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WAGGONER CRUISE, WEEK EIGHT
by Bob Hale
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We’re home. We tied up just after 5:00 p.m. on Friday, exactly eight weeks after we had untied and headed north. It took a full week to travel from Douglas Bay in Forward Harbour to Seattle, including a two-day wait in Cortes Bay while the wind blew 25 knots in the Strait of Georgia. That was the storm I wrote about in the Week 7 report.
Mechanically, this was our best trip ever. From Seattle to Prince Rupert and back, the only failure was a single light bulb. That’s it—one little light bulb. When I contrast our experience with the engine problems the Yeadon-Joneses had (they write the Dreamspeaker books), or the generator problems we saw on another boat, or the blown-up marina generators in the Broughtons this year, I’d have to say we were unusually lucky.
We did have one bad experience, and it happened less than an hour before we tied up. It was at the locks. As we waited for the light to turn green, a boat came up from behind and crowded ahead. We still got in, but only just, and we were tied side by side with the boat that had crowded. While the offending boat’s skipper was adjusting fenders, as nicely as I could I asked if he realized he had gone out of turn. I forget the exact words, but the gist of his reply (head down, no eye contact) was that it didn’t make sense to hang back and wait. He was quite firm about it. I never did see his face, just his back. Sigh. There’s always one, isn’t there?
Wireless Internet. In only a few years, Internet connectivity has changed from Internet cafes ashore to wireless connection on the boats. In the B.C. wilderness, facilities with no telephones had a dish pointed at an Internet satellite. The old idea of setting off in the boat to get away from it all has changed. Now we set off in the boat but bring it all with us.
This is not a lament. I used wireless to stay in touch with the office, answer e-mails and send weekly reports, with photos, for posting on this Web site. Marilynn delighted in sending notes and photos to the kids and grandchildren. She probably drove them nuts, although they haven’t said so.
Sleep. When we didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn to make a tide, we routinely slept 8-9 hours a night, sometimes with a mid-day nap for good measure. Here at home I’m back to 6 hours or so at night, no nap.
Cooking. As with most boats, brave little Surprise has a one-butt galley, with limited counter space and restricted refrigerator and freezer space. Yet we ate better on the boat than we have since we got home to the big kitchen, the Sub-Zero refrigerator, the freezer downstairs, and cupboards everywhere.
One reason for the difference is the kids and grandkids. After eight weeks, Marilynn had enough of me—she wanted the grandchildren. Five-and-one-half (the one-half is important) year-old Ashley Jane had a sleepover at our house two nights after we got home. Ashley’s two-year-old sister Hayley joined us for playtime and dinner before their mommy took them back. Marilynn spent the better part of yesterday with our two grandsons. With a schedule like that, supper is whatever can be scared up 30 minutes before I get home.
It’s different on the boat. When you’re up the coast, with rocks and Christmas trees all around, you can’t pop down to the deli section at QFC. Meal planning and preparation are important parts of the day, sometimes the most important parts of the day. We planned menus together, we shopped together, and even in the one-butt galley we would work together.
Well, we didn’t always work together. It was not unusual for Marilynn to prepare supper while I checked the engines, washed salt off the windows, and made log and journal entries and the like. We did wash the dishes together and plan the next day somewhat. Before we knew it the time was nine or nine-thirty, and we were tired.
Invasion of the C-Dories. Beautiful Montague Harbour is one of the best destinations in the Gulf Islands, with a popular marina (Montague Harbour Marina: store, café, gift shops, kayak rentals, fuel), a fascinating provincial park, a whole bunch of park mooring buoys, and ample room for anchoring. We anchored there the second to last night out. The weather was perfect. It was warm, there were no clouds, and only a light breeze to wash through the boat from the open forward hatch to the back door.
As we relaxed in the late afternoon, we saw a succession of C-Dories motor in and plop their anchors down. By the time they finished there must have been a dozen of them, mostly 22-footers, with canvas biminis over the cockpits and kayaks or little inflatable dinghies mounted on the cabin tops.
It turned out the C-Dories were on a loosely-planned group cruise, and they were having fun. Some had trailered from several states away. They were in Montague Harbour to catch the famous Pub Bus up to the Hummingbird for pub food and mugs of cheer, and around 6:00 p.m. the procession of dinghies began. Now, there isn’t much room for a dinghy on a 22-foot boat, so some of their inflatables looked a little like gray, blue or white colored donuts with 2-horse Honda outboards on the back. It was quite a sight to watch these tiny dinghies loaded deep on their marks with four adults, as they putt-putted across the bay to the public dock.
Back in 1979, our 37-footer was a pretty big boat. Several times on this trip, however, we were the smallest boat at the dock. Fifty feet is nothing anymore. So it was refreshing to see that two adults still can have as much happiness as two people can absorb, camping out with style on their 22-foot C-Dory. The boats were well-equipped, too. They had full electronics including radar, cockpit biminis (as noted above), barbecues, tenders, the whole works. Many even had windlasses for their 10-pound anchors.
The group, club, whatever you want to call it, is very informal. There are no dues and no officers. It’s held together by the glue of their enthusiasm for their boats. Their Web site is www.c-brats.com.
Wrapping up. Between meeting new people, seeing new places and figuring out new challenges, we had more experiences in a day on the boat than we would have in a week at home—maybe in a month at home.
It seemed that every day brought something unexpected. It might be fog that filled the spaces between the raindrops, and required close attention to the radar. It might be the walk up the road at Cortes Bay, when a nice lady in a VW van stopped to suggest an interesting trail to explore. The nice lady turned out to be the locally renowned author/artist/adventurer June Cameron. Although June is 78 now, her eyes are bright and curious, and her mind is crisp. She’s also terribly deaf. “If people died of deafness,” she said, “there would be a lot more research.”
June is working on her third book, titled 26 Feet to the Charlottes. It’s about a sailing trip she took to the Queen Charlotte Islands aboard a 26-foot boat in the early 1980s. “We didn’t know the west side of the Charlottes were so poorly charted,” she said. “But the boat was slow, and we could see where the waves were breaking over the rocks.”
Compared with some of the cruisers we met, we didn’t see a lot of wildlife. But we did see some bears, a tawny-colored wolf, a few whales, a pod of orcas (killer whales), a minke whale that surfaced right in front of us, and a pod of Pacific white-sided dolphins, who laugh and splash the day away—never seen so much joy. Black and white Dall’s porpoises played with our boat, too, zooming beside and under us as we motored along. Suddenly they were gone.
Eagles, of course, were everywhere. Ravens, too. And plump little swallows that perched on the bow rail where they fluffed themselves importantly, then flew off before I could get the camera out. Lots of sea birds. (I need to learn more about the different varieties.)
In an earlier post, I noted that boats were going slower now, a response to the rising price of fuel. I have to modify that report. Boats indeed were going slowly up north, away from the cities. In the Gulf Islands, the San Juan Islands and Puget Sound, however, the boats seemed to be going as fast as always.
When it comes to handling the boat around the docks, we yachties are a bunch of wusses, you know. Compare our delicate, tentative approaches and departures, hoping for a friendly hand ashore to help with our lines—compare us with the work boat and fish boat guys. One engine, one propeller, one rudder, no bow thruster, no stern thruster. Yet they wind down narrow channels between docks and put their boats into gaps barely larger than their total length. They do it single-handed: no fuss, no help needed. For a really impressive sight, watch a tugboat skipper move a barge an inch at a time alongside a dock. These guys are really good.
Another eight-week cruise is complete. We met a lot of interesting people, and kept up with the changes along the way. Wherever we went, we were pleased and flattered by the reception the Waggoner got. It’s the book the cruising folk carry and use. The praise is very rewarding. It also reminds us of the responsibility we have to keep the Waggoner up-to-date and topical, and easy to use.
—Bob Hale
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