Tag Archives: Cruising

Splish Splash!

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“So long you guys! Thanks for everything, it’s been so much fun. We’ll see you soon, somehow. We’ll just make it happen.”

These were our final parting words to our friends the Brownlows and the Baergs as we stood outside of Hammerheads, a local watering hole close to Marina San Carlos. We’d started the evening at JJ’s Tacos down the road, but the music was too loud and the band’s groupies weren’t really our crowd. We wanted to visit with each other; an impossible thing at JJ’s that night. S/V Blue was heading across the sea the next day and we were taking their slip in Marina Real for a couple of nights to wash the boat down. We planned to leave this side of the sea ourselves in a couple of days. S/V Slow Motion was still stuck in Marina Seca Guaymas, awaiting a new water tank; one of those unplanned expenditures that seem to happen all too often with boats. We didn’t know when we’d all be together again.

All the cool kids hanging out waiting for Galapagos to splash.

One should be very very careful of the words they use when saying goodbye to people. It’s almost like throwing wishes out into the universe and asking for trouble. When I said, “ See you soon, somehow. We’ll just make it happen.” what I really meant was “We’ll find you in a nice anchorage soon and have a great snorkel together.” Instead what the universe granted us was something altogether different.
It went like this. The day before we had successfully launched Galapagos on a windless morning at highish tide. With the Brownlows and the Baergs in attendance, Curt and Kevin got our big boat turned around, walking her stern into the slip adjacent to the dock. Cressie and Lynn stood by on the other side of the fairway, just in case we went crazy and needed help on that side. You never know. Shit happens sometimes. I love a lot of support at the dock.
With her nose pointed in the right direction, we were off. Within 15 minutes we were lying at anchor in the bay, breathing sighs of relief and drinking champagne in the cockpit.

I’ve gone to full on real glass here.

It was great being back aboard and remembering how we do things around here. I thought I had probably forgotten a great deal, but it all came rushing back: how to get off the boat and into the dinghy safely, how to tie the dinghy off on the davits so it doesn’t swing around, how to move around the boat without falling and stumbling into things, which toilet to use when, the dance of anchoring, watching the weather, so many little things that become second nature when you live on a boat. It’s just a completely different way of living. Yes, I thought. It’s really time to get going. It felt great to be out on the water once more.

Here we go! Thanks for the photo, Curt Brownlow? Kevin Baerg? Who took this? How did it end up in my photos file?

Not that houses are bad. We love houses, too. We’ve really enjoyed having a house to live in with friends while Galapagos was in the boatyard, but San Carlos was starting to grow on us too much. I think we’ve been here too long. We are getting familiar with all the places to eat and shop. The folks at the local grocery think I live here; just another gringa looking for canned stewed tomatoes and ice cream made with actual cream, items which do not exist in these parts.
Driving to Guaymas no longer terrifies me, although I prefer not to go too deeply into town. There are many one way streets that are not marked. Ask me how I know. I know all the largest potholes around here by heart and work to avoid them in advance. That’s how you know when it’s time to go: you know the potholes personally, by name, and driving is no longer terrifying. That level of familiarity happens alarmingly quickly.
After our fond farewells last night, we were ready to head over to Marina Real early this morning; our final stop before crossing the sea. We planned an early morning departure to stay ahead of the wind that builds during the day. I was enjoying my morning coffee watching the sun shine on the surrounding rocky hills when Mike popped his head up the companionway.
“Well, we’ve got another problem now.” I love how he says that stuff, all deadpan-like. “The starter battery is dead.”

Well, damn it all to hell and back.

Our yard neighbor had some extra blue bottom paint, so… why not? And how about the repair on that bottom, huh?  Go Team Galapagos!

I knew things had gone too well. We had got Galapagos’ bottom repaired beautifully, got the new boom painted and deployed, the bottom job was spectacular. And those were just the big jobs. If you know anything about boats you’ll know that there are unlimited smaller jobs that happen at the same time. It’s a quantum physics thing, the amount of jobs that can be squeezed into one day at the boatyard. Science has not yet devised a way to measure such things so we chalk them up to the unlimited mysteries of life.

Mike puts a paint roller to the area where she was supported on the hard. Thanks for the cool photo, Kevin Baerg.

Galapagos was shiny and ready to go, all systems great. Or. So. WE. THOUGHT.
So now, the start battery. Once more it’s important to be grateful for the timing of such things. We are in port, we have a car, we have friends. Mike has known that replacing this battery was going to be a pain because it’s really big, heavy, and located inconveniently. Mike has determined that one cell in the battery is bad. That means the entire thing is toast.
So we’ll see how quickly we can get this replaced. He plans to replace this flooded wetcell 8D battery, an Armor Plate 36,  with two smaller more nimble units. The battery, by the way, is about 6 years old. It was installed by the previous owner. Apparently one cell has gone bad. And if one cell is bad, the whole thing is bad.

No bueno. See the water line? It’s in the red.

Why is this man smiling? He just looks so satisfied here! You’d think he enjoyed this kind of thing. Wait a minute…

So that “See you soon!”? Yeah. Soon as in TODAY.  Mike and Curt now have a special date to muscle this baby up and out of the boat. We’ll get to say farewell to them all over again! Hey, maybe we’ll get another go at those tacos at JJ’s after all.
We’re paying 33$ US per day to stay tied up in this beautiful marina, meanwhile, so I cannot complain. After all, we already know all the great places to go eat. And what could be more important than that?

I’m not complaining. Not even a little bit.

We’ve decided to go south with the wind this year. When all systems are ACTUALLY a go and the weather looks good, we’ll sail back across the Sea of Cortez towards Santa Rosalia and try to catch up to S/V Blue. Maybe S/V Slow Motion will be close behind. And then go south from there. We are both positively stoked to get snorkeling again. We’re coming for you, fish!

Benson Island – Best of the Broken Group

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Better sit down so you can deal with the shock of what I’m going to tell you. Be calm. Don’t get up and walk out, stomp off, or slam doors about this. Just hear me out. I know it’s almost a sacrilege to say that the Broken Group, as a rule, just doesn’t do it for you as a cruising destination. But with the exception of Benson Island, this group of islands leaves me feeling a little ‘meh’. Whew. Glad that’s off my chest.

Tide pool at Benson Island. The colors are astounding, and unmolested by software. This is really how they look.

Compared to the Gulf Islands in the Salish Sea, these islands look like they just emerged from the depths last week. There is nothing gentle or time-worn about these lands. There are precious few landing beaches, but plenty of big hull crunching rocks. True, the water is practically sedate there it’s so protected. So, in terms of a quiet anchorage where you can lay around and read, they are very hard to beat up there on the west coast. But there isn’t a whole lot of variety among them. To me, they kind of all look alike. I can only do so much kayaking among giant cedar trees before I’m ready for something different.  Yeah, sacre’ bleu, etc.  I like the Deer Group so much better.

Except for Benson Island. There is nothing sedate about Benson Island. This is one wild and cool place where all your senses will be engaged. Put that Kindle down, baby, because we’re going ashore!

For your comparison. Jarvis Lagoon between Jarvis and Jacques Islands in the Broken Group. No place to go ashore here. Not even a little bit unless you want to clamber around on slippery rocks.

Another tide pool on Benson Island. I never get tired of them.

So happy to see purple sea stars living here!

This was our second visit to Benson Island. We visited in 2010 with our last boat, Moonrise, a Cal 34. The anchorage at Benson is small, with room for only a handful of boats and it’s not particularly well protected. There are many sharp and pointy rocks with big teeth, land sharks.  On the east side of the island is a cove with a sand and pebble beach complete with rocky tidal pools and the big driftwood people up here know and love.

View from Galapagos at anchor off Benson Island. Yes, fog coming in from the Pacific.

View from Galapagos at anchor off Benson Island. Yes, fog coming in from the Pacific. High tide. Ocean is around the corner to the right.

With wind generally coming in from the sea, you are protected from the worst of the wind and swells, but be sure of your anchor holding before you go ashore. We anchored in about 30 feet, give or take 5,  with good holding and with plenty of swing room. We were the only boat there. Although our holding was good, it’s exposed enough at that anchorage that we always felt better keeping an eye on Galapagos and were pretty relieved to find her where we left her. Anxiety is a bitch. (Just FYI for other cruisers, we never leave her unattended until we are certain she is staying put. Unless the wind changes. Unless the current changes. You know the drill.)

Galapagos in her natural habitat.

Once on shore you are in old growth forest and can take a path toward the beach between Benson and Clarke Islands. From there, if you are in the mood, you can walk and climb along this beach to the woolier side of the island where the rolling Pacific meets the shore. This path takes you through a clearing with sedges and grasses to the site of the Tseshaht village that used to stand here. The Tseshaht people consider Benson Island to be the place where their people originated, so this is a holy island to them and it feels every bit of it. Some of the cathedrals in Scotland brought similar feelings up for me.

Up and into the wild woods.

Since our last visit in 2010, the tribe has installed a lovely carving representing the First Man. As a tribute, or perhaps as an invocation, people have left gifts from the natural world at his feet. We thought this was lovely and wanted to participate, asking the First Man for his permission to explore the island and for his protection while we did so.  We found an empty paper wasp nest and placed this at his feet with thanks for allowing us to visit this beautiful place. When an island is full of spirit, it’s best to acknowledge that with a humble heart.

The First Man carving. He is really a handsome statue.

Offerings to the First Man. I hope his spirit appreciates the wasp nest we found.

When we were there five years ago, there was a sort-of trail that crossed the island, although I remember pushing through some rather dense and tall salal at one point. At that time, camping had been prohibited for only a year.  Five years later we couldn’t find any kind of trail that crossed the island. Now that camping is not allowed, perhaps they are letting the trail go. You can push through brush to trudge across the island if you want to, but we didn’t want to leave Galapagos for that long.  And we are 5 years older. Maybe that had something to do with it.

During our hike on our visit in 2010 I remembered that we had seen a lovely buck standing in the sunlight, filtered through the trees. He had been standing looking down at us as we walked along the ridge that crosses the island. I decided to climb up to the ridge, using shrubs and ferns as handholds, and see if I could find a trail in that area. Instead I saw his grandson. Or maybe his son.

He was completely undisturbed by my presence.

We are never overly concerned about predators in the wild, but we ran across this scat and wondered what could have left it. This is a small island and has an obvious deer presence. We wondered if something was keeping their population in check. Do you know what this is?

The larger piece of scat was maybe 4-5 inches long.

Something else precious about this island is that there are remains of petroglyphs on a rock outcropping near the anchorage. The outcropping is under the roots of a large tree.  In 2010 I discovered them as I was examining the rock and was completely taken aback when they kind of jumped into my view. I found them again easily.  They are a fascinating reminder that ancient people lived here. Archaeologists have determined that native people lived on this island as long as 5000 years ago.

Look closely toward the middle of the photo, a bit to the right.

Here’s a closer view. On the left/center you will see a salmon skeleton. On the right is a figure of a person.  Above and to the left of the salmon there is a sun. These are extremely faint and in person much easier to discern.

After checking into Ucluelet, a visit to Benson Island is a great way to start your tour of the Broken Group. But if you think the rest of the islands will be like this one, you’ll be disappointed. They are too protected, too new, and are not washed and scoured like Benson’s shores. Benson Island represents the best of the wild Pacific islands in this area, along with the Deer Group on the Bamfield side of Barkley Sound. Be ready for all your senses to tingle, and if the wind and weather is right, you’ll have a decent night’s sleep in this anchorage. Be sure to pay your respects to the First Man and give thanks that you, too, have the good fortune to visit this beautiful place.

 

Good Boat!

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We know you’ve been dying to find out how the engine performed on our trip; how that exhaust elbow stood up. Did Mike and Melissa do boat work in exotic places in British Columbia? Did the Little Cunning Plan team have to use their new unlimited towing through Boat U.S.? Did Mike perseverate on the exhaust system?  The answers are yes, no, and yes. Two yesses and a no, because we are resourceful and do our best to be prepared.

Scenes like this make boat travel worth the risk.

In this case, I was dead anxious about taking this boat very far from home with an exhaust system that was sure to fail…sometime. On the other hand, we had been taking the boat out in our local waters as much as we could, and thus far the stupid exhaust had held its ground. Which means it wasn’t broke, so why would we fix it? Still, even as we wanted to believe that it would hold for a long time, we weren’t convinced.

“What’s our Plan B?” , I asked Mike before we left.  So he made a plan. He’s cunning like that.

Before we left for the trip he stocked a repair kit of sorts consisting of supplies he got at the auto parts store. He bought a fiberglass/epoxy and wire muffler repair kit. To this he added a steel collar that could be bolted onto the pipe to hold pieces together should things go south. My contribution was a magnifying glass and a lot of praying. Our goal: have as much fun as possible before the shit hits the fan and also keep Hiram safe. 

Don’t think that my light tone implies that we didn’t take the risks seriously. We certainly did. But if you are going to have a boat and do the things we like to do with a boat, calculated risks are part of that equation. We figured we would be pushing the engine and the exhaust system pretty hard on that trip. If it failed, we’d just get it repaired wherever we were. If it didn’t fail, then we would stop worrying about it.

I had my little magnifying glass out each day, examining the weld all the way around. Days went by and I saw nothing. Then one day I thought I saw what looked like a fine pencil marking, so faint I couldn’t tell if I was actually seeing it. I talked myself out of telling Mike, thinking that it was nothing, truly not even sure it was there. That’s how faint it was, and how bad my eyes are, I guess. Mike checked with his bare eyeballs every day, or every few hours actually. We were both attentive to engine noise, always waiting for something to change. It sounds worse than it was. We just kept part of our brains in that ‘awareness’ mode you all know and love. Kind of like when you first bring a baby home and every time you walk by the crib you make sure the kid is breathing. That kind of thing.

View from under the hard dodger.

It happened when we were anchored at that lovely little beach on Kuper Island, about two days after I thought I saw what I thought wasn’t actually there. It was a Sunday. Mike went below and this time his silence just sounded different. You know, no cursing or anything like we’d had before. Just this silence that was deafening in its own way. I don’t know how I knew. I just knew.

It was cracked in the same place. Not completely broken yet, but soon it would be. Of course, we were pretty close to services where we were. There would be Ladysmith just across the water, Sidney wasn’t very far, and Maple Bay has services a well. We were not exactly in the middle of nowhere. There was a couple on a Cal 29 anchored close by who offered us the use of their car on Salt Spring Island if we needed it. We probably could have just had it fixed there. But we didn’t.

View from Sidney Spit

Mike whipped out the epoxy/fiberglass tape bandage and wrapped the thing carefully. I put on the receiving wire, which was kind of like jewelry wire only heavier so my hands knew what to do. When the epoxy cured, Mike put on the steel collar for extra holding power.

Our original travel itinerary had us going north of Gabriola Island and sailing down the Strait of Georgia. I felt strongly that karma would not deal kindly with us if we threw fortune in her face like that. It just felt like pushing our luck. So I kind of sort of insisted that we go south and start back home. We wouldn’t go home early, but we would stay close to services should we need them. Poor Mike. I felt as though I had rained on his very parade. We would have actually made it to someplace we hadn’t been before. We so want to go further north. But it was not to be.

Staged for purposes of photo because Mike had already removed it once.

Staged for purposes of photo because Mike had already removed it by the time I remembered a photo was needed.

We sailed down to Portland Island, using the engine as little as possible. Hey, babying your engine is a great way to practice your sailing skills. When we had the engine on we kept him at just the right RPM to minimize vibration. I love Portland Island, and we had a great day of sailing. So that was okay by us. We had the perfect anchorage there and settled in for a couple of days.

After our Portland Island stay, we had just enough time for a stop in Sidney to restock, then it was time to get home. We check in to Roche Harbor and began the trip back to Tacoma, again, sailing as much as possible. But damn that thing called a ‘job’, we did have a deadline for making it back.  So Hiram was fired up much of the way. Mike tested the integrity of the exhaust elbow constantly. If it was cool enough to the touch, he was testing it.  It held and held and held.

We arrived in Tacoma on Sunday afternoon after a wonderful, fulfilling trip to the islands. We docked that boat perfectly. We got her tied up and situated while the engine cooled off. Mike went below to check on Hiram. And the elbow broke. It broke all the way, as in ‘two pieces’. I am not making this up. That boat got us home with a cracked exhaust all the way from Kuper Island. It didn’t actually break in two until we were snugly, safely in our slip in the marina. Hiram was safe.

Good boat. Really good boat.

A really Good Boat.