Seals sunning themselves at the entrance to Pender Harbour

We haven’t been through Pender Harbour in a couple of years, but it is pretty much the same as we remember it… beautiful homes lining the snaking bays and inlets, lovely little parks and patches of otherwise inaccessible terrain rendered unbuildable to prevent the place from feeling overcrowded and urbanized. The same seals sunning themselves at the entrance light, the SloCat harbour ferry still putters (slowly; as advertised) through a diverse forest of anchored cruising boats, and the same little derelict red runabout twists gingerly about its mooring off the Seattle Yacht Club outstation docks.

Last time was the early season and we had thought then that Garden Bay, the favoured anchorage, was the most crowded place we had ever seen. We hadn’t seen anything, yet. Now, at the height of the season, there are ten times as many boats in here, resting amicably in a tranquil pond on 2:1 or 3:1 scopes.

We also inadvertently contrived to arrive on a Friday, just like all the boats out of Vancouver or Nanaimo heading to Desolation for a long weekend, so that even after we anchored in the early afternoon, more and more arrived, eventually spilling out of Garden Bay into the rest of the Harbour area. Nonetheless, it has been a quiet anchorage. No generators have fired up for the morning shave, and even those heading out for an early start have raised anchor softly and with reverence, so that you hardly notice they’ve left until the small wake slaps at the hull.

It turns out that my hesitancy to depart Nanaimo was mostly rooted in laying at the dock. We decided to make our last day ashore an easy one, sleeping as late as we wanted, taking care of a last few errands at our own pace, fueling and pumping out after the early rush. To catch a favorable current north, we would anchor another night in Mark Bay and head out early the next day.

Once we were at anchor, I was raring to go. The forecast hadn’t changed, nor our itinerary. Free of the easy access to amenities, shorepower, and unlimited water, I suddenly found myself back in a cruising mindset and was eager to move on.

So it didn’t take much to get me out of bed at five in the morning and motoring north through the wind-swept Newcastle Channel. We dodged a departing BC ferry in Departure Bay, spun up into the lee of Jesse Island to raise the mainsail, and pushed out into the heaving swells of the Strait of Georgia (in accordance with the ubiquitous forecasts of the Canadian Coast Guard’s Continuous Marine Broadcast, I always find myself thinking of it as “Strait of Georgia – North of Nanaimo”).

We went out behind a forty-something foot ketch and ahead of a powerboat of similar length; both turned back within a mile. The waves, three footers, were short and sharp, and we were taking water over the bow immediately. The wind blasted down out of the northwest and put us on our ear. For a rough twenty minutes, I thought hard about turning back as well, but decided to trust the forecast and the latest reports from mid-channel, which seemed to indicate the wind would abate and the waves flatten if we could just get that far. I eased the traveler to leeward, reefed in the jib, and got used to the spray in my face. And the wind did abate, and the waves did flatten, and as we pushed south of Texada Island into Malaspina Strait, it turned into a nice day for sailling.

Off the Thormanby Islands, it got a little too nice. We lost our current, the wind dropped to a whisper, and we decided to motor up to Pender Harbour instead of putting in at picturesque, but tiny, Secret Cove nearby.

So here we sit, enjoying our coffee and the sunshine and tranquility of another day on the Sunshine Coast. Here we will probably sit for another day, both to enjoy the scenery, to take ourselves out of the pack of boats heading north for the weekend, and to make some hopefully minor engine repairs (while we are still within a day’s sailing of the yards in Nanaimo and Vancouver). It’s just Pender Harbour, same as ever, as if we had never left.

The feeling is always a little overly dramatic… “further north” for us this year isn’t very far at all, and it’s likely to be jammed with other sailors and the various seasonal purveyors of goods to those same sailors. Still, I can’t help but to get a tight feeling in the pit of my stomach as I contemplate departure, wondering if I have bought everything here at the last place it may be bought, if I’ve taken care of all those things that can only be taken care of here.

Theatrical as those thoughts may be, Nanaimo itself is doing nothing at the moment to dissuade them. It’s sunny, warm, charming, and the northwesterly, as it has ever done when we have been here, is blowing like stink and raising hairy four foot chop out on the Strait. No set of circumstances could be imagined which could signal more strongly to the hesitant traveller “Stay there! Don’t go out! Spend another day!”

We’re tied up at the outer float of the Nanaimo Yacht Club, a location which has not served to encourage any thoughts of departure. The club staff and members are friendly, the rates are good, and the location ideal. This is the first time we’ve moored here; it seems to be a popular destination and with good reason. The crowded and claustrophobic Port of Nanaimo floats give me hives when the wind is up, which it always seems to be. NYC is less busy and easier to navigate, even considering the constant stream of traffic through the adjacent Newcastle Channel.

So we’re standing on the edge of a precipice of a sort, with a comfortable couch, good food, and great entertainment right behind us, and it’s difficult to take the leap. Countering that, I am quite looking forward to getting up into Desolation Sound at the north end of the Strait of Georgia. I spoke with a lady today just coming back from there and she couldn’t have painted a more attractive picture… beautiful weather, warm water, grand sights. I’m just not looking forward to what it is going to take to get there, though. It’s only about two days, but both of them are out on the aforementioned, exposed, lumpy Strait of Georgia.

That’s strange, because normally I don’t have much hesitation at setting out into exposed waters (or if I do, I guess I must not remember it). You have to respect the Straits, pick your moment, but apart from that, it’s actually sort of fun to get out onto all that open water. The winds are steady and the course clear, just what every sailor dreams of.

But Nanaimo, the end of one road and the beginning of the next, is holding me back. Looking out across at Mark Bay off the lovely and relaxing park of Newcastle Island, I can imagine drifting over, dropping the hook, and spending my whole summer there. I could even spring for the little Honda outboard advertised up at the head of the dock, ease my commute back and forth for ice and sundries. It’s hard, at this moment, to imagine anything half so desirable or convenient up in Desolation Sound. So we’ll have to see if my wife can force me to actually budge when it’s time to pull out of here tomorrow morning.

The one we knew, an uncle, my stepfather’s twin brother, had been long in coming… a good man, superficially cheerful, good at his job, fond of pets, he’d been drinking himself into the grave for years, and the end, when it came, was mercifully short. It came the day after our departure, but it was left for the police to find him later, alone in his home, the way he must have wanted it. We didn’t find out until I opened an e-mail today, our first touch with the outside world since we left.

The others happened the same day, and we had an inkling of those at least, but again did not know for sure until just now, a story we saw right here on Three Sheets.

We’ve listened in our more than our fair share of aircraft crashes over the radio, but this is the first that resulted in any fatalities, and it was something of a fluke we heard it at all. The crash happened off the Washington coast, hundreds and hundreds of miles away. As fate would have it, however, it happened near a place called James Island, and we were very near James Island in the San Juans at the time, and someone, possibly a Coast Guard watch officer or a boater with a freak skip reception on the VHF, confused the two and sent boaters from around the region toward a position “north of James Island” in search of a downed chopper, with two persons in the water and unaccounted for.

Over the course of the next hour, according to my log, the confusion was straightened out, and eventually Sector Seattle reported that all persons had been recovered. We knew, however, that “recovered” was an intentionally indistinct term… no one wants to say “corpse” over the radio. So we were at least prepared to find out that the story hadn’t had a happy ending. The third fatality, and the sole survivor, were surprises, but the balance of all the news we had today was bad.

That’s a risk you run when you are out doing this sort of thing. When you touch base with civilization only occasionally, you tend to find out a lot of things at once, and it’s not always pleasant. Two years ago, we returned from a trip up the Inside Passage to find my grandfather gravely ill. He passed away the day after we got back to Seattle. For whatever reason, fate, luck, what have you, I left town for Spokane, where he lay in a nursing home, almost as soon as I found out. I got to see him only hours before he passed away. It brought home the nature of being out of touch in a society that has a broad and unsurprising expectation of easy communication. A hundred years ago, no one would bat an eye at a relative passing away in a town a hundred miles distant and not learning about it for weeks or months. I imagine when people took leave of one another, it was a more portentous event than it is today… there were pretty fair odds you might never see someone again if they were in even moderately poor health.

When we pull out on the boat, we don’t think of it as being tremendously different than when we head off to another town in a car. It’s just another temporary goodbye from friends and family, a “see ya’ around” rather than an emotional leave-taking. But it really is considerably more significant than we have ever treated it. I can’t recall the last time I talked to my uncle. And as the downed helicopter sadly illustrates, accidents on or over the water are unforgiving.

There’s little to be done about any of this. We don’t believe in trading the certainty of a cell phone signal for seeing and doing the things that we enjoy while out sailing. And anyway, much of that certainty is illusory. But no matter, it’s still a sad and quiet boat here tonight in Ganges.

Clark Graebel
Lt. Sean Krueger
AMT 1C Adam Hoke
AMT 2C Brett Banks

Rest In Peace

Duck, duck, goose!

The combination of high temperatures and low tides seems to have kick-started the summer scene at Shilshole Marina. Before this week, you would see more people out and about on their boats, but it was mostly racers or older gentlemen out getting ready for the season. Now, we’ve encountered the magic combination that is bringing everyone out for fun instead of just function.

A posse of very small girls have taken over Q and P docks, racing about on foot and in kayaks with small nets, stopping to peer down into the depths every few feet for new and strange examples of sea life. All manner of small creatures are captured and forcibly detained in buckets, awaiting what grisly fates I don’t yet know. You can track their exploits by damp footprints and bucket sloshes up and down the dock.

It’s not just the kids that are in on the act now, though. This morning I saw one grey-haired gentleman down on his knees, talking on his cell phone with his nose down near the water, tracking the progress of a small crab across the bottom. The tide is at -2, which isn’t the lowest of the year, but low enough that I swear some of the most shoreward boats are resting on their keels, and you could just about reach down and grab those little crabs if you wanted. One fellow on the next dock over appropriated one of the nets from the girls and lay down flat on his stomach splashing and flailing after something or other down there.

My wife has been carefully tracking the progress of the single remaining gosling from the flock of geese that have made their home around the stream outfall south of P dock. It seems like it gets bigger every day, going from ball of unidentifiable fluff to small proto-goose in a matter of weeks. It may be my imagination, but it seems like the geese are happier in the sunshine, too.

It’s nice to be able to have the hatches open now and sit here working while all the commotion outside filters in as background noise. It’s been a glum spring in Seattle, and for the whole nation in some respects… oil spills, financial troubles, long wars. At times, all that gloom and rain we were having just seemed the natural companion to everything else happening in the world.

But the return of sunshine, the families, and the simple illumination of nature going about its daily business a few feet below the keel brings a little joy back into the picture. Starfish don’t care about recessions.

Insert your boat here

One of the positive aspects of being more landlocked this winter than we had planned has been the opportunity to visit some places that have, by dint of coastal geography, been places that we have generally found ourselves sailing past rather than stopping at and visiting. Whether their appeal simply hasn’t been obvious from the water or there aren’t suitable anchorages in the vicinity, it turns out there are a lot of parts of the Puget Sound shoreline that deserve greater attention than the simple glance from on deck that most passing boaters afford them.

One of those places is the Bloedel Reserve. Located on Bainbridge Island along the shore of Port Madison, the former private home and estate of Prentice and Virginia Bloedel is now a lovely park and museum open to the public. You’ve probably gazed on its idyllic grounds many times on your way to or from Agate Pass, but perhaps, like us, you didn’t realize what it was you were passing by. If that’s the case, it’s time to rectify the oversight: Bloedel Reserve is worth a closer look.

I forget the rules for forest paths in Region A... is it white, right, returning?

The Reserve is 150 acre combination of pristine nature, carefully manicured garden, and stately man-made structure. A planned walking tour from the gatehouse (vehicle traffic is heavily restricted, so plan to walk, about two miles if you stick to the recommended paths) will take you through grassy fields, past duck-filled ponds, into an elegant turn-of-the-century chateau now used as a visitor center. From the visitor center, a turn past a waterfall takes you into the Japanese garden, and then into a moss garden. All along the way you are assailed with what I can only imagine, based on the looks on my wife’s face, are a cornucopia of botanical delights. It’s all just weeds to me… but I did notice that the rhodies were blooming, an early-season treat for those who put stock in such things.

New Beaufort Scale: When tree brushes water into ripples, it's Force One

The entire Reserve radiates tranquility. Were it warmer out, I could have laid down on a bench and gone right to sleep, and I imagine that some people do. It’s a bit like sailing in out of the way places… just the wind, nature, and you. It’s a different sort of nature, though, a softer sort, with more (but quieter) noises, and a sense of life in progress all around you.

We were lucky with our timing. In order to preserve that pervasive sense of quiet calm, the Reserve limits the number of simultaneous visitors. During the tourist season, reservations are recommended, which can be made online at the Reserve’s website.

Timing is one thing, accessibility another. You’ve been sailing past the place all these years for a reason, right? The closest anchorage is inner Port Madison, but you would have quite a hike even assuming you could find a good spot to dinghy ashore on the north shore there. As close as it is to Agate Pass, one could anchor in Poulsbo and catch a bus to Bainbridge Island fairly handily, but that would necessitate a transfer at some point. The best bet is to moor in Eagle Harbor and catching the number 94 bus (see the Kitsap Transit website for more information) from Winslow, which runs right past the Reserve.

And then next time you sail past you can point to the solid white chateau on the hill and say, “Hey! I’ve been there.”

I’d worked out our trip from Sidney to Seattle precisely accounting for the tides and currents at Sidney, through Haro Straight, down San Juan Channel, and into Admiralty Inlet, taking into consideration the behaviors of Rosario Strait and Deception Pass just in case conditions militated our entrance into one of those two bodies instead. I felt confident that we actually would get to Seattle that day, late, to be sure, a long day, a very long day, no doubt, but entirely possible. At the very least, we would make it across the Strait of Juan de Fuca for a short overnight stop in Port Townsend before making the last leg quickly the following morning.

But I forgot about Spieden Channel.

I didn’t really forget about it, of course, I just discounted it. We’ve been through there a few times, and it’s always been sedate. We were just lucky. Today, after a fast crossing of Haro Strait from Sidney, seeing the water boiling up in front of us though the channel was sheltered from the shrill northern wind, I got a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. Too late, I pulled out my copy of Coast Pilot 7 and looked up Spieden Channel. “The meeting of the flood currents, which flow E from Haro Strait and W from San Juan Channel, cause heavy tide rips and eddies. This channel is not recommended for sailing craft.”

Oops.

So we slogged our way through it at about a knot, getting in to the Customs dock at Friday Harbor almost two hours later than I had planned, throwing the entire rest of my carefully honed schedule into disarray. Sailing is like that.

So, we decided to stop and get a burger and a slip for the night.

We’ve been living pretty decadently this trip, mostly because we can; it’s the off-season, and all the yacht clubs with which our own has reciprocal moorage agreements have guest slips standing empty, just waiting for us. So in Silva Bay, Sidney, and now here in Friday Harbor, we’ve indulged in the luxury of a solid tie-up, where in the summer we’d be lucky for a spot to anchor within dinghy range. Of course, in the summer we wouldn’t be madly in love with AC space heaters that require shore power, either. Still, it feels very decadent to just stop here for the night and go out on the town, when we had expected a hard day of sailing still ahead of us.

In fact, I haven’t even unlashed the anchor from its perch on the bow pulpit this trip. We’ve either found free moorage (well, everywhere but Vancouver) or an open buoy at a state or provincial park. I don’t really mind anchoring, but I won’t pretend that it isn’t easier and more certain to tie up at a dock or mooring ball.

Strangely, the prospect of being back in our own slip at our home marina doesn’t have quite the same allure. Maybe it’s the knowledge that the trip will be over and work will again loom at that point. Still, if we make it back there without dropping the anchor anywhere in between (which seems likely at this point) it will mark a first for us… we’ve never taken a trip before where we didn’t anchor out somewhere. Decadent, indeed.

But there is a certain sort of satisfaction and well-being I am experiencing at the moment.  I’m warm, well-fed, and well-connected right now, snugged in at a berth in the middle of one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, during one of the premier athletic events of our time, and I suppose I am just feeling a little bit smug about it.  That’s all bound to disappear as soon as we pull out of here and I am cold, exposed, and nervous out in the middle of the Strait of Georgia in the winter, but right now it’s just terribly satisfying to me to be sitting here, watching the Olympics live on a laptop, with a bustling metropolis right out the window.  I don’t feel like I’m traveling; I feel like I am at home.

The boat is, after all, home, and sometimes it’s still a revelation that we can take that home to any number of fantastic places for whatever amount of time we can manage.  And it’s getting easier to manage all the time, as we structure our jobs to work remotely, and with gaps in connectivity.

I don’t feel isolated, I suppose, and that’s what is fueling the infusion of well-being right now.  It’s very easy out on the water to feel alone, at least at this time of year.  Sometimes that’s a great feeling to have.  But at the moment, I think it’s just as well to be here with the crowds, with a Starbucks every two blocks, McDonald’s every three, and well-stocked stores in every neighborhood.  Just having unlimited electricity and Internet seems a boon.

I think that’s important, because all that stuff represents something to get away from when it is time to get away, but it also represents something to come back to when it’s time to come back.  And if you can find ways to enjoy both, then cruising can be that much more fun, because you can look forward to both leaving port and to coming back in again.  I used to think it was only the first that was important but now I am beginning to think that to really enjoy this lifestyle, it’s just as important to appreciate returning.

To start, we will have to pick our way in the pre-dawn murk through the moored field of derelicts to get out of Silva Bay, where we are spending the evening at Pages Marina and Resort. We’ll thread the needle passing Tugboat Rock, which seemed narrow enough even in the light of day as we came in this afternoon. Then, there is the Strait of Georgia, a vast and tempestuous body of water that has been blown back and forth by gales to a fever pitch this week. The forecast looks promising for good sailing weather in the morning, and by “good” I mean a small craft advisory and rain. That is genuine improvement, and will help make our crossing to Vancouver a speedy one.

There, we will have to brave the gauntlet of Royal Canadian Navy vessels guarding the city during the Games. I could hear them, 20 miles distant today as I rocketed up Trincomali Channel in a following wind, hailing and stopping every small craft in their vicinity. What terrors will Navy Warship 710 hold for us tomorrow? Hard to say.

After that, we have the relatively pedestrian difficulty of tying up at the False Creek Harbour Authority docks in high winds. May the gods shine favorably upon our electrical needs and also assign unto us a windward slip! I’ll worry about getting out of it later!

Then, there is the madcap dash through Vancouver, picking up tickets, locating buses, transferring to other buses, finally, hopefully, ending up on our assigned transport to Whistler, which will bear us on a three hour trip during which we can take our first breath of the day (and, hopefully, eat something).

We’ve been lucky so far, luckier than I deserve, getting to this point from Seattle in three days time. Mandy got done early Tuesday, we got out of Shilshole sooner than I hoped, and the corresponding ebb current took us north to Everett in good time. I managed to avoid the two massive dredges camped in the channel right outside the marina and we managed to get some sleep, despite their all-night operations. Worse than the dredges were their attendant tugs, flitting in and out to dump loads of sludge out in the harbor. They took pity on first-time visitor me, though, and didn’t blast us with wake nor prop wash as they tended their massive charges.

When I woke in the morning the deck was white with frost, and the dredges were still going at it, though now at a respectful distance. It was dark and I pulled out with Mandy still sleeping below. The auto-pilot was still sleeping as well, unfortunately, so I hand-steered until the sun came up, and when Mandy came up to stand her first watch, the auto-pilot magically recovered.

We hit Deception Pass right on time, slid through without even a lurch, and found good sailing wind in Rosario Strait, which bore us up as far as Blind Bay without pause. The next morning, we skipped across to Sidney in light winds and cleared customs without a snag. We moored in Montague Harbour promising ourselves that since we were on time, and since Saturday would be so long, today, Friday, would be a short day, a quick skip up to Silva Bay, then a day of rest.

Which it more or less was, except that rounding Gray’s Peninsula coming out, I put us up on a rock.

If I were the sort of person to easily let such things go, it might not have been so bad; we were on rising tide, our engine was running, and a nearby BC Hydro crew boat (the same, in fact, that I had been angling uncomfortably in-shore to let past us… still, I swear that shoal comes out further south than it shows on either of our charts!) took a halyard and tipped us to allow us to reverse off. All told, probably took no more than five minutes. I’m sure the leading edge of the keel looks a mess, but otherwise, no damage found to hull, keelbolts, or running gear.

Nonetheless, it put a pall over the day and leaves me feeling rather incompetent to do something like crossing the Strait of Georgia tomorrow. Sailing seems to be that way, for me; as soon as I start feeling comfortable doing it, something happens to take that away. It goes right back to childhood. Learning on my cousins’ Hobie cats, no sooner did I feel comfortable flying a hull without adult supervision, my cousin Craig and I flipped on the Columbia and drifted downstream in the chilly waters a mile or two before anyone noticed, unable to right it due to water in one of the hulls.

I’ve been told that people go aground sailing, but it’s always seemed a bad practice to me, and I am one of those guys you see rounding buoys meant to guide much larger vessels even when the chart shows plenty of clearance inside. It unnerves me that I can take such precautions and yet still get caught out. It’s extraordinarily humbling, and for me, at least, causes questions about whether or not I am capable of living this sort of lifestyle. After all, most folks just ground their boats, not their homes.

Still, I will shake it off and go out tomorrow, just as I kept going this afternoon. There are worse things that can happen, even on a day of rest, as we found when we docked here at Pages and the wharfinger told us of the tragedy that had happened today at the Olympic Luge track, the event we are supposed to see tomorrow. We may or may not see it. I may or may not be much of a sailor. But none of it seems to matter very much compared to what happened to that young man representing his country today.

Rest in peace, Nodar Kumaritashvili.

False Creek Harbour Authority

I’m not saying Americans aren’t kind, particularly here in the Pacific Northwest (where we have something of a reputation for altruism, at least, if not strictly kindness), and certainly not among or around boaters and marina workers we have encountered, who are with very few exceptions complete gems and entertaining to be around in the bargain.  Still, there is a certain extra something we find north of the border when we visit there; despite some not insignificant reservations our northern neighbors have about us Americans, they remain hospitable to the point of excess, as I was reminded today when I received a call from the False Creek Harbour Authority.

You may recall a couple of months ago when I began my quest for moorage somewhere in or near Vancouver during the Olympic Games so we would have accommodations with easy access to the bus lines leading to the Whistler venue, where we have tickets to one of the early events.  Our search had been fruitless and unpromising; the few marinas I had reached who had open slips seemed reluctant to let them out, and many of the rest were full up.

It hadn’t really occurred to me to contact the Harbour Authority, or rather it had occurred to me and I had quickly discarded the thought.  Most Canadian harbours have a public harbour authority which manages docks as a community resource; few cruisers who have spent time in British Columbia waters haven’t spent a night or a few at one of the ubiquitous red-railed public docks, which typically have lower rates and a more colorful community than their private counterparts.  In some ports, they are the only moorage available.  Most, however, have a primary mission of providing affordable moorage for the large (though shrinking) Canadian fishing fleet.  They are rougher and older than most private marinas, and providing accommodations for cruising boats is a secondary concern.  During the summer fishing season, though, when the fleet is out, they are happy to take in transient cruisers (cruisers who aren’t picky about slip-side services and who don’t mind rafting alongside commercial vessels with strange smells, noises, and early AM departure times) and some of our favorite Canadian port stops have been at public docks.  In the winter, however, they tend to be full with their regular customers, and I didn’t expect to find any openings.  Nor do they take reservations, typically.  Hailing the harbour master on arrival was still on my list of options, but I was figuring that Plan C, anchoring out, was going to be the most likely outcome.

Here was where Canadian hospitality came through for us, however.  Two months ago, I had called Pelican Bay Marina on nearby Granville Island asking about slips.  The manager, Marcus, told me he had a spot, but that he had promised it to someone else if they got back to him that day.  If they didn’t, he said he would give me a call and I could have it.

He didn’t call, and I figured that was that.  This morning, though, my phone rings, and it’s Alison from False Creek Harbour Authority, and she had heard from her manager, by way of Marcus at Pelican Bay, that we were looking for a slip, and they had one if we were still interested and willing to put down a deposit.

Were we ever!

Alison acknowledged that this was all out of the ordinary; they don’t normally take reservations or deposits.  But it seems as if someone realized that it’s a boon to the Authority coffers to make an exception during the games, so they’re taking reservations, bumping the rates up a bit (still extremely reasonable) and getting deposits.  We couldn’t be happier with the outcome; we stayed at the Harbour Authority docks in False Creek a couple years ago when we passed through Vancouver and had a lovely time.  They are particularly well-situated for exploring downtown Vancouver and the amazing Granville Island, the folks are friendly, and the facilities well-kept.  If I’d known they were taking reservations, they would actually have been my first choice.  Alison even spelled the name of our boat correctly on the first try (it helps to have something memorable!).

All of this only came about because Marcus, who I only ever had one two-minute conversation with (although I got to know his mother quite well as she was minding the phone while he was on vacation for a couple weeks before I managed to reach him), went out of his way to mention my name the manager at the Harbour Authority and pass along my contact information.

Might it have happened in Seattle?  Maybe; we’ve got some good people around here.  But although we didn’t ever expect it, it’s the sort of thing that we routinely are pleasantly surprised with in our dealings with our Canadian cousins.  And it has us looking forward to our visit next month all the more.

Anywhere else, I would have been huddled up in the cockpit, shivering on anchor watch, trying desperately to make out dim landmarks ashore to make sure we weren’t dragging anchor.  Down below, the cabin would still be cold and probably quite damp, as I would only have managed to start up the diesel heater after I made sure we weren’t in immediate danger, and it would take a couple hours to get the place warmed up, and a few hours more to get it dried out.  By which time it would be about time for bed and to shut it off again.

It’s true, I would have taken a certain pleasure in raptly observing the full moon, skulking along atop a ridge of dark, forbidding clouds, lighting the mists even as it ducked away to hide behind the bank, then blasting out into the open as if propelled by the wind itself to gleam coldly atop the roiled waters, and I might have enjoyed the solitude afforded by waiting until the off-season to take to some of our more popular Northwestern anchorages, and if the anchor held fast I would probably have congratulated myself on passing another test of seamanship.  But on the whole, I am just as happy to be tucked comfortably away in our slip here at Shilshole.

Of course, marina life is not without its own perils. Yesterday I was up using the public restroom at the head of our dock.  There was someone in there already in one of the stalls, but I didn’t think anything of it, stepping up to a urinal and going about my business in the approved manner.  I hear a flush, the stall door open, and then a low whistle of approval.  I find this disconcerting, to say the least, but I hope for the best… maybe this guy is just one of those unconscious whistlers, a happy sort of fellow who mindlessly purses his lips and hums a little tune as he goes about his business.  As I hear him step up to the sink, though, I think he’s really pretty bad at it… no tune to speak of, just that low intermittent whistle.  Either way, best to ignore it, I think, staring resolutely at the wall in front of me and waiting for him to finish.

He does, finally, and steps outside… and the whistling continues!  Did I miss someone?  Were there two guys?  If so, which one of us was the third one whistling at?  I am confused.  But then I realize, it was just the wind all along, whistling around the edges of the windows.

Nonetheless, it is those social situations that are the awkward parts of marina life for me.  I’ve lived in the city too long, and I’ve lost touch with the small-town attitudes and ethos that marina tenants more closely embody.  Shilshole may be an exception to that general rule; we haven’t been here all that long but people seem friendly, but more withdrawn, than has been our experience elsewhere.  Consequently, I’m often at something of a loss as to the appropriate behaviors and expectations to adopt, and still somewhat ill-at-ease while staying here.  That’s another argument for being out cruising, I suppose.  But maybe I’ll settle in to it with time.  Just in time, I suppose, for the weather to turn again and for us to go out cruising for real.