900,000 clams and 800 bags of oyster spat

This past week I volunteered to help Washington's Department of Fish and Wildlife seed baby Manilla Clams and Pacific Oysters in two local parks. If there is one thing I've learned after spending hours of time on the beach every week all winter long, it is that I don't know a damn thing about our local beach ecosystems or the ocean as a whole. Since hands-on experiences seemed the best type of education for me, I signed up.

On Monday, I, along with about 12 other volunteers and two folks from the Dept. seeded 900,000 baby Manilla Clams at a beach on the south end of Indian Island. On Wednesday, about 50 people showed up to spread 800 bags of "spat" on a 5-acre site near Shine Tidelands State Park.

Indeed I did learn quite a bit, but learning always come easy at the beginning of any new subject. It will take about 2 years for both of these species to become harvestable, and this re-seeding is an annual event.

The clams especially seemed to have had a long journey to arrive at this site in large coolers. If I remember correctly, they were born on the west coast of California, then spent about 4 months quickly growing in size in Hawaii, then spend another few months back on the west coast, possibly of Washington. These little guys were about 9 months old.

And so my confusion with the whole process began. If these little buggers grow here naturally (though neither species we were seeding are actually native), why are the harvests large enough to warrant the need for reseeding allowed every year? Why aren't fewer just harvested, allowing a natural re-population?


I have a feeling this is highly political. If I understood correctly, it is the fees and possibly the taxes that the commercial fisherman pay that directly pay for this reseeding effort. Perhaps there is a trade-off there? "If you will allow me to take x million dollars more of catch, I'll toss a few million your way for reseeding." That is my more cynical thinking. On the other hand, people hold what they can see, feel, and eat at a higher value. So, since the areas we were seeding are for sport shellfish diggers and not commercial, perhaps it is part of a bigger plan for getting the public involved in caring about the ecosystem. And then there is the revenue of individual shellfish licenses, which must add up to a pretty penny every year also. Shortening the season or reducing the allowable number of clams and oysters to be harvested would probably cut into the number of people forking out money for the privilege.

Environmentally, it is possibly a net gain. These baby clams (at least the 25% estimated to survive to a harvest-able size) will go on to have more than a year of time that they will be cleaning and filtering their foster-home waters before they are harvest-able. Now that sounds nice, especially since Puget Sound is not known for being a pristine waterway, but remember, these clams have already been shipped across the ocean twice. And believe me, they are HEAVY. That doesn't sound so great for the level of carbon in our atmosphere. It would probably take a fair amount of scientific calculation to see if the Earth as a whole comes out ahead.

And still I am left wondering why we are not seeding native species instead of non-native (though seemingly benign and non-invasive) species. One Dept. guy did have an answer for the oysters: the native and highly endangered Olympia Oysters are not legal to harvest, though there is one commercial fishery that can legally take them. The purposes of these oysters is mainly for recreation. I would imagine the other reason is economic. With more than a million (yes MILLION) dollars shelled out for this combined crop of shellfish, I imagine they are looking for the cheapest species to use.

One thing that I imagine is a net gain are the clams that decide to migrate out of the park they are planted in, and the oysters whose larvae end up farther down the beach. On the whole, I would imagine it works out to a net gain of overall shellfish in the region. I think I will need to have a much greater understanding of all of it, from biological to political, for it to become coherent in my own head. In the meantime, I'll plan to keep learning!

~M

Disaster Planning

Like a lot of people, the recent series of disasters in Japan has prompted Mandy and I to take a hard look at our own disaster preparedness and adjust our plans and expectations. One of the greatest lessons from the terrible tragedy is that disasters rarely come alone; after a hurricane, you will probably get flooding; after a quake, in our area at least, you may expect a tsunami. After any widespread disaster, you can expect fire, disease, and the ordinary depredations of seasonal weather that many of us subconsciously tune out in our electrically-powered, environmentally-controlled bubbles of habitation. It takes a particular degree of unlucky to have a nuclear plant melt-down thrown into the mix, but utilities and industry in general may experience any number of secondary catastrophes that could impact surrounding areas. So on top of suffering damage, you may find it necessary to evacuate further, without any significant degree of assistance. As we saw with Katrina and as we are seeing on the Sanriku Coast (I only know it's called that because I am watching Japanese TV right now... the coverage throughout the disaster has been excellent and they are running an instant retrospective at the moment), that assistance can take significantly longer to arrive than the government claims.

The Tohoku Quake is in many ways a good model for some of the likely disasters we face here in the Pacific Northwest. The most likely major seismic event we face is also from an off-shore fault at a similar distance and depth; we have water and large population centers in close proximity. So the quake/tsunami combo is something we want to be ready for, and there are some hard lessons learned in Japan that we are working to assimilate.

The biggest one of those is the size of the wave. Our plan, while house-sitting up here in Hadlock, had involved climbing the nearest hill. Turns out it's only about forty feet above sea level; predictions for the wave that might be generated by the Cascadia fault range up to a hundred feet. That's at the coast; even if it's only half that here, though, we're still ten feet under water. So we've had to re-think our evacuation route. Complicating matters are a lack of models for that sort of information. We haven't been able to find any information from NOAA or the USGS about how big waves here might be, or just as importantly, how long they might take to get here. To get to any hill higher than that forty footer, we have to go down first; the only thing worse waiting on a hill too small would be getting caught in a valley too soon.

There's not much we can do about that and there are no certainties in most disasters anyway, so we're working with what we can control.

We have long maintained two medium-sized bins with emergency supplies. I've always felt that the three days/three ways mantra preached by local government is a little lightweight (they do say, in the fine print, that government assistance "may not be available for several weeks or more" which is more realistic) so we have packed up enough gear and supplies to be able to rebuild civilization brick by brick should that become necessary. While here in Hadlock (we don't take the bins to the boat; in a way, the boat is an oversized bin full of emergency supplies already) we have been keeping them up on shelves at the shop, on the theory that keeping them further inland might keep them safe should something happen to the house, or if in fact what was most damaged was the shop itself, then at least we might still have everything that is already in the house itself. The Tohoku incident showed the folly in this. The shop probably isn't going to be any safer from a wave than the house. Worse, the shelves would likely collapse from the quake or at least disgorge all their contents into a jumble on the floor, which we then would have to spend precious time digging through to get the disaster bins out. So, we have moved them (and our portable generator) down here to the garage, where they can be chucked into the back of the truck and we can be out of here in two or three minutes.

Of course, that's assuming we can get out of the garage. I figure the power will go out first thing, so the automatic door openers aren't going to work. There's a manual override, but what are the odds the tracks are going to be bent out of alignment if there was a severe earthquake?

Even if all that goes well, there may be trees down across the driveway or other roads out of the area. So we're looking at being on foot. The smart folks have backpacks to carry along with them rather than bins, but I like the durability of the bins and the capacity, so I have come up with a plan B for taking them along on foot as well... wheelbarrow! I actually tested this for the first time while bringing the two of them down from the shop to the house. It was surprisingly easy to push both of them along in the wheelbarrow, one atop the other, even down the bumpy gravel driveway. Although, come to think of it, that's all downhill; I should re-do my test going the other direction sometime.

The thing that seems to have got most people nervous right now is the nuclear incident and at first glance, that doesn't seem like a major concern here. The only working nuclear power station in the state is in Richland, well away and downwind from here. Upwind, there's just ocean. So we haven't been tripping over ourselves to get in on the rush for potassium iodine tablets. Still, when the furor dies down, I think we will get some; right out the front windows on any given day we often see submarines or aircraft carriers tied up over at the naval station on Indian Island. That's right: portable nuclear power plants, right on our front porch! And they are all right upwind of us, too. The US Navy has perhaps the safest nuclear program in the world, a program that produced our greatest president: Jimmy Carter. But accidents still happen. A quick review of Wikipedia's list of military nuclear accidents reveals quite a sordid history of mishaps, from which the Pacific Northwest has not been immune: there are at least two warheads laying around loose somewhere below waters we sail in fairly frequently. And these are just the ones we know about.

Incidentally, I think that all makes a pretty good argument for the comparative safety overall of nuclear energy; for all the incidents and the many, many accidental releases of radiation, there have been damn few documented long-term environmental hazards... far less than, say, the Exxon Valdez spill or the recent Deepwater Horizon incident. For that matter, they have generated fewer human fatalities. It may be years before we find out the full story of everything that has happened in Japan this month, but I wouldn't find it surprising at all if there were more deaths, short and long term, attributable to the refinery fires that broke out than from the nuclear accident.

Still, we're getting the pills.

You might ask why we're not more concerned about being right next to a major ammunition depot in the first place, either while we are staying here in Hadlock or when we anchor out near here. The answer should be obvious: if something goes wrong over there, it will be quick and there will be little we can do about it. Actually, I think we're pretty safe. Other than on vessels in transit, it's unlikely that there are any nuclear weapons over there, and although a conventional explosion may be significant, I think we're situated to avoid the worst of the blast. And once it's done, it's done... no waves to worry about, no significant destruction of local infrastructure.

Apart from the pills I am fairly happy with how we are stocked up with the bins. We don't have as much water as recommended, but a filter, and in the Pacific Northwest there is never a source very far off. While we have plenty of food, much of it is dehydrated, which could still put a strain on the water supply, particularly if for whatever reason we are on the move. So I've also been looking into picking up some MREs, which are fully hydrated but still relatively lightweight and well-preserved. That would also help me avoid the onerous task of sorting and replacing expired food products in the bins every couple of years... in this environment, an MRE could stay good (for a certain value of "good") for thirty years or more. So I have been looking into buying some of those.

Turns out MREs are really popular with certain folks. There is a whole website dedicated to them. You can pretty much only get them by the case, though, and the whole thing would come to around a hundred bucks with shipping, which gets me more than I want for more than I want to spend. I'm thinking of going in with some other folks on it, though.

Of course our most fervent hopes are that none of this is ever needed and that this is mostly just an exercise in planning, but I feel somewhat better for the fact that in the wake of the Tohoku event, we at least know what questions to be asking even if we don't have all the answers yet.

Laid Up

That pretty much describes the both of us for the month of March: laid up. We brought home colds from the conference we went to in Spokane (or the party we attended on our way home, who can say?) and have been taking turns laying on the couch moaning about them. Then, we started our month-long dog-sitting stint with Daffy, a tubby and ancient dachshund belonging to some friends of the family. I was not previously aware that dachshunds were nocturnal creatures, but she seems to come alive only at night, snuffling and snorting about the bedroom, or whimpering softly in the dark. From time to time, she appears to have a seizure during which it sounds like she is trying to cough up a hair ball, leaving us both wide awake and wondering what horrors we might see if we turned on the light. We usually leave it off now. Her owners said she's been doing that for a while and hasn't keeled over yet.

So anyway, it's been hard to sleep around here and I finally gave up this morning when Mandy accidentally head-butted me a little before five. My brain is too fuzzy to work so I have mostly been looking at boats. It turns out there is another 38 footer up in Anacortes that I might want to take a look at, an '84 Catalina 38. I should have checked the listing sites more closely before we went up there to look at the Hunter. Fortunately, Anacortes is pretty close to Port Townsend; short hop on the ferry over to Whidbey Island and then a nice drive up across Deception Pass. Daffy doesn't always react well to being left unattended, however; she will pretty much just cut loose and perform her elimination functions anywhere she happens to be. We have a time-tested method for dealing with this while we are here: any time she shows signs of life and drags herself up off of the bed where she spends most of her hours, we take her outside and keep her there until her duty is done. If we're not here, though, we can't count on her to hold it for more than a couple hours. She will also whine loudly and incessantly until we return, which obviously doesn't effect us during our absence, but makes me feel bad when we get back. She is a poster child for the Wikipedia article on dachshunds:

If left alone, many dachshunds will whine until they have companionship. Like many dogs if left alone too frequently, some dachshunds are prone to separation anxiety and may chew objects in the house to relieve stress.

Last year, she ate the molding in the dining room when we left to go to town for the day to run errands. This year, we at least hope to prevent physical destruction by means of a pug-cage lent me by some other friends. If it can hold two rampaging young pugs, it ought to be able to confine an elderly wiener dog for a few hours.

So if we ever get to feeling better again, we may go up and take a look at that Catalina. I don't have terribly high hopes for it from the design perspective, but it is even less expensive than the Hunter was. It also occupies a similarly exceptional role in the pantheon of production boats: as the Hunter cutter was designed by John Cherubini, the Catalina 38 design is a product of the renowned Sparkman & Stephens naval architecture firm, designers of a long line of historic and undefeated America's Cup defenders (and, legend has it, during WWII the hull of the now-famous DUKW amphibious trucks that can still be found criss-crossing the streets and waterways of Seattle loaded with tourists). Due to the volume of the model that was produced and the association with the less auspicious Catalina name, you can pick up a high-performing boat at a fraction of the price it would sell for if it had the original designer's name attached.

That said, the Catalina 38 has some of the exact same features I disliked in the Hunter 37 cutter, namely the keel-stepped mast and the head forward. The keel is also nearly two feet deeper, which can be a drawback. But it looks like it might have more hanging locker space, which would make Mandy happy, and it's a foot longer and $15,000 cheaper. It's relatively narrower for the length due to its racing lineage, but also has less tankage, so storage space in general might be better. I'm fine with that. Tankage is a perennial concern for cruisers, but I would rather start out with less built in and either add additional tanks to preference or carry additional stores in cans. Single large tanks are more efficient, but less trustworthy and less flexible. We would rather take advantage of the extra space while doing short hops around here for now, while later having the option of taking on more cans of fuel and water to stretch our range if necessary.

The Catalina also has most of the advantages of the Hunter, in that it is a well-known boat with large and dedicated owners groups, for which much information and advice already exists dealing with common issues and upgrades. I've heard that some runs have been prone to osmotic blistering (that could explain the price) but you never know until you take a look.

But since we are laid up, that will have to wait.

The Hunter 37 cutter

So I mentioned in a previous post that in our search for a newer, larger boat, we thought it made sense to minimize the uncertainty inherent in used boat purchase by sticking close to a model and design that we are familiar with: the John Cherubini designed late 70s/early 80s Hunters. I also lamented that few were for sail in the Pacific Northwest market. Well, a couple weeks ago, a 37 foot cutter of that provenance came on the market, and so when Mandy and I were on our way back to Port Hadlock on Monday, we swung up through Anacortes to take a look at it.

I had high hopes. Thirty-seven feet seems just enough larger to accomodate our needs without being too expensive to maintain or too difficult to maneuver. The 37 cutters also occupy a special place in the Cherubini lore, being reputed as some of the finest sailing, most livable boats produced by the Hunter/Cherubini matchup. They are the among the few Hunter models that have been broadly accepted as long-distance, blue-water boats, and the owners almost universally seem to love them.

We didn't love it. I really wanted to; this particular vessel was priced a little higher than what we want to spend, but there are others for sale across the country in our range and assuming the design basics were all right, we might have picked up one of them just as easily. This one was in fine shape, recently re-powered, and no doubt worth the asking price. But too many of the features that we really like about our current Cherubini Hunter were missing or terribly flawed on this model.

One of my biggest personal complaints about our current boat is the size of the head/shower. I literally don't fit well enough to take a shower... can't wash my feet! It is unavoidable on the 33, there just isn't enough room. But the shower compartment on the 37 is even smaller! The head is located forward, too, which I find a fatal drawback in many American built cruisers. There is just too much motion up there in rough seas for a safe and tidy completion of necessary bodily functions.

The mast is keel-stepped, as opposed to our current deck-stepped model. That may make it stronger, but it also makes it more susceptible to leaks, which this one had, even though it was a very well-maintained boat.

The internal stowage was also lacking. We have come to rely on the relatively large spaces under our settees and under and atop the pilot berth on our current boat for storage and when packed correctly, everything we need fits in just right. On the 37, and on other models in that range we've looked at, there is greatly increased tankage, and typically the tanks are located under the settees. On the 37, this isn't even replaced by space under the v-berth (where our water tank is located) because that's where the holding tank is at. Notwithstanding the queasy thought of sleeping on top of the sewage, that just doesn't leave a lot of room. Presumably the cockpit locker and lazarette are much larger (the salesman didn't seem too interested in actually selling the boat; he didn't bother to unlock any of those hatches so we could take a look, and didn't seem to know or care much about the boat itself) but those spaces are inaccessible much of the time and unsuitable for many of the items we currently stow in the cabin. The quarterberth is not much larger than ours, and the space beneath it is taken up by the fuel tank.

The galley layout was not particularly appealing; the chain locker was tiny; the nav desk was small; engine access was poor; there was very little hanging locker space; there were no good candidate areas for creating a work space. These are all areas in which, despite moving up to a physically larger boat, we felt we would actually be taking a step back from what we have now, or at least not gaining in the particular requirements that we feel are not already being met.

This was a real let-down, because there are some other very positive qualities. The size of the fleet and the iconic nature makes the 37 cutters generally quite well documented and easily supported... the community on hunterowners.com is very active and helpful. Problems with the model and their solutions have been thoroughly discussed and explored. The build quality is something we can judge from our own boat, produced in the same shop in the same era. The sailing performance is supposed to be excellent, which is important to us as we prefer to sail, in situations where others are often forced to motor. And the Hunter name, much reviled in sailing circles, tends to push the price down despite the respected designer.

I suppose I was hoping that we could short-circuit the hard job of doing legwork and research to find a replacement boat by leveraging what we already know, in the same way that a lot of folks will stick with a brand as they are up-sizing. In this case, though, it doesn't look like that trick is going to work, and I feel like I am back at square one.

It's a given that all boats represent a compromise of some sort between price, livability, and performance. I don't think the particular combination that I am looking for is out of reach. There are any number of newer designs that have exactly what I want, which are priced in the same range that Hunters traditionally have been. In thirty years, they'll be exactly what I am looking for. But it seems that thirty years ago, no one was putting together those particular combinations of features.

At this point, I really don't know what to look at. There is very little in the Pacific Northwest in our price and size range and we don't have much of a travel budget to be out looking at other options. It looks like we probably will not be putting Insegrevious on the market this year after all, without a clear idea of what we might be looking at for a replacement. It's a bit of a let down, but I guess I am getting used to not having any really solid plans for the future by now, so perhaps not as much of a let down as it might otherwise have been.