Month: February 2010

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The Great Tsunami of 2010

Actually, it’s early in the year to make a proclamation of that sort, so I may be tempting fate a bit… there could certainly be an actual Great Tsunami at some point later in the year in which case I’ll probably regret my sarcasm here. Let’s hope not, for reasons other than the potential wounding of my pride that might occur.

As you can see, our tsunami experience here in the Pacific Northwest wasn’t all that great, a state of affairs apparently shared around most of the Pacific Rim. Nine foot waves in Japan? Didn’t happen. Flooding in Hawaii? Not that anyone could tell (despite CNN’s somewhat breathless live coverage).

The great waves break on shore
Tsunami!

We got the National Weather Service Tsunami Alert fairly early in the day and quickly looked up the predicted impact at the place we are housesitting near Port Townsend: 1/4′ wave. Port Angeles was to have it even worse: a half-foot monster wall of water impacting at around 1544 local time.

Hawaii was to be hit an hour before us, so we watched CNN anxiously for some idea what to expect. As it happened, what we saw there was a pretty good predictor for what we would experience here: some minor tidal anomalies, nothing you would notice if you weren’t already looking for it.

We had to look pretty hard, but we think we may actually have seen some evidence of the surge when it came in. The wind was blowing pretty hard out of the south yesterday, and the bay here is well-sheltered from southerly winds. Consequently, the water out front was pretty well dead flat for most of the morning, with occasional wind ruffles, even as two or three foot breakers crashed in up around Port Townsend itself. But at about 1550, we saw a weird back-pattern of interference in the otherwise calm water… the cross-hatch you may just be able to make out in the photo above. Those tiny, one or two inch waves refracted off the shoreline are what we believe the great wall of water sent blasting north from the Chilean coast amounted to when it got here to Washington.

As underwhelming as the event was, it still struck me as pretty amazing. Small though they may be, any evidence whatsoever of a climactic event that happened closer to the Antarctic than to us is pretty incredible. Of course, we can’t prove that was what those are, but there was nothing else out there yesterday which might have generated them, and it was certainly not a phenomena of the wind.

Although I have enjoyed making fun of the predictions and the outcomes from the tsunami all around the North Pacific, I believe that the various prediction centers certainly did the right thing, and the degree of response to the threat was appropriate. The evacuations were prudent and seemed to go smoothly, and I sincerely hope that the lack of any dramatic outcome does not lull anyone into a false sense of security. Rather, it seemed to me that this served as a valuable exercise of the warning systems and a validation of the plans and procedures that have been put into place to deal with the potential for real disaster from these natural phenomena. I know that I will have no hesitation in running for the hills (or heading for deep water, should I be on the boat and in a position to do so) if one of these alerts were triggered again.

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Decadent Living

My timing of the tides and currents through the San Juans en route to Seattle proved to be masterful and heroic in scale… yet deficient in one particular: Spieden Channel.

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.

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Heading home too soon

Too soon, and too fast! Our sailing for the past two days has been fantastic, and we’ve been rocketing along at hull speed under clear blue skies, feted by porpoises, unimpeded by Customs. It’s all come too soon and gone too quickly.

Our last couple of days in Vancouver were just spent wandering, taking it all in. A stop to see the now famously cordoned off Olympic Flame; a quick public transit tour of the venues, or at least those accessibly by public transit (Cypress Mountain was not on that list, even before it started melting and even ticket-holders were prohibited from visiting); and a night spent wandering the streets of downtown, listening to the music and watching the throngs of people from every nation acting and interacting.

Vancouver 2010 Olympic Flame
Looks pretty safe to me

I say every nation but it’s just a broad assumption that I am making; Vancouver is such a cosmopolitan city anyway, it’s difficult to say if even the most exotic-looking or -sounding person is a resident or not. But from all those we saw fumbling around with maps just as we were, it’s a safe bet that not all were locals.

Being in attendance with the rest of the world, we weren’t really looking forward to leaving, but when we did, we did it fast. The day dawned clear and cool and brought a northerly wind bombing down the Strait of Georgia with it that left us tearing across at hull speed and better, bashing through three foot swells with a part-time escort of porpoises, who alternately annoyed, as they splashed water toward an otherwise miraculously dry cockpit, then frightened, as they made breathtaking cuts ahead of and beneath our bow. We were heaving and bounding so much that I was sure one of them would miscalculate and face an unexpected appointment with the leading edge of our much-abused keel, but they knew their business far better than I and steered clear, if only by inches.

The wind and weather encouraged us to angle south for Active Pass, cutting the corner on the route we took north, and saving us a day on the return trip. We caught the tides barely in time at the pass; we didn’t dare sail through but motored dully against the slight current, pausing only to raise sail again on the other side before rocketing off to the south again. A rail-car carrier, seeing us pause to unfurl the jib off Enterprise Reef, acidly informed us that he and a ferry were coming through and we should start our engines to get clear. I didn’t bother to tell him we were faster under sail and that he should step outside the bridge and check the wind sometimes… I just let the genoa unfurl again with a roar and took off down Swanson Channel.

With so much and so favorable a wind, we decided to put in at Sidney for the night. This was no easy decision; Mandy loathes Sidney and its approaches, cluttered with rocks and other vessel traffic year round. It always seems to be her watch when we’re passing through there. I talked her into it, then regretted it when I saw the chart for the approach to Blue Heron basin in Tsehum Harbor, where our moorage was… shallow. Then I realized it was a metric chart, and that wasn’t a one fathom sounding I was looking at, but one meter… half of what I had already thought was pretty thin water.

A detailed study of the tide tables convinced me it was safe to go in, but we only managed it with a lot of false alarms and the prop barely ticking over. Docking, even with the wind blasting down on us, was an anti-climax.

We were still in Canada, but the sedate club house of the Sidney North Saanich Yacht Club where I went up to register for the evening convinced me we were a world away from the Olympics. It was too soon, and we’d gone too far to go back. So it’s on for home in the morning.

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Having it both ways

I don’t want to say that I am feeling cozy, particularly, because that’s really more a word that my wife would use and she would mean something completely different than I might mean by it, so it’s probably best to avoid it entirely.  Especially because right now men’s figure-skating happens to be playing on the computer we have set up semi-permanently atop our diesel stove for live streaming Olympics coverage while we are here in Vancouver, and I don’t necessarily want anyone reading this to think I am comfortable with that.

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.

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The Olympics, from the water

One of the primary benefits of cruising is going interesting places and doing fun things there, and there may be no place that is at once as interesting and fun as a hosting city during the Olympic games.

Vancouver is alive with the buzz of fans and athletes, a special place at a special moment in its history. As a child, I was here for Expo ’86, and though I don’t remember much, in some parts of my mind this has all taken on the aspect of some long-term extension of that experience, with everything new and exciting also seeming somehow familiar and reassuring.

There’s also a certain sense of satisfaction involved; it’s been a difficult year, and getting here by boat in the amount of time we found available was by no means a sure thing. Long days, cold nights, and some rough patches of water stood in the way of our getting here in time to get to the event we had tickets for; that event itself, the men’s luge, seemed on the verge of cancellation the night before we got here, the consequence of a tragic death in practice.

But the cards all fell into place, the stars aligned, and we made it!

Saturday was, however, a very long day. We were up at 0430, picking our way by spotlight out of crowded Silva Bay, into a choppy and confused Strait of Georgia by night. The wind had abated to around 20 knots from the whipping 35-40 range of the night before but the waters hadn’t calmed yet. Raising the main with a reef in it in the dark on a pitching deck helped warm us up, though, and soon enough we were bashing through the waves on a close reach bound for English Bay. The Strait was empty but for a single tug pushing a barge, which in the immutable law of the sea, was crossing us on a collision course. I altered to pass behind him and he flashed his deck lights in acknowledgment once we were clear.

As the sky grew brighter beyond the vail of grey overcast, the wind backed, and we were soon sailing close-hauled, but unable to point close enough to our destination. Mandy took over the helm about halfway across, and by the time she had us across, we were closer to Bowen Island than to Point Grey, and faced with a lot of tacking to get us into False Creek.

Before that, though, we had to contend with the security cordon; a Canadian corvette quickly closed with and hailed us, asking some pointed (but polite!) questions about our origin and destination before letting us past. Further in, an RCMP patrol boat repeated the routine as we were picking our way past the half-dozen freighters at anchor in English Bay.

Time was getting short and as soon as we got in close enough to shore for the chop to die down, we dropped sail, fired up the engine, and headed straight in. Some combination of bashing around and revving up popped a cooling hose off; water sprayed out the engine compartment and into the cabin before I got Mandy to throttle back and found a screwdriver to tighten the hose clamp that had worked loose.

We got into False Creek about an hour later than planned, and had to go through the usual song and dance to get hold of the harbourmaster at the Harbour Authority (if they regularly monitor a radio channel, we haven’t found it yet). We called them on a cell phone finally and quickly got sorted out in our slip on B dock. I changed quickly out of my foulies, grabbed the ticket confirmations, and we headed off to the will-call office.

The only problem was, I didn’t actually know where the office was at; I’d left the directions behind somewhere. A very fuzzy phone call and some hazy recollections later got us into the right neighborhood, and then we just followed the crowd and looked for signs.

One of the cool things about the tickets is that they also serve as all-day transit passes on any public transportation in Vancouver. So once out of the will-call office, we hopped the next bus we saw headed for Coal Harbour, and were at the Sea Bus terminal in no time. All the public transportation here has been incredibly effective; there are buses or light rail trains every few minutes, Sea Bus water taxis every ten minutes, and if you’re on False Creek, the ubiquitous harbour taxis flit about like a cloud of gnats… you could almost step from taxi to taxi to get across, instead of just sitting inside one and waiting for it to get there.

The Sea Bus took us to Lonsdale Quay in North Vancouver, which also happened to be the boarding point for the restricted spectator buses up to the mountain venues of Whistler and Cypress. And it took us there an hour early. We stood in the rain and took the opportunity to gulp down some food while we waited.

The trip up the mountain was two hours, during which I slept, hoping to stay awake for the event itself. The Sea to Sky Highway is beautiful, winding along Howe Sound and presenting spectacular vistas of what looks to be world-class cruising territory on par with the San Juans or Gulf Islands. We made plans to come back and explore it by water, in warmer weather.

The highway is restricted right now to Olympic traffic and we had it pretty much to ourselves, other than a mystery motorcade that passed us going the other direction about halfway up. Joe Biden was in town; we heard one of the volunteers talking about leading members of the royal family around some of the venues later; could it have been one of them? It didn’t matter, it just added to the gravity of the event.

After having been cold and wet for so long already, it was a bit of surprise that we could get colder and even more wet up on the mountain. But it was further up, and quite a bit colder, and the rain came down even harder as we went through security.

We got through without hassle; everyone, from volunteers, to spectators, to the security personnel, were in good spirits. Whether they’ll still be smiling at the end of two weeks of it all is an open question, but here at the beginning, the pride and happiness are both shining through, and we bobbed our way up the trail to the luge track with a buoyant crowd.

The event itself was exciting, but to be honest we saw more on the big screen, the same view you would get at home, than in person. We picked a good spot in the final turn (the deadly one, although that wasn’t why we picked it) to catch a glimpse of the racers going past right at the finish. Although there is a good long stretch of track visible (since you’re standing in the middle of the curve), I timed a few of them through it, and we had a view for all of about two and a half seconds.

I wouldn’t have traded those two and a half seconds for all the warm couches in the world, though.

The trip back was just as long, and a bit more frustrating, and we were beat by the time we made it back to the boat. But our enthusiasm for the Games, and the excitement here in the city, was undiminished.

The experiences we are having in Vancouver right now during the 2010 Winter Olympics are exactly the sorts of things we hoped for when we decided to move aboard and spend as much time as possible sailing, and it’s proved, at least to me, that you don’t have to be out voyaging around the world to have terrific, memorable, unique experiences from afloat. This is the sort of life I want; whether or not we can maintain it will be a question for the future. For now, we’re basking in the glow of a city in celebration, and we’re celebrating a bit ourselves (and not just over the two US hockey victories today, although as a hockey fan, that doesn’t displease me in any way).

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A Day of Rest

That’s what today was supposed to be, at least. And certainly, I’m going to hit the bunk right after writing this, because tomorrow’s busy schedule calls for an early departure and promises a day of, shall we say, interesting, sailing and navigating from start to finish.

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.

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Just waiting

All our tanks are full, the lines are singled up, provisions are loaded, cabin stowed… I’m just hanging around right now waiting for my lovely wife to get home from her big presentation and we’re heading north as the sun sets behind us, bound for Vancouver, and the Olympics.

Tonight is just a short hop to get a jump on a much longer day tomorrow. We hope to get as far as Everett and lay up for the night before getting through Deception Pass tomorrow afternoon and into the San Juans. We’ll be sailing pretty hard through the weekend so don’t expect many updates here… but there may be some stories to tell by the time I get back to an Internet connection!

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Slow boat to Vancouver

So our weather window for hoisting someone up the mast to check out our malfunctioning radome has slammed abruptly shut on us with the onset of the familiar vista of clouds and rain coming in from the south last night. We got into town too late yesterday, which would have been a beautiful day for it, with a high near 60 and not a raindrop to be seen, and I had high hopes that today would follow along in the same vein, but winter came back early.

I woke this morning to an annoying buzz and vibration; I at first put it down to a nearby boat warming up for an early departure, but as the haze of sleep cleared a bit a realized it was coming toward the stern somewhere on our own boat. When I was awake enough to give it a couple second’s thought, it seemed pretty obvious it must be the water pump. Usually I turn off the breaker overnight or whenever we’re not using the water; it’s a cheap way to keep a split hose or broken fitting from flooding us while we’re on deck or otherwise occupied (like, sleeping), but on the night I forgot, somehow the tank had gone dry and the pump was gulping for water that wasn’t there. There was none in the bilge, so it must have been some fluke where the last drops were used that night but the line didn’t pull it all through until early this morning.

Anyway, we were well awake by 0700 because of that little incident, and we put the morning to good use. Mandy grabbed the hose and refilled the water tank (the pump, fortunately, did not need to be re-primed but started sucking through again immediately) and I checked over the engine and warmed it up for a quick trip to the fuel dock.

We motored over without seeing anyone else on the water and tied up at the pump-out station at the end of the fuel dock. We have a moderately complex waste water system and pumping out takes both of us and a moderate amount of time. It also requires more attention to detail than I gave it, which resulted in a moderate amount of backflow through the vent line and onto the deck. While we were getting that cleaned up and flushing the system, the fuel dock opened up, and suddenly swarms of runabouts materialized out of nowhere and lined up at the pumps.

I assumed it was the die hard fishing fleet, up and ready to go at 0900 on SuperBowl Sunday, the game notwithstanding, but after we jockeyed Insegrevious into position and grabbed a diesel line (fortunately, they were all waiting for gasoline) the dock attendant wandered over and struck up a conversation. Turned out they were all craft that had been on display at the boat show the past week. They had come down from Vancouver and were on their way back up today. “It’s smooth and not much wind,” the attendant said. “They shouldn’t have too much trouble.”

What a different world! In a matter of hours, probably not even a particularly long day, those little powerboats are going to blast their way up the same distance it is going to take us three or four days to cover.

This isn’t a particularly new realization, or even a depressing one. There are tradeoffs to be made; for one thing, while each of us put about $50 worth of fuel in the tank, they will have burned through it by tonight, and I probably won’t have to fill up again until July. For another, were the weather worse, they wouldn’t be making the trip at all whereas we would probably be flying along in comfort and style. If it happens to deteriorate somewhere along they way, they’ll have to put in somewhere; we have a safe, warm cabin to tuck away in and can find anchorages all over the place.

Still, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a heartbeat’s worth of envy when I heard their plan. What an easy week we would have if we could simply put the hammer down and be in Canadian waters in a few hours! Forget about preparations, who cares if we get a late start, we’re going to the Olympics!

But instead we’re on the slow boat, and our path is less direct. I’ll be happy with it once we get there. Usually, I am fine with enjoying the journey and not worrying about the destination so much… anyone who does otherwise will find sailing a frustrating affair, I think. But this time, the destination matters, and for once, I wouldn’t mind shortening the journey a bit to get there.

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Plans and Planning

I have a whole raft of quotations that I love about plans and planning.  They oscillate between those that favor the planning process and those that deride it.

Everyone has heard the old proverb, “He who fails to plan, plans to fail,” but I just find that pithy and condescending.  Come on, if you’re not planning, then you’re not planning, for failure or anything else.  Give laziness a chance.

Sun Tzu is more motivational.  “Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as the night,” he wrote, “and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”  Since my plans are often accused of being dark and impenetrable, I feel a certain kinship with the general, but no one has yet provided me with an army of three hundred concubines, so perhaps they are not yet dark and impenetrable enough.  Also, I have a tendency to fall more like snow than a thunderbolt, but I’m working on that.

Coming at the planning process from another perspective, I heard this line in a movie once: “A plan is just a list of things that never happen.”  The truth in it struck me.  Few plans are executed in a way that bears much resemblance to their intentions.

“Plans are useless,” said Eisenhower, “but planning is indispensable.”  A wise man; hidebound adherence to a plan formulated for a set of conditions that has changed (as conditions generally do) is fatal, but having gone through the planning process, having considered the options ahead of time and weighed them against the possible course of events, is critical to making good decisions quickly in changing conditions.

On the other hand, Lennon said, “Life is what happens when you’re making other plans” and he had a point there; become too obsessed with the planning process, and whatever it was you thought you were planning for will pass you by.

Among others, Dennis Waitley attempts to walk the line between planning and living.  “Expect the best, plan for the worst, and prepare to be surprised.”  Of course if you were prepared, it wouldn’t be a surprise.  His formula doesn’t work very well for me anyway.  If I could really expect the best, I wouldn’t have much motivation to plan for the worst, would I?  I plan for the best to be prepared for the worst.  Patton might have captured the essence of the middle course a bit better: “A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.”  Georgie knew you needed to have a plan, but couldn’t get obsessed by it.

If you take from all this the notion that plans have been much on my mind of late, you would be correct.  To me, plans become most important when you are dealing with tight timetables, and our timetable for getting to Vancouver in time for the Olympics has become quite constricted.  Our tickets are for an event happening the evening of the 13th; Mandy, however, found out only recently that a major corporate client would be needing her services on the 8th and 9th.  If you have a powerboat, perhaps this would be of little import, but to sail from Seattle to Vancouver, in the winter, in three days, is something that takes a little planning.

The trip should take about three days in normal conditions.  That’s “summer normal” though, and doesn’t account for anything nasty blowing in an effectively slamming shut the Straits of Georgia or Juan de Fuca on us.  So I have been burning the midnight oil lately looking for alternate routes and gaming out what I will do if x happens at point y during the trip.

This may all be for nothing.  The El Nino weather pattern we are in this winter that has made this the warmest January in Seattle on record shows no sign of abating, and with no pressure systems moving through storms are unlikely to appear, winds will be light, and we might just have to motor the whole way over glassy seas.

But that’s hardly the end of the challenge; we’re going to an event at Whistler, three hours north of Vancouver, on the same day that our slip reservation starts.  Even in the unlikely event we could get in early, we’d have to manage anchoring and then moving the boat to the slip before we could head up to the mandatory Olympic bus transit point for a ride to the mountain.  The loading point is another bus and sea taxi ride away from the marina, and we have to first find the will-call office for our tickets and pick them up before we can even head that direction (all Translink public transportation is free for ticket holders on the day of the event, a nice touch particularly compared to the Olympic bus network, which gouges you again for bus tickets, which alone cost even more than the event tickets).  To make things even more fun, you have to reserve a specific departure time for that bus, so we have no margin for running late if there are delays at the ticket office or elsewhere.

Coming back, we have to be sure we get on a bus that gets to town before the buses turn into pumpkins at midnight.  It’s not so much the buses that I am worried about, I don’t mind walking, but the water taxi across from North Vancouver cuts out a lot of swimming that I wouldn’t be too happy to have facing me at one in the morning.

I’m looking forward more to the days after the event, to be honest.  We’ll be moored right in the middle of downtown, an area filled with athletes and spectators from around the world, in one of the most attractive and cosmopolitan cities on the west coast.  And I don’t have to plan a single thing for any of that.