I just realized, my digital camera has become part of my memory.

CB 9 May, 2009
[3] comments

I was sitting here thinking that I should do a better job of updating this site, and as I was trying to recall what we had done since the last time I updated, and drawing more than a couple of blanks.

I thought to myself, “hmmm, maybe I’ll look at the pictures on my camera”.

And then it hit me. Each weekend was sitting right there, in chronological order. Mostly out of focus or poorly framed, but there none the less. So instead of racking my brain trying to remember details from 2 or 3 weeks ago, I’ll fire up the camera and take a trip down memory lane.

The weekend after the last update, Me and Tawn sailed down to Quartermaster Harbor, which is on the south end of a Vashon Island. There was almost no wind so we ended up getting there a little later than we thought we would. We had brought our mountain bikes with us this time, so we went for a  bike ride after we had tied up at the docks. The sun was setting just as we got back.

We woke up the next morning to a little more wind and a nice sunny day. We sailed out of the harbor and headed a short distance away to a little town called Gig Harbor. It had been 5 years or so since we had last visited Gig Harbor. And that was on Thanksgiving on our little boat “Strange Crew”.

The wind was actually blowing pretty good, but as we got out of Quartermaster Harbor, we had to go against the tide. And while the wind was not blowing very hard, it was enough to push us along at 2 knots, however, the tide was running against us at 3 knots. The net result was us moving backwards at 1 knot. That was not very productive.

Gig Harbor is probably the most protected harbor in the entire Puget Sound. The entire anchorage is surrounded with the exception of a small opening on the southern side that requires a tight “S” curve to get in. It’s even tighter at low tide, which is when we just happened to come in at.

As usual, pictures just do not do it justice, but I’ll post them anyway to give you an idea of what it looks like. This is the entrance into Gig Harbor. The picture was taken about 100 yards from shore. As you can see, or not, it looks like there is no way in. The plan is to head straight ahead towards that little grey house in the center of the picture, then turn right towards that lighthouse on the right of the picture:

Once you get to about 20 feet from shore, you’ll see the entrance open up and it looks a little more inviting. The grey house is just out of the picture to the left and the lighthouse is just out of the picture to the right:

Since the tide was out, the depth in the entrance was very low, the depth meter showed we had about 4 feet of water under the keel. Tawn was on the bow keeping an eye out for rocks, just in case I got out of the channel. Once inside the depth increase to a respectable 15-20 feet. While Tawn was on the bow, she shot a quick little video of the entrance as we came through:

We headed home on Tuesday, unfortunatly there was not a puff of wind, so we had to motor the whole way home.

The next weekend is the cheesiest boating related weekend in Seattle. It’s called “Opening Day”, and it’s basically when the retards with the blue blazers and scramble egg “Captian” hats parade their boats up and down a piece of water called the Montlake Cut, to much pomp and crapenstance. It really is very stupid. I’ll not speak of it again.

Posted in CB, Palarran, Weekend trips | 3 Comments

Ooohh! Summer like conditions…for a couple days at least.

CB 23 April, 2009
[4] comments

Things, weather wise are warming/drying up. For short periods of time at least. Easter weekend, however, was not a good example of good weather, but we untied the boat anyway and headed over to one of our favorite anchorages (Manzanita Bay) for just chilling out and relaxing in. Our friends Dave and Jen on their boat Epic, and Phil on his boat TipToe, with Rhonda & Jason along as guest were gonna be there waiting on us. We all rafted togather for optimum fun.

Since Tawn and I had to work on on Saturday, we would be a couple hours behind them, and by the time we got there, dinner was almost ready. And holy crap was it good. A big ass ham and scalloped potatoes….and a bunch of other stuff.

After dinner we sat around with a few cocktails and ended up talking each other into trying our luck at Squid fishing. Either our luck was lousy or we had no clue how to catch squid. And in all actuality we did not really give it that much of a try. 30 minutes tops.

We woke up on Sunday morning to some spectacularly shitty weather. It was absolutly pouring rain. The plan for easter was to have B-fast on our boat, then a boozy easter egg hunt. Tawn made our traditional Easter B-fast, “Eggs Germeraad” for everyone. They were a huge hit…oh and bacon….mmmm bacon…

The second part of the plan involved hiding plastic easter eggs that we had filled with little bottles of booze. But since the rain would not let up, no one really wanted to go to shore and hid them. So we hid them on the boats and everyone looked for them and stayed nice and dry.

Everyone else had to be back to work on Monday so they headed back to Seattle around 2pm. Tawn and I headed south a short distance away to a little marina called Brownsville, that we had never been to before. Nice sleepy little marina, but since it was easter sunday. There was not a lot going on.

Monday we headed to Poulsbo and grabbed a slip at the marina there. In the summer time this marina will be filled to capacity with visiting boats. In the spring, fall and winter, we had the place to ourselves:

Tuesday found us back home in Seattle. The weather was awesome and the wind was perfect. Managed to take a very cool picture of Mount Rainer:

Word on the street was that the next weekends weather was gonna be sunny and warm. So we invited a few friends to go for a sail with us on Sunday afternoon. We also made plans to meet up with Phil and Kristy on TipToe again.  At first we thought we would all just pile in one boat, but the list of people kept getting bigger and since the weather was supposed to be nice, everyone showed up. So two boats it was.

Things got a little delayed, but we left the dock at around 2pm. The sun was out and the wind actually picked up to between 15-20 knots out of the North.

On our boat was Me and Tawn. A buddy of mine from work, Zach. A friend of Tawn’s from her work, Lola and her B-friend Josh. And Jen from Epic, Dave was down in California working, so could not make it.

We had a great fast sail over to Port Madison. By the time we got there, the other boat, TipToe, was already there and anchored. On board were Phil, Kristy, Jackson, Erin and Sam. Once we got tied up along side. The sun was even warmer and the winds were blocked. We had tons of food and drink. Holy crap was the food good. Zach grilled up some Thai chicken and Lola brought some sort of awesome ass rice salad freaking delicious good thing. Then Sam made these killer tacos. And and I don’t mean those bullshit tacos that you make at home. But those really, really good tacos, that you get from the taco trucks at construction sites. Soooo goood.

I stung up the hammock we all just hung out laughing and telling stories till around 7pm before pulling up the anchor and heading home. The wind had almost completely died by then, so we motored home.

I can tell already, It’s gonna be a great Summer!!

Posted in CB, Day Sails, Palarran, Tawn | 4 Comments

When the hell will winter end?

CB 2 April, 2009
[0] comments

I for one don’t care. While the first part of this winter really sucked (Snowboarding wise), the last half has really picked up some steam. It’s been dumping in the mountains, and the snow keeps piling up. So I keep heading up.

Last weekend Tawn and I got up early and met Danno at Steven’s Pass ski resort. Actually, he met us, since he over slept a little. Normally we’d all drive up in one car, but he had to be back to work on Monday and Tawn and I decided we were going to go snowshoeing and stay the night in a NSF (National Forest Service) ranger cabin for a few days. We had never done this before and it sounded pretty cool.

Snowboarding on Sunday was great. As you can plainly see by this awesome action photo of me flying through the air on my board:

Tawn couldn’t go cause she tweaked her back at work a few weeks earlier. So she went snowshoeing instead. Sunday afternoon, instead of heading back to Seattle and home, we headed east and down in to the little town of Leavenworth, Wa. (Towns website) As you’ll gather from their website, it’s a cheesy little tourist town that models it’self after a little German Alpine village.

A few days before Tawn had found this site: www.recreation.gov and further in she found this Ranger cabin  and we reserved a night to stay there.

We woke up Monday morning and started heading towards the cabin. It was only 50 some miles way to drive so we got there about 11am. Parked at the trailhead and unloaded the packs and snowshoes from the Jeep. The trail to the cabin was actual pretty well packed down. So we did not even need to put on the snowshoes, even though the snow was probably 2-3 feet deep.

The hike to the cabin was only 2.5 miles and we got there in about an hour or a little more. Here are a few pictures of the outside of the little cabin:

And of course a few pictures of the inside for balance and closure….if you need that sort of thing:

As you can see we had to hang our packs up off the floor as there were a couple very industrious mice that lived in the cabin. They worked there little ass off all night trying to get into everything. Tawn kept throwing boots at them during the night as they rattled around in the kitchen trying to get into the pots on the stove.

That little stove may not look like much, but we got a little over zealous in the loading of the firewood and got the tempature in the cabin up to 90 degrees F. We had to go outside and stand in the snow to cool off and open the windows a few times. :)

We mostly sat around, read some books or took a few hikes, oh and tawn found a small piece of an old sleeping pad or something under one of the bunks, so she decided to climb up the hill behind the cabin and slide down on her new found ‘booger’. And as luck would have it, I had the camera with me, and turned on:

On tuesday we were going to do some more hiking and try to find a few Geocaches that were in the area, but when we woke up. It had snowed 6 inches over night and was still dumping. So we decided to just cook some breakfast and head out. We did not want to get stuck on the East side of the Pass if they closed it due to avalance danger.

This is a picture of Tawn getting ready to leave, wearing her Snoopy hat that she has had since she was 5 years old. Her head is still the same size!! WTF :)

And one last shot of Tawn, Me and the cabin……Thanks cabin!

My hat is not that old and my head size is steadily increasing in size….! WTF indeed.

Posted in Adventures, CB, snowboarding, Tawn, videos | Leave a comment

What have we been up to?

CB 12 March, 2009
[3] comments

When we last heard from the crew, Tawn was doing some under water work on the boat. That was back in October. What the hell have be been up to since then? Lets see….

Tawn had to work on Thanksgiving this year…I however did not. So me and my buddy Dan drove up to Canada to Whistler/Blackcomb ski resort for 4 days or so of early season snowboarding.

We got a pretty late start out of town on Wednesday, the day before T-day. So we got a room in downtown Vancouver for the night. Roamed around downtown and sampled some of Vancouver’s finest beer….and rum…and scotch….and…….

Woke up close to 11 am turkey day and headed toward Whistler. Which in case you did not know is going to be the site of the 2010 Winter Olymipics! meh….whatever…the olympic suck. But, it is a very scenic hour drive from Vancouver to Whistler Village however.

We hungout for three days and snowboarded and of course participated in much apres ski. The snow was not exactly awesome but it was the first trip of the year, so you can’t really complain.

I can however complain about this:

That was the only picture taken on the whole trip. It’s seemed funny at the time. Now it’s creepy. That is my buddy Dan.

The following weekend me and tawn sailed the boat over to Blake Island. We had not been to the island for almost a year and due to some annoying mechanical issue, had not had the boat away from the dock in over two months.

We built a couple bon fires on the beach and did some hiking around the island. And the sail back home was sweet. Rainy and cold but fun.

There were a few more weekends snowboarding, then on Xmas. We had a bunch of our friends that were orphans and had no family to spend xmas with over to the boat. We all just hung out, watched movies and ate a crap load of turkey and noodles. It was a fun time.

The next big trip was in Feburary. Me, Tawn, Dan flew down to Sayulita Mexico to meet up with Scotty and Angie. We had rented a condo on the beach and spent 4-5 days hanging out, and learning…sorta…to surf. That was an awesome trip. We will be going back next winter.

After a few missed flights and a days detour down to San Diego to visit very quickly with Tawns Aunt Jane, Uncle Tom,  Aunt and Cousins Jilly & Brian and there kidsWe flew into Puerto Vallarta, then grabbed a cab to Sayulita. I was the last one to arrive. Tawn got on a flight 2 hours before I did. So by the time I got there, they were all waiting for me on the balcony. It got more than a little drunk out that night. Surfing the next day was a bit rough, but fun as hell. The water was like 78 degrees. Much, much warmer than it is back home in Seattle, even in the middle of the summer.

Unfortunatly as we were packing for the trip down, I decided that the batteries on the camara were charged up enough. They however were not.  So the only pictures we have are the few that Scotty took.

The first part of March found us back up in Whistler BC for another Snowboarding weekend with Danno, his brother Reid and a couple of his buddies from Tennessee.

Which brings us up to date. Boring quick and not too many laughs….I must be losing my touch. I’ll try better next time.

CB…

Posted in CB, Palarran, snowboarding, Weekend trips | 3 Comments