Northward Bound

We're off and we are both playing to type: Carol is excited and I'm nervous .... what did we forget, what did we not do that needed doing, ad infinitum et ultra. In dealing with performance pressure, a sailboat is an interesting challenge because the pressure starts immediately; you have to get underway from the dock without wrecking any other boats or generally embarrassing yourself with lousy boat handling skills. There seems to be a law of inverse proportions for this situation: the worse you do, the more people there are on the dock to see you do it. Nail it, and there's never anyone around. I was adequate so, good enough.

We have a plan, sort of. We will head north on the eastern side of the Salish Sea, which is continental British Columbia, and return south along the western side of the Salish Sea which is the east coast of Vancouver Island. The prevailing winds here are from the northwest quadrant so, tougher going on the northern leg and, maybe, good running to the south. Of course, this plan is based on exactly zero experience, so, go back to sentence #1 .... I'm nervous. All plans are good until execution exposes all the flaws, and my first one was that I assumed that my Google Earth places were tied to my email address and that I could access them from my laptop. Wrong! They have to be physically transferred from my desktop to may laptop. How silly is that. This means that I cannot locate all the way points that I created from my laptop. Fortunately, I have marked them on my charts so we should be OK.

Most sailors obsess over weather and those that don't obsess at least worry about it. My assumption is that weather will be a big factor on this trip. I suppose that we are on what could be called an inland sea, and will never be very far from some land. But, storms are what they are, and I expect one or two, and a fair amount of rain. I had thought that the weather here was influenced by the Japanese current. That was approximately correct, but the currents in the northern hemisphere of the Pacific Ocean are much more complex than I was aware. The affecting ones are the North Pacific and the Alaska currents. Regardless of the names, the issue is still the same: warm moist air collides with cooler air and it rains.

It's inevitable, I guess; any boat we are on will be compared to the one we owned, for better or for ill. The Maine boat was older, 80's vintage, and smaller, 30-ft., than ours. It was a tight fit, not much storage, and the forward v-berth was not very comfortable for sleeping. This boat is much newer, and longer, 34-ft. It has a separate v-berth and another sleeping berth, like our boat had. As on our boat the v-berth is being used as a closet and pantry, a shambolic arrangement best kept behind a closed door.

Yardarm issue solved: scotch for me and wine for Carol. This works.

We had a "captain's" meeting with the charter service on Friday evening before getting underway. Didn't know what to expect; didn't expect what happened. First there was a one hour meeting on safety regarding hazards and related issues in these navigable waters. Tidal currents are going to be a much bigger issue than I had anticipated. Probably should have seen that one coming, but didn't. Next we spent a couple of hours on the boat with a young lady who acquainted us with how it worked. Several first impressions: this is a way nice boat. It was built the same year as ours, 2005, and cost at least 50% to 75% more, despite being shorter. Second, it is a serious sailing vessel. It has running rigging that I could not identify by name. Each sail has more lines than both our sails did together. It is set up really nicely. And nothing, not a single thing, seemed to be an analog of anything on our boat. Different places, different setup, different usage; at one point it felt like six years of accumulated knowledge was rendered useless. And, of course, when things go south, which they may, we'll have to translate old speak into new speak and do so quickly. I don't do "overwhelmed" but if I did, that would have been what I felt walking off the dock. The sole saving grace is that they have incredible documentation. The book remembers if you can remember to look in the book. Boat details, a home made chart showing all the places and hazards where people have screwed the pooch. They also have a pretty good inventory of spare parts, hopefully, not needed. However, the diesel heater works so, everything else is a detail.

Our plan for getting under weigh was simple: get there about 7 am; start schlepping stuff onto the boat; Carol would drop off the rental car early; then she would work on stowing things and I would work on clearing out the old way points from the nav system and putting ours in. Maybe leave the dock by noon, maybe not. Didn't really happen like that. It took us more than four hours to load and semi-organize the boat. Stuff was, and still is strewn hither and yon. We has the folks off load some things so that we would have better access to storage. Carol probably nailed it when she commented that this is a pretty boat, but it's tough to beat Beneteau for overall livability.

So, we got under weigh about 12:30 with the goal of going to a small, near by cove called Pleasant Bay. It was a pure Mongolian cluster ______ trying to use the chart plotter. This one is different and newer than any of ours. It worked just fine, but I could not get it to do what I wanted. And, what I wanted was pretty simple stuff. SO, a couple of phone calls, and an in depth read of the owner's manual may have solved the issues, or maybe not. The chart plotter was such an issue that we did not even think about raising the sails. That will be the Marx Brothers meet the Three Stooges. absent pies in the face. That will have to wait for another day and the motor works just fine.

We caught a lucky day, today, sunny and warm, almost sun tan weather which was good for getting stuff onto the boat. Tomorrow, rainy, windy, not so nice. And, we have a 35 nm to 40 nm run to get to point Roberts, which has a marina and where we can clear customs into Canada before going farther north. So, until then we will enjoy our sheltered anchorage in Pleasant Bay, aptly named, it is pleasant and this is what we see to the west.