still very tired, on a settee reading a bit, and Mandy told me to get cracking and whip her up some ham and potatoes. I get up to do just that... and am amazed to see out the companionway another sailboat, this one on the other side of us, with our dinghy gently brushing up against his anchor chain. I hadn't even heard him come in.

So I bound up on deck, it's raining now, and check, and we're not even stretched all the way out on our rode. Any little breeze coming up from the south and we're definitely going to smack him. So I hail him and he comes up scratching his head... he had anchored when the wind was coming from the other direction, just as the guy in the Catalina had, only it had shifted sooner this time. He had imagined he was well away from us, but again, he was on all-chain and we, with our mostly rope rode, had shifted back much more quickly. He asked how much I had out, and I told him ninety feet... a respectable three-to-one, our typical ratio in the crowded anchorages up here, and about the minimum I feel comfortable with, considering how light rope is. I am sometimes embarrassed to have to reveal that I have four or five to one out when it is windy, feeling a bit selfish and over-protective considering the community norms up here.

So I asked how much chain he had out. One hundred and twenty five feet. Better than four to one, of chain. Suddenly I didn't feel so selfish with my wimpy lightweight rope and a measly three to one. He volunteered to haul some in and shorten his scope, which I agreed was perhaps a good first step. Considering my own predilections, shortening scope is not something I am comfortable openly encouraging among others; after all, if they start dragging, they may present a much more drastic problem for me than if we are just rubbing. Still... I think he's probably safe, considering the forecast for the next week doesn't call for anything stronger than fifteen knots.

Like the fellow last night, I didn't directly ask him to re-anchor, but let him come to the conclusion himself that we would all get a better evening's rest (which god knows I need at this point) if he picked up and dropped back over where he thought he was in the first place. Eventually, he did.

So, that's how quiet it is here right now, which doesn't seem all that quiet, considering this is the first time we've bumped with anyone at anchor this season (I did, actually, ask a fellow in False Creek with a fifty-foot tug to re-anchor after he dropped too close; it was way too big, and obviously way too close, and we certainly would have hit given the wind and current patterns there, but after some grumbling he did move along), and it's happened twice in less than twenty-four hours, in an otherwise mostly empty anchorage.

More from quiet Ganges

I mentioned in my earlier post today that I've been getting lots of work done. People often ask, "How do you get work done while you're on the boat." Answer: battery power and generators.

But batteries still only last so long, and we can only (in good conscience) annoy our boating neighbors with a limited number of generator hours per day.

And so I find myself hanging out at Ganges Salt Spring Coffee Company. This is the kind of coffee shop I wish, wish, WISH that Nanaimo had! Still, after as much time as we spent in Nanaimo this summer, I have not found a coffee shop to meet my simple needs (chai+a plug-in+free Wifi).

This place also has very cool art on the walls, and tout that they have "Great coffee that doesn't compromise the Earth." I like this place. It is a bit noisy, but what do I care; I have noise canceling headphones! Since I was as low on battery power as I was, though, I've been here for quite a while. I have suddenly found myself in an unusual spot: my busy work is all done.

I've answered 6 weeks of non-pressing emails that had backed up, checked out my sister-in-law's Flickr page and oogled over pictures of brand new baby Tessa, sent the invoice out for the work I did in Seattle, published all the work I had done on the boat and was waiting for a strong, reliable Internet connection to finish up, and completed many, many bits and pieces of other stuff as well.

So here I am on the blog again. Babbling away.

But my battery is still only at 83% full. Sure, I've got other stuff I still could do, but... oh crap, a look up and out the window in front of me shows raindrops. We FINALLY got the boat under 80% humidity after Sunday's solid downpour in Nanaimo, and now I'll be dinghying back in the rain. Did I think to bring a raincoat? No. Would Scott have ever made such an error? Never.

Oh well.

And since I'm on a bit of a babbling streak here, I thought I'd mention a law that is true on land as well as on a boat: smoke detectors always chirp their battery's near-demise in the middle of the night. I was wondering why I'd set it off so much less frequently lately. So I'll have a quick stop at the store for a new battery before going back to the dinghy, too.

One thing that is sort of fun with the fall coolness and wetness is that, once we actually get the diesel heater running, it makes a cooktop as well as a heater! This morning I made split pea soup with carrots and onions. I don't know why cooking not on a regular stove is such a fun novelty. But it seems to be true anywhere. It is why men grill and people love camping. Maybe it makes us feel more hearty or something, as if we'd just discovered fire all by ourself.

Yep, that dinghy is going to be plenty wet by the time I get back to it. Maybe I'd better forgo the last 13% of my battery charge and head out now.

Cheers,
Mandy

From Quiet Ganges

Time to catch up on some happenings!

As Scott said, our last trip to Seattle was for me to work. So the days beforehand were spent in preparation. Wednesday night before we left Vancouver I suspected I might be coming down with a cold. I fought it in transit on the Amtrac train on Thursday. It was fun taking the train to Seattle since it was a route we've never seen before. We've driven it, taken the bus, and obviously sailed it. But the train follows along the water much of the way down, and it was interesting to see the water from land instead of that same land from the water. Also, we passed along Shilshole. We've seen the Amtrac train from the boat many times, but I'd never even actually considered I'd ride it some day. I wasn't actively dismissing the idea, but I never thought I'd have a purpose for it.

Thursday night I spent at our friend's place. Never before had I seen a sunset as spectacular from their waterfront home.

Friday morning I had my presentation, then in the evening we went and crashed at another friend's place in Everett. Still I could feel the lingering cold, and so unhappily avoided picking up their adorable baby.

Then Saturday was the bus ride back up to Vancouver, rather uneventful.

Sunday, four days after the first symptoms, my cold reared itself to its full extent. I was out, tired as hell, and fighting a pounding headache. Scott wasn't kidding when he said I spent most of the day in the v-berth. I didn't even wake up when he stopped for fuel. He had to single-hand the entire day, including docking for fuel, later raising and lowering the sails, getting us across the Strait of Georgia, and finally anchoring.

Monday I also slept, and Tuesday I began finally feeling a bit better. We hung out in Nanaimo for the rest of the week, spending time at anchor, then at Nanaimo Yacht Club, happily taking advantage of their facilities.

Once we finished up in Nanaimo, it was a long-ish motor down to Ganges. This Scott also pretty much did on his own. Since finally feeling recovered from my cold I've gotten my head back into a major work project I've been working on, and he's obliged to let me spend all the time I want working on it. So, that's it. I've been working. And reading. And sleeping.

(Images, top to bottom: Vancouver Sunset; view from the boat, Shilshole from the Amtrac, Sunset at Ed and Terry's, Morning fog at Ganges)

Sunshine on a cloudy day

We don't have any of the real variety, so I am making do metaphorically with the surprising and convincing win the Seahawks just registered over the 49ers.

It's downright miserable outside, but we went out and hiked through the rain to The Foundry, a pub up the street a bit that advertised UFC championship replays on the big sign out front. We figured that also probably meant they would have a football game on during the typical Sunday afternoon, but when we got there, we found a very quiet place with a tennis match up on all the screens. The bartender obligingly hunted up the Seahawks game for us, which we had missed the first half of due to my inability to keep the timezones on nfl.com straight. Looking at the postgame reviews, it's probably a good thing we missed it; it sounds as if they started off like a train wreck in the first quarter. By the time we tuned in, they were already well on their way to a rout, and watching over a large plate of nachos was just good fun (note: if you are ever at The Foundry in Nanaimo, get the half order of nachos. I don't care if there are eight of you. Get the half-order.).

So despite the weather I am in pretty good spirits. A gentleman we ran into on the dock on our way out, unprompted, greeted us by saying, "Tomorrow will be better." I hope so. Sailing in this muck will not be much fun, though we don't have far to go and if the wind persists from the south, won't actually be able to sail very much of it. Anyway, this weather system won't sit up here forever, and tomorrow will be another day closer to something different, even if it doesn't actually show up when we shove off early in the morning.

All I am hoping for tonight is that it is not as rough as last night. This morning, our hull, dock lines, fenders, and much of the dock were coated with flotsam that was washed up during the wash cycle we were put through on the south side of the dock until around midnight. Everyone stuck it out, but just about all the other boats that were here last night have headed out today. Whether that was simply on their schedule or they feared the prospects of another evening, I can't say. So far the wind is milder but the rain heavier, and I think that's a good omen.

We haven't decided exactly where to go next, except that we need a post office, so one of the more substantive towns in the Gulf Islands or Vancouver Island seems likely. Beyond that, it will just depend on weather and our mood.

Good Call / Bad Call

Deciding to take two nights tied up at a marina with electricity, heat, and all the amenities easily available as a rainy storm system moves in over the area:

GOOD CALL

Taking a spot on the exterior of the southernmost dock, exposed to the full stretch of the harbour, as the southeasterly builds from that same rainy storm system:

BAD CALL

So, I am happy to be warm and dry and out of the rain, with no need to conserve electricity or fuel and all the diversions of a fully stocked town at my fingertips. I'm not so happy to be getting slammed up against the dock as the waves pound in from across the bay in fifteen or twenty knots of wind. I've got all our fenders out now and they're getting squashed flat. The guy with the boat moored astern of us is talking about pushing off (it's about 2130 right now) and going out to anchor in Mark Bay instead of staying here getting pushed around. Maybe I'm just jaded; we were on the float adjacent to Newcastle Channel last time we were here and got smacked about similarly by wakes and chop there, so this seems uncomfortable, but not unusual. Or maybe I'm optimistic; it's supposed to die down around midnight. Or maybe I'm pessimistic; getting off the windward side of the dock with vessels close in fore and aft would be no picnic, nor would be poking around looking for a protected spot in the dark in Mark Bay. That right there could take till midnight.

At any rate, it's just noisy and bouncy, nothing dangerous, and I was going to sleep in tomorrow anyway. Leaving the electric heater on all night so I don't have to get up and start the stove to warm up the cabin in the morning:

GOOD CALL

Everything is better in Nanaimo

I don't know if it's just because of the location, as the sort of northern terminus of the protected waters of the Gulf Islands, or if there is something about the place itself, but it seems like Nanaimo always serves as our happy place when we are cruising in the Strait of Georgia.

If there were ever a time we needed a happy place to go to, it was certainly this week. Ending a whirlwind, on again/off again visit to Vancouver the day after returning from a trip back to the States (for work and play; Mandy worked, I played), we had an arduous crossing of the Strait with no realistic options for bailing out or stopping early. Mandy came down with a terrible cold and was laid up in the v-berth most of the day; the wind was on the nose, and was only moderate at that, which made for a lot of slow beating across a lot of slop left over from heavier breezes the night before; we were low on fuel, necessitating a two hour detour and arguing against motoring; and we hadn't had a chance to go shopping to restock our barren pantry before we left. Also, another storm was brewing on the horizon, ominously, all day long.

So it was under those conditions that we chugged across the Strait for eleven hours, ending up at nightfall in an anchorage that was chock full of Labor Day sailors. In the rain. All I could do after such a numbing day was shovel down some hot ramen (which, together with instant oatmeal and granola bars, comprised the entirety of our larder for the trip) and crawl into my berth and hope that the anchor was set well enough to endure the wind shift coming with the storm.

We woke to a rainy, miserable day, in a damp, dark, chilled cabin. Mandy was still sick, I was still tired. But it was Labor Day, and we didn't really have anywhere to go: docks and anchorages were full, and anyway most of the stores we might have gone to were probably closed. So we just hung around and watched the rain coming down on the portlights.

Today was a new day. The rain stopped, the anchored boats evaporated, the stores opened, and the docks cleared. We hauled the anchor in and motored over to go shopping. It was still overcast, but fresh food brightened our spirits considerably. Returning to Mark Bay, the well-protected, solid anchorage off Newcastle Island Marine park, we had our choice of spots to drop the hook. I got well in close to the dinghy docks, and in the most protected nook in the bay. We managed to get our fiddly diesel heater going, and between it and the glimpses of sunshine that shot through the clouds by mid-afternoon, we got the cabin heated up and the relative humidity down from just over 90% to around 75%. Not exactly dry, but a lot drier, and warmer, than it had been.

We didn't have either oatmeal or ramen or a single granola bar all day today.

Tomorrow and Thursday are supposed to be the best days before another storm system rolls in late in the week, so we hope to spend some time exploring the park further. When it starts raining again, we can either hole up here with the heat on and the wet all locked outside, or we can take a little harbour ferry from the island in to town and amuse ourselves there. It feels good to be all stocked up, with no pressing deadlines, easy access to provisions, power and Internet readily available, and no need to venture out for anything.

We'll probably sit here for a week or so, then duck into a marina to do laundry and take on water, then start poking our way south through the Islands again. Even if September this year doesn't extend our summer measurably, fall isn't so oppressive if you can stay warm and dry and pick your ports as you choose, rather than being forced into them by circumstances.

Forth and Back

Traveling is stressful for most people, but I have decided that traveling while you are already traveling is the most stressful thing of all.

Traveling while traveling? What gibberish is this, you ask? What I mean are the side trips we keep taking away from the main trip that we are on, a swing up through British Columbia. Various things have pulled us back twice in the last month from that trip to Washington state again, and the logistics of those small trips have been difficult and costly.

I'm also not sure stressful is the right word. I have enjoyed both of these trips back, despite the cost and complications. But I end up dreading each leg of them, and what is at the other end. I didn't want to leave Vancouver to come down here in Seattle; now that I am here in Seattle, I don't want to go back to Vancouver. It's not new or exciting; it just seems like work at this point, a lot of work on a voyage that we're not well prepared for. Leaving the boat in a marina while we have been gone has provided a certain peace of mind (particularly during the small windstorm Vancouver experienced today) but the combination of that and our stretch at anchor in between means that we are all used up on time in Vancouver. As soon as we get back, we have to head out, crossing the Strait of Georgia in iffy conditions without provisioning or preparing. That's not really a great idea as we verge into the fall storms, but all my energy and budget have gone into these other trips, so I have a feeling of dread about the whole thing now.

I had been looking forward to this last month of our trip, after many of the crowds have evaporated from the popular cruising spots, and with a little bit of cool, breezy weather mixed in with the relentless hot and clear summer we have otherwise had, but now it just seems pointless and undesirable to go back and go through with it all. We'll still stick with our plan, of course, working down through the Gulf Islands and into the San Juans slowly as we make our way to Seattle again to tie up at Shilshole for the winter... there's neither any point in rushing back. But if there were some way to hit the fast forward button and be done with it all this afternoon, I think I would.

Vancouver

I love Vancouver. Every time I am here I love it more.

Don't get me wrong, I love Seattle, too, but Vancouver has something to it that Seattle just doesn't. I'm sure part of it is where Scott and I are, anchored an easy dinghy ride from the Yaletown neighborhood. Yaletown is young, clean, and urban. The people, the buildings, and the parks are all beautiful. And Yaletown is probably the only place I've been in a couple of years that is pulling off what no other place seems to be capable of right now--prosperity. New condo high-rises have giant "SOLD OUT" banners across their billboards. Even with high-rises on every block, the building ordinances must allow the sun to reach the sidewalk. Most buildings are tiered back from the street and get narrower as they get higher. The mix of 3-4 story buildings mixed with 20+ story buildings is nice. Or one part of the building is only a few stories high (often on the street corners), then toward the center it climbs much higher. Either way, the effect is a dense, yet airy mixed-use city core. Actually, with Yaletown so vibrant and beautiful, it is no wonder the Olympic Village (across the water) is having a hard time filling up!

Transit here is efficient and easy to use, even for first-timers. No doubt a little familiarity with place names would make it easier for visitors, but it is like that in any metropolitan city. And it seems highly used by the locals.

The central library is spacious, and even non-citizens need only go to the service desk for a card for one year of public library Wifi. And, even though I can't check it out, they have a reference book here (two copies even!) that I really wanted to take a look at in Seattle. However, it was missing from the Seattle library's shelf. It wasn't checked out, and even after a thorough search by the librarian through all the possible hiding places, it was never found. I had hours of bliss yesterday afternoon getting so many answers from the book that had eluded me for many months. Before I left, I ordered myself a copy online. It was a somewhat expensive book, and I really wanted to take a look at it before buying it.

Canadian social service programs mean that I've only seen two homeless people so far in a stretch of time and distance that would have revealed at least a hundred in Seattle.

If I didn't love my life on the boat, and love Seattle so much, I could easily live here. As it is, I'll take in all I can in these brief visits.


:)
Mandy

Back and forth

Most of the delays in posting have been due to travel lately... not on the high seas, but more mundane excursions by car and bus and rail, with not a little walking thrown in for spice. Once we got back to the boat, there was, of course, work to be done... and that's what we've been doing, up through today, and now I feel like I can take a little breather and get back on course. Until next week, of course.

We're in Vancouver, still or again, depending on how you look at it, anchored out in False Creek. Mandy is back from a trip to Wisconsin to visit family, and I am back from Washington from a separate trip for similar reasons. I went backpacking in the North Cascades (after a short delay due to a brushfire burning across I-90; though frustrating, at least it came with an air show in the form of a helicopter making water drops from a nearby stream), which is a whole different sort of wilderness than the one we have been experiencing up here. A lot more work required, too! The mountains may be best viewed from a great distance.

The spot we ended up in in the Creek isn't as advantageous as the one in which I spent the few days after sending Mandy south. It's not as convenient to shopping, nor Internet, nor a dinghy dock. It's still quite lovely, but options are limited; in the last hurrah before fall, boats abound and False Creek is crowded. We had a couple days in relative seclusion, though the best spots were full up. Now we're a little wedged in by other boats. But we'll be here for a while, at least another week, so perhaps it will clear out again after the weekend. On the other hand, next weekend is Labor Day... so maybe not.

This weekend, we have some friends coming up for a visit, which should be fun even though the weather is taking a turn for the worse. We've been bound to the bus and train while exploring up here so this will be an opportunity to get further off the beaten path and see some things we might not otherwise.

Not that the transit system up here is shoddy in any way. We figured out yesterday how to get out to go shopping in a place much cheaper than the downtown core, and even with a couple of transfers in between, it only took a couple hours. With buses every 15 minutes and trains every 5 on the main lines, you're never waiting around for very long. It very much points to how limited the options (and the thinking) are in the Seattle area, where your best bet is usually to take a car and sit in traffic. There certainly is traffic here, but it seems to be less a problem, and with such flexible transit you're not really forced into driving as much.

Despite the weather, it's still pretty nice here, and I am looking forward to a little more exploring and a little less scrambling around next week. At the end of the week, though, we're southbound by land once again, Mandy for business and me for a convention (not business). While it's all for fun, all the bouncing around is starting to get to me a little bit and I'll be glad when it is all done, September has come, and we are solidly back aboard once again. Leaving the boat is a little nerve-wracking, as is coming back and getting adjusted to it once again after any length of time on dry land. There are rewards, of course: moonrise and moonset on the day we got back:





Although we have also had the occasional uninvited guest, who has left unwanted gifts in the dinghy as it floats along off our stern.

At any rate, September may bring cooler weather, but it will also have fewer crowds, less pressing travel demands, the possibility of televised football, and the promise of a return to familiar circumstances and what seems, despite our best efforts, to most resemble real life.

Police Psychology

A basic grasp of this subject has proven invaluable to me of late, as odd as it may seem while spending so much time out on a boat, away from law enforcement in almost every aspect.

Last week, it came into play during our stay at a yacht club which shall remain nameless. A security deposit was required for the gate key, a common requirement at any marina. I didn't have enough cash, the person at the desk when we checked in didn't believe that her stand-in the next day would be capable of figuring out how to reverse a deposit authorized on a credit card, and at any rate we were leaving much earlier in the morning than anyone staffed the desk. She accepted my driver's license and told me I could turn in the key and collect the card from the night watchman before we headed out.

She didn't have a number or radio channel on which we could get hold of him, nor did he normally stay at the desk. This combination of information, while apparently vague, in actuality told me everything: having been a night watchman myself, I knew I would have to get up early the next day to give myself time to poke around all the buildings to find whatever secluded corner he was using to sleep in on the job.

In case he was smart and to give him an honorable way out, I first banged loudly on the front door of the main building, but there was no response. A more crafty man would be dozing nearby the entrance most likely to attract attention, hoping to be woken by the noise of anyone knocking or entering, but this wasn't the case. Fortunately, it was a terribly hot night, and two doors were left open on the main patio on the other side of the building, so I was able to walk in and wake him up from the couch on which he was napping in the bar. License retrieved, we left on time.

Our next stop was False Creek, where the subject of police psychology came up once again. Here in Vancouver, there are certain anchoring restrictions supposedly in effect in the False Creek area that allow anchorage only outside the navigable channel, and only for two weeks in every four during the summer. To enforce these, a self-registration system is set up, where you fill out your paperwork and post a permit on your boat if you are staying overnight.

I knew that considerable effort had been made prior to the Olympics to clear out the vast numbers of abandoned and resident derelicts, but as we motored in the other day, this seemed to have been abandoned or neglected in the intervening months. The anchorage was still very crowded, and many of the boats there didn't display permits, and looked either abandoned or as if they couldn't possibly have moved in the past two weeks. So, I wasn't all fired up about the necessity of getting a permit myself, for only two nights there. I figured if there was any enforcement effort, it would more likely be occupied with the more obvious transgressors and probably took some time to get rolling judging by how long some of them looked to have been in place.

I did go ashore that first day and stopped by the permit station, and if there had been a pen or something there, I would probably have just filled the thing out and dropped it in the box, but there wasn't so I just picked up the paperwork and took it back to the boat with me. I decided, at least partly out of curiosity, to hold off and see what happened.

I was relying, in this, on another principle of police psychology, which is the desire to avoid unnecessary paperwork. Even if there was a regular patrol, and even if they did note our presence, the most powerful instinct even when noting the absence of a posted permit, would be to let it go for a couple days... who wants to fill out tickets or file reports on problems that are going to go away by themselves? Additionally, most officers genuinely want to deal with real problems and not busywork; with limited hours in the day and clear choices between a boat that was obviously just passing through and others which equally obviously were not, most of them would probably give us a pass for a few days and deal with the longer-term problems. I was anchored near several of these, and figured the difference would be obvious.

Anyway, I dinghied ashore the next day and headed up the seawall path only to see a police Zodiac heading down the waterway past me. I was too far around a curve to see my boat, but I was curious how closely it might get looked at, so I stopped to watch. Sure enough, the Zod bent in off his course and swung into the anchorage. I couldn't see exactly what he was up to, though he pulled in and out a couple times (possibly just idling in circles as he was writing?) and had plenty of time to tag several of us in there. I didn't see anyone with permits properly displayed. Here, however, another aspect of cop psychology would be working against me: once you get the ticket book out and you're stopping to cite one offender, you may as well do 'em all. The stats look good.

This is one of the reasons the paperwork rule is not infallible; there are motivations involved beyond the obvious, in the form of superiors and other bureaucratic incentives. And there is always the danger that you'll get one of those twisted individuals who thrives on paperwork, and can happily spend all day dotting i's and crossing t's and will enforce the letter of the law to the last detail. You can't reason with, fudge, or sway these guys, they will just putter right along detailing every transgression and acting as the law dictates without logic or reason. They're like a big legal assembly line.

Although that may in fact seem like the fairest approach, in fact it's dangerous because most laws now are so complex and the mechanisms for implementation are so ill-defined that enforcement is effectively arbitrary. The law is whatever the police and prosecutors (although the two may not always agree) says it is, and applies to whoever they decide to apply it against. Too many laws and too few natural applications for them make for a sort of fascism, which inevitably is enforced mostly against an underclass that has no effective means of protest.

All the same, in reasonable hands, this isn't entirely unproductive. Though they may hate the paperwork, pursuant to filling it out most cops have an excellent opportunity to interact directly with the people being investigated, letting their very real and astute police instincts sort out the legitimate problems from the minor violations. This isn't infallible; I have a friend, an entirely stand-up guy who is utterly innocent of all significant wrong-doing, who manages to set off those cop instincts with every interaction he has with law enforcement and consistently gets the fifth degree. On the whole, though, most cops can sort out most citizens between those who have made a mistake or are confused, and those are truly up to no good. In this respect it's not a lot different from how things have always worked with law enforcement.

But if you also have some understanding of how exactly that process works, it's much easier to have conversations with officers that result in nothing happening, even if you haven't done everything technically legally. You simply have to reassure them that, in the main, you are all right, didn't mean it, and probably won't do it again.

How to do this depends on the officer and the circumstances, and I would say there aren't probably any hard and fast rules except to avoid challenging their authority. You may know it's bullshit, but there's no faster way to make things bad than to call them on it.

When I got back to the boat there was no notice of any sort on it, but I did notice that two others nearby that had not previously displayed permits, now had them up in the windows. My theory is that they were still aboard and got a talking to, and then complied with the registration. I filled out all my paperwork and put up the registration too, taking another basic principle of cop psychology as a guide: blend in, and they won't bother you. When no one else around had a permit up, it was okay that I didn't. Now that several of them did, I wanted one as well. Being the grey man, the one that looks just like everyone else, is a good way to avoid attracting attention in the first place.

That's not always possible. An example would be our late arrival to clear Customs in Port Townsend last year. We were faced with a very irritable Customs officer who had been called in after hours, and some serious fines for our transgression, not to mention the possibility we simply wouldn't be allowed back in to the country.

Late as we were, we had to wait even longer for the officer to show up, which on top of a very long day already was difficult to bear. Mandy was fuming so I swore her to silence; women, if they can't cry productively and on-demand, aren't always an asset to these interactions, having a certain sense of entitlement that rises from frequently getting the benefit of the doubt from authority figures at every stage of their upbringing. Anger and entitlement aren't useful attitudes in this respect. I didn't let her cook dinner, either, though her temper is even fouler when she is hungry... I didn't want to look too comfortable and settled in. It's good if you can look a little abject and miserable yourself; the idea that you've already paid, in some sense, for having done something wrong, can factor in your favor (this doesn't always work; I got a ticket after totaling my truck in college, for excessive speed, even though I had been within the limit, nothing else was damaged, my truck was clearly trashed, and I was lucky to be walking away; the trooper was just being a dick, and I got the ticket thrown out in court later. Still, he wasted my time and introduced undue anxiety I could have done without right then).

When the CBP officer showed up, I was tremendously apologetic in the manner of someone who has just dinged a stranger's car in a parking lot... gosh, sorry, I just didn't see it, thought I was clear, super sorry about that, I'll take care of whatever the insurance needs, sort of thing. We had had some engine difficulties, which made us later (though we probably were never have going to been exactly on time, and hadn't called ahead, or enough ahead, to schedule clearance for that reason), and I introduced an element of frustration with the engine, ensuring my dirty and bloodied hands were on display without calling attention to them. The patched hoses in the engine compartment were what sealed the deal; they were real, but after seeing them, the officer didn't investigate any further, and indeed didn't check our ID, ask any other questions, or do anything else except complain about the paperwork and staffing problems that apparently consume his post.

In my apologies I was careful to commiserate with this sort of problem in general, showing I understood that cops have lives too, and though we were late getting home already and badly wanting to tie up at a mooring and get some food and sleep, we sat around and chatted for quite a while about the miseries of working for the border patrol with him. He actually was a pretty decent guy and I did genuinely feel bad about his own situation; my anger was at the terrible system that put us both there and the inability of either of us to do anything constructive about it.

This sort of ingratiation shouldn't be carried too far, of course; it starts to be obvious and serves as a bit of a warning flag. And cops aren't stupid; they will usually know what you are up to no matter how subtle you think you are. But in some respects that doesn't matter. If you're able to make the effort and not over-do it, they are still getting a sense of who you are and whether or not you are worth the effort of further action.

Anyway; it's tiresome to have to deal with authority figures on this basis, but apparently, like any other sort of seamanship skill, it's necessary for navigating the complex waters of international cruising today.

Eeriness

This morning Scott dropped me off at the last sailboat accessible dock nearest the Amtrak station that sits near the head of False Creek in Vancouver. It was only around 8:00 am, and my bus to Seattle didn't leave until 11:30. I was armed with a map of Vancouver that Starbucks had been handing out during the Olympics. Along with street names and such, it also handily shows EVERY Starbucks near every Olympic venue as well as downtown.

I followed False Creek to its head, past the Olympic Village, which had been off limits to non-athletes during the events. This was my first chance to see it. A very nice trail had been constructed (or updated) along the waterfront, and walkers with and without dogs, joggers, bikers, roller-bladers, and moms pushing strollers all made heavy use of this lovely public green space.

To my right, it was easy to see where temporary staging areas must have been within the Village during the Games, since large swaths of land are now just empty lots alongside very nice looking brand new condos. In the center of one lot was a giant inukshuk, the symbol of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games.

After picking up my bus ticket, I consulted my map for the nearest Starbucks, which was only about 2 blocks away. I stepped inside it, but it looked like a commuter Starbucks and had only a few barstools for seating. I was looking for something more substantial to wait out the hours at. The next-nearest Starbucks was back the direction I had come from. So I headed back, but decided pass along the opposite side of the Village and see what was there. There was nothing much: old, nondescript buildings, workshops or former workshops of differing sorts, many of them with faded "for lease" signs out front. I walked along a street busy with cars, but not many pedestrians. The map was true, however, and there, in the bottom of a new condo/office building on the far edge of the Village was the promised Starbucks.

After killing a few hours there catching up on this and that, I walked back to the bus station. This time I decided to walk through the middle of the former Village and see what that was like.
It was weird. Eerie-weird, and not at all what I expected from passing by within blocks of it in each direction. Two blocks toward the water, and the trail was busy with human traffic, two blocks the other direction, the the street was busy with car traffic. In the middle of the former Village there was nothing: no cars, no people, no dogs, no kids. The street and sidewalks were equally empty.

I'd heard that the condos that were built for the Village were not selling well, and many had been converted to rentals, which also were not filling very fast. Most of the condos had the shades drawn, either to make the vacancies less obvious, or to keep down the air conditioning costs on hot days like today. A few occupied units had plants out on balconies, softly announcing, "Someone lives here." The scene was mostly like an empty movie set. Since it's Sunday, people aren't at work and kids aren't at school. But they aren't here either. As I came to a park within the Village I noticed the first sign of life. There was a single family with a child. A little later, as I got to the end of the last street, two adults on bikes rode in and a car left a parking garage. There was a sign for a London Drug, but where it was, I don't know.

It was like a ghost town, except that everything was brand new and perfectly landscaped. The thing is, this place must have been the hub of the palpable energy of nervous, overwhelmed, elated, disappointed, or just relieved athletes and their coaches and families. The streets and sidewalks must have been packed with teams in their matching gear showing their country of origin. I highly doubt cars were even allowed inside, on account of the thousands of people. I can't imagine a place with more emotion than the Olympic Village would have. And now, everyone's gone; they took their liveliness with them, and the new residents have not yet arrived.


If we hadn't made the trip up to Vancouver to experience some of the Olympics, I doubt any of this would have occurred to me. I wouldn't have known the history of where I was, nor would I have experienced the spirit of the host city at its greatest hour. Now, here I was again, and there was nearly nothing that actually claimed that these few city blocks had even been the Village, nor marked its border or touted its past. Not a single set of Olympic rings were anywhere. Some "Vancouver 2010" flags remained, and a street was named "Athlete Ave," but that was about it. Except for the soft rustling of the leaves of newly-planted boulevard trees, there was only eerie silence, and the laughs of one child in a park.

And so it begins

Well, Mandy is on her way on the long road back to Wisconsin, marking the beginning of two or three or four weeks of complicated travel, moorage, and provisioning arrangements we are making to bounce back and forth between here and the States on various business and personal trips.

I am anchored out here on my own for a bit in False Creek, in Vancouver, enjoying the heat and the sunshine, if not all the other people out enjoying the heat and the sunshine. Despite efforts the city has made to clear out various derelict and "permanent" residents, it's pretty crowded in the outer parts of the Creek (note: not really a creek). In the inner basin, which was blocked off entirely for the Olympics (being adjacent to the Olympic Village) things look a little better, but that's on the other side of a bridge that is too low for us to pass, and out here, it doesn't look like there is a lot of compliance with the 14 day maximum occupancy rule. I could be wrong, some of these tubs that look like they haven't moved in ages may go out every other week, but it sure doesn't look like it.

So, anyway, that's mostly me grousing about getting a somewhat shoddy spot among the few allowable anchorages left in the outer area. Really, it's not so terrible... it is pretty secure here, and while there are a lot of wakes, generally people seem pretty good about keeping below the 10km/hr limit, so it's tolerable.

I don't have a lot going on here and not enough time between now and my own imminent departure to start with much, so I am cleaning and airing out the boat... projects much more easily done with only one person aboard. I went ashore and took a walk over to Granville Island this afternoon and explored Leg-in-Boot Square on the south side of False Creek. There are two grocery stores near there, a good find for us as we have always had trouble provisioning here. There's a neat park nearby also, which I didn't know was there, and Mandy told me that she quite enjoyed her walk to the train station through the former Olympic Village earlier. It seems clear that we have barely scratched the surface of things to see and do here... but although I would love to be able to be in two places at once, we're jumping around so much I fear there will be little time to explore while the boat is in this area.

Rollin', rollin', rollin'

That's what we were doing, for the past two days on a park buoy at Plumper Cove in Howe Sound. The BC Marine Parks brochure has the gall to refer to the place as "well-protected" which it's not, although it is in a channel that does not, at least, seem subject to the otherwise brisk inflow/outflow winds created by the steep terrain around the Sound. It's wide open to the Strait of Georgia, though, so when those big northwesterly swells start coming in, you get all 100+ miles worth of fetch on them. Well, that's not true, either... there is a relatively shallow bar near the entrance, which absorbs some of the energy... but not enough!

Despite that, it's a lovely little park, and if we were just making a day trip it would be at the top of our list for a return visit. Even one night would be tolerable. Two... well, unfortunately, we paid up front. The rates are excellent, but not something we wanted to forfeit.

Howe Sound is a bit like a big lake, a lot of cabins, a lot of hills. This morning, as we pulled out, they were somewhat obscured by a haze of smoke, drafted in by the nightly outflow from the mountains, I imagine. Yesterday was worse; you could smell it, and swirls of smoke curled through the anchorage as if everyone had started barbecuing at the same time.

We had a splendid sail across from Nanaimo, 15-20 knot winds on the beam, a low one foot chop, clear skies, bright sunshine. We were joined for a bit by a single porpoise, but as we were only making five or six knots, I don't think we were fast enough for him to play with and he soon lost interest. If only he had shown up earlier; a very short stretch of the way, out from behind Protection Island through the Fairway Channel, we had to sail on a close reach in an area that funneled the wind even faster. This put us on our side, at speeds up to seven knots, pounding into the chop. Usually, if I am on watch in such stuff, I put on at least my fouly bottoms, because it's a pain to do when you are underway and by the time you realize you need them, it's too late, but I was sitting up on the weather rail in shorts and a t-shirt while Mandy had the helm. Spray was coming over the bow, but not badly, until... we caught a particularly large wave at a particularly bad angle. I saw the wall of water coming over the bow at me as if it were in slow motion. Then... SPLOOSH! I was soaked from the waist up. A few seconds later, with a soft hiss, the part of the wave that had landed on the foredeck came rushing back along the side deck and spilled over into the cockpit, getting everything below the waist that had escaped the first drenching.

I looked back to see how Mandy had fared... and she was bone dry. I had been directly between her and the wave and formed a perfect human shield.

I went below and changed and put my fouly jacket on. Of course, that was the last wave we took over the bow. I bet the porpoise would have found the incident amusing, though.

We're in an outside slip at the West Vancouver Yacht Club right now, in Fisherman's Cove north of Point Atkinson. There is not much in this neighborhood, being rather on the outskirts of town, but it makes up for few commercial services with a considerable amount of local color. Three or four marinas, including the yacht club, are crammed into the Cove. On a chart it looks positively claustrophobic, particularly with very shallow waters. In person, it's not that tight, but it's busy, and cooperation and courtesy are key to getting around safely. Fortunately, everyone seems to have those qualities, and a large dollop of patience for outsiders who don't know where they are going and have to hunt around for the right dock. Like Seattle's houseboat community, life here seems to be lived largely on the water. In addition to the boats, there are houses lining the shore and the small Eagle Island that dominates the mouth of the cove. We just saw a dinghy parade go by, mostly comprised of small, flat barges with outboards, decorated variously as floats in a regular parade might be. Not long after that, some poor guy in a sailboat lost power right out in the channel; a passing Boston Whaler took him in tow almost immediately. The yacht club is hosting a wedding reception this evening, which also promises to be entertaining. There is plenty to see here, then, if not a lot to do.

There are commercial services a couple miles away, but the neighborhood is at the base of some steep-to terrain that doesn't appeal to me at the moment. There are handy bus routes, but I have spent our last cold, hard Canadian cash on the gate key deposit, so it looks like a quiet night in for now.

Tomorrow we will get going pretty early so I can deliver Mandy to False Creek and she can make her way to the Amtrak station in time for her train to Seattle. After that, I am likely anchored on my own in False Creek for a few days. There, at least, city services are right near by. And cash machines... I'll need some more of that.

Meteors

(Image: Plumper Cove looking toward the Strait of Georgia)

The park attendant who came to collect our Plumper Cove Marine Park buoy fee two days ago asked if we'd heard about the meteor shower. We hadn't. He said it peaked the night before, but that night should provide a show as well.

We don't usually stay up until dark, thought it has gotten easier in the past couple of weeks as the days shorten.

That night as I crawled into the v-berth to bed, I opened the hatch wide above my head. This we don't usually do, on account of a dew-sodden bed in the morning in an already constantly damp boat. But this was special.

Slowly the light of day faded, revealing the stars that had been there all the time, hidden by the sunlight they now showed the reflection of. Since we were pretty close to Vancouver, I wasn't expecting very vivid stars, but I was hoping a few meteors would pass by our little opening to the sky.

Plumper Cove isn't really much of a "cove." At low tide, maybe, but at high tide it is a bay, protected only from the weather and swells of the Strait of Georgia by a couple of small islands. The wind had calmed completely, and with no tension on the line connecting us to the buoy, every tiny swell or wake rolled us side to side and we thump, thump, thumped against the buoy. With every roll the halyards inside the mast clanked from side to side, reverberating noisily into the cabin. Every time the boat calmed again, another motorized dinghy would pass close by, and we'd start over again.

Proximity to the city also brings other kinds of boater, not cruisers, but also pleasure boaters out for a few-day holiday. As the sky darkened and the rest of the world quieted, the party within another boat in the bay became more apparent. It was the first time I'd heard music come from another boat in quite a long time. As the minutes passed, and the sky darkened, they slowly became quieter and quieter as well. A heron screeched its ghastly call from a nearby dock.

Still we waited. The wakes stopped and the swells died and even the halyards quieted. Scott rolled over to go to sleep, and of course, shortly after he did, a huge, bright meteor streaked directly overhead, burning itself out just before passing from view. A few more small streaks followed.

When a flock of geese began honking I noticed that the party boat had become silent at some point, and that our boat too was silent. Another sizable meteor passed, seeming to leave its trail for longer than the first one. But perhaps it just showed more in the darker night. Then more small ones, and finally one last bright streak before I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer.

It's always windy in Nanaimo

I may have mentioned that before. At any rate, it's perfect for us right now, because we decided to test our spare anchor here on this stop, a two-day layover before heading for Howe Sound and Vancouver later in the week. Nothing to work out your hook like strong and shifty winds, which is what was forecast here. Well, not so strong, 15 knots, but when you throw in all the people going unreasonably fast and throwing wakes around the harbor, all the bouncing should give it a good work out.

We've had this Bruce anchor for a couple of years but the only time we used it, it didn't work so well and the conditions were poor, and our regular Danforth type has been rock solid, so there was no incentive. But I keep reading that Danforths don't reset when the direction of pull changes (as in a wind direction shift), and while that has never been our experience (we've been in some dandy wind shifts, and it's stayed right where we put it), there have been a few times when I have hauled it up and the long handles at the head of it have gotten twisted up in the anchor rode, effectively shortening our scope and putting pull on the anchor at an unpredictable angle. While this has never resulted in any problems, it makes me nervous, and the Bruce should avoid that issue, so we are giving it a try. It's smaller than I would like for a primary anchor, but as long as the winds are moderate (as forecast) it should be fine... and if higher winds are forecast, they are usually from a single direction, in which case the Danforth will serve perfectly well as it has in the past.

We're in Nanaimo again after a two-day jaunt down from Grace Harbour in Desolation Sound. Grace Harbour was a nice little spot, watched over by the inukshuk in the picture above. The inukshuk may be familiar to you, as it is to us, from this past winter's Vancouver Olympics, where it was part of the logo. We don't know if this one was here before that or if it's always been, but thought it was a neat touch.

We waited at Grace Harbour through a brief patch of unseasonable southeasterly winds, and hitched a lift on the northwesterlies as they returned to blow us down the west side of Texada Island. The largest island in the straight of Georgia, Texada doesn't see much traffic on the west side since the strait it forms together with the mainland on the east (Malaspina) is well-protected and an easy and direct route to points north. We've come down the west side in the open strait before and it's always a bit of a ride; this time, we stopped on Lasqueti Island, Texada's little brother, to spend a night in False Bay. It's definitely off the beaten path. We saw few other boats out on the water, and only a handful anchored inside. Lasqueti looks like an interesting little place but we were too tired to explore.

The next day we kept going, heading for Nanaimo even though it's on the wrong side of the Strait from our next destination because it was the best anchorage available within twenty-five miles without backtracking. This turns our jump to Howe Sound from one long and arduous day into two pretty easy ones.

That's about all I have to report. The weather has gotten back to very nice again after the spat of rain that came with the southeasterlies, and we're just waiting here for a day of variable winds to blow themselves out and get back into steady northwest winds so we have a fast and predictable ride across to Howe Sound tomorrow.

Food for the fishes.

When black beans are burning in a pressure cooker, they smell an awful lot like roasting coffee beans. Given our close proximity to Vancouver Yacht Club and Seattle Yacht Club outstations, I really had just assumed someone was roasting coffee beans. Until I tasted my black beans.


~Mandy

Ancient Boatkeeping Secrets

There are certain things on this old boat that I know must simply be tolerated. Some things are just plain old, and replacing them opens cans of worms that aren't worth the risk. Our hatches were well within this category. They had long lost their transparency, but they still are operable, they (mostly) don't leak and light can still pass. Since they still maintain their primary functions, an attempt at replacing them just so I can see the sky through them again seemed destined to create new leaks in this boat where there are currently none. So it has been, so it will remain. I thought.

Last week I was browsing through our copy of Aiken's Good Boatkeeping, a text we picked up at Half Price Books a year or two ago. I was flipping through it, not looking for anything in particular, when I came across a blurb that said Brasso can be used to clean pockmarks and scratches from plexiglass hatches. "Really?" I thought, surprised. Metal polish on a smooth, plastic surface?

I have no idea what could have caused the pockmarks on the interior of our hatches. They existed already when we bought the boat. I assumed it was some attempt at a chemical cleaning that had gone awry, and I never tried removing them with any other chemical besides general window cleaner. It seemed a recipe for further damage.

Yesterday Scott got a bug in him to polish the chrome stanchions and dug out the Brasso. Since he had it out anyway, I tried my experiment. On a small corner of the mid-ship's hatch, I scrubbed a small circular patch of Brasso, hoping that if I wrecked it further it would be in an inconspicuous spot, at lease. To my amazement, the pockmarks slowly disappeared, turning my rag black in the process. I continued on one of the two panels of the interior.

Then I went to the exterior, and polished the opposite side of the plexiglass that I had done inside, hoping to see a comparison with the unpolished side. The exterior had many more layers of grime and oxidation, but slowly a shine appeared where before had been a dull, dark grey surface.

I went back inside and looked out. I could see details! I could see the stays and the underside of the boom where before would have been only a dull shadow. It isn't perfect; it isn't like new, but it does look about 25 years newer than it had looked before!

This is the kind of knowledge that seems so esoteric, maybe because we are surrounded by folks with much newer boats that don't yet have similar old-boat issues, or maybe because owners hire boat detailers to fix things up so nice. Maybe people are just resigned to some things being old and looking their age. I don't know, but I relish every trick I find for returning things to their previous luster and beauty.

Red sun in the morning...

"...sailor take warning" is how the old rhyme goes, but since the same small red disc is now rising in the east that set in the west last night, I figure that "Red sun at night, sailor's delight" pretty much cancels it out.

The wind shifted back to more or less northwesterly overnight, but it was very light, and the pall of smoke that settled in yesterday is still hanging over us now, thicker than ever. I can barely see out of the mouth of the bay this morning.

It's still warm and calm and otherwise an entirely pleasant August morning. The odd thing is that it still smells like ocean here, and not at all of smoke, despite the thick shroud. It's dry though, much dryer than it would be if it were fog hanging over us.

Otherwise... it's just another day. This is going to crimp my solar charging but since we're anchored I can use the generator for anything I need to juice up anyway.

On a side note, not that we get many comments here, but I am enabling comment moderation, which means that if you make one, it won't show up immediately... one or the other of us will have to approve it. Which we will, unless you are the annoying Chinese spammer who keeps trying to post link comments, in which case you can continue to waste your time, but not ours.

Calm and ominous

So when I said earlier that it was, inexplicably, foggy up here in Desolation Sound contrary to forecasts, I was wrong; it's not fog, it's smoke, from the wildfires in the BC interior. I've been reading about them for several days now, but didn't make the connection between the increasing haze and the easterly winds.

Tonight, it has socked in more than ever, and the sun is just a thin red disc hovering over the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club docks. It's dead calm. On a hatch cover I cleaned this morning, there are speckled bits of ash this evening. Those must be some impressive fires over there. Hopefully this doesn't have implications for my backpacking trip later in the month.

Hanging out

With a week to kill before we even have to think about getting down to Vancouver (our selected site for leaving the boat while we both make short trips Stateside to visit family), we're just sort of hanging around right now in Cortes Bay, at the south end of Cortes Island. The area is generally considered to be part of Desolation Sound, but if that's the case, it's probably due to the fact that both the Vancouver and Seattle yacht clubs have outstations here; for those clubs, and their many members, this probably serves as base and launchpad for the Desolation Sound area. There is a constant stream of boats and planes in and out. There is also well-developed Internet service; and, if exclusivity is your thing, the public dock here is very small, mostly used by locals, and the holding ground for anchorage is reputed to be poor. So, it's a great spot for exclusive yacht clubs. We've been enjoying it too, though.

The weather is still good although it is, of all things, somewhat foggy today. The forecasts haven't been particularly clear or accurate. Yesterday was clear and sunny all day, but a chance of rain was forecast. Winds have been supposed to be northwesterly still, but have been from the east. It's been mild and moderate, though, good conditions for sitting on the hook.

Today, Wednesday, most people have finally cleared out after the long BC day weekend. The club docks are back to being only one boat deep, with empty spots, after having been rafted to capacity. And there is only one other boat at anchor, although more may come in later in the evening.

We've only been here for a couple of days but I have to look at the date and day every morning, and even armed with that information, I can't really recall how long it has been since we left Campbell River. We left a day early, or on time, rather, as the electrical problems there continued and it wasn't worth staying for a make-up day. We spent a couple of days in Gorge Harbour, a nearly landlocked bay entered through a narrow, rocky gorge, and that was pretty pleasant. There is a marina there we could row into for provisions, or just to walk around if we wanted. But Internet service was spotty and we needed to get some work done. So, we had a nice sail down here and got a pretty good spot, even considering the holiday crowds.

Things have been pretty leisurely. We get up, read a bit, maybe work a little, have lunch, then fire up our portable generator and work some more while things are recharging. We've been slowly working on cleaning the boat and taking care of some small maintenance projects, too. There's not much rush. We may stay a couple more days then pick a more secluded spot nearby. Although the weather patterns are a little odd right now, I am betting that they will get back to normal at some point before we have to be in Vancouver, and with the prevailing northwesterly back behind us, it should be a quick one or two day trip.

After that things get a little complicated, with some odd travel arrangements to get us to where we are going. Mandy just needs to be dropped off near the Amtrak station in Vancouver, no real trouble since it's at the head of False Creek. After a couple days on my own (I'm still not sure exactly where to spend them), I will put in at a marina in Vancouver where we have a slip reserved and embark on a two-day odyssey to get from Vancouver, to Victoria, to Port Angeles, to Port Hadlock, to Spokane... to parts unknown, as I am going backpacking with Loyd at a destination he has not yet named (and perhaps has not yet selected). I still haven't figured out fully how I'm getting back again. It has to be easier than all that, though.

Anyway, I am trying not to think too much about that and instead just relax while the relaxing is good. I am already looking forward to September. Things should be quieter on the water then; the weather may be worse, but not much worse, and we'll be able to stay close to civilization and work, but still relax, as we hang out in Vancouver, the Gulf Islands, and the San Juans until our slip in Seattle opens up again in October. The more we do this hanging out stuff, the more I am enjoying it.