Tag Archives: Sailing

S/V Who Knows?

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The still nameless Ericson 25

Here’s the latest on Andrew’s boat. I know you’ve all been holding your breath for this update, right? Get some popcorn, because this post is mostly movie clips.

We sailed over to Gig Harbor last Friday to pick up the boat and the whole thing was just about perfect. The weather was warm and windy, which is all one can ask for around here on a summer evening.  I dropped Mike and Andrew off on the dock where the still nameless Ericson 25 was waiting, then stood by on Moonrise while they got everything ready for the maiden voyage. I was pleased to have been able to navigate Moonrise in unknown territory, around lots of expensive boats, and get Mike and Andrew off at the right slip without ‘incident’. Whew!

Out in the passage, they raised the sails for the first time on the little Ericson. You’ll notice the main looks a little wonky. No worries, that’s been adjusted since this video was taken. It looks loads better now. Notice the Viking on the main sail! This is pretty cool because Andrew is a student at Western Washington University, home of the Vikings!

We arranged to have a slip in our marina for a couple of months while we figure out where the boat will be stored when Andrew is in Bellingham at school. The Gods were smiling on this whole situation because as a new boat owner Andrew has a lot to learn and we’d like to be the ones to teach him. A temporary slip was found on the dock behind Moonrise. Turns out to be the exact slip we had for Moonrise when we first moved into that marina a few years back. Andrew’s boat is almost directly behind Moonrise, giving him access to everything we have on our boat, and putting us right there if he needs help. Excellent!

Remember those videos you took of your kids when they were babies? Or that your parents took of you, if you happen to be Tate and Dani, or Vlad and Atilla. You know the ones: Watch while little snookums picks his nose!, Watch while little snookums takes his first steps and whacks himself on the table corner. Watch little snookums sleeping.  Okay. Well watch while big snookums takes his own boat out of the slip alone for the first time. (Now he just backs the boat out of the slip, but he was not sure about it the first time. I love how they toddle first, then they run!) I’m filming from Moonrise. Bear with us. We’re being parents here.  There are a lot more video clips where this came from. At least we’ve progressed from watching him sleep and if this video is not more interesting than watching paint dry, it’s at least mercifully short.

As an aside, I sometimes wonder about the number of photos we take of our kids. These statistics tell the tale: number of photos we have of Moonrise under sail after owning her for 4 years: 2, both taken in the last 3 months.   Number of photos of Andrew’s still nameless boat, under sail, after owning her for less than 1 week: 234,490. Hmmm.

The proverbial sunset sail.

It’s been several days of sailing together, teaching Andrew how to anchor out, and watching while he learns to single-hand the boat. We notice he is falling in love with this boat and it makes our collective hearts swell with pride. This part of our cunning plan is working.

Here’s another stunning video of us stealing Andrew’s wind, talking smack about how much faster our boat is than his boat:

 

In yet another indication that this was the right boat for Andrew, today a dinghy pretty much fell out of the sky and into my lap. I awoke this morning and the first thought that popped into my mind was that Andrew was planning to sail up to Seattle to see his sister and he doesn’t yet have a dinghy. Pulling Puddler, our dinghy, would take about a knot off his speed, at least. Plus, we like to have Puddler available ourselves. I wanted a dinghy in decent shape and I didn’t want to spend more than about 50$ for it. So I opened Craigslist over coffee. And there it was, posted less than 1 hour before, probably right as I was waking up. By noon we were putting it into the back of Andrew’s car, and it fit perfectly.

So, aside from some odds and ends, he’s pretty much set in terms of learning how to sail his boat and use it to travel to exotic locations such as Seattle and Bellingham. He’s lining up crew so he won’t be alone at first, which relieves our minds. And what about Mike and me? We’ve been sailing a lot, too. Here’s a quick clip of our sail down to Penrose State Park for the 4th of July. We are not real fans of that holiday and like to get away from the noise and crowds. We were the only boat on our side of the park. Perfect. And we had winds gusting to 25 knots on the way down. More perfect.

And while we were there, we had a little adventure. Or rather, Mike had a little adventure and I watched him. Then I had to buy him a present.

The view from the top of the mast is stunning. Plus, I hold Mike’s life in my hands. Not really. He’s actually very safe:

And now, relax to the soothing visuals of fireworks over Commencement Bay. It’ s much more soothing to watch the video than it was being there with hundreds of boats, some unlit and small, all over the bay. What a circus. I can’t wait for the 4th to be on a weekend again, so we can come home the following day and miss the zoo in the bay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Need for Speed When Performing Boat Yoga, and a Cunning Little Cruiser!

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You think a Cal 34 cannot go fast? HA! Double Ha!

Another fine weekend of Pacific Northwest sailing. On Saturday we headed over to Oro Bay on Anderson Island. There was a little boat moored there that we wanted to take a look at for our son, Andrew. More on that later.

The wind was whipping about 15 knots as we headed out of the marina, taking full advantage of the incoming tide as we swept under the Narrows Bridge. Sailing around here means always being very aware of what the tide is doing and when, since any sailor up here knows that if you try to sail against the tide in the narrows, you will sail backwards.

This time we had about 2-3 knots of current with us, and great wind to boot, so naturally there was time for a little boat yoga. Boat yoga is good for all parts of a person and really takes the edge off those long wheel-slave sessions when the only auto pilots on board are named Mike and Melissa. That’s right, folks, there is nothing like a few yoga poses while heeled at 25 degrees to make what could otherwise be a tiring time at the wheel simply fly by.

Thankfulness. Hold pose for at least 30 seconds while you give thanks for the wind and your saucy boat.

 

The Wind Tunnel. Sailing for long periods on a broad reach in plenty of wind allows tension to build up in the body. Use this pose to discharge that tension, sending the energy back up into the wind from whence it came. Brace foot firmly. Blow out through your mouth, like the wind.

The Compass. Become the needle on your compass, pointing toward the horizon. Strike pose swinging arm through all four of the major directions, keeping arm straight. Pivot at the hips. Brace feet and be careful! Alternatively, you can pretend you are singing into a microphone with one hand, point to your audience with the other. Your choice.

After a refreshing yoga session, it’s time to change helmsmen and sail through some tidal rips. May as well turn off the sound on your computer because I still don’t have the hang of talking during a video clip when there is a lot of wind.

The anchorage at Oro Bay is really protected and quiet. We anchored in about 16 feet of water, feeling completely protected from the wind. An interesting feature of this anchorage is this old ferry. Someone brought this thing over from the east coast, thinking they would somehow restore it and take over the ferry service over on Ketron Island, just next door. Why do people think they can salvage huge things like this? It’s pretty cool, but I cannot imagine how much money it would take to get something like this up and running.

The old ferry from Ocean City, which is probably in New Jersey. Just now it has two travel trailers parked in it, and plenty of sea life parked ON it.

So, now we can satisfy the question on everyone’s minds: Why are these people looking for a boat for their son? The answer is simple: we are insane. Let’s just get it onto the table right now. We have lost our minds somewhere in the wind. Sure, there are nice logical answers like ‘We want Andrew to learn about working on boats.’, ‘Andrew needs a project to work on.’, or ‘It would be cheap housing during college.’

But those answers are probably not the real reason. Probably the real reason is that young men need adventures in order to become solid men. We prefer that Andrew’s adventures not be in the form of either going to war, or playing like he is going to war in front of the video screen. Andrew had a grand adventure traveling through Europe on his own between highschool and college. It crystalized something in him that has helped him be successful in college. Adventures do that. We’d like to see that kind of development continue so that he can become even more self-sufficient and make choices about how he lives his life that might be a little outside the box. He’s enough like me that I worry he will get bored with life if he enters the world of work, never to have time to himself again until retirement.  We see this as part of his education, part of his growing-up. And if we get to live a little vicariously through him, well, what are kids for? I guess like most parents, we want better for our kids than we had for ourselves, and we want them to know they don’t have to do things the way we did them.

So we sailed out to Anderson Island to look at this little Westerly Cirrus, a 22 foot sailboat that could take Andrew just about anywhere.

The Westerly Cirrus

This little boat is salty as heck, but it needs some work because it’s been sitting there for a long time. The price is right, but does Andrew want to take it on? Like us, he’d rather sail than work on a boat, but it wouldn’t take much to make this boat sail-able. And the sails are in good condition, as is the standing rigging. I’ll review this boat on the boat reviews page.

Here’s a final video of our sail back. We ran our engine for about 1/2 hour the entire weekend. Great Pacific Northwest sailing!

Moonrise, out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.)