Canada Trip

Sunday-Monday August 10th-11th:

This is it, the last post of the long ass vacation posts.

This morning we had a choice to make. Actually we had a couple, but after the breakfast and coffee choices were made we were down to one biggie. We did not have to be back to work until Wednesday, and it was only Sunday. We could head all the way back to seattle from Port Townsend (about 35 miles) or we could half the distance and stay in Port Ludlow and head home on Monday or Tuesday. We decided we did’nt want the vacation to end just yet, so we headed to Port Ludlow for the night and would go back to Seattle on Monday. This would give us a day to get the boat unpacked and easy back into city life…..whatever that means.

Port Ludlow is not a bad place, some people love it. Mostly old people it seems. But to me, it’s the last stop of our last two cruises. So it makes it even more crappy.

Ghost followed us down and we had one last dinner aboard Palarran.

I do have to mention that people on boats are wierd when it comes to anchoring. I don’t know if it is their insecurity about their skills at anchoring their boat. Or maybe its their herd mentality. Or maybe they just assume that because your already anchored, you must know something that they do not and want to follow your lead. But more times than not, when your anchored somewhere in a large bay, with tons of room. Someone will come along and drop anchor as close to you as possible. This happened in Port Ludlow, amoung other places.

I understand it if the anchorage is small, I understand it if the anchorage is crowded. I understand it if there are some spots in the anchorage with poor holding. But in this case the anchorage had exactly 4 boats in it. We were one of them. Ghost was another and anchored about 200 yards way. Another boat was behind us another 200 yards way and a fourth boat Waaaaaay over on the other side of the anchorage.

And just so you don’t think I”m over reacting and to let you know just how big this anchorage is, I measured it with google maps. And being very conservitive with the area I would consider anchorable, I came up with 116 acres. Thats a big area. Depending on wind and weather this number could grow or shrink, but it’s a fair number.

So with 116 acres of water to choose from the SS ‘No Personal Space’ comes in and drops anchor right in front of us. His stern was 50 feet from our bow. 50 feet!! 116 acres of room to anchor and 3 other boats to fuck with and he drops anchor 50 from us. Why?? It’s the equivient of going to a movie in a empty theater and having the only other person in the theater coming in and sitting right next to you.

No harm no foul guess and it’s not illegal, I just don’t know why people do it.

Anyway, after raising anchor the next morning we headed south for home. No wind at all so it was alot of motoring.

As we rounded Point No Point the Seattle Skyline came in to view. BOOOOOO! It was over. The vacation was done. We had a blast, did’nt break too much stuff and saw some freakin AWESOME sights. And learned alot about our little boat and what she can handle, and what we can handle as well.

The pictures I posted in all these updates are only a fraction of the pictures we took. Follow the links below for more pics, vids and the map of the trip.

• PICTURES
• VIDEOS
• MAP

THE END!

Next up, Underwater boat maintenance.

Friday-Sunday August 8th-10th:

As the crow flies it was over 30+ miles from Reid Harbor to Port Townsend, so the fleet was up and heading south by 5:30am. The fleet consisted of Palarran, Ghost, Pearl, two other boats in the harbor and another boat that joined us as we were passing Roche Harbor. We were all headed to Port Townsend to attend the Lats & Atts Northwest cruisers party for the weekend.

The wind was up and blowing pretty good, unfortunatly it was out of the Southeast, which was the direction we needed to go. At first we thought we would just motor into it and just get to Port Townsend, but the waves were getting pretty big and it was getting old slamming into them all morning. So we raised the sails and did what sail boats do……sail. We had a pretty good sail and some fun with a little tacking duel between us, Pearl and that last boat to join the fleet. Ghost and the other boat motored on without us.

Just as we were passing Lime Kiln Point on the southern end of San Juan Island, Pearl and the other boat took a tack out. We stayed on our tack to hug the coast of the island. Since it was taking pretty close to our rhumbline. This turned out to be the wrong thing to do. About 20 minutes later, the tide turned and the wind dropped a little and shifted and we got slowed way down and could not seem to make very good progress.

Just as the other boats sailed away from us,  a big pod of Orcas showed up. So we watched them for a bit and continued our sail south. The sun came out, the wind died around noon as we passed Smith Island, so we lowered the sails and motored for a couple more hours. We got a little more wind about an hour or so from Port Townsend so we sailed right up to the entrance of Port Hudson Marina, where the party was.

Ghost and Pearl were already there and tied up.

For what ever reason, we did not take one picture for the rest of the trip.

My buddy Dan drove up from seattle and hung out with us for the weekend, the party was a good time and we caught up with some boating friend that we only see at the party every year or only every few months.

Sunday morning was the end of the weekend and everyone was either headed home or headed north for thier summer cruise to the islands or Canada.

We finally kicked Dan’s ass off the boat and sent him on his way:

What the hell is up with that hobo looking backpack thing??

Wednesday-Thrusday August 6th-7th:

Another windless day today. As we were motoring through the southern part of the Canadian Gulf Islands we saw a pod of Orcas. They were quite a ways away, but you could see their fins as they swam along.

Right after we spotted the Orcas and left them in our wake, I discovered something about my trusty little camera. Up until this point I had only one real complaint about it. That being it had a really lame 3x zoom. You really could’nt zoom in on anything. And today, after almost a full month of taking pictures with the thing, I finally discovered that there was a setting that could be enabled to give the camera 11x zoom!! FRAAAAACKKKK!!!!

So in celebration, I give you a zoomed in picture of a lighthouse:

We were heading for Roche Harbor so we could check back into the U.S. and clear customs.  Right after we crossed the official border we motored past Stuart Island and had to take pictures of our favorite lighthouse, the Turn Point Lighthouse, on the NW tip of Stuart Island.

About 10 minutes after that picture was taken, I noticed an apple floating past the boat and thought to myself…..hrmm, what are the odds that I would float past a random apple in the middle of all this water? Then I spot another apple, and another and a few oranges and a couple more assorted pieces of fruit. All whole, wierd. I guess somebody dropped them overboard by accident.

We thought that clearing into customs on a Wednesday would be a good idea and alot less crowed, but we were wrong. There were 8-10 boats ahead of us and 10 or so other boats already at the customs dock getting cleared in when we got there. Luckily there was no wind or current so it was not too difficult to hold station while waiting for our turn.

Clearing in was not a problem, and after assuring the custom’s agent I was who I claimed to be, that I did’nt have any exoctic birds, monkeys (I did’nt know they had monkeys in Canada?) or any fruit onboard….’Aaahhhaaa, that is why I saw all the fruit floating about’, I was allowed back in to the U.S.

We had a small list of stuff we needed to pick up while we were here in ‘town’, but there was such a long ass line up of boats behind us wanting to check in that we felt it would be a dickhead move to stay at the dock and go shopping. It’s allowed for up to 30 minutes, and alot of folks do it, which accounts for the line up. But decided to move on and pick up stuff later.

Originally we planned on staying just around the corner in Garrison Bay, but decided that we would instead head back over to Stuart Harbor and meet up with Ghost and Pearl in Reid Harbor.

Once there and anchored we found Ghost and Pearl, but the crews were ashore hiking. So we stole Scotty jerry cans and Tawn took the dinghy back over to Roche Harbor to get 10 gallons of diesel fuel and some stuff from the store.

As we were getting settled in, the tall ship “The Hawaiian Cheiftian” was leaving the harbor:

We set out the crabpots when she got back and had a crab boil with the crews of Ghost and Pearl.

We took a little hike the next day, and did some fishing. Not alot of luck fishing, Zack caught a big Ling cod, but since it was not ling cod season, he had to put it back. We also stopped by the little treasure chest on the island and picked up a couple new tshirts.

Map of trip