Month: September 2010

If September can sometimes provide a lovely Indian summer postscript to our delicious northwest summers, it can also bring a dismal foreshadowing of our mild, but wet, winters. We’ve been getting a little of both here in the Gulf Islands this year.

While you’re tied up at a dock somewhere it’s easy to crank the electric heat up a bit and go back to your game of Tetris or whatever and enjoy the nice days while ignoring the others, but if you’re still out on the water, you’d better have some way to cope with the cold and wet, or you find yourself spending most of the sunny days recovering from the rainy ones. The heavier winds, from unusual directions, also demand new considerations, both when sailing and at anchor. Some of the prime anchorages that are enjoyed under prevailing summer weather patterns turn into bouncing, howling traps in the southeasterlies that start roaring through this time of year, and the calm morning/windy afternoon pattern that the Pacific High brings with blue summer skies cannot be relied upon when planning the sailing day any longer.

We’re still in well-protected waters here and there are a multitude of marinas and anchorages available within an hour of almost any location, so we deal with the weather challenge under way simply by keeping a close eye on conditions and regularly monitoring the forecast. Foulies are more frequently to hand, and harnesses and jacklines will be ready.

Anchoring safely is actually easier now that there are fewer boats out. We can more easily pick the best protected locations, and are free to put out as much scope as we can stand without worrying overmuch about getting in anyone’s way. It’s tempting to want to go in and hit all those previously crowded bays that are difficult to visit during the summer high season, but we also have to evaluate their protection from different angles than we are used to, and not all of them measure up as well in the fall as in summer. Ganges, for instance, is a spot we were looking forward to returning to and anchoring in for some extended spell, but it is just a huge maw waiting to catch the next southeaster coming in. The holding is still excellent, but how one sets the anchor and where you position yourself in relation to both shoreline and other boats can change dramatically. We’ll duck in for a few days only if the weather promises to be fairly settled.

Safety aside, comfort is the next big factor for late summer sailing. We are usually able to catch most of our above-deck leaks during the spring showers and fix them before we head out for the season, but there are inevitably fittings that work loose or caulking that springs and there are a few drips below. These are comparatively easy to deal with next to the condensation problem, though. Cool and wet go hand in hand, and no amount of insulation or ventilation will prevent it. Likewise, no sort of warm clothing or number of layers will make you happy if the boat is dismal and chilled.

For our primary heat source, we have aboard a fixed diesel heater from a major Pacific Northwestern manufacturer who I will not name, because I hate the thing. I hesitate to call it a complete piece of crap, because when it works, it works quite well; but the design is intricate and fiddly and not really suited for the marine environment. The longer I live aboard, the more I come to prefer simple, robust, reliable equipment; this stove is none of those things and is prone to all the sorts of histrionic events that delicate, feeble equipment can fail from. Nonetheless, on those occasions when we need it, it can throw out big bundles of heat and cheer the cabin right out of any dank, frigid mood it might be in.

This time of year, though, it’s often over-kill, and more trouble than it is worth. One of the few benefits of having a small boat is that it doesn’t take much to heat it, and when it’s over sixty or so, rain or shine, I can get up in the morning and scatter a handful of tealight candles about the cabin and have it warm and dry by the time Mandy crawls out of the v-berth.

Much of the trick to keeping the cabin pleasant is to simply pay attention and stay ahead of conditions. A little heat early on does wonders for comfort throughout the day. So does taking maximum advantage of any dry or sunny periods to open up and air out. Cushions and clothing get strung up along the lifelines and we look like gypsies… but so do all the other long-term travelers nearby. It’s like wash day all around the anchorage.

Another discipline is simply keeping water out of the cabin in the first place. We vent whenever we are cooking anything steamy, keep the head closed off from the rest of the cabin and opened to the outside after showers, and mop up and ring out any puddles otherwise introduced to the interior. When it’s raining, we take care to restrict our movement from outside to inside so that any wet clothing or shoes are left abaft of an imaginary line near the galley… close to the head and companionway, where they will be unlikely to contaminate our living quarters further forward.

With practice, all this becomes nearly automatic, and it’s easy to stay comfortable and even take pleasure in the most dismal fall weather. Now if only I could find a battery operated Tetris game….

I wrote recently about the increasing prevalence of fixed moorings in many popular Pacific Northwest anchorages, and touched briefly on the matter of permanently moored residents in those same areas. In particular, I highlighted the debate now taking place in Nanaimo regarding the Mark Bay anchorage, where the city is attempting to impose a time limit on anchoring in order to prevent derelicts and crowding out transient tourists with permanent residents. The locals who were there first take some umbrage at the suggestion they should be displaced for outsiders who are just passing through; the visitors think it’s inappropriate that the residents essentially claim ownership to patches of water that cannot be owned. So, governments are getting involved.

This provokes fairly strong reactions on both sides. On the one hand, it is a basic impingement on hundreds of years of nautical tradition and code: governments have repeatedly upheld (at least in the Western world) that they alone own the land below the tide line, and that apart from public interests in maintaining freely navigable channels, boaters are free to traverse or stop over any part of it. The boat that is there first is the one that others must avoid.

On the other hand, the sheer number of boats and the more or less fixed positions some of them have taken in some places have served to create an environment that is more akin to a set of docks or wharves, preventing any other vessels from safely anchoring, and creating certain environmental difficulties. In many ways, it is a different sort of use than nautical tradition or maritime law were designed to regulate. While anchoring has been, and is, protected, it has also come to be viewed distinctly from moorage, a more permanent state of affairs with different regulatory implications. I think when you get to a point where you view a particular patch of water as “yours” you are probably no longer covered under traditional anchoring rights: it’s a mooring.

Vancouver has fought this fight over the False Creek anchorage and further south, Bainbridge Island is doing so over Eagle Harbor, but in both cases it’s too soon to say how onerous the long-term effects might be. In the short-term, it has displaced some people who are just trying to live someplace (not a few to Nanaimo, prompting the Mark Bay controversy). This blog resonated with me (see entries from December 30, 2009 to February 1, 2010), since it’s by a guy who is basically trying to do the same thing we are. We are lucky enough to have a slip to retreat to; not everyone does, and I sympathize with those whose only offense is being in the way of rich yachties from out of town.

We’re in an unusual position with respect to this debate, since we both live aboard and travel. We have felt the frustration with paperwork and regulation when we are in a place like False Creek and are just trying to live our lives. When that deadline is creeping closer and the police are cruising past giving you the eye, it can feel very lonely and hopeless out there if you don’t have any other good options for relocation (say, around about Labor Day, when anchorages are often choked to capacity). I imagine it’s very much like being evicted from your home. Our home goes with us, of course, but a boat isn’t like a tent or even a car; something must be done with it, it has to be kept safe and secure, and there are a limited number of places where that can be done. Those places are even more limited if one must take into account the services and infrastructure required for living and making a living in today’s world.

As visitors, we want to be respectful, but we also want to, well, visit. I can well understand the motivation that locals may have to keep newcomers out of “their” spots, and the “mooring first” argument serves that end. But I can’t reconcile that with the prevailing right of free anchorage. It’s unfortunate that local governments have to get involved in this, and I agree that they will probably make a hash of doing so in some instances. On the other hand, this is why governments (or, democratic governments, at least) exist in the first place, to prevent one group’s “freedom” from impinging on that of another. The problem on our bays and coves now is that the transient uses envisioned by various navigation regulations have been supplanted by the alternative use as a place of more or less fixed abode. It’s difficult to imagine local government not becoming involved in that, just as it’s hard for all but the most hardcore libertarians to imagine a city without zoning or building codes. When more and more people with increasingly diverse interests are packing themselves into the same places, there’s going to have to be some party with authority to diminish and arbitrate disputes. That they will ultimately do so by inconveniencing all the parties involved is simply the price to be paid by all of us with varying demands on the resource.

The first of September was like flipping a switch; suddenly, it’s fall in the Salish Sea. Blustery winds, rain, and that characteristic damp chill in the air all came in out of nowhere to suddenly displace our idyllic August summer days.

The change hit us as we were ending our stay in Vancouver swiftly but reluctantly. We spent the better part of August there but it seemed like we barely touched the surface of that vibrant and complex city. Friends visited, we took side trips, and in the end it seemed like we caught only a few bare glimpses of the place as we were rushing around on errands. The long immersion I have often promised myself will have to wait for another year.

We left to cross the Strait of Georgia without the planning or preparation that body of water is due. We had neglected to take on provisions, made only cursory route plans, got too litle sleep the night before, and to top it off, Mandy had a terrible cold and had to stay below and in her bunk for most of the eleven hours it took us to get across. The wind was right on the nose for most of the way and while it was light and easily managed, leftover slop from strong winds the night before slowed our progress considerably. When we reached Nanaimo, our destination, it was dark, cold, and Labor Day… the anchorage was packed. I dropped the hook on the outskirts of the bay and went to bed exhausted.

By the Tuesday after Labor Day, the rain had more or less stopped, and the water had cleared of boats as if they were grease chunks and someone had up-ended a bottle of Dawn in their midst. We crawled out of our dank, dreary little cabin, motored over to the Port Authority docks, and went shopping. Properly stocked up, we motored back over to Mark Bay and took our pick of the open spots near the park docks, then conjured heat from our recalcitrant diesel heater. The wind shifted and built, but we had hot food, cold drinks, and a warm and dry cabin in which to enjoy them and endure whatever conditions nature might choose to throw at us.

Surprisingly, what she chose was sunshine, and we took advantage of it the next day to go ashore and walk the woods and beaches of the suddenly deserted Newcastle Island Park. In the pale yellow sunshine, the pine trees still gave off the warm and musty smells of summer. But scattered among the dusky evergreens, the brighter green of the maples and oaks was fading and already shot through with the early flashes of brilliant oranges and yellows of their last full measure of glory.

The mornings come later and bring chills and condensation along with them. The sun shines as hot at mid-day as ever, but in the shade, the wind is cold and shifty. When I clamber out into the cockpit for my morning coffee, fewer kayaks pass by on early morning paddles, and the boaters around us peer out from within their warm cabins instead of coming out with their own mugs and waving.

After all the chaos and expense of Vancouver, Nanaimo is a whole new mini-vacation. We don’t have any deadlines now other than a promised rendezvous with a friend in the San Juans near the end of the month; there are no great passages to be made while we skulk up and down the protected waterways of the Gulf Islands and San Juans. September is always a gamble here; sometimes it is the last, best gasp of summer, and sometimes it is just fall, no better than it should be. This is fall for sure.

It’s a truism that there is nothing easy on a boat. There are a hundred reasons for this but I think in the end it usually boils down to the unforgiving nature of, well, nature. True, some of it has to do with compromises inherent in small living spaces, but why are those spaces small? The rigorous demands of hydrodynamics, that’s why.

It’s been a particularly difficult adjustment for me to get used to this fact, because my day job is in information technology, and in IT, we’re all about being lazy. Technology is, at its basis, really only of use in automating or aiding processes that otherwise must be done manually, or would be utterly impractical if attempted to be done manually. Your private experiences with technology notwithstanding, done properly, it’s all about making things easier. Inasmuch as I have had any success in the field, it is due to my innate, elemental motivation to avoid doing work of any sort. I’ve managed to parlay this character flaw into a career of making things easier. Other people simply put their heads down and charge along doing things the way they have been told. I’m always looking for an easier way.

On a boat, there is no easy way (well, there is; it’s called “having a crew.” I don’t). Sailing is all about making things harder. You’re probably already familiar with the basic complaint of the sailor, underway or at anchor: stowage. Stuff is always going to be underneath, behind, or wedged in with other stuff, necessitating that all related stuff must be removed to get at the stuff on is desirous of. The lazy man might unpack all of those items in the way to unearth the desired equipment, leaving it all out until finished with the original item, after which it and all the stuff the belongs atop it could be stowed at one time, instead of twice. It doesn’t work that way, though; you have to get out the thing you want, then put away everything that was in the way, then pull it all out again when you are done to put the original item away, and then everything else, again. Otherwise, you probably a) don’t have enough room to do with the thing whatever you had planned, since all the other crap is now strewn about the cabin and b) will lose or break something when the boat rolls unexpectedly. Which it will, assuming you have left anything out loose. Law of the sea.

The same thing is true for small and simple efficiencies like opening and closing doors or drawers. If I open the head door, it needs to either be closed again immediately after I pass through, or latched open. Failure to do one or the other will result in it bashing back and forth as soon as the boat starts moving, damaging either itself or one of us.

Then there is sailing itself, which typically involves tedious hours of trimming, reefing, unreefing, or changing sails, not to mention one’s course, regardless of what the optimal rhumb-line course might be, due to tides, currents, winds, other boats, floatsum, jetsum, whale sightings, etc, etc, ad nauseum. Sometimes this is called “fun.” When you’re just trying to get from point A to point B, it’s an affront to laziness in every form. I want to set the sails, turn on the autopilot, and take a nap until we arrive, but that’s just not how it works.

Those are just the things that are most obvious. Other things aren’t necessarily drawn to your attention so dramatically, but are equally important to do the hard way. For instance, before heading out for the day, whether there is wind or whether you plan to sail or not, the sail must be rigged for hoisting and the halyards clear to hoist with. The day you don’t bother, the engine will quit and the current will be sweeping you onto some nasty rocks, and getting the main up in a hurry will be your only hope.

That’s safety related, at least, but at the end of the day, it’s also important to reverse all that preparation, securing the halyards and putting on the mainsail cover. Why? Maintenance. It won’t kill you, but leaving the halyards flogging and the sail exposed to unnecessary UV will shorten their lifespan, and will cost you more to replace or repair than if they are taken care of. Plus, the flogging halyards will keep you awake at night and do the same for your neighbors, if you have any neighbors, which you won’t if you don’t secure your halyards.

Maintenance is the greatest hard way there is in sailing because it involves working on things that are already working perfectly well. My lazy lizard brain regards this as an anathema to logic and rational thought, but unlike software, lines and winches and fabric and metal all wear out. If replacing your lifelines is hard, it’s not so hard as having them snap when you are thrown against them offshore in a gale. At least, I imagine it’s not… that’s why I am planning to replace mine.

I suppose that is the attitude that a lazy person needs to adopt toward sailing then, thinking of the hard things as really being the easy things. I can’t say I am quite wrapped around that thought yet… changing how you think, it seems, also involves some hard work.