Fun – Page 4 – Late Entry

March 4, 2010

What’s your coverage?

There are certainly ranges of coverage available in marine insurance today and I am frequently surprised at what clauses are available and at what cost. Family medical, hurricane haul-out coverage, fuel-spill liability, dock contracts, fishing equipment coverage… you name it, there seems to be a clause covering just about every eventuality, no matter how remote, and often at surprisingly reasonable prices (at least, as reasonable as anything else having to do with boats).

But where, oh where, can you get coverage against lawsuits over the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases (NSFW)?

I know that I’ll be reviewing our policy with a magnifying glass after that shocking wake-up call. What’s your coverage?

February 22, 2010

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.

February 20, 2010

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.

February 17, 2010

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.

February 16, 2010

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).

January 29, 2010

The Great Seattle Boat Show

So if you live anywhere in the Puget Sound area media market my post title has just set off that cursed jingle from the commercials in your head where you won’t be able to shake it off until sometime in March. You’re welcome!

It’s that time of year again, though, and everyone is getting excited about the Great Seattle Boat Show. Three Sheets has a whole separate blog dedicated to the event, which will have updates throughout the week that the show is going on. I plan to check it regularly for hot tips on what to check out next. And Navagear’s Tim Flanagan has an unusual floating perspective on the Lake Union portion of the show (Boats Afloat) on his blog.

I just picked up our tickets today. If you happen to be a BoatUS member, you can get a modest discount by going through their site for the purchase (and you still get the free Qwest parking pass with the deal).

Oh, a Boat Show commercial just came on as I was typing this. Apparently it’s no longer the “Great Seattle Boat Show” but the “Big Seattle Boat Show.” I’m keeping the blog title, though… it’s the same jingle.

The show is always exciting, particularly coming in the middle of winter as it does, when most of us have been off the water for a few months and the itch to get out there again is reaching a fever pitch. I’m a little less into it this year, though. Last year, and the year before, we were deeply involved in planning for significant trips coming up the next summer, and we had both budget and motivation to take advantage of boat show deals for outfitting. There were also many mysteries of medium-distance cruising still in our minds, and the many informative seminars put on by people who had been there and done that were high on our list to feed our hunger for information.

(The commercial came on again just now. Funny how that jingle gets stuck up there, isn’t it?)

This year, we don’t have anything major planned for next year (which isn’t to say that it won’t happen, just that we’ll be poorly prepared for it if it does) and we have a lot of other things going on here in the next two weeks. So, we’re focused on other things at the moment, and the boats and exhibitors at the show all seem as if they are a long way away from where we are right now.

We have a plan to kindle our excitement though, which is to go for our first day with some friends who are looking to buy a boat and retire soon to go cruising. They are reformed boaters who sold their last boat long enough ago that they have forgotten all the reasons why they shouldn’t buy another, and we expect the enthusiasm to be infectious. We’re counting on it, anyway; I have to go back to our boat afterward and find the energy to dig into a fistful of projects that have to be finished before we head north in two weeks for Vancouver.

January 20, 2010

The kindness of Canadians

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.

December 26, 2009

Christmas travel as sailing analog

So I’ve been missing sailing in between being busy and not having the weather for it, and with Christmas now intruding on our time (yes, yes, I’m a veritable Scrooge, I know) I didn’t figure we’d be getting in any sea time for a couple of months. But it turns out that the Christmas travel season may well prove to be a good stand-in for a good, brisk winter sail.

Our destination this year was Phoenix, where the family had agreed during balmier days earlier in the year to gather at my sister’s place to celebrate the holidays. It seemed like a good idea at the time; after a few months of drizzly, miserable Pacific Northwest fall and winter, the perpetual sunshine of central Arizona seemed a soothing balm, even if palm trees aren’t exactly a substitute for a nice, plump Douglas Fir in the living room. It turns out, however, that Phoenix is gripped in a wet, frigid winter of its own, and the lows here have been lower than those in Seattle, even though Seattle itself is unseasonably cold. It turns out the combination of cold and the deprivations of holiday travel are a lot like off-season sailing.

It started with the flight down. The unpredictability of arrival times is a staple of the sailing life, dependent as we are on wind and tide. Airplanes generally do better, but this time out, we found ourselves spending an extra hour in the air, courtesy of a nasty thunderstorm parked over Sky Harbor just around the time we were supposed to be landing. Even better, we spent the time orbiting the periphery of the storm, with lightning flashing out the windows, rain spattering the windows, and Mandy slowly turning green beside me as the plane bounced around in the unsettled air. I started getting flashbacks… it was just like crossing the Strait of Juan de Fuca!

She managed to keep her lunch down, but the misery was eerily similar to certain sailing experiences we have had. Maybe the whole sailing experience need not actually involve sailing! This was an exciting thought, though I admit I had difficulty concentrating while trying to pry her fingernails out of my arm after touchdown. After all, the better parts of sailing are frequently when the actual sailing bit is finished. Basking about the anchorage in the sunshine, drinking wine at sunset in the cockpit… or even just drifting once the wind dies in the vast, scenic spaces. These are usually the foundations of our fondest memories, and the idea that one might build upon them without the actual strain and penury of boat ownership was a novel concept to contemplate.

The possibilities were further impressed upon me when I went to shave the first morning after our arrival. As is often the case aboard, where shaving is a less-than-frequent occurrence, it developed that I had forgotten to pack any shaving cream. And so, just as if I were aboard Insegrevious, I was forced to improvise a lather out of what soap happened to be available. In this particular case, it was my grandmother’s “Berry Breeze” hand soap, which filled the role admirably, although I smelled faintly of strawberries for the rest of the day.

Navigation, too, has been a replicable challenge. Though the signage is somewhat better, the vast, open desert proves as constant as the waves on the ocean, undulating slopes of cactus receding into the distance in every direction, with no particular clues as to which way is north. And if you do figure out what direction you need to head in order to reach your destination, you are thwarted instantly by the oppressive Phoenix traffic, just as the Sunday exodus of cruise liners and cargo ships parading up Puget Sound can force one into undesirable tacks for extended periods.

Have I found the perfect replacement for cold, expensive, off-season sailing? Well, probably not. For one thing, the sun came out today and it almost hit sixty degrees. That’s just too warm… I nearly broke a sweat. For another, it’s not nearly expensive enough. Airline tickets just can’t compete with shredded sails and shorted-out marine electronics. Still, it may be something I have to experiment with for a few years to rule out entirely. You can’t just form a solid opinion in one trip. Maybe Arizona in the winter isn’t a bad replacement for Puget Sound cruising!

December 10, 2009

No Room at the Inn

I think I might have mentioned here before that Mandy and I have, through what luck I do not know, tickets to the Vancouver Winter Olympics coming up here in only a couple of months. Specifically, we’re going to the luge, an event to which neither of us have any particular connection, and which doesn’t present itself as an ideal spectator sport, considering that the sleds and their riders pass through a very limited field of view on the track at speeds approaching 90 miles per hour. But I’ve always like watching the luge events and the bids were correspondingly low for the tickets, so that’s what we got, and the point isn’t really so much the event itself as, hey, we’re going to the Olympics!

As anyone else with tickets, or ticket aspirations, already knows, getting the tickets is the smaller part of the battle to attend the games. The larger part is accomodations. Vancouver will be filled to the point of bursting with athletes, officials, spectators, and their families.

If you didn’t already know you were going, if you are among those who only got your tickets in the most recent lottery and have been beaten to the punch by everyone who got lucky a little bit earlier, you have a real challenge working out some place to stay at this point (disclaimer: I am not one of those people; we found out that we got our tickets months ago and I have only my own procrastination to blame and deserve no sympathy in this matter). This is the case even before you might try to take minor details such as budgets and travel dates into account… places to stay are just hard to find up there this February.

I knew that this would be the case, of course, as it has been at nearly every modern Olympic games, but I also figured we had an ace up our sleeve: accomodations that float. Vancouver has vast amounts of waterfront loaded with marinas and at least one pretty decent anchorage right in the middle of town. And how many other ticket-holders also happen to have boats?

Not that many, it seems, but enough to make things troublesome, perhaps.

Finding a reasonable slip at a marina is our first choice. We only plan to be in town about four or five days, making it a pretty affordable option if we can find an opening, even with inflated rates. We’ve had some oddly schizophrenic responses to our inquiries of availability, however. Some marinas we call cluck mildly, as if they are bored by silly, slow Americans calling so late in the day and tell us they have been booked up for months… don’t we know the Olympics are on, eh? Others don’t seem to realize the games are happening at all… it’s business as usual, the off-season, and regulars are probably going to be in their slips, there’s probably no room but leave your number and they’ll get back to you. We have a couple of vague, “Yeah, we think we have something open, let me call you back” answers hanging out there, but no one has actually called back. I can’t figure out if they are in the second group and don’t care about the money to be made, or if they are in the first, and don’t want to waste time on anyone not booking up for the full two weeks.

Because there is that second group, I still have some hopes of getting a slip, but I’m focusing more now on Plan B, anchoring out. Here, however, there is also some uncertainty. False Creek, the primary anchorage in downtown Vancouver, nicely protected and at the center of the city, also happens to be hosting on its shores the Olympic Village, where the athletes will stay. Needless to say, in the wake of Munich and Atlanta, this creates a security concern, and the latest word is that the Creek will be blocked off at the Cambie Street Bridge to all vessel traffic. That still leaves quite a lot of usable anchorage, but not the copious amounts I had recalled from prior visits. Also, the security situation there leaves the question of whether all traffic or anchorage may be prohibited as of some later date up in the air.

All this uncertainty has left me scheming and coming up with alternatives to such extent that I am now fully capable of getting down as far as “Plan F” without scratching uncomfortably for risky or unlikely alternatives. Still, I’m holding out some hope for Plans A (a slip in False Creek), B (anchoring in False Creek), or D (a slip in North Vancouver). Don’t ask what happened to Plan C.

While this degree of confusion over the final plans would normally leave me something of a nervous wreck, I am actually having a little fun this time around. It has forced me to look harder and see that there really are a lot of options. Having to work through them and consider how we can still get to our event and have a berth to sleep in the same night is giving me additional confidence that the whole trip is going to be exciting and memorable.

Of course, it could get a little too exciting; we have two notoriously rough straits to cross at a dodgy time of year. But I trust too that I have built enough time into our plans to make the crossings during what weather windows may be available. Even if not, if we somehow get stuck in the Gulf Islands somewhere, if it’s cold and blowing crazy, at least we’ll have tried it… and anyway, I can probably scalp the tickets for twice what I paid for them!

November 12, 2009

For your entertainment: SailO

If you don’t keep up with the comments here, you may have missed Peter Roach’s comment on last week’s “Guarding 16” post. Apparently I’m not the only one who looks on the VHF as a form of entertainment. But Peter has taken it to a whole other level aboard his CSY 44 Grace. He’s turned it into a complete bingo-type game called “SailO.” With Peter’s permission, I am reposting his comment here in full with the complete rules of SailO for your use and entertainment when the cruising season here kicks off again.

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SailO – Invented by Peter Roach, Captain of Grace, a CSY 44

SailO is a fun game we play on the boat while cruising the East coast of Florida or in the Bahamas. SailO is adapted from Bingo for the cruising and boating community.
The rules for SailO are simple.

To play the game you place a marker over a space on your Bingo style card when you hear a word or phrase said over the VHF radio. You can also get credit for an inference, such as, if you had Radio Check on one of your squares and someone said “can anyone hear me” you would get credit.

What is needed:
Blank cards – we make them up on the computer and they look like this (this one is filled in)

Beans, pennies, or other means of covering the squares. Make sure they are heavy enough so your card and markers will not fly away in a breeze.

A VHF radio

A busy anchorage

How the game is played:
You write in common phrases said on the VHF into each one of your squares on your card.

Don’t worry if someone copies your phrases just don’t put them in the same positions on the card. You can use boat names, people’s names, or virtually anything that can be heard on the VHF. The order is real important (If you have older kids make them all write down the phrases on slips of paper and then draw them from a hat and fill out the card in the order they are drawn. Otherwise it is likely to be a short game). Once you have the cards filled in you can play as many times as you like with the cards. Just make sure you hand them out at random. You will probably need a new card in a new harbor since the boat names and places will change.

Listen to the VHF and place your pennies over the squares when you hear the word, phrase, or inference. If there is any doubt the Captains Word is law (or we like to think so)!

Usually a prize will help keep kids motivated; e.g., whoever wins SailO – picks the movie tonight, does not have to do dishes, gets the hammock, etc.

You can even play this across multiple boats. The first one to get an entire row, column, or diagonal corner to corner covered goes on the VHF and states their boat name and then calls out SailO. It works particularly well during a radio net (use dual watch on your VHF so you can call SailO on another channel and not interrupt the radio net).

Remember – having fun is what we are out there to do. Don’t let running the boat get in the way of the fun.

Ps. You have to give me credit if you use this game. Just like boatball, I made it up.

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If you are curious about boat ball or any of the other entertaining pasttimes that Peter has come up with, you can follow him and Grace on their own blog here.