August 21, 2016 - Friday Harbor on San Juan Island, Washington

     A sunny windy day today in the harbor. Yesterday we took Mike’s sister Ann and her husband Barry for a day sail in the channel. It was a clear sunny, hot, day with light winds; perfect for conversations and lunch out in the cockpit. Ann and Barry are visiting their daughter and her young family for a couple of weeks in Seattle. 

      Since my last blog of a month ago we have made our way back to the Gulf Islands where we spent a week. We explored Saanich inlet further. Last summer we had visited small secluded Tod Inlet and visited the famous Butchart Gardens with our grandson, Johannes. This summer we went as far south as possible in the Saanich inlet, to Finlayson Arm. It almost felt like a fijord with few houses dotting the shore. We anchored in late afternoon to absorb the quiet of this place only to discover that the major road out of Victoria passed right by this body of water! The guide books made  no mention of ths noisey road at the end of the arm! There was consolation in the fact that Goldstream Provincial Park was within walking distance of where we anchored. We spent a leisurely day walking along the Goldstream River and into old rainforest. It was one of the first hot days of the summer but cool and shady on our walk through the woods. On the return, we stopped at the vistor center/ hands on museum/ bookstore. When we’d left the boat to go on our walk we’d only brought water with us. We were like little kids when we discovered ice cream available at the visitor center. The museum part was created to engage kids with lots of touching and visuals. After walking all day we found the museum refreshingly different from the average museum geared towards adults. 

     From Saanich Inlet we sailed north to Bedwell Harbor, a favorite spot for us because of it’s pretty little beaches on South Pender Island, lovely walks through the woods and a steep climb up Mount Norman. From the top of Mount Norman one has a birds eye views of the islands all around. The day we spent anchored in Bedwell Harbor we decided to hike over to Port Browning on North Pender Island. The islands were connected to each other by a natural causeway until the late fifties, I believe, at which time they dredged a channel, dividing the two islands by water and built a bridge for cars. This made it much easier for boaters to access the two harbors, Bedwell and Port Browning. We had a lovely walk through the woods, it felt like summer instead of spring. Eventually the path came out on a main road which we followed for a mile or so. About that time we realized the other harbor was a bit further away than we anticipated. We kept walking, undecided about what to do when we came upon a bench on either side of the road with maps of the roads and various public facilities on the island. The bench was a place to sit and hitch a ride to wherever one needed to go. After about fifteen minutes a nice couple on vacation stopped to give us a ride to the local shopping area on the island. It was a nice bustling little center with a hardware store, a nursery, a grocery store, a bank, a liquor store, a book store with cart loads of used books for sale, some kind of tourist shop full of beautiful things crafted locally on the island, and two restaurants. We ate lunch and had good beer on tap at one of the restaurants. Then we made our way to the bookstore where we loaded up on  mostly used books for our boat reading time. I’ve read several books this summer that in contrast to the mystery novels I like to read  were often serious, historical and disturbing.  Some of them Mike and I read aloud to each other; one about late twentieth century north Korea, The Orphan Master’s Son, another one was an intertwining of the Roman Empire in England and the dawning of Camelot, The Singing Sword. In the evenings after a day of sailing or on a day when we needed to rest after several days of sailing nonstop, Mike and I would take turns reading to the each other while dishes got washed or dinner was prepared. 

      After purchasing our books we went and sat down on the bench beside the road and waited for our next ride back to the path that would take us through the woods to where we’d left our dinghy tied up. I spotted ripe blackberries across the road and picked a few handfuls to be eaten on our walk back to the boat while we waited for someone to stop in their car and offer us a ride. It was only a few minutes, a handful of blackberries in my staw hat, before someone stopped. Such is island life. On our way to the dinghy we came out of the woods onto a deserted pebble beach. The sun was shining and we were hot from our walking. Even though the water has a reputation for being icy cold, it looked so inviting we stripped down and went for a quick dip. It was just enough to cool us down without getting the uncontrollable shivers. We hadn’t bothered putting the little outboard on the dinghy and the row back to the Pinniped was a good way to get warm again.

September 11, 2016

     Dear Readers, our time in the Northwest will soon be over. We are planning to haul the boat out of the water a week earlier than planned, perhaps the twenty first of the month instead of the first of October. We have had a good summer of sailing with more wind than we knew what to do with at times. It has been good. Hot summer days by New Mexico standards, finally arrived the last week in July. August was hot, although being on a boat in the water is always much cooler than it is on land. I actually wore shorts and short sleeved shirts on the boat in August! We sailed across the straight of Georgia the end of July to Blaine, Washington to meet up with family for a week. Our sail across was quite windy with waves crashing against the boat from the northwest. We reefed the main sail twice initially and only used our small stay sail for a jib. Then as we grew accustomed to the wind and saw it wasn’t getting any stronger than it already was, we let out one of the  reefs and sailed with a reefed jib. The Strait of Georgia where we crossed was about 25 miles to Point Roberts on the U.S. mainland where we had to check in with customs. We figured the waves were rough and high from lots of wind the day before. It takes time for waves to build and when we came through Active Pass the wind was blowing but not near as much to match the height and roughness of the waves. Some things will remain a mystery for us until more experience is gained.

     Well, I will sum up our adventures this summer a little bit more in one more blog but this is it for now. We have to leave this little coffee shop and get back on the water. Kieran is finished with his mountain guiding job for the summer and is sailing with us for a few days.