Author Archives: Melissa

A Fine Motor Yacht

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It was all a big misunderstanding, this claim that we have made that we enjoy ocean sailing. I say this having got very little rest since the day before we left Neah Bay, that date of which I have no idea. Two days ago? Three? And then there is the fact that so far on this entire trip starting on August 4 when we slipped the lines at Swantown Marina in Olympia, all the way up to Princess Louisa Inlet, and all the way down to where we currently sit in Newport, Oregon listening to the wind howl, we have spent just a few hours with our sails raised.

To be fair, this is almost to be expected in the summertime Salish Sea if you have an actual destination and are not just out for a daysail, whichever the wind blows (always always always on the nose, as all Pacific Northwest sailors know). As a rule, we kind of shrug that off. Navigating the interior waters, we will be going from port to port, enjoying flat calm anchorages and beautiful scenery, on the lookout for whales and their kin, maybe picking up the occasional rock for the lifelong collection. We got a nice sail across the Strait of Georgia so we know that the sails will draw wind.

Murdock beach on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. We saw an actual Sea Otter here. But what is this little guy?

But we were kind of thinking that once we got out on the Pacific we’d be sailing. And that would be where we were wrong and where the misunderstanding lays. Until this current situation, whereby we actually have a little too much wind, but also have great swells (14 feet at the NOAA buoy) coming from a couple of different directions (again, to be expected) it has been a mighty fine motor boat ride. An exhausting one. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The plan was actually much different than what we are doing. The plan, at least in our minds, was to recreate the trip we had the first time we turned left, and this time do it better. We’d go about 100 miles offshore and then sail down the coast, this time just skipping San Fransisco altogether. I think maybe we were thinking we could get back a little of what we lost when that passage from Hawaii to home was cut off so abruptly by the demise of our backstay. We had been having such a good time. Until we weren’t. Could we get that back?

We could almost watch the butter melting in our minds’ eyes. So our operating principal was flawed from the get go. Why? Because we were not ready to leave in the summer. We just…weren’t. We were delayed until mid-September by things like important boat systems and apartments that needed renovating. Not to mention the fact that is is not, by any stretch, Hawaii. By the time we could make the big left turn into the Pacific Ocean, we were threading the needle between summer and the inevitable weather changes fall brings to the North Pacific. And still, our denial was strong on this. We hung on.

What broke through the denial of good sense? What shattered the seal of our irrational minds? What broke through our conviction that we would make one long passage to south of Point Conception, where the weather changes for the better? A man named Jamie.

Anchored in Neah Bay

When we sailed from Mexico to Hawaii and then from Hawaii to home, we hired a professional weather router out of Honolulu to offer some guidance about waypoints and help us make good decisions that would preserve our comfort, if not our lives. Well, maybe also our lives. It seemed a small price to pay for on-the-ground professional support on something as important as weather. I think it was that first passage to San Fransisco that stood out in my mind as one that probably would have gone better for us had we realized what rubes we really were. Certainly we would maybe have been less exhausted when we pulled into Drakes Bay by San Fransisco, otherwise known as Bay of the Thousand Flies, at the end of that passage. This time “knowing” we would be well offshore again, we wanted a professional with whom to talk over options. Our Honolulu guy never got back to us when we contacted him, so we hired one Jamie Gifford, of Sailing Totem fame (if not infamy) to fill that bill. If you are in any way connected to the cruising-by-boat community, then Behan and Jamie Gifford need no introduction. We joined their cruiser coaching group so we could have ground support in terms of weather. It’s nice to have someone to talk things over with. And, again, we were going well offshore… LALALALALA!

During our consultation with them, over a sketchy zoom connection via Starlink in Princess Louisa Inlet, Jamie said one word that cracked the code of denial for me in an instant. That word was this: gale. Excuse me, what? Did he say GALE? That would be wind 34-40 knots. Oh hell to the NO! What he said was that if we went that far offshore at this time of year, it would greatly increase our chances of being caught in a gale with no way to get out of it but to go through it. And as he said it, I noticed the air around him shimmer with the ring of truth and felt my Plan A dissolve into thin air. Of course, he was 100% correct. We both knew that. It’s not like we haven’t lived in the Pacific Northwest for over 35 years. We are practically natives. We know the wind never stops blowing at Ocean Shores. We hired Jamie to say the hard part out loud.   I like to think we would have stopped ourselves before heading that far offshore this time of year. Probably we would have. At some point.

Flesh-footed Shearwater with his friends, the Sooty Shearwaters.

He offered us the less desirable, in my book, option of harbor hopping down the coast, or at least staying close enough to shore that we could tuck in to avoid weather systems like the one we are currently avoiding. That’s right. We are in port. Option B. B for the ‘best we an do’.

The current system is gusting to about 25-27knots with sustained speeds over 20 here in the anchorage. That means it’s probably bigger wind outside the port.  It’s a little more sporty than we are ready to deal with. But it’s really not the wind that is the issue. If it were only wind we had to consider, 25 knots is pretty good sailing for our big boat. The issues are twofold: first it would be a downwind run with swells that were already really big before the wind came and whipped them up more. They are currently at 14 feet and 15 seconds between them. That makes for an uncomfortable ride unless you can sail a course that keeps swells on the aft quarter and not directly behind you. (Think: sailing fast and rolling side to side, a large blue weeble on the open sea. It’s just not fun. )

We can do without that kind of stress on the boat and on our tired bodies.

This guy was so huge. Mind boggling.

The other problem is this: There is another, much bigger weather system, taking shape south of Port Orford, Oregon and that system is going to be larger and nastier with, yes, gale force winds, and we definitely do not want any part of it. I don’t like even looking at this on a chart, much less thinking about myself out there dealing with it. Port Orford is literally the only place that is not a river bar to tuck in on this part of the coast and get protection from north winds, or if you need to for any reason. Like rest. And you cannot always cross a river bar safely. The right timing can make the difference between it being a  reasonable, if challenging, ride and it being a call to the Coast Guard.

For example, even crossing into Newport this morning, when there were zero bar restrictions to vessel traffic and when we were following local boats into the channel, reminded us that the swells are huge, the forces great, and the timing of such an entry is critical. As I write, the bar is restricted to recreational vessels over 36 feet long and the waves are 10-12 feet high. Absolutely no thank you. We are 47 feet, but we are not as powerful as a fishing boat of the same size with a bigger engine. We would not chance this.  It was not lost on us that we passed a grounded fishing boat on the way in. We were grateful that we spent that uncomfortable night last night rolling around going dead slow so we could time our arrival in Newport this morning just at daylight. A little discomfort. A lot of safety.

Get a load of those clouds. This is the entrance to Newport. That wave wraps around the jetty on the north side. At least the fog lifted.

So if we were out there sailing in this weather system and something happened to the boat, or to one of us, then maybe we would be able to time a bar crossing, but maybe we wouldn’t. And that is the very risk we are unwilling to take. The North Pacific is difficult even on a good day.  It’s not just about the wind out here. Back home 25 knots of wind would be great sailing, especially for our big, heavy boat. But here? We’ll just be happy with our fine motor yacht and look for sunfish in the glassy swells on a windless day while Hiram chugs us south to better weather.

We accept this, but it is a little disappointing, not to mention expensive, not to mention loud and over-stimulating. I don’t remember Hiram the Beta Marine engine ever being run for this many continuous hours. We were so very glad to drop that anchor today and get some sleep. And turn that blessed engine off. And pretty much that’s why we were not jazzed about doing the harbor hopping that so many people love to do and why that plan wasn’t even on our radar.  These short passages are absolutely brutal. No one really gets any rest at night and the passages are too short to get into any kind of routine. I had maybe 3 hours sleep total in two days. Mike had about the same. My ribs hurt from being upright for too long as the boat rolled around in the great swells, trying to go slow enough that we didn’t arrive at Newport in the wee hours of the morning.

Flat water in Newport, with plenty of time to get settled and have a nap before the winds came.

We may consider having crew at some point in order to share the workload, but we are not there yet. We like having the boat to ourselves and as a rule, we work like a pretty recently oiled machine. Still, that matter of rest hangs heavy.

This passage so far has not been an entire loss in terms of entertainment, though. Wildlife Bingo is back on the table at last! Woo hoo! I’m here for it! Yesterday we motored over large, rolling swells like liquid mercury in the sun, that calm before today’s little storm. We saw many sharks, who we think were confused that we are not a fishing boat. We discovered we were trailing a piece of kelp and I believe one shark was hoping it was a crazed sailor being dragged behind the boat, trying to get clean. (That is not happening on board Galapagos. We have hot showers for that, thank you.). We saw breeching humpback whales in the distance ( KEEP YOUR DISTANCE, MISTER!). We had Orcas to port.

Also what is this guy? Identifying seabirds can be daunting.

The first night we had dolphins, torpeedoing through the phosphorescence like glow-in-the-dark toys. And yesterday had a pair of small sunfish! This was a true bucket list item. It’s funny how much pleasure it brings to pass something at 7 knots and have only a split second to realize what you have just seen. We actually turned around and tried to find them again, to no avail. I have a watery photo, taken on the fly, and only recognizable by the eyes that saw them first.

So here we sit safely at anchor. Flat water, howling wind, gusts to 26 knots here in the anchorage, the boat tugging at her anchor. I would say we made the right choice.

S/V Galapagos, standing by on channel 16 in Newport, Oregon. We live here now.

Here sharky sharky.

Did Weasels Rip My Flesh?

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I’ll give Frank Zappa the nod he deserves for this finely chosen combination of words and the visuals they bring up. But, I mean, he got his idea from this cover of Man’s Life magazine from 1956.  This may be a man’s magazine, but I will not be outdone by old masculine tropes. Weasels do not discriminate. More on that later.

This is about as good as it gets.

So, how’s it going out here with this shakedown 2023 cruise? I mean, we are both shaking down and cruising, so I guess all the goals are being met. We have shaken down the outboard lifting system until it works flawlessly, even for old spaghetti arms here. We have given the new Alado furling system a hard shake where by at first we worried we had made a horrible and expensive error in judgement ordering that one (even though we loved it on the Cal34). It’s dialed in now, and much relief on board. For now. My trust level is tentative on this one. We continue to toss around the new stackpack, which is working well but still has a few small issues to be sorted. No big deal. We just like to tweak things incessantly.

Mike is working on replacing the lifelines, going from pink to blue dyneema. They used to be red. That lasted about a week in Mexico before they faded from UV damage. I imagine the nice rich blue color we currently have will be more of a baby blue before it’s over. Oh yes, and we added 200ft of anchor chain to the aft locker to balance the pointy part of the boat better. Now when the engine is on, she squats like a pro, sometimes maybe a bit too much. We’ll continue to shake that down as we go. Hmmmm. Let’s see. I know there is more.

Mike is shaking down his fishing systems. Rockfish:2. LingCod 0, and more’s the pity.

There was almost a galley emergency when I realize my pressure cooker was not pressuring. I don’t want to buy a new one so I was happy when giving the valve a deep clean was all that was needed to set it to rights again.  We are loving the new folding steering wheel and the new wind instruments with a beautiful display in the cockpit that we can rotate to show whatever combination of data serves the purpose at any time. Thanks, Garmin.

One of several screens of combinations of speed, wind speed, apparent wind speed, depth, Course over ground… I mean what does it NOT show? Getting knocked around by very large swells close together here in the Strait of Georgia, under reefed sails. But SAILING!

The Starlink has been working beautifully and is a true treasure on board. (Our only hiccup was in Princess Louisa Sound, where we were surrounded by towering land masses. I believe it can be forgiven for not streaming a zoom meeting to perfection in those conditions.) We refer to this new comms system as The Muskrat, for obvious reasons. While we’re ‘floating like the heavens above’, we do have that Muskrat love.

In other news we are rightly pleased as all get out with our new True Kit dinghy and the 2 stroke engine I got last year for my birthday. It goes almost TOO fast. The new way we have rigged the boom is working nicely. Still happy we took the mizzen off and we’re getting used to how she looks without it. The new latex mattresses in the aft cabin, while, yes, really heavy, were worth every penny and every minute of difficulty and heavy lifting. Expanding the settee in the salon, while making the access to stowage underneath the cushions a little more difficult, was an excellent choice for overall comfort.

Somewhere in Jervis Inlet. It’s not an anchorage. But, you know. So what?

We decided at the last minute to pull the trigger for larger membranes for our Rainman Watermaker, so those are on order from Australia. I mean, what’s a shakedown cruise without at least one international delivery? Thanks to friends in Port Townsend, we’ll take delivery of those there. We have made a number of last minute on-line purchases and at least one of our kids will meet us somewhere in the north Puget Sound to deliver the goods, as well as some Costco loot and all the wine I took off the boat to avoid paying Canadian Customs for the privilege of bringing it across the border.

Our paddle boards are still holding air. And that brings us to the title of this post.

No shakedown of S/V Galapagos would be complete without a foray into the water. You’d think that the water up here in Canada would be way too cold for foraying, and as a rule you’d be dead right. But in Princess Louisa Sound the water was close to 65F degrees. Still cold, but with my handy new 4mil wetsuit, I was game since it was also about 90F outside and it wasn’t like I was actually going to go UNDER the water. Just the thought of putting on a wetsuit and getting into the water made me giddy with anticipation. And that, my friends, is where our cautionary tale begins. That feeling of giddiness that is the harbinger of being possibly less careful than I should be, even though who would have known? Certainly not me.

Being photobombed. Snorkel hair, don’t care.

It takes anywhere between 15 and 60 minutes for me to don a 4mil wetsuit, depending on the amount of moisture on my skin at that particular time.  It’s not easy, graceful, or even, really, acceptable, but there it is. By the time I have tugged, stretched, shimmied, threatened and sworn the wetsuit into place and zipped it up, I have less of a feminine glow and more of a dripping sweat to deal with. It’s bloody hot in there and the cold water is going to feel good.  Into the water I slipped, being very careful not to fall off the swim step and smash my forehead on the propeller of the dinghy engine. I was absolutely sloth-like as I made my way down the swimstep ladder, which is known to be slippery, and sank beneath the surface. Cold water made its way in a trickle down my back and I breathed a sigh of relief and profound pleasure at being back in the water again. Today, I would see great things.

As is my habit, I pull my floating swim platform, the paddle board, over and begin to decant snorkel gear onto it from the handy swim platform at the back of the boat. Case with special mask, anti-fog spray, earplugs to keep the cold water away from my brain. (I hate the scuba hood I have and have ordered something else, but meanwhile, it’s the earplugs for me.).  Water bottle with electrolytes. Case for eyeglasses. Fins and snorkel. Quick-dry baseball cap. Excellent. Now to mount the board and paddle out to the area where I want to snorkel.

Let me pause here and give you a visual about how I generally accomplish this feat of unadulterated  athleticism.  From my position in the water, I rest my forearms across the board. Then I give a mighty dolphin kick, truly Mark Spitz-esque,  and launch myself bodily from the water and onto the board, landing gracefully draped across it. This move makes me feel 25 again! I am so elegant and natural looking as I perform this with the ease of a true sea mammal!  From there I can pivot and sit up. Securing all of my belongings under the handy bungie straps, off I go. So easy. Except…

Except that I haven’t done this in over three years. Except that I was not wearing my swim fins, which I generally am. Except I am, as of today, not 25 years old. And, of course, I didn’t warm up any muscles before I got in the water because who actually does that? Not me.

As I landed smartly sort of on my right short rib, I literally felt the weasel claws rip my flesh on the inside. “NOOO!”, I yelled to the absolutely no one who was listening. “Weasels ripped my inside flesh and wow, this is going to hurt tomorrow!”. The seal, he did not care. He silently slipped beneath the waves.

But what to do? Am I going to let flesh-ripping, if not eating, weasels ruin a perfectly good opportunity to test out my new snorkel and possibly see a curious harbor seal under water for the very first time ever? What am I going to do? Get out and try to struggle out of a cold wetsuit and apply ice? The water is already cold enough for a compress. The wetsuit offers structural support. It doesn’t actually hurt yet, although I know it’s inevitable that it will.

I just carried on. It probably didn’t make any difference to the amount of pain I’ve been in for, let’s see, 5 days. I figure I pulled some kind of core muscle somewhere near that short rib but whatever. It’s hard to say exactly where since the whole upper right quadrant of my abdomen hurt dreadfully by the next day, to the point where movement was difficult.  I was forcefully reminded that 1) I use those muscles regularly 2) I live on a sailboat that is never still 3) I am 40 years older than I think I am. Nothing is broken and no one can do anything about this kind of injury. It’s already turned the corner on getting better as of today, which is a great relief because sailing down the coast would have been extremely painful and probably not a good idea. So overall, I feel like I made the right call by carrying on with what I was doing. As we are currently sailing across a pretty challenging Strait of Georgia and dealing with big swells and a short interval, I’m using those core muscles a lot just to stay upright. So, thankfully, I’m good.

Lest you think it’s just me who gets up to no good out here, get a load of the varmit climbing into what is definitely an old, rusty Ford filled with lockjaw. Looks like his mother didn’t teach him how to stay out of trouble, either.

And if that isn’t a smug face, I’ve never seen one.

We enjoyed a couple of days being mostly lazy before leaving Princess Louisa Sound and moving down the inlet towards Pender Harbour. There was a 2 1/2 hour hike that sounded like it went almost straight up to 1500 feet or so. We passed. I know my limits.

Ha! Caught you!

Not to be outdone by an actual injury to my flesh, weasel or no, the area of Pender Harbour at the mouth of Jervis Inlet still celebrates the manly man of the 1960’s and his glorious physique. And why wouldn’t they? They have a grand tradition, according to their history,  of celebrating this trope of masculinity and the well developed muscles it boasts, hanging out for everyone to see and, potentially, to admire. The evidence of this is clear from the latest edition of Pender Harbour Magazine, a publication that celebrates the harbour lifestyle. Why just look at this photo from the 1950’s of the shenanigans harbourites got up to during some kind of regatta. I’m not sure what these guys are doing, but it doesn’t involves sailing.  I envision the local weasels, salivating and showing their sharp little teeth.

Photo credit to Sue Kammerle, as shown in the 2023 edition of Pender Harbour Magazine

We had anchored in the harbour for a couple of days so I could work via Starlink and maybe rest the savaged flesh inside my abdomen. Needing a walk on actual land,  we took Sea Pony, our fast dinghy,  over to the dock where, mindful of the need to mitigate pain,  it took me 5 minutes to disembark, strategizing every movement before executing same. Once on my feet I was fine, so we set off down the road. Honestly, during this time of removing myself from the dinghy onto the filthy and splintery dock, I wished I had a sweatshirt that read, “Not Old. Just Injured. Carry On With Your Business.”

Coming around a bend in the road I see this little shack labeled ‘Nut Hut’. Considering that their storage facility here at the harbour is called “Squirrel Storage”, I imagine there are a lot of squirrels and nuts around here. Hungry, I checked out the offerings. Sadly, no nuts were to be had. Instead there was a darling little display of a school desk and chalkboard, plus a way to measure your height on the corner of the wall. I think it’s a school bus stop. But wait! There’s more!

A trove of manly treasure!

On the wall was a magazine rack holding a number of fine copies of old comic books. Like from the late 1960’s and early 1970’s when men were real and women were… almost exactly the same as they are now.  And these were not the Archie comics of my own youth, regardless of Betty’s curvaceous nature. What we had here were real comics for real budding men; manly comics, especially of the Wild West variety. Everyone knows that only a true man understands the wildness that is west.

Michael and I took a walk down memory lane as we took our time leafing through the pages, revisiting such beloved and thoughtfully indoctrinating characters as the skinny many who always had sand kicked in his face by muscle bound beach bullies, and the young woman who needed extra bust development. How could that smile be real with breasts that small? How she must suffer.

I don’t know about you, but this move never worked for me. Not that I needed it.

Who could ever forget the days where you could learn hypnosis by mail for the low, low price of 1$? I should have taken advantage of that way back then. I think the cost has really gone up.

It’s hard to fathom all the great deals I missed out on because, probably, my parents said no.

Wow, almost 10$? That was a lot of money back then. That must have been high quality stuff, as is evidenced by the Mr. Universe poses and the women who seem to just want to touch him for no good reason at all.

I don’t even remember being offered the chance to earn prizes by selling seed packets door to door. Man. I really missed out. And being paid for ideas? A girl can only dream! According to the advertisement, big companies need thousands of ideas per month! (See above) Just send the people at “IDCO” (get it?) all your ideas and they’ll let you know if any are good! Imagine! People would have PAID ME FOR MY OWN IDEAS AND WOULD IMMEDIATELY LET ME KNOW IF I HAD A GOOD ONE! And to think of all the money I spent getting college degrees. What a waste.

Scams as old as time. I remember that somehow I knew these were scams, even as I sat in the tree with the neighbor kids reading the latest issue of Betty and Veronica. How did I know? Well, probably my parents told me. I mean, I didn’t have a checkbook or even a debit card back then so I would have had to go through them to get the hypnosis coin. And I can just about imagine them saying no. I mean, as a rule, my parents didn’t approve of stuff like hypnosis. They already had enough trouble with me. Who knows what I would have got away with had I been given more power over others,

This one really hurts. I bet I could have sold a ton of seeds and maybe even joined all the other white kids in winning a plastic magnifying glass.

My favorite comic among the ones left at the Nut Hut was the Bat Lash comic, which I think may have been from 1968. I kind of wish I’d taken that but I didn’t. I’m not going to say I was not SORELY TEMPTED! It was incredibly cool and I can’t even believe that my finer nature won out on this internal battle. I wanted that comic for some reason only my own, dark inner self knew.  I had never heard of Bat Lash before and, doing a quick search later, found out there were only 7 editions of that comic published. Good thing we had been motoring at 5 knots for about 3 hours before I remembered to google it. Otherwise I’m not convinced that my moral compass would have passed muster. Bat Lash was, according to Wikipedia,  “A self-professed pacifist, ladies’ man, and gambler”, probably not necessarily in that order. Had I known all of that while standing in the Nut Hut, that particular comic would have found its way into my backpack. I didn’t even read the entire comic, so I will never know if he actually saved the Wild West or ruined it. Alas.

Will you just get a load of this? I don’t know. I might have to find one of these just because it’s seriously unbelievable and yet I am drawn to it. The woman saves the day by keeping her man out of trouble since, naturally he is unable to think for himself, being a man of pure instinct and reptile brain. Is that his mom or his girlfriend or what controlling that steed with her thighs? I’ll never know since I didn’t take the damn thing. And even as I analyze the not-so-subtle teachings from the fine literature of my youth, I am vastly entertained.  I read that the flower on his hat symbolizes his conscience and that when he is getting ready to do something dirty and rotten and scoundrel-ish, he removes his hat. I’ve always been attracted to a man who knows his own mind.

Looks like Ma Cob’s Mr. Man is going to be mighty unhappy finding ole’ Bat Lash at the family table.

We are headed back to the states, kind of slowly. Currently under sail for awhile, which is a new twist on this trip. We’ll make our way through the islands again, spending some time at old favorites before we cross the strait to meet up with one or two kids; probably one. We are extraordinarily grateful to Kerry and Donn Christianson in Port Townsend for letting us use their porch for an international delivery of high volume water maker membranes. It’s good to have friends, even if you don’t see them often. We look forward to a little time in Port Townsend, a favorite place. After that, we’ll make our way out to Neah Bay to await a weather window for going south.

S/V Galapagos, standing by on channel 16.

Shakedown 2023

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Welp, we left the dock at close-enough to slack tide on August 1, as planned. Not one for tempting the gods of docking or undocking (?)  on the first day of the trip, I was fairly insistent that we wait until the currents were not gnarly before we pulled out. Michael is, if not amenable, at least resigned at this point, so we were in agreement. It was a good move anyway as it gave us time to take the car up to the house, do one last pass through the old place to see if we had missed anything and give our daughter one last squeeze goodbye. These are the cuts that are the deepest, these leavings of loved ones.

Walking to the marina we gave a wave to Left Bank; the French pastry place on our corner. I imagine they’ll still be there when we come back, judging by the lines of customers that are always out the door and sometimes around the corner. Down the hill to the marina, stopping at the marina office to turn in our keys and parking pass. They will mail us a check for our deposit. That was a little bit of a surprise, considering we had automatic payments. I guess they want to keep that money as long as possible.

On the dock, Richard from S/V Firefly and the other Richard from S/V Soirse were on the dock waiting to cast us off and wave us bon voyage. We’ve come to love this dock community and all the sharing of tools and information, even gossip, if you will,  that goes back and forth in such places. We have a special place in our hearts for young couples like Richard and Ashley on Firefly who are living aboard, working, and making their bigger plans. Firefly Richard got certified as a marine electrician and recently started his own business. He is already really busy. We are thrilled for him. Hit us up if you are down Olympia way and need the contact info of a good, local marine electrician.

Headsets on, Michael gave the boat a little push to get the stern going in the right direction, I gave the engine a tiny bump of reverse, and we floated out of the slip one last time. I always breathe a big sigh of relief when the stern is in the right direction and the current is low enough to manage. We still had enough current to need to finesse the leaving; floating back, cranking the wheel, moving forward, cranking the wheel, floating back again with more cranking. Then Mike said the bow was clear of Richard’s Hunter 50 and we were off, steering clear of the marina and into the fairway with the lowest water under the keel that we have ever had in Olympia. At times the depth meter read 3 feet under the keel. Yikes.

Farewell, for now, Olympia.

All the way through the channel, we commented on how low the water was and how easy it would be to run aground. In my own mind I harkened back to the days when I would have literally been panicking about this. How far I have come in managing that dreaded anxiety. Now, in a muddy area like Olympia, I am just thinking; ‘Welp, if we hit mud we will just get more coffee and wait it out’.  To be clear, rocks are another issue altogether.

As I write this, I am connected to Wifi via our nifty new Starlink system. This has been working great so far and has been a real treat to have aboard. Except for the power draw. Although it’s not really that much, it’s enough that we unplug it at night, and if we don’t have sunshine to keep the batteries topped off, we can’t really afford to use it without charging the batteries with the engine. This was not an issue until I brought out my brand new crockpot to make some carnitas.

You scoff.  Surely she doesn’t use an electric device to cook on a boat? Yes, she surely does and has done forever since we have had this boat. I love my little crockpot and bought a brand new small one with a locking lid so that we would not have a repeat of the famous sweet-potatoe-stew-on-the-floor fiasco that occurred at the beginning of the passage to Hawaii. You haven’t lived until you have been on your hands and knees in large swells and decent wind cleaning up tomato-based inedible stew.

Anyhoo, we were going to entertain Andrew and Jill and my sister, Amy, in the cockpit with some of my world class and probably famous carnitas tacos and my plan had been expertly thwarted by Michael who said we didn’t have enough battery power for that. We had been sitting in Gig Harbor at anchor for a day and a half and the batteries were not keeping up due to the insidious trickle of juice being used by the Starlink. Out came the pressure cooker, but this was surely information that is now recorded as part of this shake down part of the cruise. Can we manage this draw on our precious electrical power? Sure. Do I want to manage that? I do not. We need to put on more solar, something we talked about before we left. Where to put another panel is the issue, but we may have a plan for that. We’ll see, but it’s possible we need to add “bring solar panels currently residing in the basement” to our list of items the kids will bring us at some point before we head south.

Two of my favorite people in the cockpit eating yummy carnitas tacos.

The other thing we’ve discovered, although the only proof I needed for this was the way water pools in the forward port corner of the cockpit settees, is that we need more weight in the starboard stern. Our boat has always been a bit bow heavy, mostly because we carry 300 feet of 3/8” chain and a big anchor. When we put a new engine aboard all those years ago, we lost weight toward the back of the boat because we put in a smaller Beta Marine engine to replace the really big Ford Lehman that was in there. At one point this boat also had a genset in the engine room and I imagine that also weighed something significant. Once we took the mizzen mast and all of its bits off and stored them at home, we lost more weight aft. Adding the radar pole helped some, but not nearly enough. So I have observed our boot stripe with, as they say, a gimlet eye.

We had no idea how much weight we needed to add. So we did a small experiment while at anchor in calm Gig Harbor. We let out all of our chain and watched the bow. Yep. The bow was significantly higher without all that chain. This gave us a rough calculation that adding 300 pounds would be enough to balance her out so that her nose is high enough to not plow into the waves. When we add the 80 pounds worth of Liferaft that is currently living in the forepeak and will live on the aft deck during ocean transits, we figure we will be fine. We are currently at anchor in Bellingham and while here we are going to work on solving this problem. We hope to end up buying additional chain and storing it in the aft lazarette. The sailboat wrecking yard also sells buckets of lead shot from recycled boat keels that we could get in a pinch. But extra anchor chain would not come amiss. Yesterday, crossing the Strait of Juan de Fu*^ You, we experienced proof of concept that our bow is, indeed, too low to be plowing into rough seas. Enough about that. It was not fun for anyone. Fortunately, the north end of Whidby Island sported smoother water.

Galapagos, with her boom to one side to take advantage of all the sun power hitting the solar panels (making the boom appear short). With no chain left in the chain locker, she looks almost right. Not quite, but almost.

As shakedown cruises go, this one is definitely working to reveal potential issues. We had the hydraulic steering rebuilt this year and while that is working fine, if a little stiff, we have had a couple of hiccups with the autopilot. To be brief, twice during the trip up here it has briefly stopped working, giving us an error message that said the motor for the unit had stalled. It’s a Raymarine Smart Pilot, which has a heavy duty motor and has worked for these years without even a hitch in its giddyup. So we are a little flumoxed about what might be happening now. Raymarine has an article on their site that Michael is referencing in terms of what might be going on and we’ll go through those possibilities to see if Michael can get it sorted. We do not know if it is related to the rebuild of the steering. Perhaps not. But whatever it is, we would like that sorted before going to ocean sailing again. Although we use our Hydrovane almost exclusively on passages, we use the autopilot on inland waters anytime we have to motor and would rather fix that while in the US than try to fix it in Mexico.

Yesterday we noticed yet another little issue that, while irritating, we know how to address. We got in about 30 full seconds of sailing via headsail today before two things happened: the wind died, and the bolt rope on the headsail started coming out of the track on the furler. Honestly we didn’t even have time to tweak the sail shape. This was dead irritating because that bolt rope has always been just small enough to do this and cause irritation. Of course, we sailed for years with it like that and Michael had worked a fix at the foot of the sail to keep it close enough to the furler that it wouldn’t pull away. It was just one more thing to keep track of and watch carefully. But we just had that sail up at Ballard Sails in Seattle to be looked over and that would have been the perfect time to have that bolt rope replaced with something just a little larger where this would not be an issue. Had we recalled this was a problem. Which we did not. We were reminded today when as soon as the sail was unfurled it started coming loose at the bottom. Curses. Many curses.

Michael and I are getting in the groove out here. We are already playing our favorite games of cruising: Log Dodge (whereby you steer clear of anything that might be a log in the water), What’s That Noise? (whereby you get irritated by a repetitive noise and try to locate the source), Wind/NoWind (whereby Mike gets excited because we still haven’t sailed yet and he believes he has felt wind and gets the headsail ready to deploy only to be thwarted because it was only someone exhaling somewhere), Kill the Fly (self explanatory) and Hot, Then Cold. This last one is the game that comes up after you’ve put away your cold weather clothing because you inconveniently forgot that you are actually moving north first, not south, and a cold front is coming in. Also, Pacific Northwest. Meh.

Our new radar pole and engine lifting system. Works great! This added some weight in the back, but not enough.

We will be here in Bellingham for another few days while I work from the boat and Michael locates more anchor chain. Bellingham is a really fun place to visit by boat. Great dinghy dock and the anchorage is close to all the fun things Fairhaven has to offer.

Where we anchored off the south end of Marrowstone Island. It was a peaceful night. No, this is not in the guidebooks. Remember, you saw it here first. The bottom is smallish rocks and sand with the occasional kelp. We dug in and held fast in about 20 feet under the keel.

 

S/V Galapagos, standing by on Channel 16a.