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.