Random updates and backstory

The bed and breakfast we have moved to is quite nice, and has an excellent view north out over the bay. It is about ten minutes walk up the hill from the marina and shipyard. As Mandy says, there are pluses and minuses to being further away.

We spent an hour or so on her this morning, laying things out to dry, emptying water out of various places not previously discovered, and salvaging what we could. One benefit to the B&B is that it has a kitchen, so we were able to get some food off and save our perishables. On the whole, however, there isn't much we can do until the shipyard staff does their thing—they'll need in and out and while they are helping us dry out with a heater and wet/dry vacs, we won't be able to get everything sorted out and tested until we're back in the water. Right now, we're still waiting for some information from the insurance company.

Everyone is extraordinarily sympathetic here; “Oh, we've run up on the rocks before too,” said our B&B host, and the Coasties gave me a brief tour of the shipyard pointing out the other vessels they have hauled in this year, mostly commercial fish boats.

Mandy is feeling more grim today and I am about the same as before. I am confident the hull can be made good as new, or better, but it's an open question what damage might have been done to the engine. I'm not clear on what the insurance will or won't cover, either.

It's finally stopped raining and the sun is out, which certainly helps from the drying-out perspective. But there are a lot of things we want to rinse with freshwater and re-dry as well, so another day of rain might not have been altogether bad. On the plus side, they can do the glasswork out in the yard if it's dry... otherwise, they want to remove the mast and take her into the shop, an old airplane hangar left over from when this was a WWII seaplane patrol base. I'm not keen on taking the mast down; it's one thing, at least, I know is undamaged after all the excitement and I would like to keep it that way.

Speaking of excitement; the day before we went on the rocks, we had an energetic afternoon out on Queen's Sound, splashing about in the leftover swells and wind from a low which had just passed through, with the idea that we would cut outside the channels and get a good straight day or two of clear sailing up toward Prince Rupert. The result was everything you expect open ocean sailing to be: blue skies, big waves, spray, breakers, fun stuff. Only I didn't get to enjoy it much because I spent most of the time heaving over the side like a lubber.

The incident confirmed something I have suspected for a while, which is that I don't get seasick very easily, but when I do, it is quite severe. I find myself almost incapacitated with weakness, which simply is unacceptable on a two person boat. Mandy gets sick easily (although, above deck and at the helm the whole time, she did not on that day) but then she pukes and can function again. I keep heaving the whole time, getting weaker and weaker even after my stomach is empty.

The worst part is that I had done everything I could think of to head off the very possibility this time: I had a good filling meal, took anti-nausea medication, didn't move around much or suddenly after we got into the swells. But I did have to go below to don some gear, and that's when it started, and after that it was all downhill.

This is tremendously disappointing to our aspirations to sail more and farther; it's just too risky for one of us to be that far gone. Mandy probably wouldn't have lasted another hour or two in those seas, and what if she went overboard or something (although I made her clip in with a safety line as soon as she took the helm)? Although I enjoy all of this quite a lot (apart from vomiting and wrecking the boat) I'm beginning to wonder if I am cut out for it.

At any rate, we ended up cutting back into Kildidt Sound, a beautiful little place we would not otherwise have seen on the coast of Hunter Island, and then back into Fitzhugh Sound via Nalau Passage. We kept north up Fitzhugh as we had the days before and then cut up Lama Passage and through Seaforth Channel to where we eventually got in trouble in Boat Inlet.

We stopped, coincidentally, for lunch here in Shearwater on the way and ran into a solution to a mystery while we were here. The S/V Spirit, belonging to David and Jo out of Helena, MT, was also at the dock, and we stopped and chatted with them for a while. Turns out they have two other friends who are heading north with them who they had somehow lost a week ago, but who also are named Scott and Mandy. Sometime after we finished talking with them and left, we heard a hail on the radio: “Amanda Grace, Amanda Grace, Amanda Grace, this is Spirit calling.” It's a very familiar hail; we've been hearing it randomly for a week, but it took hearing it again to out two and two together: Spirit has been David and Jo, and they are looking for their friends Scott and Mandy, no doubt aboard the Amanda Grace.

We ran into David again this morning at the laundromat and gave him most of our sordid tale; we'll get together over drinks later probably. They had seen the yacht being towed in and heard the story (the whole town knew about the entire thing, in shocking detail, before we were even out of the slings of the travel lift. I had forgotten that about small towns) but hadn't realized it was us.

I had not realized until this afternoon that it was Friday, and they don't work weekends here. I had heard that the pace is a bit slower than city folk are used to, and it is, and I'm trying to adjust... although I notice that they don't charge any less for the time than those faster folks back in the city do. Hopefully the insurance will cover everything, or that's what I am clinging to in order to stay happy and confident. So, we have another three days at least up on the hard... an enforced vacation from our vacation, I suppose. But there is plenty that we can do aboard, checking the engine, drying things out, cleaning up, and that should keep us occupied for a while. Not to mention washing and drying every single item of clothing to our names here.

Internet connection is really terrible and quite expensive, so we probably won't get a lot more updates out until we leave.