News Break!

This just in...

Well, we are on our way back to Seattle from Hot Springs Cove. We're in Ucluelet again, but this late on a Sunday we couldn't find wireless, just this community computer, and so we can't load photos and write a real blog.

Here's the big breaking news. We will be back in Seattle for a couple of days, including Friday and Saturday next weekend. So... The big dilemma was who all we should call and say hi to, without creating yet another "going-away" type of event. I mean, either we call a couple folks and shaft a bunch of others, or else we call everybody and have a huge event on our hands. Neither struck us as a good option, so, instead we are posting this blog. (Also, our phone got wet and has been beeping at random, thinking it's charging when not plugged in, and refusing to turn off, so we may or may not be reachable by phone.)

We will be at People's Pub, Friday at 6:30pm, for food and beers. Anyone who would like to join us, we would love to see you! And we'll leave Saturday evening open too.

Cheers, and please look forward to a full blog entry soon. Yup, Hot Springs Cove was everything you'd imagine, and then some. Stay tuned!

- K and M

The Broken Group (and it's not GnR)

A number of years back, we went to the Boundary Waters in Minnesota. A vast stretch of unspoiled nature, to be sure, but from the perspective of a canoe-borne traveller, well summed up in a few words: Trees, Bugs, Mud, Rocks, and Water.

Enter Barkley Sound, Vancouver Island. Here again we find ourselves paddling around unspoiled nature; but here, the operating words are reduced to Trees, Rocks, and Water. Except for you Minnesotan mud and bug enthusiasts out there (Erdmann? Bergen?), I think most would agree that the Boundary Waters has nothing on Barkley Sound.

Specifically, in Barkley Sound there is a set of numerous small islands called the Broken Group, which is a part of the Pacific Rim National Park (that is, National to Canada). These are forested with the thickest old-growth rainforest you could imagine. Ben, you will be glad to hear that it is SO thick that bushwhacking is not even an option. (As proven by our achorage neighbours who set out to "wing" their way to a freshwater lake on Effingham Island After litteraly crawling around the underbrush for 4-5 hours they abandoned all hope of finding the lake or their way back and flagged down a fishing boat for a ride back to their boat). The outer islands are pounded by Pacific Ocean waves, creating cool things like Sea Caves, and also protecting the inner islands from the swell. Among the inner islands, the water is flat and tranquil, and the forest reaches its branches right down into the water. Beaches are stacked with driftwood accumulated over the centuries, which M likes to imagine belonged at one time to Indian Longhouses. (Indians did in fact inhabit these islands.)

The actual stories of us paddling our dinghy about are less interesting than the photos we took. Without further ado, here they are. See if you can spot Merz Cove, Merz Arch, (hey, I didn't see any names on the charts) and an eagle.

(This cave was straight out of a fantasy storybook, one of those stories with a Unicorn King; all glowing and purple, with strange but not unfriendly creatures about. "Unicorn King in the Land of the Starfishies.")

Today, we are in the town of Ucluelet, a small town at the northwest edge of Barkley Sound. We had our first real whale-sighting on our way here earlier today. We didn't have time for photos, but the whale(s?) performed a few stunts close enough to wake up Karl at the helm. The splash was big enough to make him think one of the small powerboats that buzz around here endlessly, had flipped around, and he was dissappointed to learn that it was a whale instead. But we hope for some photos later now that we know how to spot them. Basically seek out the closest congregation of at least 20 small powerboats and you should be able to find the whales in the middle.

Next we plan to go to Hot Springs Cove (Hot Springs! Woo-Ha!) for a couple days. That'll be the farthest North we get. Probably no Internet there, so we'll post again on our way back down.

The West Coast!

Authors' note: Some of this is written by M, some by K, and some by both. Skilled readers may be able to tell the difference.

Leaving Victoria:

Free wireless internet cafes haven't quite made it to this corner of the world yet, so our updates will be a little infrequent for the rest of the Vancouver Island trip. We're currently in Port Desire (next to Bamfield) in Barkley Sound. But we should start off where we left off, with us being tourists in Victoria. We were only enticed into seeing one major attraction which was Miniature World. Somewhere on the order of 50 historical and fictional scenes, ranging from famous battlefields to Gulliver being tied up by the Lilliputians, had been recreated by some extremely patient folks. The smallest people in the scenes were maybe 5 millimeters tall and they all appeared to be different. A teacup was maybe the size of a fruitfly, but most definitely looked like a teacup. Mindboggleing! Other than that we just strolled around and tried to soak up some of the atmosphere in town. They are seemingly very proud of their British roots, and the city definitely had the most European air about it than any other West Coast City we have been to so far.

Our second thought after we pulled into our pimp slip as we arrived Victoria (after "Wow, this is AWESOME!), was "How on earth are we going to be able to pull out of here without trashing 3 other boats?" The nice lady who checked us in reassured us that they would only put boats behind us that were not staying as long as we did, ensuring a clear path for us to pull out. Well, wrong. We ended up with two boats rafted up behind us and had to arrange with them to move so we could get out. For some reason "4am" didn't seem like a good answer to the question of when we or were planning to leave, so instead we suggested bewteen 8 or 9. Since we got such a late start, we ruled out making it to Port San Juan, and instead planned for a relatively leisurely sail to Sooke Harbour 15 miles away.

Victoria to Sooke:

I had always pictured "adventurous" sailing as arriving after some ocean passage or another, into some exotic port, all sea-spray and wind as the boat surfs the waves under a reefed mainsail. I was only part right: the sea-spray and wind part. Adventurous sailing is motoring into 20+ knots wind with an opposing tide, creating steep choppy seas, while a Canadian warship conducts "towed sonar array" drills that require a kilometer's clearance. Aaa!!! He's heading right for us! Steer away, steer away! Wait, wait, he's turning through. Whew. Aaa!!! He's heading right for us! (and so on...)

And, well, need I even say it, in the afternoon we made only a couple knots, motoring full speed, as we fought the current into Sooke Harbour. We did actually get the sails up, but due to the current we spent a couple hours tacking back and forth across the Straits, not actually moving upwind.

Don't give up on us yet, though! I know we've been telling a lot of stories about not sailing well. Fortunately, I'm writing this a few days on, and I can say that things get better. Not just yet, though...

Sooke Harbour:

Lesson of Sooke Harbour: as a sailing vessel, beware any place that is known as a "mecca of sport-fishing". Some people think sport-fishing consists of catching fish. Actually, sport-fishing is the act of piloting a small powerboat at full speed through all sorts of narrow channels, coves, harbours, and such. Do they make sport-fishing boats with a throttle, or just a "go git 'em!" button?

Yes, for you Washington climbers out there, I guess I do sound a bit like Ira Spring. I'm griping a lot, and it wouldn't be quite fair to the Sooke-ese at this point, not to mention that we DID anchor more or less in the middle of the channel. There were only a couple places to anchor, as the harbour was shallow, but crab pots seemed to congregate in the most desireable anchorage. And for whatever reason we spent two nights at anchor here.

Sooke to Port San Juan:

The crew of Ho-Beaux had some difficulty selecting their departure time to Port San Juan. I's funny, on most vessels, the captain has ultimate say over the crew, but not so on this boat. We had a board meeting at midnight, then again at 3am and at 6am. Fog developing overnight was the main reason for the indecision rattling the captain and crew. After about 60 little powerboats had zipped by and the two other sailboats in the bay had lifted anchor, Ho-Beaux finally glided out of the harbour around 8:30am, still in the fog. Even so, we had a pretty good day on the water, making good speed motoring against no currents (!) until the wind picked up in the afternoon allowing us to complete the remaining 1/4 of the distance under sail. We found that we could make about 6 kts (4 kts vector upwind) in a 15 kts breeze. The boat was perfectly balanced in the smooth winds and more or less steered itself between tacks. The fog that was supposed to evaporate in the morning, turned out to stick around all day, which is why this boat carries 2 backup GPS units just in case. Port San Juan thankfully didn't live up to it's reputation of providing poor anchorage and captain and crew slept soundly the whole night for the first time while at anchor. We would have liked to stop by the supposedly large upscale pub supported by the tiny fishing community (and all the hikers on the West Coast Trail), but as in Sooke, we were not quite brave enough to leave Ho-Beaux alone at anchor.








Port San Juan to Bamfield (Port Desire):

Let's get the last bit of negativity out of the way, so we can start talking about the fun stuff. 8 hours motoring, zero wind. None. But big (2 meter) ocean swells nonetheless. Boat goes up, boat goes down. Boat goes up, boat goes down. Yup, fog too. Gray ocean, gray sky.

But wait, what is this? A tickle on my cheek. A ruffle in my hair. Is it... Is it not... Wind? Stop the boat. Yes, yes! Wind! Put the sails up!

And where there is wind, there is more wind. A breeze for an hour or so, becoming a blow. Wow! Remember what I was saying about ocean passages, exotic ports, all sea-spray and wind? Here it was! All the sails up, five knots, six, lulls in the troughs of the waves, gusts on the top, as the sails catch the wind and the boat surges. The fog is lifting, Cape Beale is in view, gnarly rocks and breaking waves at its foot. The Graveyard of the Pacific, they call this (no joke!). It blows even harder, now the boat seems to be overpowered, rushing down the waves and swerving. M takes the helm like a pro. "Steer 60 magnetic!" K clips his harness into the jacklines and goes up on the foredeck to douse the jib, as the boat passes the rocks at Cape Beale and heads up Trevor Channel. Another half-hour of beautiful sailing, 15-20 knots breeze up the channel, but the seas damped by the islets and headlands. Lush forest and sharp rocks, broken by small sand beaches. THAT was fun.

A bit of trivia about sailing in the Pacific Northwest... here's Commodore K's sailing outfit, in August: thermal underwear top and bottoms, rain pants, sailing boots, thermal vest, fleece sweater, life jacket, chest harness, foul-weather sailing jacket, warm beanie hat. And he's STILL a bit cold.

Bamfield:

Ever since Victoria, M had jokingly called Bamfield "Promised Land". Not only did our arrival to Barkley Sound represent the first real destination of the trip with its many secluded and undeveloped islands and coves (not to mention that the longest stretch of barren coastline with little protection was behind us), but Bamfield seemed like the place that would have a decent restaurant, a pub, laundry facilities, and a real SHOWER! The disappointment when we found that all the public floats in town were full and we ended up anchoring out another night (in Port Desire which is the next inlet over from Bamfield) was by no means little. Captain Karl took pity and rowed M the mile or so to town to find the nearest pub for a burger and a brew. And yes, the conditions in Port Desire were so benign that we actually dared to leave the boat. Disappoinment hit again when the first Bamfield-ian we talked to informed us that the pub in town is closed for renovation and that no, there's nothing else in town open at this hour (8pm). That's when it hits us how spoiled we are and even if seclusion is part of what we're here for, it is hard to give up your favorite comforts. The long row was not at all in vain. We ran into some old dock-neighbours from Elliott Bay Marina earlier that day at the fuel dock in Bamfield, Bob and Kris aboard Luna. We rowed by their boat and visited them for a while. They were just completing their Vancouver Island Circumnavigation, and had lots of good stories to share.

Bamfield is... idiosyncratic. The town straddles a small inlet, and one side isn't connected to the other. Folks get around by boat. There were a couple cars, but only a couple. The few roads were dirt. Many of the houses were accessed only by a boardwalk that ran along the harbour. It has a summer-resort cabin sort of feel, quaint little homes, but folks live here year-round, and there are only a few tourists. The pace of life is completely different, even in comparison to Port Townsend, which I thought was completely different from Seattle. (What's completely different times completely different?) To give an example, the one restaurant in town is open from 12-4pm, Thursday through Sunday. The Postmaster's desk has a little sticker saying "BRB", and he comes in five minutes later with a mug of coffee. But it's still first-world: the little general store sells Indian curry, Asian foods, Mexican peppers, fresh vegetables, fine liquors. There's a government marine research facility at the harbour entrance.

There's a really cool beach, Brady's Beach, a short walk from town. Supposedly it is the most-photographed beach on the West Coast of Vancouver Island. The two things that made it stand out from your run-of-the-mill beach were, first, the forest-capped sea stacks; and second, the abundance of marine life in the tidal zones. Millions of clams, mussles, and barnacles, big clumps of orange and purple starfish piled on top of each other, and little shrimp-eating (?) anemones.

In the next day or so, we plan to leave for a more secluded anchorage in the Broken Group, a series of small islands in the middle of Barkley Sound. No blog posts from there. Check back in a few days, as we will be visiting Ucluelet, a town on the other side of the Sound.

Victoria, BC, meet Ho-Beaux

Let's start this off on a high note... We are in Victoria, BC, on Vancouver Island! Here we are, in the mega-bad-assest, pimp-stylingest, high-rolleresque slip this boat and its crew have ever seen, in front of the Empress Hotel. Fitting accommodations for a self-proclaimed Commodore and crew, I must say. Except for the showers, four shared between all the boats in the harbour, hidden next to the Customs dock a few blocks from the Empress. A line of pre-coffee boaters had to be braved in the quest for cleanliness.



I'd like to say that, since our arrival Tuesday, we've been out enjoying the town and doing all the great touristy stuff in the area, but in fact Wednesday was spent with Karl deep in the dungeons of Ho-Beaux's bilges, trying to fit large tools into narrow spaces, with Mariann filling a supervisory and tool-delivery role. More on this in a minute.
98 percent of the sail across the Straights of Juan de Fuca was uneventful. That leaves two percent, one departing and one arriving. Leaving Port Townsend, we were happy to find a moderate breeze as we rounded Point Wilson, so we gladly raised the sails. Just past the point, a bank of fog enveloped us, so we turned on GPS. Hey, we're going 7 knots! In a slight breeze! Master sailors, we.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a giant, roaring, red, possessed navigation buoy flies at us from the fog bank! What demonic forces are allied against our journey!? Fortunately, our intrepid commodore and crew managed to start the engine. But still the buoy charged right at them, thundering like the wrath of Poseidon! At the last moment, we fooled the monster with a sharp swerve, and it missed us by mere yards.
After collecting ourselves and changing undergarments, we realized that maybe this fine sailing wind wasn't really wind, that maybe we aren't good enough sailors to go 7 knots in a 5-knot breeze, and that maybe rather than worrying about demonically possessed buoys, it could be more productive to worry about tide and current charts.
But lessons do evaporate quickly in long sunny days on the water. After we got Victoria in sight, we messed around with a new sail arrangement for a while rather than trying to beat the incoming tide. We paid for that mistake by an extra hour or so of motoring full throttle and making 2 kts headway. . .
Okay, this leaves the other one percent. Karl noticed when docking at the Canadian Customs dock (*) that reverse gear was a bit spotty. Strange, since we JUST GOT A NEW #$%@$%^ TRANSMISSION installed a couple weeks ago. Well, whatever, let's go to our slip in front of the Empress. Now, the Empress Hotel is the tourist center of this quadrant of the Milky Way galaxy, and people of all stripes mill about the waterfront where the boats pull up. Many of the docks are full, with well-to-do boaters sunning on the deck or enjoying an apertif. My, here comes a rather classic-looking sailing vessel, with a comely lass on the rail. It pulls slowly into the long slip. Now's the time when the Captain usually guns reverse to bring the vessel to a halt, and the lass ties the ropes to secure it to the dock. But wait, this captain just stares, horrified, as his gearbox clanks and bounces, but spins no propellers, while the boat heads for certain lawsuits.
See, here is why I highly recommend you select crew of only the highest durability. As an anchor drags along the bottom before setting, so did Mariann drag along the dock, until the sheer friction stopped the boat. Ho-Beaux has landed!
The end to the gear-shift saga isn't too interesting. It was a matter of slightly adjusting the shifting lever on the transmission (we hope), although as mentioned before, this involved fitting large tools into narrow spaces.

It was the (also brand new) alternator that kept us working all day. The cartoon that served as the installation instructions failed to show how to wire it appropriately, unless you speak alternatorese. The folks who sold it to us, it turned out, didn't speak alternatorese either. I think I finally figured out how to wire it so it both turns on and doesn't overcharge the batteries, so things like the VHF radio won't turn on in order to protect their innards. This involved dismounting the alternator and adding a wire. Hm, funny, this mounting bracket seems a bit loose. Oh, wait, it's CRACKED OFF AT THE BOLT.
So... this is either really unlucky (because the darn thing, after 30 years, cracked and broke off) or really lucky (because it broke off in Victoria Harbor and not the Pacific Ocean). I tried hand-drilling a new hole, but our bits were too dull. We carried the bracket into town to look for a repair or replacement. Now, I don't know, maybe this is a Canadian thing, but so far 100% (one out of one) of the machinists we've met have been very attractive young ladies who will repair brackets and such things for $5 Canadian! Fixed bracket in hand, drool wiped off of Karl's mouth, we returned to the boat and finished installing the alternator.
This is why we haven't yet done any normal touristy activities to speak of. We plan to see more of the local sights on Thursday, before departing for either Sooke Harbour or Port San Juan, depending on conditions, on Friday.
(*) Yeah, you pull up at this dock with a yellow phone on it. Pick it up, and you get Customs. "What's your boat name? Who's on board? Been to Canada before? Bringing in any beer, wine, or potatoes?" [Foreign potatoes are NOT WELCOME in Canada!!!] "Okay, thanks, write this number and put it in your window, have a nice day." No dudes with uniforms and guns. It will be interesting to compare this with USA re-entry.

Finally Mariann co-Authors a Blog!!!! (And we leave Seattle)

So we've finally severed the umbilical cord and left Seattle. We quietly slipped out of town around 9:30am the morning of Friday July 27th. We felt like we'd had way too many farewell-events already and didn't want to do it all over again by having everyone come down to the dock to see us off. (We'll swing back into town toward the end of August, so it's not really the "real deal" going away until then.) We made it to Port Townsend by 6:30 pm, after a pretty average day on the water with a lot of motoring in the AM and increasingly more interesting sailing the closer we got to the straits (of Juan De Fuca). Interestingly, the wind died abruptly when we rounded the headland at Port Townsend Bay, so we doused our sails... Then, of course, it picked up to 10-15 knots a few minutes later. The excitement peaked upon arrival to Boat Haven Marina when we encountered some militant dighy sailors who did not like the fact that we had taken down our sails for the final approach into the marina. They charged us full speed and maneuvered last second to clear just in front or behind us. They repeated this 10 times or so while yelling things like "Sailpower!" and "You're a sailboat!". We were pretty tired and tense at this point as there were about 30 little sailboats and 2 ferries to worry about so we didn't find this too funny at the time.

We pulled into the marina, which seemed to have a narrow separation between piers. After an, um, "experience" a couple years ago at Elliott Bay Marina trying to turn around in a stiff breeze, we've been reluctant to drive our full-keeled "don't-feel-like-turning-on-a-dime-or-at-all" old lady into such situations. So, we turned around in the wide entranceway and decided to anchor for the evening. Problem was, it turned out, that anchoring conditions were marginal throughout the bay: 8 to 10 fathoms (about 50 to 60 feet). Mariann learned the important lesson that even if she's been able to feed out the anchor and chain by hand so far in our anchoring career, 60 feet of chain plus a 45 lbs anchor gets to be a bit much to hold on to. Now we know why people spend lots of money on electric windlasses. . . It took us 2 tries to set the anchor to where it maybe didn't drag (Karl claimed it did slightly, Mariann thought that it didn't). We each spent half the night in a sleeping bag on deck making sure we didn't go anywhere (very fast anyway). The winds died down around 2 am, and we motored into the marina the next morning.

Dinghy Nazis aside, Port Townsend is one of the more interesting towns in the area. In particular, it is home to the Best Breakfast of All Time. Yes, this slightly sleepy burg holds the gateway to breakfast nirvana: the Landfall Cafe. What makes one breakfast stand alone atop all others? Pancakes. Unlike mortal pancakes, these cannot be expressed in words. You'll have to come see for yourself. Order a coffee, followed by a breakfast sandwich, and a full stack of pancakes (to share). Of course we also paid homage to the town's two breweries. We ordered a beer sampler at the Port Townsend Brewery's tasting room, and we both declared the Hop Diggety IPA the clear winner. No strangers to the Water Street Brew Pub (located close Point Hudson Marina where we spent 3-4 months working on our rigging 2 winters ago, we had to have a brew there for old times sake. Other than those highlights we've spent most of the time in town getting crew and boat ready for ocean sailing. Tomorrow (Tuesday July 30th), we plan to leave for Victoria to clear customs into Canada before continuing up the West coast of Vancouver Island.

We had some photos to illustrate this story, but the crew was so eager for shore leave that they forgot to bring the camera to the bar with Internet. Here are some historical pictures to keep you entertained.

Check back for more nail-biting excitement in a few days! As we get some extra time on our hands, we'll add some more pictures and more details about the boat and our trip as well.

Stupid Movie Night

Tonight is Stupid Movie Night, the irregularly-held evening where we gather together to appreciate the finer points of ridiculous, cheesy, badly produced, overblown, or, yes, stupid movies. As the movie night begins in less than an hour, there is not time to write the full story today. I will say that tonight we are taking a bit of a departure (we have periodic recovery nights after the most agonizing experiences) and watching Rambo 3, which, although the whole 1980's-American-action-hero-versus-an-entire-army thing is pretty stupid on principle, is supposed to be a pretty good example of the genre.

For stupid movie connoisseurs, today brought TREMENDOUS news! The DVD release of Gymkata is scheduled for January 30th!!! This epic event may require a second watching in celebration.

A Very Special Day

Saturday was a Very Special Day (TM) in Carrotland. There are four things that made it special. The first is that a bud was in town for the weekend (let's call him... Ben) and a big group went out in celebration of this miraculous event. The second is that I had the worst beer of all time. The third is that M and I sang karaoke, which again all the yunguns was talking about but we hadn't done before. Fourth, yesterday was the official kick-off of me saving the world! Hooray.

Important stuff first. So, we went to Dad Watson's in Fremont for dinner and beers. I will take you on a pictorial journey.

A variety of vegetables:

More vegetables:

Ben has been away for some time, and I wanted to make sure that this "Ben" that showed up was not in fact an androidal space alien spy sent through time to capture and probe us. So I asked him to show me the essence of Ben, January 2007, summed up in a photo. (Ben is on the left; unfortunately, results of the test were inconclusive.)

Yes, and the worst beer in the world was at Dad Watson's. Most of their selection is great, but I tried a Pickleweasel Pale (name should have tipped me off), one of their limited-batch offerings. It tasted like a skunk blended with basil. (To be fair, others thought it tasted like basil blended with a skunk.)

Later we went to the Steel Pig on Aurora. Hey Seattle, since you haven't noticed yet, the Steel Pig is excellent place, if you have a large group of friends, because it is never crowded, and they have karaoke, pool, South Park pinball, and shuffleboard (though the shuffleboard table is sticky in places, making it an "advanced" difficulty).

Some singing vegetables (Karaoke Master Joe is in the middle):

All the ladies of the group got onstage for song. The shimmer from the heat blurred my photo. Yow!

Then we did an aerobics class, apparently. I don't remember this part.

These dudes were part of another group at the Steel Pig. They're doing a rap-core version of Mariah Carey (?), the shoop-shoop-a-doop song. It was suh-weet.

When Karaoke Master Joe was nailing Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For (U2... quite an impressive singing performance, I must say, hence the Karaoke Master title), the dude on the left in the previous photo busted some break dancing moves. This is probably something nobody has seen yet, or ever will see again.

Finally: rewinding time a bit, during the day Saturday I began researching how to save the world. It is a big task. The first step of the plan is to identify which aspects of the world economy (human consumption patterns) are drawing down natural resources most severely. Then, I will identify what combination of technology development and conservation could result in reducing resource use to a sustainable level, for each class of resources. If I am successful in this initial stage, I'll publish essays on my website.

Try searching [environment sustainable technology] on Google Scholar, if you're interested in this type of stuff.

Thanks for tuning in!