October 2009 – Late Entry

October 31, 2009

The Joys of Marina Living

I have to confess that it’s challenging to start a blog about cruising life in the low season, while one is tied up in a marina with trains going by at all hours and all the conveniences and inconveniences of urban living close to hand. Still, days like yesterday and nights like last night make me glad we are tucked safely away in dock here at Shilshole rather than anchored out somewhere in the gale. The weather station at West Point shows sustained winds of 33 knots gusting to almost 40 around 0200 this morning; at some point right around then, I think I woke up to the shrieking in the rigging overhead, listened to the lines and fenders taking the load comfortably, and rolled over and went back to sleep.

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.

October 28, 2009

Spot the hazard to navigation!

If I had a fancier camera, or if Insegrevious were a more stable camera platform, I would make a regular feature of comparison photographs of nautical objects taken first from far away and then from up close. I find identification difficult and wonder how many other people share my curse. It’s not even a vision thing; my wife has much worse eyesight than I do, yet she can often spot and identify objects before I can. It’s something about how my brain is wired that it can’t decide what it is looking at.

Is it a floating flock of seagulls ahead? Or crab-pot hell? An indistinct white dot against the shoreline; breakers over a rock, or an idling Bayliner? Two masts appear on the horizon; a tame and friendly ketch crossing, or is it a fishing trawler coming at you on autopilot? Is that a line of kayakers, or a low-lying reef? Then there is the always popular game for kids and watchkeepers, “How many sportfishermen can you find in this picture?” You’ll always miss at least one!

The issue is exacerbated in a stern cockpit sailboat, where the helm is situated at the worst possible place to see anything that matters most, ie, ahead of you. You’re often lower than the bow by some few feet, and there is the whole mess of sails, masts, ventilators, hatches, lifelines and pulpits ahead of you. It would amaze wildlife biologists what size of whale you can effectively hide behind a one inch lifeline stanchion, and it’s a phenomena that I feel should be further researched as it almost certainly holds vital keys to the preservation of the species from the depredations of whalers.

Then, on our boat and many others in the chilly Pacific Northwest, you have the dodger with its plastic windows that distort and hide objects on the other side. I often spend my watches huddled beneath the warmth of the dodger and amuse myself with the manner in which it turns all sorts of obstacles into rather poor Van Gogh knock-offs. While a boon to the arts community, this probably isn’t exactly in the finest traditions of seamanship.

So, partly of necessity and partly through my own cowardice, I spend many watches in fear of running down whales, kayakers, and fishermen in Zodiacs (well, I’m actually a little encouraged at the prospect of running down sportfishermen, savoring the possibility of the tables being turned for once, but you don’t exactly get to choose), enjoying the fine vistas off the beams and stern and then realizing with a start that I haven’t had a good look dead ahead in some time now. It’s amazing what leaps out at you in those moments of panicked clarity and, as if through some sort of adrenaline-driven super-power, I have yet to nail all manner of deadheads, crab pots, and aquatic mammals, but I am sure it’s only a matter of time.

October 26, 2009

Welcome to Late Entry

A lot of people might tell you that planning in one summer to get married, rent out your house, move aboard a 33 foot sailboat with your bride for an indeterminate period of time, and immediately circumnavigate Vancouver Island as a honeymoon trip would just be asking for trouble, but I say big leaps in the wake of the wedding are traditional. Charles Barkley met 17 year old Frances Trevor in September of 1786, married her in October, and set off from Belgium for the West Coast of North America in November. Edith Iglauer moved at the drop of a hat to Vancouver BC, from New York, to marry and fish with John Daly in those same waters, and that was as recently as the seventies. It wasn’t that long ago that the custom was to make all your dramatic lifestyle changes right after getting married. Go slowly? Dip your toes in first? Bah, I say. Take the plunge!

But anyway, a lot of people have, usually quite politely, told us they thought it was asking for trouble when we planned to step aboard our 33 foot sloop, Insegrevious, last July on the night of our wedding to live aboard indefinitely and circumnavigate Vancouver Island. They may still be right, but at least we have some tradition to cling to.

The Barkleys spent 46 years together, much of it sailing in this very region, so I don’t think the precedents are terrible. Maybe we’ll get something named after us. Or perhaps Mandy will outlive me and write a new Northwest classic. Possibilities abound.

We’re not as tough as any of those past sailing couples, of course; the perseverance and stoic work ethic that came from a life aboard a wooden vessel in a wilderness a year away from civilization, or from weathering a great depression and a world war, are virtually unknown, and perhaps unimaginable, to our generation. But we have been in some difficult places, and can at least imagine ourselves capable of getting through more of them, and if we lack grit forged in childhood from poverty and deprivation, perhaps our current deprivation will impart some.

At least we have withstood the first part of the test, sailing around Vancouver Island, and since we returned more excited than when we left, I think that bodes well for our chances. I started writing this after a week back on dry land, a week that seemed twice as long and three times more stressful than the month we were gone; all we could think about was getting back aboard.

I should say more about the vessel we will be aboard; a sailor’s boat may be as much or more a part of his or her character and outlooks as all other formative experiences combined. Sometimes I think that the boat informs the experience of sailing more than those sailing her. Insegrevious is a 33 foot Hunter sloop, a ’77 model, an old, solid John Cherubini design with nice lines (no humpback for us!) and a good turn of speed for her age. She isn’t as spacious as newer models and much of her gear and many of her systems are old, but she has been pretty well maintained and retrofitted enough to make me comfortable taking her into out-of-the-way anchorages like those on the west coast of Vancouver Island. After two years of pretty hard cruising, it’s clear the time is coming due for a haul-out and re-fit but we try to take the breakdowns in stride. After all, what else can you do? The sea is unpredictable and boats are built by human hands. Any cruise is fraught, regardless of what you sail in.

This blog will be about cruising, the fraught parts together with the fun. We are moving aboard because it seems like a good time to do so, with business depressed (we are both self-employed) and likely to remain so, and with cruising a long-held goal. We’ve heard that cruising is just like real life but more damp (even in Seattle) and that’s all we expect; we’re under no illusions that we’re getting away from it all, we’re just trying to take it at a slightly different angle.

At the same time, we don’t want to simply be floating apartment dwellers, one of those boats with a DirecTV antenna clamped to the rail and mooring lines that have stiffened enough to be used as clothes lines… we want to be out, sailing, living that life at the same time as we work and play in our current lives. We’re not south-bound along the traditional escape route of Pacific Northwest cruisers, but we’re not just going out on the weekends anymore, either. Call it local long-distance cruising. There will be changes, some of them major, sacrifices, often unpleasant, and trials, frequently unexpected. But still, it’s just Mandy and me, moving forward, only now primarily under sail power. We hope you will find it interesting.

– A note about the name of the blog

Not many cruisers are as rigorous about log keeping as I am (more on that in a subsequent post), and those that are often have their own methods and shorthand for doing so. My own introduction to logs and logging came at the impressionable age of 18, when I went to work with a bunch of ex-military, ex-police officers for whom there was a Right Way and a Wrong Way of recording watch information for subsequent readers. In that indoctrination, I was taught that it was always best to record information as it happened, but if that were not possible, one was not to simply fudge it and write things down in a subsequently timed entry; instead, the time of the observation should be noted at recording, and annotated with the initials “LE” for “Late Entry” to indicate that the information itself was actually being recorded after the fact (and therefore, the recollection might not be as fresh, might be informed by additional knowledge, etc, etc).

Cruising and blogging are activities which are almost inherently dis-contiguous in the time-space continuum, in that when one is sailing one is almost certainly without either the time or the means to blog, and conversely one who is blogging probably is not sailing (or at least not sailing very hard). Thus, pretty much all my blog entries are going to be “Late Entries” in the nomenclature; you are hereby notified that they may therefore have been considered, re-considered, half-forgotten, polished, and embellished before you ever get sight of them.