Category Archives: Travel

Falling in Love

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Mike and I went to Vancouver, British Columbia this weekend and while we were there we fell in love. At least we think it’s love. It could be lust. My dad always said there was a big difference, and sometimes it’s hard to tell what the difference is. It’s bad enough when you fall in love with another person. When you fall in love with a boat, it’s even more complicated!

There is an old, trite saying about how if you love someone, you have to let them go free and if they return to you then the love is real, and if they don’t, then you’ve saved yourself a ton of trouble. I’d like to make that case for boats as well as people.

We went to Vancouver to visit our newly married niece and her newly minted husband and since we can’t afford to be traipsing off to Vancouver all the time, paying for hotels, etc, we thought we’d look at a few boats while we were there. Our broker, Lee, set us up to look at a Swan 40, a Spencer 1330, and a Westerly Conway. (Reviews to follow)

Newlyweds. Their love seems like the real deal to me. Micah is a very talented musician and programmer whose professional goal is to put music to videos, video games, etc. He has his degree along with his talent, so if you know someone who knows someone in the Vancouver area, give me a shout. I like to help young people get off to a start in the career of their dreams.

Why are we looking at boats when Moonrise is still for sale, you might be asking yourself. And you would be wise to ask. Except that we are well and truly into the nasty rainy season here and going sailing is not much fun right now. We have to do something to keep the dream alive or it will die a watery death during the rainy season. If we look at boats, we not only keep the dream active in our lives, we also continue to educate ourselves about what we really want and need, and work toward making a final decision about whether we really want to sell Moonrise.

And that’s where the ‘let it go free’ concept comes in. We found a boat that made our hearts go pitty pat quite a lot. You know that feeling you get when you first spot the object of your affection from across the room, and your heart swells just a bit and dizziness overtakes you… that’s the feeling I’m talking about only this object is a boat, and we already own a boat. Technically, we own two boats if you count Danger Kitten, Andrew’s boat.  So you can see the quandary we find ourselves in.

The boat is the Westerly Conway. Long time readers may recall we also looked at a Westerly Sealord last spring, and we also liked that boat. We’ve reviewed that one, and also reviewed a Westerly Cirrus that we looked at for our son over the summer. The common thread is that we loved all three of those boats and wanted to own each one. I think we may have found our builder, if not our boat.

The Westerly Conway, which made our hearts beat a little faster.

The Westerly Sealord, S/V Spellbound. I love the name. I loved the boat.

So we are throwing this issue out to the Universe to solve the problem for us. Do we make an offer? Do we consider the Westerly Sealord again? I would love to have that boat. It’s perfect in just about every single way: layout, size, amenities. But the price is not right for us, especially right now. And it needs quite a bit of work and is just that much bigger than the Conway. The Conway, at 36 feet, is only slightly longer than Moonrise. It has good accommodations and is ready to sail. The really big compromise on that boat is the galley, which would have to be completely redesigned. Either one would take us where we want to go, but the Sealord would be more comfortable to live on, no two ways about it.

Is it love or is it lust? I maintain that because we’ve liked every Westerly we’ve seen, it’s love. So if it’s love, we have to let it go free and see if it works out; we have to do our part but not try to control the process. We have to realize that if it’s right for us, the boat, whichever one, will be ours and Moonrise will find a new owner who will love her and sail her, as she is built to sail, not sit at the dock. If this does not work out, we will continue looking at Westerlys. Perhaps not exclusively, but definitely.  Sometimes life is a little bit like a movie. You do your part by buying the ticket and taking a seat, and then you watch to see what happens next. I think that’s called making a leap of faith.

So, everyone who believes in fairies, or anything else good, clap your hands now and send all that believing our way!

After seeing the Conway, we stopped to watch this acrobatic fire juggler perform. He was pretty funny, and also very, very strong. We tried walking around the cool shops in the area, but we couldn’t focus so we got in the car and drove home, wishing we could stop in Blaine to see the Westerly Sealord on the way home.

 

Time Waits for No Man (or Woman)

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I  look forward to a time when life slows down a little bit. We have been cramming a lot of ‘living’ into a short amount of time lately. Mike’s mom has been here for a visit and although we always say that we’re going to just ‘hang out’ and have everything be low key, it never really turns out that way because she’s here for such a short amount of time. Time is just the worst thing! It always makes us feel like we have to do things in a hurry, cramming so much into just a few days. I know some quantum physics types say that time doesn’t really exist, but it sure doesn’t feel that way when we are trying to live life to the fullest over the course of one weekend.

It was Mike’s birthday this weekend. I am two years older than Mike so I am gritting my teeth until he reaches the magic age where he can feel the same sense of urgency that I do about shaking things up a little and sailing to Hawaii. Or Mexico. Where ever. Until then, I just buy him gifts that we can use on a sailboat. This year I bought him the[amazon_link id=”B005IGVY8I” target=”_blank” ]Nikon COOLPIX AW100 16 MP CMOS Waterproof Digital Camera with GPS and Full HD 1080p Video (Blue)[/amazon_link], a ‘ruggedized’ digital camera that is said to be waterproof. He’s been talking about having a little waterproof camera on the boat so he can take photos of, for instance, the engine when he takes it apart. Or the bottom of the hull when I hit rocks with it. This should work. Andrew got him a nifty little[amazon_link id=”B0019KPS66″ target=”_blank” ]VidPro Gripster Flexible Compact Camera Tripod[/amazon_link] for action shots, and Claire bought him a paper chart of the west coast of Washington, and one of the Columbia River where it empties out into the Pacific. If our Cal 34 hasn’t sold by August, I’m hopeful for a trip down the coast to further expand our sailing skills. We celebrated his day with a trip up to Seattle to our daughter’s new apartment.

How is it that our 27 year old daughter has this view? Oh, right. She lives in Seattle, not in Lakewood surrounded by trees.

Mike made this family portrait using his nifty new tripod and a timed exposure. Cool!

 

And because that simply wasn’t enough traveling, we took Mike’s mom, Carolyn, to San Juan Island so she could say she’d been there. I figured we’d kill two birds with one proverbial stone since we’d never driven around the island ourselves and we consider whether we’d like to live in the San Juan Islands some day. If we win the lotto, that is. Because pretty much anything with a water view starts at 1/2 million dollars. And if you want to actually live on the water…..don’t even go there. Maybe we’ll just live on a sailboat for awhile.

Down at the southern end, in the Cattle Pass area. Could I live here? What a dumb question.

But the island is lovely and when we arrived Mike and Andrew took naps while I drove Carolyn out to Lime Kiln Point to see the whales. Mike is the Whale King ever since he was surrounded by them while out for an evening sail in Commencement Bay. Mike must have been calling them for me in his sleep because they were there! So Carolyn got to see them. Here are a few photos from the weekend.

Not a great photo, but for the whale lovers in all of us, any photo is good.

The lighthouse at Lime Kiln. Classic.

This seal has the right idea. A little water and a lot of sunshine.

 

Mike shows the appropriate posture when napping on driftwood.

Apparently foxes live on the island.

Archetypes of the Pacific Northwest, with Magic!

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We pulled the dingy onto the muddy shore at Penrose State Park, looking forward to a hike to the other side of the little peninsula. We hoped we’d see other boats from the Puget Sound Cruising Club anchored there as we were supposed to be there for a raft-up. I’d spent the better part of the previous evening sick as a dog and, feeling more myself, it felt good to get off the boat and stretch my legs. The park was filled with Memorial Day revelers  and several dinghies were tied up on rocks on the other side of the cove. Together we pulled the dingy up onto the mud and looked for a place to tie up.

Me: ” Honey, there isn’t any place to tie off Puddler in this part of the cove. Maybe we should move it closer to those rocks with the other dingies. The tide is coming in.”

Mike: “Naw, let’s just pull it up further onto the beach. We won’t be gone that long.”

Me: ” Are you sure? That seems a little risky to me.”

Mike: “Here’s a rock. I’ll tie it off here. See? Okay, let’s go.”

Always trusting my husband to know what is best, I trudge off with him, ever the ‘dutiful’ wife. Hahahahahaha!

Love is frequently blind.

We spent the next hour hiking the woodsy trail, enjoying the sunshine and remembering why we still live in the Pacific Northwest, in spite of the hateful winters. If only it were like this all the time! We began to think of all the folks we know who live in other parts of the country, never having known the joys of Pacific Northwest Cruising in Good Weather. With newlyweds Tate and Dani of Sundowner Sails Again in mind, we assembled this collection of Northwest archetypes to give them an idea of what they are missing by living down south. Some folks would call these photos ‘ubiquitous’, but I prefer the more academic, intellectually stimulating term ‘archetype’ as it more accurately reflects the esoteric symbolic nature of these images and also allows me to use big words. If you are more on the side of ‘ubiquitous’, you can skip the next part and cut to the video at the end.

Archetype of Haughty Eagle in Craggy Tree; archetype of limitless freedom, our national bird, and my personal totem animal.

 

Archetype of Weathered Driftwood Archway on sand and shell beach; symbolic of hidden mysteries, doorway to homes of native gnomes, elves, and fairies, symbolic of entries into other realms.

Archetype of the Meandering Forest Path; symbolic of the uncertainty of the future, also of worlds between worlds and the interconnected-ness of all things.

Archetype of the Partly Submerged Rock; symbolic of danger lurking beneath the surface and also watching the hell where you are going.

 

Feeling the pressure of time, and the ever increasing wind, we headed back to the other side of the park. As we emerged from the forest we could see the beach where we left Puddler.

Mike: There’s Puddler. Looks like we got back just in time, the tide really came in fast!

Me: It looks like Puddler is…… floating?

Mike: Maybe just a little. We’ll make it in time.

Me: Are you sure? He looks like he’s really floating pretty good. Actually, there appears to be a lot of water between Puddler and the beach.

Mike: He’s headed out to sea!

Me: Hurry! He’s getting further out from the beach. I think you will have to swim for it. (Naturally I assumed it would be Mike doing the swimming, since he built the dingy.)

Mike: Wait, he’s slowing down,  I think he’s moving in our direction!

Me: Call him! Whistle for him! Use your magic to bring him to you! You can do it, I believe in you! Reach your hand out to him and call him by name! (I clap my hands loudly, believing in Mike with all my heart.)

Does Mike have magic powers over his boat? Watch the video and you be the judge, along with our audience at the site, the South Sound Sailing Society. (Maybe we should join their group since we found them easily, plus they had a tasty looking potluck on the beach.)