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Notes from the 2014 Cruising Diary: On Personal Flotation Devices

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Some days you get to test that little auto-inflate canister in the life preserver to see if it works. Ask me how I know. Okay, I’ll tell you. It happened at Kuper Island. I give it to you straight from my notes from that day.

On the way to Bergoyne Bay

Saturday, Sept 6, 2014 This is not a day for sailing. It is a day for motoring and charging the batteries. Destination Kuper Island;  the lovely sandstone beach we visited last year. We anchor just off that beach in 25 feet of water. I let the dinghy down to go rowing, go ashore and take photos.

Easy rowing on flat water, no turbulence.  I thoughtfully put my camera in a waterproof bag. I remember the water being quite warm here last year.  This year I have a swimsuit. Going for a swim would be fun tomorrow. The universe has other plans for me.

Portland Island

I tie up the dinghy to the swimstep. Stow the oars. Place my camera bag on the swim step and notice that the ladder has not been deployed so is too high. Holding onto the step, I begin to get up to let it fall into the water.

How is this happening? The dinghy is out from under me, I am stepping on the gunwale, and then watching in horror as the gunwale sinks beneath the waves and I am in the sea, still holding onto that swim step. I feel the water seep through my clothes and am amazed that it isn’t too cold; actually quite refreshing on this hot day. I cannot believe it. Maybe I am in shock already.

 I am relieved the life jacket has not deployed because I don’t need it. But just as I think that it pops open. First one side, then the other. My neck now in traction,  I am a cork with a head and two arms flailing around. Swimming in an inflatable life jacket is ridiculous. A big white jelly fish approaches me in a determined manner. I fling my arm out at it, waving it away. It tries to approach from the rear. I spin in the water, kicking ineffectively at the creature, a bobbing stooge ninja. It retreats, waving menacing tentacles, ghostly in the green sea. I see sunlight shining through its body. It is beautiful. 

Mike, examining the sandstone at Portland Island

I grab one flipflop floating by, yelling for Mike. His preternaturally good hearing works so well. Usually. But not when I’m in the water behind Galapagos, down low. I can see the exhaust pipe above my head. I feel happy that the engine is not running.  The dinghy is upside down, floating with all the oars, portable bilge pump, and square flotation device we keep there. No sharks in sight. Do we even have those here? I manage to get the ladder down, but I can’t handle the upturned dinghy. It is dead weight in the water. An island of heavy white gleaming dully in the brilliant sun.

 I yell for Mike. What the hell is he doing in there anyway? I bang on the hull. He appears, a bit nonplussed but calm in the face of a wet wife, treading water underneath a firmly engaged turgid yellow flotation device, fending off determined sea creatures. How did this happen, he asks. Seriously? 

The offending dinghy, ‘Tortoise’.

I remember my hearing aids.  I hand them to Mike to open and lay in the sun. I will clean them with alcohol.  I realize the top of my head is actually dry; most of my hair is dry, I have no water in my eyes. I must have been holding onto the swim step the entire time, never submerging completely. I hope they will be okay.  Damn the things!  I get dead tired of having to be troubled by them. Why can’t my ears just work right, for the love of Jesus?  

The davits, once again, worth their weight in gold. Mike is able to use one of the davit winches to pull the dinghy up. There is a gentle whooshing noise as the seal with the water gives way. I easily recover the items that had been trapped beneath.  What they say about Walker Bay is true. They are unsinkeable. As am I, riding each wave, facing the sky. I can barely move, much less propel myself with any accuracy. Ralphy, without snow.  I am wearing a sundress. Guess where that ends up? Who cares? This is British Columbia. No one knows me here anyhow. The jelly fish has given up. I think about staying in the water longer. 

Kuper Island, later that evening.

  I climb the ladder to the boat and prepare to rinse off with fresh water. I strip off the wet salty clothes and leave them on the deck. I can’t bring myself to remove my underwear while on deck. This isn’t Europe for Christ’s sake.  No salt water below. I think about how when we are in warmer climates we will have to be aware of this kind of thing. Salt water on the upholstery will make it always feel damp.  I hate that. No salt water on clothes below deck. Now it’s a rule.

I clean the hearing aids. They still work. No harm, no foul. I am completely uninjured without so much as a bruise. Except to my ego. But cruising will get you used to that in a hurry. 

Sandstone formation on Kuper Island.

Sandstone formation on Kuper Island.

Toilets That Flush

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That’s right, we’re back to our regular lives. Toilets that flush, hot water on demand, king sized bed, unlimited furniture that’s comfortable, internet access all the day all the time. A big washer, dryer, two refrigerators (and an ice maker!), the list of amenities we enjoy at home grows tiresomely long.

We miss the boat. Coming back to our house is always a difficult transition for us after a couple of weeks on the boat because in spite of all the amenities our land based home offers,  there is also a lawn to be mowed, a floor that needs vacuuming, and groceries to be bought. And even though it’s so much easier to take the car to Costco and stock up on groceries, it’s much more fun and adventurous to anchor in front of downtown Sidney, dinghy in to shore, and hike up the beach and down the street and lug everything back to Galapagos.  I guess we’re just crazy like that.

Galapagos waits in front of the public beach on the Sidney, B.C waterfront.

We had a wonderful, successful trip and I have over 500 photos to sort through. We got our anchoring routine down pat. I learned that the hot water heater works only when we’re tied to the dock. Whoops! We anchored out 100% of the time and remembered what it’s like to negotiate food storage sans refrigeration. Let’s just say that ice is expensive in the islands. I docked the boat in Poet’s Cove, choosing a dead calm day and plenty of room so I would have a good chance of complete success. It worked out great. And we’re getting the whole ‘docking this beast’ routine down in terms of who does what when Mike’s at the wheel and I’m doing the tying off. We’re learning. So far, so good.

On the Strait of Georgia.

Our route took us from Tacoma to Camano Island and then through Deception Pass for the first time ever. A ten hour day by motor got us to the island and anchored out for the evening. We continue to be amazed at how much faster this boat moves than our Cal 34. We had planned to meet up with a friend of Mike’s from work, who has a house on Camano Island. But alas, his cow was calving that day so they were not home. For some reason, that just cracked me up.

But regardless of cows, we had to pay attention to the timing going through Deception Pass.  For the uninitiated, Deception Pass is one of those places where you don’t want to be caught at the wrong time of the current cycle because you could find yourself with an opposing current of over 6 knots if you don’t pay attention. We had been through that area on the Victoria Clipper, but had never sailed (or motored) through it. The mother cow made it possible for us to make it up to the pass in time to go through without trouble. We had 1 knot of current with us and even with that, it was like Mr. Toad’s wild ride as Galapagos struggled to keep a strait course. A sailboat coming the opposite direction, against that same 1 knot of current, was stopped dead in the middle of the pass for awhile and I thought he was going to drift into the rocks, but he made it. I’m pretty sure current doesn’t tell the whole story in this place. It’s pretty ‘exciting’ to be sure.

Approaching Deception Pass. Fishermen fishing the currents appear to block the passage, but they don’t actually get in the way.

Once you get through the pass you are in the islands and that’s pretty sweet. We hit Rosario Strait at the wrong time, however, and would have been bucking current with no wind all the way north so we decided we were done for the day and anchored at little Strawberry Island State Park. There isn’t much going on at that little park but it was a reasonable enough anchorage in calm weather.  We were already tucked in for the evening and it wasn’t even dinner time yet. I thought about dropping the kayak in the water, but it was too much trouble. I decided to sleep instead.

It’s an interesting thing, going on this kind of vacation. It takes awhile for the ‘vacation’ part to sink in, at least for Mike. It hits me immediately in the form of sleeping. The first two days if I wasn’t on watch, I was probably sleeping. Mike, on the other hand, was doing projects. Here’s a little note from my diary after the first two days of this trip:

What I do best on this boat is sleep. I could sleep all day long and into the night and through to the next day. Honestly, sometimes I can barely keep my eyes open and it feels like my brain just needs someone to hit the ‘reset’ button. Mike does projects. Since we left he has installed and hardwired a small inverter, being used as I type this to keep this laptop running and to allow him to use his little soldering iron. Because he has also wired in the battery charger for his drill and now he is working on some other god-knows-what project in the man cave. I like the IDEA of doing projects, but I cannot bring myself to think of one to do. Well, there was that Creeping Crack Cure I put around the outside of the midship hatch as extra insurance against leaks, but that hardly counts since it took all of 5 minutes. But by GOD that hatch doesn’t leak a drop. Then I did cook dinner and clean up. And then put some gluten free cookies in the oven, hoping the shot of glucose from them would somehow jumpstart my brain. I wonder if this is what I will always feel like when we live on the boat. Will I be this completely lacking in motivation, unable to find the energy to even drop the dinghy in the water? Thank God this laptop works without internet.

Mike, working on a boat project during his ‘vacation’.

Let’s just say that it takes awhile for Mike to unwind. And it takes me awhile to find my groove. I feel a little bit ‘between worlds’ the first few days, a bit discombobulated. I can’t go on my morning walks with the dog. I have no interweb. It’s a wierd, liminal space.

The following day was one for sailing! We rode the tide up Rosario Strait and out into the Strait of Georgia to find wind! Lovely, constant wind. Getting to the head of Rosario Strait took almost no time at all. By 10:00 we were in the Strait of Georgia, looking through our binoculars at a crowd of boats in Echo Bay on Sucia Island.   We had the whole day ahead of us so we just went sailing, waiting for the Labor Day crowd to leave Sucia so we could find a decent anchorage and spend a little time there. We spent several hours on a warm sunny day just doing long tacks back and forth in the strait, finally having a chance to really get the hang of tacking Galapagos. It was fabulous. Let the vacation begin.

Long, easy tacks on the Strait of Georgia.

We found a great anchorage at Sucia between Little Sucia and the big island, just outside of Fox Cove. It’s not a marked anchorage and it’s nowhere near the mooring buoys. It was perfect. We are learning that we can trust our big Bruce anchor and heavy chain to hold us. We settled in for a couple of days to explore Sucia.

Scenes from Sucia

Sea lions on rocks off Sucia Island.

And just around the corner, seals on rocks. Classic.

That’s Little Sucia and the beach right by the boat.

Forest path on Sucia.

Galapagos and the sandstone of Sucia Island.

Little Blue Heron.

And the next day, it poured rain all day long. The hatch didn’t leak a bit. We stayed in bed and read books and ate bad things all day. Aside from expanding waistlines, this was our reward:

Sunset from Fox Cove

And this looking the other way.

And this.

And now you know why we miss the boat.

The following day was glorious sun and warm temperatures. Time to get off the boat and do some hiking around the island. More photos. Remember, I have almost 500 hundred to sort through.

 

It’s a vulture. It was busy dining on a small dogfish.

Sucia Island is known for its fossils. Here’s a little vein of fossilized shells in the sandstone.

Mike likes to go Geocaching whenever there is one around, and there was one at Sucia. He found this one easily. No cool prizes, though, although there was a pin from the American Club in Hong Kong. It’s probably still there if you want it. 

We stayed at this anchorage for close to three days, then beat time over to Poet’s Cove in Bedwell Harbor to check in with the Canadians. Galapagos’ first two owners live in British Columbia. She would be back in her home waters. More fun to come, so stay tuned.

Our dinghy, Tortoise.

Our dinghy, Tortoise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her Mysterious Ways

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The boat is a demanding mistress. We’ve been taking a break from working hard on her, preferring to spend weekends sailing. Still, that list of boat chores isn’t getting shorter so we’ve started knocking a few small things out. Doing these kinds of things makes us feel like we’re really in charge around here. Then there’s the whole law of physics about an object at rest tending to stay at rest…well you get it I’m sure. If we totally stop all boat work, we might never get back to it.

All the rest of the photos are dead boring so I'm putting this mermaid here. She graces the salon.

All the rest of the photos are dead boring so I’m putting this mermaid here. I made her a couple of years ago. Now she graces the salon.

One of the little projects we’ve been involved with of late is chasing down small leaks that put water in our clean bilge. This drives me nuts. Our young friends down in Louisiana, Tate and Dani of Sundowner Sails Again, recently posted about their bone dry bilge. Now, to be fair, they have worked their hind ends off getting the bilge to be water free, but that little fact was lost on me as I read their post about dust bunnies in the bilge and felt a white hot rage of envy flood my being. I felt a little temper tantrum coming on motivated purely by petty jealousy. I really want a dry bilge like theirs. But whining won’t make it so. You have to earn it. So it begins. Time to chase down mysterious leaks.

As boats go, Galapagos is really pretty dry. But there are a few little ones here and there that keep me up at night. We had been hearing the bilge pump come on intermittently, and recently another sound had been added to Galapagos’ repertoire: the fresh water pump would come on for no apparent reason. Except there is always a reason. This one turned out to be easy once it was located: vibration had wiggled loose a hose clamp in the aft head and it was steadily dripping water. That was a dead easy fix but don’t get your hopes up about any of the others. This easy fix was created just to lead us on. We already know that game and we refuse to play it.

Another mermaid, because you need something to rest your eyes from these pictures of the engine room.

Locating leaks on Galapagos is not for the faint of heart. Under her sole are cavernous spaces that are dark and dank; medieval catacombs where water drips unseen and collects in small fetid pools. Each time I pull up the sole to look under it I expect to see the mummified remains of ancestors lurking in the corner. I know that rather than face the torture that is our bilge areas, many people would just shrug and wait for the leaks to get worse before bothering with them, not worrying about those little pools and what may be breeding in them.  But it just doesn’t seem right to ignore these seemingly insignificant leaks because who knows what havoc they are creating in the dark of night as I lay sleeping peacefully in the aft cabin, wrapped in a warm cocoon of denial?

 

In Hiram’s engine room, way in the forward recess to the left of the starting battery, there is such a pool of water. I needed to know this water better in order to make it disappear. It is too far to reach back there with my hand so, using a metal probe, I reached back with a paper towel to suck up this water and give it the ‘taste test’.

Way in the back, past the forest of hoses and wires, is a small pool of water.

Yes, that is right. To find a leak you have to know: do we have salt water or fresh water? Fresh water comes from our water tank and hoses, or from rain (this falls from the sky, but not lately). Salt water comes from the sea and is a more serious issue. The only way we know to get this information is to completely trust our immune systems, dip a finger in the water, and place it gently on the tongue. Then rinse vigorously with clean water. It is quite disgusting. Damn. This is salt water collecting quietly in the corner of Hiram’s room. So that means something is weeping somewhere, But where???

We go into Sherlock mode and I began emptying the compartment under the sole by the engine room. It’s filled with hoses of all shapes and sizes and is filthy underneath. I find water standing next to the drain from that compartment; the drain that flows water into the same area of the engine room where no hand can reach. You’d think that we would be getting closer to a solution but not so. We see no way for water to be collecting there, much less salt water. There is only one thru hull anywhere near this area and that thru hull has recently been tended to and is completely dry. Not even a tiny drip of seawater emerges from its freshly greased surfaces. Foiled again.

The adjacent compartment, which I am drying out with a fan. Yes, it’s ugly. No, I am not going to paint it right now. Maybe later. I believe this is number 104 on my list of priorities.

So I leave you with a cliff hanger. I wiped the compartment out, then we left a fan going so it would be really dry, allowing us to see any tiny trickle of water that might enter and give us a clue. Stay tuned for the solution, if we ever find it. Today I am down at the boat and that little compartment is still not dry. No standing water, but I’d think it would be bone dry by now. (You know, it occurs to me that I can ‘work’ on the boat all day long and never accomplish a thing.) We are one for two in the ‘solving of the waterworks mysteries’ department.

The better part of Hiram’s engine room. Water on the floor sort of in the middle of the photo.

There is other unsolved water on the other side of the engine room. We wipe it up, it comes back. This has been going on for months now. We’ve both stared at it for what seems like centuries, pleading for it to give up its secrets, shining lights at angles hoping for a glisten of moisture, running fingers and paper towels along hoses and connectors. I know astute readers see that thru hull in the photo and think ‘Aha!’ but don’t get too excited. This is fresh water and, anyway, that thru hull doesn’t leak a bit. Our staring and shining lights hither and yon turned up no clues. I stuck a few paper towels around to see if we could determine which direction the water was flowing from. Then I tightened all the connections in the fresh water line in that area just because why not? I have nothing to lose.  It’s all we could do. We are now one for three and the water is definitely in the lead. Recall I said this stuff makes us feel like we are really in charge, but I didn’t say we accomplished anything specifically.

In other news, we’ve bought our mistress a few gifts lately.  Mike climbed the mast and gave Galapagos a new wind vane. The old one was frozen to itself and the metal was bonded to the mast, requiring a hack saw to remove it. But Mike made short work of it and now we have a wind vane that actually works. Small pleasures. Damn that’s a tall mast and we’re grateful there are mast steps to help.

Mike bought another little gift for Galapagos this week: a 12 volt battery charger. Boy howdy, we were excited about that! It matches his new little hand held vacuum for his man cave, and also will charge the flashlight and drill. This will be so useful when we are at anchor and he wants to whip out a boat project or two rather than relax. An inverter would not come amiss at this point.

Mike is so excited about this 12 volt charger and vacuum for the man cave.

Mike is so excited about this 12 volt charger and vacuum for the man cave.

The new stuff is by way of preparing for a 2 week cruise up north. We plan to leave next weekend, all other things being equal. Our plans are flexible because we don’t want to overtax the exhaust system, which is still holding. And as an aside, if you are looking for a second career, please consider being a diesel mechanic since they are always completely booked up and have no time for small things like exhaust systems. Mike will be emailing a photo to Broomfield’s in Ballard. If we can get anyone there interested in this we may take a couple of days from our busy vacation schedule to have them take a look at our exhaust system.

So we’ll be heading north. If you are up Seattle way keep a lookout for a big blue boat and give us a shout.