Another day in Campbell River

It's a good thing we both like Campbell River, because just about every time we are here, we end up spending at least one more day than we had planned.

That is somewhat understandable due in part to the location of the city. Five miles south of Seymour Narrows, five miles north of Cape Mudge, with no protected anchorages in between in either direction, it's a place you don't want to leave if conditions aren't just right. A southeasterly at Cape Mudge or a stiff northwesterly through the Narrows can cause you to postpone your departure from here indefinitely until conditions clear up.

This time around, though, it's something a little more mundane: the power is out. Around three am, a transformer blew that supplies at least some of the docks with power. A BC Hydro crew is up working on it right now, but as of 11:30 this morning, they are saying it will probably take the rest of the day to fix.

The only reason we were staying for the day in the first place was to get some work done. Now, it's like we're anchored out again (although Internet service has not been affected): we're cooking on propane, washing up in cold water, and relying on our solar panel to keep our computers charged (which relegates me to my tiny Eee PC and only allows Mandy to work about a quarter of much as she normally could... solar charging is slow!). So, not much is going to get done today. We did laundry when we got in last night, went shopping, and were all set just to get online and get stuff done today. Now we don't know what to do with ourselves. I washed the boat, and Mandy plans to patch up our dinghy sometime today. Otherwise, it's possible I might be more bored here than out at anchor somewhere!

We got to Desolation Sound last week two days out from Pender Harbour, and took on some supplies and spent our first night in Refuge Cove. Then we moved to Prideaux Haven, in the Desolation Sound Marine park itself, for a couple of days... it was busy, but not crowded. We moved up to another small Marine Park north of there called Walsh Cove, and that was great. Warm water, sunshine, some small but interesting islands to explore, and some cliffs with Indian petroglyphs on them (or, possibly, doodles by some teenagers with spray paint. I'm undecided). We read in the sun and went swimming. Mandy jumped off a small cliff a number of times. I did, too, but the warm layer of water ends about four feet down, so jumping in gets really cold, at least until you resurface. But as long as you float about in that top four feet, it's very pleasant.

After Walsh Cove, we headed up through Yaculta and Dent Rapids. It's the first time we have taken that back route and weren't sure what to expect. It was a lot of current, but the guidebooks show good techniques for getting through, and we followed several other sailboats with the same general idea, so it was just a matter of connecting the dots. I have some ideas to make it easier and faster next time around; the guides are all written for people going further north, so they advise cutting some corners at the rapids, but I suspect we would have gone through quicker if we had done things differently.

Our swing up north of the rapids could best be characterized as: windy. Gale force winds have been blowing down through Johnstone Strait for almost a month now. There was a lot of chop in all the channels and a lot of wind in all the bays. We stopped at the resort at Blind Channel because Terry keeps telling us how great the bread there was. We missed the bread but got cinammon rolls, which were good; we also hiked up to see an 800 year old cedar tree (just like other cedar trees, only bigger), and I got Mandy roped into judging a dog show. I think she had fun, though. That will all probably get a post of its own, though. I got pictures... she had to wear a funny hat. Funnier than her normal hats, even.

It was a fun stop, but very expensive, as everything up north of the rapids tends to be. Even so, they were full up while we were there. We only stayed a night. Even that seemed like a mistake, since waves rolling in from the nearby rapids kept us rolling around all night even at the dock.

The next night we tucked into a little spot at Turn Bay just out of the main part of Johnstone Strait. That was a nice little nook, but the wind blew in fiercely. It was the same story at our next stop, Small Inlet in Kanish Bay. Small Inlet actually isn't that small, but we were the only boat in there. A couple of kayakers came through in the afternoon, but that was it. We rowed ashore and hiked up across a low saddle to Waiatt Bay (sp?) which was chock full of boats. It also happens to be, in a convoluted way, south of all the rapids, which explains the difference. It was a great little hike, but a very strenuous row back to the boat, since it was all upwind. Also, we blew a leak somewhere in the dinghy and it wasn't as rigid a platform for rowing on the way back.

That night the gusts came in and batted us around pretty good, keeping Mandy awake much of the evening, but our anchor held like a rock. Even though she was tired the next day, she took the helm through Seymour Narrows coming south... it was uneventful, though, as our timing was right on and the wind was with us.

So here we are in Campbell River for two nights plus an extra. After this, we'll poke around near Desolation a bit more, then head down to Vancouver for our various trips stateside in mid-August.

A short time-out

We had intended to head north from Nanaimo pretty much directly (with overnight anchorages, obviously) to Desolation Sound, but events have conspired to keep us in Garden Bay for at least another day.

First, yesterday was a pretty rough crossing, at least in part. The Strait of Georgia lived up to its reputation for roughness as we cut across the western half... short, sharp chop and gusty winds had us burying our nose in saltwater and Mandy heaving over the side despite medicative precautions. We were both exhausted by the end of the day and in no mood to get up and press on immediately this morning.

Second, this morning was Saturday; yesterday, then, was Friday, and that makes it a weekend, and we inadvertently put ourselves on the same track as hordes of vacationers from Vancouver and Nanaimo, who showed up shortly after we did and turned the bay into a big parking lot. A lot of these folks have the same general plan that we do, which is to overnight here and head on to Desolation Sound... that means they'll be at anchorages between here and there today, and up there through the weekend. If we wait a day, we should be able to find relatively open places as we work our way north along behind them.

Third, I noticed the bilge pump coming on more frequently than usual yesterday after we started the engine, and when I opened the engine compartment for inspection, my suspicions were confirmed... the muffler had sprung a leak again. I pulled it this morning to repair it, and sure enough, there was a new hole, adjacent, of course, to the part already fixed. I laid some liquid metal into it and will let it cure today; hopefully it will be okay tomorrow. I suspect that I botched the job... the liquid metal filler stuff sets up much faster than I expected and I didn't get it laid into the hole as deeply as I was thinking. But there's no sense in putting more in if that layer won't hold, so I will just have to put it all back together and see if it blows again. If so, I'll get an opportunity to do it right, although I'm not looking forward to it. The weather is too nice to be all jammed up in the lazarette messing with hose clamps.

Anyway, we wanted to take a crack at it while we are still only a day's sail away from major ports like Nanaimo or Vancouver, which could still fix us up if I really botched things.

Finally, our anniversary is tomorrow, and Mandy wanted a nice night out, and this is probably the last place anything of that sort will be easily possible. So, she'll have it a night early, assuming we can get in at the Garden Bay Hotel, which is reputed to have an excellent spread.

Images from Nanaimo

Nanaimo seems like a town that's really trying to be somebody. I think, if it weren't for the financial meltdown, it could have been almost there by now. Instead, there is a dying shopping mall a few blocks from brand new, vacant (but lovely) buildings, and a highly touted, through barely-there "Old Town." I hope, that once North America actually recovers and small business starts to grow again, Nanaimo will thrive. It certainly seems to have the waterfront infrastructure to become a tourist destination and lovely getaway.





A nice pedestrian friendly waterfront (McGinn, take note).













The Nanaimo constants: seaplanes, sailboats, and mountains











Roses along the waterfront












New waterfront construction, waiting for occupants (like too many of the rest of the buildings).














Old Town, which covers a whole block, and seems to be mostly new buildings (except this string of facades), seems to be facing some challenges as well.














The truest sailboat name ever












Departure day sunrise from Mark Bay













Goodbye, Nanaimo. Seeing ourselves out in fresh Northwesterlies. Next stop: Garden Bay, Pender Harbor, mainland British Columbia

Marina-stop Balance Challenge

It has taken us a while to find a good coffee shop in Nanaimo. I often think it is overstated that Seattle is addicted to its coffee shops, and that there are too many of them around, often multiple per street corner. I love the Seattle coffee shops; I love the "sameness" of them, and I love the sheer quantity. I am the biggest Seattle cliche. You can get pretty much the same things at all the Seattle coffee shops, which means that no matter which one you find yourself at, you can still get your favorite beverage (I never get coffee, but that is a different topic all together).

This morning, while walking back to the boat after visiting "Serious Coffee" (a place I'd go back to), Scott said he felt like we'd wasted our stay in Nanaimo by not going further from the marina and exploring more. I somewhat agree.

Marina stops have contradictory objectives. On one hand, they are a place to rest the body and mind since there are so many fewer worries, such as how well the anchor is set or if we are too close to another boat, or rock; and the tides (and subsequent anchor rodes) really don't matter when tied to a dock. On the other hand, marinas are an opportunity to get a lot of work done since we have Internet and unlimited power for computer activities. And then there are the necessary things to do as well: get groceries and ice, fill up the water and fuel tanks, do laundry, clean the salt off the dodger with freshwater (so we can see through it again), and pump out our waste holding tanks. The challenge is getting the necessary stuff all done while finding time to rest as well. When the activity of sailing itself takes so much energy, it is difficult to expend an equal amount of energy on onshore activities, too. While the lists say, "Get this done!" the body and brain say, "No." It doesn't seem like it would be so hard, yet I certainly haven't found the balance it seems to require.

In the end, even a stay of three or four days flies past. Onshore activities just aren't as urgent or demanding and at some point rest is needed. I'm trying, instead of fighting the urge to sleep and relax, to just let it be, and not rush through it, even if that means not exploring so much of the city around us. But then, instead of fighting the urge to sleep more, I find myself battling the nagging feeling of "missing something."

I'm going to need more practice at this.

~M

Getting the point across

I don't recall seeing this on the list of approved navigational signals.

Sailboaters moon Washington State Ferry

Frankly, professional mariners put up with enough guff from recreational sailors, who don't understand some of the limitations of larger craft or the rules involved or the nature of the business, as it is. This sort of thing is completely uncalled for, and probably just makes professional captains and crews that much less likely to extend any courtesy to any of the rest of us when they might have the option to do so.

Fire Raft 2010

As usual, we spent our Fourth of July down in Burien on the waterfront at our friends Ed and Terry's house. Also as usual, the centerpiece of the affair was the floating fire raft, a raft piled high with wood, fireworks, and various other incendiary devices, set on fire from ashore by various means and left to burn throughout the evening.

That was where all the common threads of 4th of July fire rafts ended, though, because this year our friend Maxx is back in town, and he seized the raft by the horns and built, from scratch, a completely new platform and frame, a high-tech, storeable, re-usable, NASA-approved fire raft. I'm including some pictures of the assembly and deployment here; you can find more in our Flickr stream.

It started with two circular sheets of OSB sandwiched together to form a two-ply base for the platform. Beneath, the lids of twenty-five five gallon buckets were glued and screwed to the base, to which the buckets themselves would later be attached for flotation. Above, a lip of 2x4s were screwed down to allow us to pile stuff inside, namely sand, which was hoped to provide sufficient insulation for the wood below to keep the platform from being incinerated as occurs in typical years.


Another innovation was the use of two eye-bolts, on opposite sides of the raft, for both anchoring and control. The far eye-bolt would have a line tied to it, looped through the anchor shackle off-shore, and then back to shore... pulling on the shore-end of this line would pull the raft out into place over the anchor site. To the other eye-bolt another line was attached and led back directly to shore. Used in opposition to the anchor-side line, this allowed us to orient the raft with one side constantly facing shore regardless of wind or current. This feature made our standard ignition system much less fraught, as the line leading to it had less risk of becoming fouled as the raft spun around through the day. It also allowed us to position fireworks that might otherwise prove a danger to those ashore safely on the seaward side of the raft, and to construct a flammable 'basket' of sorts for aiming bottle rockets or roman candles at to set the thing off.

The basket was formed by a seven-foot tall lightweight, pyramidal frame that set within the lip of the platform. The frame stabilized the wood stacked up on the raft, provided a place to hang our accelerants, and gave the whole thing a touch of class, rather than simply being a whomping pile of stuff.

The frame and base were built off-site, then assembled on the bulkhead on the morning of the event. Another change from years past were the tides; there wasn't really a low tide at any sane hour on the 4th this year, so there was water all the way up to the seawall beneath the house and no beach area in which to assemble the raft. This proved most difficult with respect to installing the buckets. They were easy enough to put in place while the raft was upside down on the seawall, but when it had to be turned over and passed down to the water, they tended to bang into things and get knocked off or loose. This was exacerbated by both the increasing weight of the raft, and by the bricks we put in some of the center buckets for ballast. Jim and I argued for additional sealant to be used on the buckets to secure them to the lids screwed to the raft, but we were over-ruled... with disastrous consequences!

We eventually got all the buckets attached, and with some additional manpower provided by Ed, Maxx's friend Sean, and Ed's cousins Bruce and Justin we lifted the raft down onto some rocks, and then into the water.

This is where the high water complicated matters further: we needed sand to layer the platform with, but had only rock available. All the sand was under two or three feet of water, and we didn't have a dredge handy.

So, the raft got towed down past the seawall to a small, rocky beach, where we managed to scrape together enough sand to put about an inch over the platform inside the lip. As Maxx objected vociferously throughout the remainder of the day, this was outside of spec, but as later events would show, fire proved among the least of our worries.

We brought the raft back below the house and as everyone else started stacking it with wood (including the traditional dried Christmas trees, three this year!) I set to work on the secret ingredient: white gas. In years past, attempts had been made to just set the wood on fire directly with roman candles, or to pre-soak the pile in an accelerant, or to position balloons full of gas around the framework and to try to hit and ignite those (you would be amazed how fire-resistant your average party balloon can be). A slow evolution led to open containers, usually bags, filled with gas and positioned around the structure, into which a lucky shot could fall, igniting the whole contraption. Last year, however, I hit on the ne plus ultra of fire raft remote ignition systems: a plastic juice or milk container, half-filled with white gas, suspended from the highest point on the raft near its pivot point, with a line led down from the top to the base of the raft and then to shore. Holes are poked in the top of the container, causing it to form a sort of sprinkler when upended, as will occur when the line led to shore is pulled. This arrangement prevents the gas from spilling and evaporating due to wave action, and allows the pile to be doused with it just before the audience starts firing roman candles and bottle rockets at the thing.

I used a plastic nut container this year, with a small water bottle as backup, and after all the wood and fireworks were positioned aboard, Maxx hung them from the frame. Although the raft has a considerable amount of flotation, it still wasn't enough to allow us to put as much wood on it as was available, or as we had hoped. Still, there was a fair amount and the platform was just above the surface of the water when we pulled it out into position.

As the day drew on, however, the platform began to list. One of the buckets, apparently, had developed a leak. At first this was not significant, and one out of twenty-five wasn't a cause for serious concern. The wind shifted, however, and the waves started hitting the raft on the side it was already listing, causing the platform to take on water and some of the lumber to start to float off. It got worse more dramatically just as dark began to fall, so we decided to go ahead and light it off a little early. Here are the results:



It gets a little shaky after the raft ignites because I was beneath the deck where everyone was shooting from, and a rain of fiery debris started coming down on me. As you can see, though, once again the method has proven quite effective.

The raft burned well into the evening, until we finally put it out from shore with hoses... there was some concern that the hot coals were going to burn through the platform. It was impossible to see through the ash and in the darkness whether or not this was the case, and since we left town the next day I have not yet received a formal report on the post-fire inspection, but it seemed prudent. Also, with the bulk of its cargo burnt off, the listing became less of an issue with the remaining buckets retaining more than sufficient buoyancy to compensate for the leaky one. In fact, I don't even know for sure where the leaks were; we had one bucket that flat out ruptured when we were installing them, it's possible that happened with one or more of the others as well and wasn't caught at launch.

All in all it was a successful effort, but the real test will be if the setup retains its utility to be used again next year as more than just scrap for the 2011 raft!

So significant, I forgot to mention it

For some reason, our radar, which has been missing in action for nearly a year now, started working again yesterday morning when we turned on our instruments departing Telegraph Harbour. No reason that I could see for the change... we didn't bump anything, hadn't been rattled around at all at that point, none of the connections were changed at all from the day before. But it lit up consistently and seemed to be working fine all day long.

I don't trust it, of course. The whole thing points to some loose connection somewhere in the radome, and if it slipped back into place, it could slip out again just as easily. I checked everything I had access to during the haul-out this year and everything appeared snug, so whatever is wrong is buried pretty deeply in the radome and would need a technician's attention. The problem with that, of course, is that it's crazy expensive to get anyone to look at the damn things, and when the problem is intermittent, you can bet that the time they happen to look at it will be the time it happens to be working fine.

We'll see how long it lasts... I have been resigned to having to purchase a new radome before any significant trips in the future, but if this holds out through the foggy season here in late summer, I may hang on to it for a while. No guarantee that a new radome would be any more reliable, after all... this one is practically new as it is (although, of course, just out of warranty).

The Violence of the Tack

A sailboat is pulled upwind, most will tell you, using the same physics that lifts an airplane off the ground. I have little understanding of either, but, since every airplane I've ever been on has been able to defy gravity, and every sailboat I've been on has been able to sail with the wind coming from a frontal direction (rather than pushing from behind, which, of course, it can also do), I can buy into the logic that the aerodynamic properties of an airplane wing and a sailboat sail are similar.

When sailing upwind, there is the well-known sailing concept of "apparent wind." The faster the wind comes toward you, the faster the boat sails (to a point), as the boat sails faster into the wind, the more quickly the wind passes over the sails. This makes the boat try to sail even faster yet, until the point is reached when the resistance of the wind is too much, and all that results is uncomfortable, and slower, sailing. This is known as "being overpowered." The solution is to have less sail up when the winds are too strong.

Also, since a sailboat cannot sail directly into the wind, it must zig-zag to get to an end location that is directly into the wind. In British Columbia, the Gulf Islands are laid out in such a way (long and skinny), that often where you want to be is exactly where the wind is coming from (or exactly where you just came from, if you happen to be sailing downwind at the time).

The process of making the boat zig or zag while traveling upwind is called "tacking." The boat turns about 90 degrees and the sails are moved from one side of the boat to the other. While sailboats look so serene out on the water, there is nothing serene about tacking in heavy winds; tacking can be an outright battle between wind, sail, skipper, and boat.

The process of tacking is, quite simply, amazing. It starts quietly enough by prepping the sheets to be released. Then the helm is turned and the upheaval begins. Beneath the water, the rudder directs the boat into a new direction. The bow turns and the sails begin to savagely flap as the wind howls through the process of flowing mainly over one side to switching to the other. The mast vibrates, then shakes ferociously. The jib flows over the front of the mast, the fabric of the sail making a zipping sound as it abrades against the metal. The boom pulsates until the force of the mainsail holds it steady to the opposite side of the boat. All the while, the teeth of the winches are ratcheting the jib sheet, tighter and tighter to the opposite side of the boat from where it had been only a few seconds earlier. The rope strains as it resists stretching, voicing its torment in low groans. Then, so quickly, all returns to the state of balance again, and the boat resumes being pulled through the water. The only difference is that it is now going 90 degrees in a different direction. The helmsman, having been quite occupied through the process, barely notices the sounds of the strains of physics that just took place.

From inside the cabin, however, the sounds of the rest of the boat are not so masked by the sound of the howling wind and briefly luffing sails. The first sound is the shout, "TACKING" made by the helmsman dutiful enough to alert the rest of the crew that all hell is going to break loose for a few seconds. It is from below decks that the vibration of the mast is then felt, the quaking and quivering. The sound of the jib sliding across the mast is carried directly down, through the mast, into the interior space. The ratcheting of the winches seems amplified through the hull. And then everything in the entire cabin moves. The stronger the wind, the greater the "heel," the more the boat is tipped on its side while sailing. Even well-stowed items tip from one side to the other while tacking. The dishes slide from being held against one side of their cabinet to the other. The tools and books do the same. And the cabinets themselves chime in, adjusting to new forces prove that this sturdy vessel gives in ways unseen, but certainly heard. The wood squeaks and groans. The vibration slows, the winch stops, and the boat builds back to its previous speed. The sound of the water against the hull picks up. The person below finds a new way to brace themselves against the opposite heel, and the sail continues, until the call is heard again, "TACKING!"

~M

Oh, just Nanaimo again

I think we've only been here twice before, but it all fades together... blue skies, sunshine, crazy northerly winds.

We're tied up right now at Nanaimo Yacht Club, on the outside of H dock facing Newcastle Island Passage, and we're getting bounced around more with doubled-up docklines and extra fenders out than we were last night on just our anchor in the middle of Telegraph Harbour. It's an undesirable berth anyway, because, 5 knot speed limit notwithstanding, there is normally a lot of traffic up and down the channel and you would catch all the wakes here; right now, no one is out there, so there are no wakes, but thirty knots of wind is whistling down the gap and trying hard to scrape us down the side of the dock and into the big powerboat behind us.

For all that, I'm happy to be here. Dinghying in from the anchorage would be no picnic right now. We came in and tied here because it's adjacent to the check-in slip, where you are supposed to tie temporarily while walking up to the office to get a regular slip assignment. That was where the big powerboat was already parked, though, so we just got as close as we could so I could go up to the office and see if they had anything else available in our size. Turns out the member who normally moors right here is gone this week, so they just told us to stay right where we are. That was fine with me. If there's something worse than being in a bouncy outboard tie-up, it's having to get out of one and try to dock someplace else in high winds.

Every time we have been here it's been blowing like mad, and docking and undocking has always been unpleasant (particularly within the confines of the Harbour Authority docks a bit south of here). So, an outside spot, where all I have to do is fire up the engine and go, no jockeying around, no boats on either side, is pretty darn attractive.

So we're happy to be in port, and particularly happy that it's Nanaimo, despite the wind. It's a great town, with an interesting and useful waterfront and downtown area. There are a ton of used bookstores, which is good because I've pretty much worked my way through our onboard library already (we've only been gone a week!), shops and galleries, hole-in-the-wall restaurants.

We're also particularly impressed with the yacht club. The staff are friendly, they have showers and laundry on site, and the ice is cheaper than at the grocery store, and not nearly as far to carry home! It's also further away from the airplane docks than where we have stayed before, making for a quieter experience... well, it would be quieter if the wind would die down, anyway. The rates are good, too, both for services and for moorage itself.

So we decided to stay for a few days. To tell the truth, I'm not exactly sure where to go from here. We're planning on heading north to Desolation Sound, of course; but do I crawl up the Vancouver Island coast or jet across to the more interesting areas along the Sunshine Coast of the mainland? Clearly I'll need a few days to make up my mind.

It's harder now because, although in my mind this has sort of been a vacation plan, really it's not... it's just life, with a few side trips. I need to think about not just what we want to go see, but where we need to be to get things done. Transportation, work, getting mail... all the unglamorous bits that still need to happen. Nanaimo just happens to be well-suited to meeting most of those needs. It's going to be hard to pull out.

Oh, and we've seen more evidence that boat traffic is down... Mark Bay, across the harbour, was absolutely jammed full at this time two years ago. Today, it would have been easy to find anchorage. We could have had our pick of spots. The Harbour Authority docks look relatively empty, too, apart from long-term tenants.

Small victories

This morning we sailed off the anchor, something boats with no motor do every time they weigh anchor, be we have accomplished (or even attempted) only a handful of times in the past four years of semi-regular sailing. Albeit, the conditions were pretty good: there were no other boats exceedingly close to us, and the wind was from a mostly favorable direction while being neither to weak nor too strong, and the amount of rode out with the anchor wasn't excessive, meaning it could be pulled up rather quickly.

Scott has to do all the heavy lifting in circumstances like this. He must quickly raise the mainsail, then immediately shift to pulling up the anchor. My job is to listen to him beforehand about the technique we will use, then try my best to remember and follow the instructions at the helm once he is at the bow and we can no longer speak gracefully about matters.

The primary goal was to not end up on the rocks of the Chain Islands, about 200 feet to port. The secondary goal was to get out of Ganges Harbor without starting the engine (we had the batteries switched to the starter bank just in case we decided to ditch the endeavor and continue to meet the primary goal).

Both goals were met, I dare say, even with grace.

I liked Ganges. We were lucky enough to be there on a Saturday, too, and got the experience the VERY popular Farmer's Market.

Popularity is it's own curse

Like everyone else, we keep going to all the popular places mentioned in the guidebooks, only to find that is exactly where all the people are.

We're in Telegraph Harbour right now, and it being a Sunday evening, managed to find a spot to drop the hook in the crowd of permanent moorings and raft-ups. Some other people have managed to squeeze in later on, but they're mostly in spots I would never have dared to try.

I don't know why it is that I keep being surprised that we go to great places and find lots of people there. It's not that I mind the people so much, after all, I'm one of them. It's hard to complain that everyone else is ruining your trip, when you are just as culpable of ruining theirs. Actually, ruin is the wrong word. I'm just used to a little less crowding, a result, perhaps, of spending our last couple of seasons further off the beaten path, or when we were on the beaten path, taking it during times of year that no one else wanted to.

Anyway, it's another beautiful day here and I like our spot. I'm a little too pooped to row ashore right now, although it wasn't as long a day as I feel like it was... only took a few hours to sail here from Ganges, even with spotty winds. Speaking of crowded, the crowd making for the exits in Ganges this morning was a sight to behold. The weekend is clearly over! Anyway, I'm afraid I would likely be underwhelmed by whatever we might find ashore here at the moment, or perhaps just overly tempted to spend money on treats we don't really need, so I foresee an early evening.

We haven't even been gone a week yet but it seems longer. Tomorrow we'll head to Nanaimo for (hopefully) our first real port stop. We're low on water and need some ice and grocery products we couldn't otherwise bring in from the States. We're hoping that, it being a Monday, we'll be able to find moorage for a couple days at the Nanaimo Yacht Club. It's a bit further from town center, but it would have the virtue of being relatively inexpensive, and also of avoiding the zoo that the Harbour Authority inner floats become when the wind is blowing hard, as it invariably has done during our past visits.

If we can't get in there, we may have to anchor out in Mark's Bay and figure out a quicker provisioning stop somehow. We keep hearing that recreational boat traffic is on the wane, but it's hard to imagine more people out here than there already are, even considering it's the high season.

The gentle thunder of electricity

So I mentioned that our solar panel was doing nicely keeping up with our boat battery needs, all of which are low-draw DC devices, but when it comes to getting work done, we rely on our computers... AC power required. I've never seen the point of using inverters to go from DC to AC for that purpose except in emergencies or if there is a surplus of power otherwise being generated by the system beyond what the battery bank or other draws require. It's just too inefficient to convert DC to AC, and when you are already operating in a low-margin system, that twenty percent or so loss can make it flat-out unsustainable.

Our laptops all run on DC current, and for the small Eee PC I use, it was easy enough to find a DC power adapter that plugs into it directly to use instead of the manufacturer's wall wart. I can charge it off the house battery system, with the engine or solar panel easily keeping up with the low draw it has. I've had more trouble finding direct DC chargers for our larger Apple laptops, though. There isn't quite the ecosystem of equipment providers as there are with PC laptops, and the chargers I have found all seem of dubious quality. The systems also draw quite a bit more than the Eee... enough that even with the solar panel at maximum efficiency, it wouldn't keep up with our working needs, to say nothing of our occasional entertainment uses.

Our alternative to date had been extra battery packs and intervals spent in marinas charging them up, then carefully shepherding them while we are out away from civilization. This year, though, we expected to spend a lot more time out, and didn't relish paying for marinas so frequently or having to dash back to civilization, so I broke down and brought my little Yamaha 1KW generator aboard.

We're not big generator fans, a stance borne of too many evenings/early mornings sitting in anchorages next to powerboats with big gensets and no compunctions about using them at odd hours. They're noisy and smelly, and we didn't really want to be the ones to inflict such disruption on our neighbors.

The Yamaha has a "quiet" mode it can use with low-draw applications, which keeps it down near fifty decibels, which I am told is conversation level. With it out roaring away in the cockpit, it seems a lot louder than any conversations I regularly have. But I hope that the combination of putting it down in the cockpit below the bench level and running it in quiet mode keeps it from being too obtrusive. It has a twelve hour runtime on one tank of gas (about half a gallon) but we'll only use it a couple hours at a time. And, if I have my way, we'll only do it when we're in an anchorage alone, or as today, we're far out on the periphery of a very large, already quite noisy harbor like Ganges. If our neighbors can hear us at all over the roar of floatplanes coming in every five minutes or runabouts screaming past, I would be very surprised.

So far it's working pretty well. I think that Mandy, with her noise-canceling headphones one, is getting the better part of the deal, though.

Sailing as a Second Language

Most of my students are highly fluent in English, though it isn't their first language. They do quite well for themselves, holding their own as professionals, living and working in the United States. I help them with those difficult aspects that come after one becomes fluent -- those annoying little elusive grammar rules, and ALWAYS their pronunciation. Many of them have children that were born here in the US, and they are, at first, envious of their kids' ability to pick up flawless, accentless, American speech patterns. Later, as the child becomes able to express that mom or dad has said a word wrong, or "talks funny," that gift of a malleable child's brain seems more of a curse to these loving parents. Still, those children often have a bit of an initial struggle in school, simply not having the vocabulary, in English, that their peers have. Research has proven, again and again, that those non-native speaking kids catch up, and often exceed the academic performance of those same peers a little later in school. I am always telling my adult students that the best gift they can offer their kids is to speak to them in their native language at home. I urge them to not buy into the myth that English should be spoken at home for the sake of their childrens' education. Many are relieved to hear this bit of information, and I stand behind it 100%.

It isn't much of a leap for me to feel that sailing is most definitely a second language to me, one I learned much too late in life to be able to speak it without an accent that gives me away as a late-learner. Scott, on the other hand, learned it early enough in life that it is much more intuitive to him. Perhaps he wasn't born into it, but he has the benefit similar to my student's children. He got to learn to sail alongside learning lots of other things, since sailing wasn't the only thing his family did. He speaks and reacts and trims sails to a level of an enviable fluency, and he speaks other handy languages, too.

I try to tell myself that it is okay to be learning to sail as an adult. I know the brain has ways to compensate for late learning. I can study the science of it and apply the rules, just as adult language learners can do with grammar and pronunciation. It is truly a myth that kids pick up language easier and more quickly than adults. I could get into the reasons of why that is, and why it is extremely counter-intuitive, but I won't bore the poor readers of this blog with it here. I also know that sailing will probably never be perfectly intuitive for me. I may get quicker and more accurate with my reactions and anticipations, but there is still that split second (or two or three or four seconds) where I need to translate what is happening around me to the correct response.

Ganges

We pulled into Ganges in the Gulf Islands yesterday and will probably stay for a couple of days. We rowed in this morning to go to the Saturday farmer's market, which is, as most of those things are, more of a crafts fair than farmer's market, but it was good-sized and there was a lot of neat stuff and overpriced organic foods to be had.

The weather has been great since we left, and our 20W solar panel has been doing a bang-up job of keeping the house bank charged up. Still, we'll probably haul out our generator for the first time today to get the laptops charged up and allow us to work some while out at anchor. We're getting decent wireless out in the bay, and we're anchored far enough out that the noise shouldn't be too much of a bother to anyone else.

Anyway, this is just a quick update. I expect I'll post something more before we leave.

On the way

Apparently all it took for the weather to improve was for us to leave Seattle; it was gray and miserable when we pushed out of Shilshole yesterday morning, but by the time we were passing Point No Point on the way north, the sun was out and the typical afternoon northerly of the Puget Sound summer pattern was helping push us along toward Port Hadlock. We motor-sailed much of the distance after a spotty start (the winds were spotty, I mean, not us) and made it in about six and a half hours... about average for the Seattle to Hadlock run, for us at least.

Though I'm not one to tout forecasts too much, so far it's looking good for an easy crossing of the Strait tomorrow... or in fact any day this week, should we decide to delay for any reason. Actually, it's looking a little weird right at the moment. The current (1500 PDT 06JUL07) NOAA marine forecast for the east entrance to the Strait calls for easterlies of 10 to 15 knots all day tomorrow. When I looked this morning, it was calling for westerlies of that same strength. Is the current forecast a typo? Or did someone really change the prediction by 180 degrees in the course of a few hours? There may be entirely legitimate reasons for it, I'm no weather guru (and so far my guru of choice, Cliff Mass, has nothing to say on the subject), it just strikes me as odd that a weather pattern could reverse itself so suddenly and precisely. Particularly when surrounding areas retain their standard summerly northwesterly predictions. Our brethren to the north are making the same call, so odds are it isn't just a typo. Either way, it doesn't really matter to us, the wind will be on one beam or the other, but I have to say it doesn't increase my confidence in our local forecasters. I will be pretty curious to see which way the wind is actually blowing when we pull out of here tomorrow... if it's blowing at all.

As long as it's sunny, I'm content to bob along on the current all day long. We don't have any grand destination, though we're aiming to get up into the San Juans. If I floated along as far as Deception Pass and had to hole up there for the night, I wouldn't be disappointed, though. We're experimenting with taking it easy now, so I have to tell myself these things so I don't end up rushing around trying to make it to places I don't ever really care about on any given day.

The general plan, though, is to get into the San Juans, cross over into Canada, and continue up the Strait of Georgia somehow (we haven't decided which side yet, and may allow the weather to decide for us) to Desolation Sound. Then we'll hang around there as long as we can before we have to get back to civilization in mid-August for Mandy to make a trip back to Wisconsin to visit family, and for me to make it to a mid-summer backpacking trip.

For those of you on our SPOT list, we'll be spotting along the way so you'll have a fair idea of where we are, but don't expect daily updates... we're trying to take it easy, so if we spend a few days in one spot we're not going to spam you with multiple reports. If you don't see an update on a given day, you can assume we're sitting around in roughly the same place as the day before, enjoying the scenery.