Category Archives: Boat Search

Bow Before the Queen

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Queen of the Valley Inn

What makes a quick getaway even better? A beautiful place to stay, of course! And also bread pudding french toast and salted caramel sauce with coffee, black, for breakfast. That makes it very, very better. When you add to the mix the great company of new friends a quick get away becomes practically a vacation!

Sitting smack in the middle of beautiful protected farmland, the Queen, known to locals as the Armstrong House, was built in 1908 and is now owned by Shelly and Chris Davis. Shelly, a gregarious, generous, and entertaining hostess told us stories about how this house used to be THE party house in La Conner, the scene of many a prom or fancy ball. Apparently the third floor of the home, where the Davis family now lives, used to be one large open space and was referred to as the ball room. Cool! Makes me wonder what kind of interesting noises one might hear at night up on that third floor, especially at midnight…

The adorable sun porch which Shelly has transformed into a nice breakfast room.

But while old stories are nice, equally cool is the story of how Shelly and Chris were filmed by the reality TV show Radical Sabbatical on the Fine Living Network when they bought this place and renovated it into the bed and breakfast it is today. She entered a contest and won, and the prize was that she was followed around by TV cameras while she went through the most stressful time any home owner could imagine. Okay. I admit part of me was thinking ‘that’s complete insanity’. But I think Shelly would likely agree with that part of me. It’s also a pretty wild story, with a coolness factor that is hard to beat. No one filmed me when we renovated our house. All I have is a bunch of story boards with photos on them. You win, Shelly!

One of the fun things about The Queen: a cat door. Wish I had taken a photo of their dog, Maisie. She is very sweet and made me miss our Fran.

Staying at The Queen at the same time was the professional fishing couple Kathy and Kyle Rynning of Camano Island. Before I tell you what happened, let’s be sure we’re all on the same page here that Mike and I are generally not ‘friendly’ with others. It’s not that we don’t play well, it’s just that we’re usually not that interested in playing whatever game is afoot at the time. Between us we probably have no more than a handful of friends. But now we have more! We made friends with this lovely couple to the point that we actually went to dinner with them! That is correct. We went out with others and….. had a good time! Kathy and Kyle told us all about fishing for Salmon on the river up in Alaska, and about horses and living on Camano Island. We talked about kids and jobs and the fact that they had been at The Queen on their honeymoon. And Kathy and I talked about how it’s so hard to find cute boating clothes for women; clothes that don’t look like watered down stuff made for men. We had some ideas on what to do about that. And all the time I was looking at Kathy’s hair and thinking I would kill for hair like that. But she is so nice, I didn’t mention it.

The delightful Kathy Rynning and her glorious hair. Maybe if I used chemicals...

We went to Nell Thorn of La Conner for dinner. After the appetizer of tiny baby beets roasted with their greens I had the very best hamburger I’ve had in many years. I couldn’t finish it, but it was just as good the next day. They have this drink called Sugar Plum Fairy. It has brandy, lemon and ginger agave nectar and something called Tuaca, a vanilla citrus liqueur. It is completely yum.  I had two. This trip was lethal as far as the eating plan is concerned. Oh well. Life is short. (And if I keep eating like this it will be shorter.) Go to Nell Thorn, but make reservations. It’s deservedly popular.

Mike and Kyle visiting in the very comfortable living room.

I’m hoping we can go back to La Conner in the spring and stay at The Queen of the Valley Inn again. Shelly says that the field next to them will be planted with daffodils  this year and I can imagine how beautiful that setting will be for this house.

 

 


Pop Quiz

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The lovely Emerald Lady

Answer this question: What is the coolest part of finally getting into the groove of boat shopping?  Is it A) Experiencing boat lust  B) Thinking about spending a million dollars  C) Wasting time trying to make appointments to look at boats or  D) None of the above. If you answered D, none of the above, you would be correct and win a prize if I had one to give you. The correct answer, for the bonus essay point, is ‘making new friends who live in Boat World’. First we met Lee Youngblood, then we went to a club meeting of all sailing people all the time and won a prize. And now, thanks to Lee, we’ve met sailors, soon-to-be cruisers, Kelly and John Wanamaker and their freaking fabulous Cheoy Lee Ketch, Emerald Lady. We spent the better part of 2 hours on this beautiful yacht talking boats, sailing, how to manifest dreams, healthy cooking in the galley, boat projects using non-boat materials, and all kinds of exciting and wonderful boaty boat things! It was so much fun I was practically levitating as we left!

Now before you go rolling your eyes at me and wondering if I’m just easily amused and all that, let’s consider this: when was the last time you had the chance to sit and visit with people who had the exact same interests as you and were just enough ahead of you in the game to be encouraging but not daunting, sharing wisdom and experience but not being condescending? Hmmm? As I thought. It was last year! Maybe even never!

We wanted to meet John and Kelly because we were told that they bought a fixer boat and turned her into a beauty. And that’s exactly what they’ve done! I can’t imagine how they’ve done it in a year’s time, but this is one lovely vessel and it has many of the ‘necessities’ we’re looking for, including an extremely cool aft cabin with its own hatch! They talked about the plans they have for making the boat even more comfortable in the future and Kelly talked about some of the compromises she made when choosing this boat. (She did use the word ‘compromise’, but I put my inner 4  year old in time out and Kelly remained safe. I was on my best behavior.)

As you enter Emerald Lady, you see this. This tells you something about John and Kelly.

So in an afternoon of visiting with new friends, we came away thinking more strongly about setting a date for departure, at Kelly’s urging. And we came away thinking ‘we could probably handle a boat larger than 40 feet if we wanted to, at John’s urging. We came away thinking that the more we look at boats like that Cheoy Lee, the more we like them because they are so comfortable and beautiful, and they feel like tiny houses, yet still like boats. Just maybe we don’t have to spend a million dollars right up front to get the boat of our dreams. Maybe we can spend it a little at a time. I even started thinking that maybe a big master cabin is not so necessary if you have a roomy and comfortable salon. Then I had to slap myself really hard because I started to get too flexible on that point.

As Mike and I walked away from Emerald Lady, I looked back at her and had a little deja vu moment; you know those times that make you wonder if you’ve lived that moment before, like you’ve just looked through the window into another dimension.  And then I remembered. A few years ago we were sailing in the south sound and spent a night at Harstine Island. There was this beautiful boat tied up at the dock. It had gentle curves and a sweet overhang. It looked like it was a modern version of an old sailing vessel; long and slender with teak decks and varnished brightwork. I remember standing on the dock with Mike, staring, sort of imagining what it would be like to be on that boat. I remember saying, “I would love to have a boat like that.” Walking up to the little store at the marina, we met a man coming down toward the docks. We asked him if that boat was his boat.  “The Cheoy Lee? Yep.”  He smiled at us in a dreamy sort of way.

 

 

It’s a Merry Library Christmas at Little Cunning Plan

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Mike is reading from the 'go small and go now' genre.

It’s Christmas and I know the question on your mind is this: ” What does the well-heeled, crap-discarding, boat-shopping couple give one another for Christmas?” Well, you can stop fretting about this and get some sleep, because I’m going to tell you: Books. Lots and lots of books about boats and cruising. And a kitchen aid mixer, but since I can’t imagine storing that on a boat, we’ll just move on from that now.

Yes, this Christmas, rather than supporting the economy by buying a lot of useless junk that no one wants, I went directly to my local book store, Amazon.com (and also Half Price Books) and bought books on the top-secret inner workings of sailboats, how to sail on a paltry sum of money, and how to outfit a boat for blue water sailing by spending a million dollars. We will be busily reading these for weeks to come.

Mike must have been a very good boy this year.

Got a boat library of your own? Drop us a line and let us know what books you think we need. For a complete list of the books we bought and what we think about them, see our new ‘Books You Should Get If You Want To‘ page. To find that page, go to The Plan in the menu at the top of the page.