While cruising around in a boat… occurrences reoccur. Sometimes they are planned. Sometimes not. Bottom line stance: reprises on boats are just about as common as the reprise of a verse in a song. Anchoring at the same location for the third time: Planned. Getting caught out in stormy weather: Sometimes planned, sometimes not. It depends on how stormy it is predicted to be, how ready your vessel is to negotiate rough seas and high winds, where the nearest safe port is located, how easy it is to get there, and how long it might take to get there. A hole in a hydraulic line spraying oil into the bilge: Unplanned. Nasty. Potential environmental disaster if anchored in Princess Louisa Inlet. Change in plans: Always an open option. We always have plan A, B and sometimes C, with D being on the table, lined up and ready for consideration.
On June 19th, 2019 we cast off the dock lines securing us to our cozy dock at Salpare Marina on Tomahawk Island near Portland, Oregon. We headed out onto the Columbia River. Our starting point at Salpare was 100 nautical miles upriver from the Pacific Ocean. Salpare was close to Portland International and as good a place as any to ready Great Northern for a voyage. We felt that we were ready and were itching to start making our way up North to the Salish Sea for the summer cruising season.
We meandered down the Columbia, stopping at Cathlamet (if you feel up to pawing through some of our cruising past, feel free to follow the links leading to previous blog posts https://wordpress.com/post/boatingongreatnorthern.org/467) and Warrenton before crossing the infamous Columbia “BAR”. Our cruise up the Washington coast was uneventful. The winds were light and the swell a manageable 1 to 2 meters at a 12 second interval, glassy conditions for this part of the coast. While cruising in a powerboat, uneventful is a good thing… “Our Columbia River Passage Part 3: Warrenton, Oregon to Port Angeles, Washington” covers most of that portion of the voyage: https://wordpress.com/post/boatingongreatnorthern.org/653
In the early morning hours after our coastal passage, we anchored in Neah Bay. It was darker than the insides of a goat standing in a cave, on an overcast night, with her eyes closed… waiting for the rain to stop.
Darkness, Darkness
Be my pillow
Take my hand
And let me sleep
In the coolness of your shadow
In the silence of your deep (The Youngbloods, 1969)
And sleep we did until sometime around 0400 or so… something hit the boat. It was as loud as if someone slapped the hull with a fish kill bat. What the! Spurting adrenaline out of every pore, I jumped out of bed, grabbed a powerful, heavy Mag-Lite flashlight / bludgeon from the pilothouse, slid open the port pilothouse door and sprang out onto the side deck, ready for “whatever”. I looked all around the boat. Nada mucho to see. Zero. Zilch. No wind. Smooth water. No derelict boat. No pissed off fisher getting even with a cruising boat for anchoring in his favorite spot. And for the most part, the goat was still hiding in her cave. It was still very dark. And her eyes were still closed…
Several years before, Les and I were attached to a mooring buoy at Avalon on Catalina Island. We were sitting in the cockpit enjoying an early evening spot of cab. About 50 feet away I saw a flying fish take off and head towards our boat. It whupped into the side of the boat and knocked itself out, leaving a bloody spot on the hull. A harbor seal nonchalantly made its way over to the doomed fish and munched it down.
In retrospect, the flying fish whump was similar to the sound that woke us up in Neah Bay. Perhaps it was a sea lion going after a salmon. Perhaps not. We will never know, but since we were up and still had a bit of adrenaline sluicing through our veins, we decided to make some coffee and by 0600 we had raised anchor and set a course to Port Angeles for refueling. After that, we made our way to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island to meet up with our cruising friends, Birdie and Bob.
That first cruising year we visited 70 or so different anchorages, marinas, villages, towns, and small cities including 2 months in Victoria: (some snaps and comments about Victoria: https://wordpress.com/post/boatingongreatnorthern.org/339, a month at Port Browning on North Pender Island: https://wordpress.com/post/boatingongreatnorthern.org/128 , https://wordpress.com/post/boatingongreatnorthern.org/250 and a final month at the Sidney Marina on Vancouver Island (sort of Sidney post: https://wordpress.com/post/boatingongreatnorthern.org/788)
And then… Covid hit. We were fine and had the OK to return to Port Browning or stay at the Sidney marina, but… if we got sick and required in depth Canadian care it would have been an out of pocket expense. That was before the border closed. That was before there were vaccines. And… the rumblings about border closings were already starting, and many Gulf Islanders were getting nervous about having non-resident aliens with potential viral loads anchored in their bays. For many reasons, we decided to return to the US and this is a short blog about our return: https://wordpress.com/post/boatingongreatnorthern.org/1010
That was four years ago as the crow flies. Now for the reprise… Recently, Les and I spent a few days at one of our old haunts: Port Browning on North Pender Island. We anchored out and had a nice meal at the Bistro and another breakfast at a little restaurant in the nearby village. Four days later we anchored in Madrona Bay close to Ganges on Salt Spring Island. I woke up in the morning and I was not feeling chipper: Body aches, chills, fever of 100 degrees and a slightly sore throat. Yep, all that, and I had a positive Covid test to boot. Hmmm. I didn’t feel all that bad, but I was sick and we thought that if Les were to get sick as well… how that might effect our ability to get the boat back to Ludlow, and our health care team if we needed to go that route? So again, after nearly 4.5 years, Covid had reared its ugly head and made it necessary for us to return to the US. Oh, I never got very sick. My symptoms were never more than those associated with a moderate flu thanks to the multiple vaccines Les and I have recieved over the years since they were available. But, Covid has certainly had an influence on how we cruise, where we go, how we shop and socialize. Perhaps we had become more complacent, and a bit less careful. Perhaps. Perhaps not. At any rate, we returned to Ludlow and have been performing maintenance, varnishing, had the CoOp techs check out an oil leak from our NAIAD stabilizers and are having a wired remote control installed so I can leave the pilot house while docking the boat and use the remote to control the engines and thrusters to get us to the dock without having to rely upon a fickle camera system. All good? Yes. All good. And by day seven or so after returning to Ludlow, I was testing negative.
In a couple of weeks we will most likely leave Ludlow and go on a shoulder season cruise… our favorite type. Yes… it will include several reprises and many new areas to explore.
Hope to see or hear that you out there somewhere close to your personal Yonder, Hither or Thither… For us it will be the Salish Sea with its thousands of places to visit, anchor and enjoy.
Where will you be spending your shoulder season…?
Salish Sea Cruising With Blair, Les, Leo, and Bliss 