It’s been a year since I’ve been on Georgia Strait. I miss the SV GIRI, up on land, waiting for our next adventure. I’ve been enjoying land. Motorcycling, Now the sea reminds me. Dancing about on deck in rolling seas and stiff winds. Heeled over. A rush of memories. My first thought was the people I encountered on deck. Loading my white F350 truck was no problem. But standing in line for White Spot the faces had that eerie ferry light that reminds one of the Walmart experience. This is definitely more middle class. But here and there a left over hippy steeped in marijuana looks like they never left 1970. A collection of Sikh’s, long beards, turbans, armed to the teeth. A warrior class. Good guys in my books. I just miss my ceremonial Glock. Or cutlass. I’m a ships captain and navigator and do actually have a cutlass. I carry a Leatherman too but only for the pliars. In London they’ve outlawed blades more than 3 “ as there are more violence there with knives than in New York with guns. Guns are restricted in England.
The rain is falling on the sea. We’ve passed through Active Pass. I’ve remembered catching salmon at the south end. It’s rather quiet today. Not like the days I traversed it at high speed careening forward with the flood, knowing a false move could cause all manner of grief.
It’s the depth. I’m here on this ferry with so much sky and sea above and below. All around there are islands in the distance. I love the perspective. It was frightening at first when I did this alone at night navigating by the lights. I’m awash with memories.
Crossing water is an electrically charged event. Being on water the stress there’s depolarization of some kind that lifts one out of the malaise of mundane. My mind is at peace at sea. I’m looking forward to seeing Philip again. Glad for the invitation.
I’m still getting over my abscess molar, the sleepless nights, the pain, the pus filled jaw. I’m still taking antibiotics.Steadily improving. The good cheer of friendship will complete the healing. Hope Alive is such an uplifting enlightening experience.
Showing posts with label Georgia Strait. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Georgia Strait. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Sunday, January 21, 2018
Vancouver Boat Show 2018
The Vancouver Boat Show is one of my favorite annual traditions. In years past I outfitted a 40 foot Folkes Cutter Rigged sailboat, sailed her to Mexico and around the Sea of Cortexz, up to Alaska and the Queen Charlottes and eventually solo to Hawaii in winter and around the Hawaiian islands in summer. I sailed the boat back to Canada with a friend, but had to jury rig a mast after it broke in a major blow.
The boat show has been the place where I’ve often learned of new advances in technology and safety. It’s also been the place where I’ve got some incredible deals. I love looking at what ICOM has each. I love seeing the Cooper booth and remembering years ago taking night classes on Granville Island learning coastal navigation those early years with Sherrie.
Now with my sailboat out east ,where I go to sail the Great Lakes ,making my way slowly to the Atlantic with the dream of another ocean crossing, I don’t have any immediate major needs. Offshore blue water fair winds and following seas beckons but these days I’m getting real joy from camping on shore and boating on the inland lakes. I’m not into winter scuba here any more either but would like to get a motor and snorkel arrangement like the one I saw in the US at West Marine. The boat show is full of surprises and often has things I never thought up but come to get later in the year.
I completely revamped my boat with three generations of advances in technology over the last 30 years. I got the SV Giri barebones from a fellow who wanted to sail but found being a captain didn’t suit him as much as being crew on other’s boats. I had to outfit the boat completely while coast cruising the Strait and Vancouver Island and Juan de Fuca. Every piece of equipment seemed to come the day after I needed it.
One of the most memorable was was the “pea soup” fog experience winter sailing and coming into False Creek following a fishing boat. My ex wife Sherrie was leaning off the bow trying to keep her eyes on the commercial boat ahead of us, shouting back directions. I couldn’t see as far as my hand. The next day we got our first radar. Another time after a back breaking experience in Desolation Sound trying to anchor in 80 feet and the anchor wouldn’t set, we got our first anchor winch.
I’ve even had plates added to the bottom and new sails and rigging. It’s an ongoing maintenance thing with a boat. The ocean is a harsh environment. There’s little that compares to anchoring in a isolated beyond Desolation cove and diving for clams to chuck on shore. Nothing compares to eating fresh caught barbecued fish on deck at anchor. I’ve so many incredible experiences of sailing the west coast. Big Whales off the Mexican coast. Dolphins and Killer Whales surrounding the boat in Georgia Strait. One of my favorite trips sailing back and forth among the islands between VAncouver to Victoria. I love the coast islands and their habours and anchorages. The San Juan Islands are especially special.
On the main floor of the exhibit I always look for the Metal Boats where the amazing engineers make Landing Crafts. Today the idea of driving a boat with my Honda ATV up to an island and driving off Rambo style seems so appealing. I hunt and imagine this would improve my moose hunting which hasn’t been up to standards for years. I got a grouse and a rabbit last year. But if I had that landing craft I’d be back in the game! Sure enough I found it. These guys make such sturdy craft. My sailboat is steel and I love seeing the workmanship in the metal boats.
I also love the luxury coastal cruisers. If I won the lottery I’d buy one tomorrow. They’re so elegant. I always imagined myself in white trousers and a blue blazer. It’s never happened. I’ve always been more like Humphrey Bogart in African Queen.
Recent years I’ve been comparing the amazing Yamaha Wave Riders with Seadoos. I have a Harley for land but I ‘ve just thought the equivalent on water might be something I ‘need’. I’m also interested in the fishing pedal boats that Western Canoe and Kayaking brings. They’re not expensive but I have no room to store them despite loving them so much. There are so many good things.
Over the years it seems I’ve got everything Honda Centre produces from their amazing generators to their ATV’s and off road motorcycles. I’m loving my side by side Honda 500 Pioneer and loved the CRF off-road 250 before that.
There were even floating house boats that people take to the Okanagan lakes for the summer there. Lots of rental opportunities and getaways.
I really need to win a ‘lottery’ and go to the Vancouver Boat Show ‘flush’ . It really is the ultimate boy and girl toy store. There were even these new water skiing boats there this year that looked like something Vin Diesel would drive. I’m more a OO7 sailor because sailing I can go long distance quietly and cheap. But I do like speed. The Vancouver Boat Show has everything in every price range.
The first person I met walking around the second floor was Selim. I loved seeing him. He and his brother started Steveston Marina. This guy really talked to the fishermen and boaters and learned what they actually needed. He always has the ‘best’ ,most ‘reliable’ and ‘safest’ products. I outfitted my boat for the trip to Mexico completely at Steveston’s. Everything worked. When you’re 100 miles from land and can only see rough seas and threatening clouds around you, it’s important that the recommendations you got and equipment you have is right. I’m forever thankful to Selim and Steveston’s for those early years.
It was all I could do to resist upgrading my Mustang offshore suit this time. Stevestons always have great deals and Mustang folk were there too to show me the improvements in fabric and design. My offshore clothing is nearly as important as the boat stuff especially in winter sailing. Mustang , the best, has improved greatly on it’s boating wear taking lessons from the Navy Seals learning. I don’t ‘need’ new gear “now”. It was with great restraint I resisted. Selim will have it tomorrow. I wont get boat show prices but if it’s sold out he’ll get more in. I could always rely on Selina.
Walking around that arena circle with all the vendors was for me la walk through my personal history. I love my North Sails. I just got a new genoa a couple of years back and will need to replace my main sail again soon. It was last repaired in California when I was anchored in Sausalito before heading out under the Golden Gate to sail solo in Winter to the Hawaiian Islands. I’d hit hurricane force winds off the Columbia and taken some chaffing Despite the torture that North Sail took in those ugliest of conditions it really only needed some luff repairs that have last another decade and a couple of ocean crossings. North Sails take a beating. But like all good things there’s a time to replace them. When I got the new Genoa from them I was amazed at how much closer I could sail to the wind. My sailboat was so happy feeling.
I stopped to talk to the greatest riggers of all time, Pro Tech Yacht Services!!! They’ve done all my rigging and do the rigging for the offshore racers as well. Years back I had a new roller furling and was trying it out solo in the North Pacific. I was going like a bat out of hell in 60 knot winds only to find that I couldn’t get the sail in. Sailing solo and trying the new rig out , I was feared pitchpoling as wind and seas increased. I was considering cutting the sail to slow the out of control speed but an Angel, God watches over solo sailors, reminded me I did have a hamm radio/SSB. I got a phone patch to Pro Tech. They’ve helped countless offshore racers and they explained really simply what I was doing wrong, knowing I was likely hysterical and probably unable to follow complex instruction. Solo in the big seas I didn’t want to come about and broach, and was dependent on an autopilot which wasn’t going to hold me in those winds. I listened to that wise experienced calm voice tell me what I needed to do. I did it. I didn’t pitchpole. I didn’t destroy thousands of dollars of sail that I would need later to to get to back to land . That pro tech self furling rig served me on two ocean crossings too. Pro Tech has done all my off shore rigging even lovingly putting in the guidelines that kept my dog from going overboard. They’re incredible.
The smoked wild salmon display caught me too. It’s called ‘Indian candy’ for a reason.
I loved talking to the folk about the new EPIRBS. Mine needs to be re stored or recalibrated. It’s a decade old but with new battery should work. The price has come down. An EPIRB is triggered by water pressure and gives off the position the boat goes down. Major insurance. What I liked this year were the Personal miniaturized satellite connected wearable devices. Considering my first EPIRB thousands of dollars and 3 feet long, 6 inches wide the advances are amazing.
I have that fun each boat show, seeing the technology improvements. I’ve a Volvo inboard engine I got to replace my Yanmar that lasted 20 years. It’s half the size and weight of the original ones with better performance and power. Seeing these advances makes me so proud of the human race making such advances in science and technology. The boat show is always a high for me in this very positive way.
I was looking for a folding boat to replace my canoe. I simply don’t have storage for my perfect Clipper Kevlar canoe I bought a decade back from Western Canoing and Kayaking in Abbotsford. So many years ago I started white water canoeing with a Grummon Aluminum. I think of my 40 foot sailboat as a really big canoe. The actual Kevlar canoe I have now hasn’t seen any white water, just fishing on BC lakes. It’s the ultimate Skookum canoe . It just takes up too much room in my storage locker. What do I learn when I’m talking to the Western Canoe guys at the boat show , really there to lust after their pedal boat, is that they’re consider a trade in. I love this. It’s always a hassle upgrading unless I can trade something in as I’ve no time to sell on line even if there’s more profit. So while I didn’t find a folding boat I found a solution. So many times I’ve been at the boat show talking with people and learned what I needed to learn in just this way.
I even discussed sailing down the Eerie Canal or up the Lawrence with one of the Blue Water Cruising Association folk. Laura and I had been on their watch for years helping get the advertising and maintain the Current’s Magazine when Blue Water Sailing Association was only volunteer organization. It was a lot of work maintaining the funding for the magazine, hunting down contributors, getting new folk to advertise. We learned a lot.
Blue Water Crusing Association really was a great place in those volunteer only years with mostly folk who had been offshore or were going offshore. But organizations get bigger and often better. I stopped going one year where there seemed to be too much coastal sailing stuff. Everyone has their preferences. Work always overrides and competes with recreation. I got more involved with writing too. Living aboard for years, and always sailing.
I enjoyed talking with the BC Marine writers at their booth. I really must write another book, I say, seeing such productivity present there. It’s just that a book takes more time than a blog. I’m really so busy with adventures now I don’t seem to get around to recording them in a form for books and stories. It’s on the bucket lists. I’ve got miles of film and journals from several offshore trips and whole lots of stories. I remember when I thought I’d give a presentation but never got around to it. I used to teach offshore wilderness medicine courses to cruisers but even that fell by the wayside.
There just never is enough time to do the things you want to , to quote Jim Croce. When I was docked in San Diego I remember so enjoying eating crayfish in Ingrid Croce’s awesome restaurant. Those were the days I was playing guitar a lot and singing Jimmy Buffet’s iconic sailing song, “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes. We sang and playing a lot of music on the back of my boat in Mexico. Where does the time go?
There are young and old and whole families at the boat show each year. I laughed at my doctor friends who we sailed with who loved having their small kids in the cabin knowing where they were. They were doing all those family things together that so many land lovers miss out on. Theres’ a real ‘vacation’ and ‘summer’ feel to the boat show. People in Vancouver have that ready for summer look in their eyes. You can almost feel the sand underfoot. Such a contrast to the cold dreary rain outside.
This year I was alone. Other years I’ve gone with so many different people. In the past I’ve enjoyed the lectures but now it’s like I’m over the hump. I’ve been there, done that, got the t shirt, wear the ball cap and worry I sound like a boring old man. I suppose I can rest on my laurels. It’s a place where I’m truly an authority. I’m part of an elite group. We know each other when we meet. It’s good to talk together. This a few of us reminisced about our silly running aground experiences. I am planning more sailing for sure. It’s too much fun. One day I’ll turn in the offshore sailing boat for a coastal 26 footer and water ballast with 50 hp. I sailed around VAncouver Island with a couple of guys who had these and loved them. Because they’re trailerable they’re not only all round less costly but easier and cheaper to store.
These days I’m mostly interested in inland camping and fishing. I want a folding boat that I can take on top of my new Mini Cooper S. I’d like to go out for a day, and keep it easily at home without having to go to the completely full storage locker. I have a little Honda 2.5 hp kicker that I want to use more too and a flat bottom boat will be easier on Gilbert the dog now that he’s blind.
I loved truck camping last year and am already preparing for the weekends fishing with Gilbert even if we never seem to catch fish. Hunting in the fall were’ more than lucky. Sailing I caught so many salmon and ling cod in tidal waters. I just dragged hooks behind the boat and reeled in supper. Lake and stream fishing requires more patience. I’m not known for my patience though I keep believing I’m working on it. Sailing is a lesson in patience.
Another great Vancouver Boat Show year for me. Thank you all, you incredible people who make it all happen. Thank you for those who make the great stuff, those who supply the great stuff and those who sell the great stuff. You’ve made my life so much richer with your incredible equipment and advice.
The boat show has been the place where I’ve often learned of new advances in technology and safety. It’s also been the place where I’ve got some incredible deals. I love looking at what ICOM has each. I love seeing the Cooper booth and remembering years ago taking night classes on Granville Island learning coastal navigation those early years with Sherrie.
Now with my sailboat out east ,where I go to sail the Great Lakes ,making my way slowly to the Atlantic with the dream of another ocean crossing, I don’t have any immediate major needs. Offshore blue water fair winds and following seas beckons but these days I’m getting real joy from camping on shore and boating on the inland lakes. I’m not into winter scuba here any more either but would like to get a motor and snorkel arrangement like the one I saw in the US at West Marine. The boat show is full of surprises and often has things I never thought up but come to get later in the year.
I completely revamped my boat with three generations of advances in technology over the last 30 years. I got the SV Giri barebones from a fellow who wanted to sail but found being a captain didn’t suit him as much as being crew on other’s boats. I had to outfit the boat completely while coast cruising the Strait and Vancouver Island and Juan de Fuca. Every piece of equipment seemed to come the day after I needed it.
One of the most memorable was was the “pea soup” fog experience winter sailing and coming into False Creek following a fishing boat. My ex wife Sherrie was leaning off the bow trying to keep her eyes on the commercial boat ahead of us, shouting back directions. I couldn’t see as far as my hand. The next day we got our first radar. Another time after a back breaking experience in Desolation Sound trying to anchor in 80 feet and the anchor wouldn’t set, we got our first anchor winch.
I’ve even had plates added to the bottom and new sails and rigging. It’s an ongoing maintenance thing with a boat. The ocean is a harsh environment. There’s little that compares to anchoring in a isolated beyond Desolation cove and diving for clams to chuck on shore. Nothing compares to eating fresh caught barbecued fish on deck at anchor. I’ve so many incredible experiences of sailing the west coast. Big Whales off the Mexican coast. Dolphins and Killer Whales surrounding the boat in Georgia Strait. One of my favorite trips sailing back and forth among the islands between VAncouver to Victoria. I love the coast islands and their habours and anchorages. The San Juan Islands are especially special.
On the main floor of the exhibit I always look for the Metal Boats where the amazing engineers make Landing Crafts. Today the idea of driving a boat with my Honda ATV up to an island and driving off Rambo style seems so appealing. I hunt and imagine this would improve my moose hunting which hasn’t been up to standards for years. I got a grouse and a rabbit last year. But if I had that landing craft I’d be back in the game! Sure enough I found it. These guys make such sturdy craft. My sailboat is steel and I love seeing the workmanship in the metal boats.
I also love the luxury coastal cruisers. If I won the lottery I’d buy one tomorrow. They’re so elegant. I always imagined myself in white trousers and a blue blazer. It’s never happened. I’ve always been more like Humphrey Bogart in African Queen.
Recent years I’ve been comparing the amazing Yamaha Wave Riders with Seadoos. I have a Harley for land but I ‘ve just thought the equivalent on water might be something I ‘need’. I’m also interested in the fishing pedal boats that Western Canoe and Kayaking brings. They’re not expensive but I have no room to store them despite loving them so much. There are so many good things.
Over the years it seems I’ve got everything Honda Centre produces from their amazing generators to their ATV’s and off road motorcycles. I’m loving my side by side Honda 500 Pioneer and loved the CRF off-road 250 before that.
There were even floating house boats that people take to the Okanagan lakes for the summer there. Lots of rental opportunities and getaways.
I really need to win a ‘lottery’ and go to the Vancouver Boat Show ‘flush’ . It really is the ultimate boy and girl toy store. There were even these new water skiing boats there this year that looked like something Vin Diesel would drive. I’m more a OO7 sailor because sailing I can go long distance quietly and cheap. But I do like speed. The Vancouver Boat Show has everything in every price range.
The first person I met walking around the second floor was Selim. I loved seeing him. He and his brother started Steveston Marina. This guy really talked to the fishermen and boaters and learned what they actually needed. He always has the ‘best’ ,most ‘reliable’ and ‘safest’ products. I outfitted my boat for the trip to Mexico completely at Steveston’s. Everything worked. When you’re 100 miles from land and can only see rough seas and threatening clouds around you, it’s important that the recommendations you got and equipment you have is right. I’m forever thankful to Selim and Steveston’s for those early years.
It was all I could do to resist upgrading my Mustang offshore suit this time. Stevestons always have great deals and Mustang folk were there too to show me the improvements in fabric and design. My offshore clothing is nearly as important as the boat stuff especially in winter sailing. Mustang , the best, has improved greatly on it’s boating wear taking lessons from the Navy Seals learning. I don’t ‘need’ new gear “now”. It was with great restraint I resisted. Selim will have it tomorrow. I wont get boat show prices but if it’s sold out he’ll get more in. I could always rely on Selina.
Walking around that arena circle with all the vendors was for me la walk through my personal history. I love my North Sails. I just got a new genoa a couple of years back and will need to replace my main sail again soon. It was last repaired in California when I was anchored in Sausalito before heading out under the Golden Gate to sail solo in Winter to the Hawaiian Islands. I’d hit hurricane force winds off the Columbia and taken some chaffing Despite the torture that North Sail took in those ugliest of conditions it really only needed some luff repairs that have last another decade and a couple of ocean crossings. North Sails take a beating. But like all good things there’s a time to replace them. When I got the new Genoa from them I was amazed at how much closer I could sail to the wind. My sailboat was so happy feeling.
I stopped to talk to the greatest riggers of all time, Pro Tech Yacht Services!!! They’ve done all my rigging and do the rigging for the offshore racers as well. Years back I had a new roller furling and was trying it out solo in the North Pacific. I was going like a bat out of hell in 60 knot winds only to find that I couldn’t get the sail in. Sailing solo and trying the new rig out , I was feared pitchpoling as wind and seas increased. I was considering cutting the sail to slow the out of control speed but an Angel, God watches over solo sailors, reminded me I did have a hamm radio/SSB. I got a phone patch to Pro Tech. They’ve helped countless offshore racers and they explained really simply what I was doing wrong, knowing I was likely hysterical and probably unable to follow complex instruction. Solo in the big seas I didn’t want to come about and broach, and was dependent on an autopilot which wasn’t going to hold me in those winds. I listened to that wise experienced calm voice tell me what I needed to do. I did it. I didn’t pitchpole. I didn’t destroy thousands of dollars of sail that I would need later to to get to back to land . That pro tech self furling rig served me on two ocean crossings too. Pro Tech has done all my off shore rigging even lovingly putting in the guidelines that kept my dog from going overboard. They’re incredible.
The smoked wild salmon display caught me too. It’s called ‘Indian candy’ for a reason.
I loved talking to the folk about the new EPIRBS. Mine needs to be re stored or recalibrated. It’s a decade old but with new battery should work. The price has come down. An EPIRB is triggered by water pressure and gives off the position the boat goes down. Major insurance. What I liked this year were the Personal miniaturized satellite connected wearable devices. Considering my first EPIRB thousands of dollars and 3 feet long, 6 inches wide the advances are amazing.
I have that fun each boat show, seeing the technology improvements. I’ve a Volvo inboard engine I got to replace my Yanmar that lasted 20 years. It’s half the size and weight of the original ones with better performance and power. Seeing these advances makes me so proud of the human race making such advances in science and technology. The boat show is always a high for me in this very positive way.
I was looking for a folding boat to replace my canoe. I simply don’t have storage for my perfect Clipper Kevlar canoe I bought a decade back from Western Canoing and Kayaking in Abbotsford. So many years ago I started white water canoeing with a Grummon Aluminum. I think of my 40 foot sailboat as a really big canoe. The actual Kevlar canoe I have now hasn’t seen any white water, just fishing on BC lakes. It’s the ultimate Skookum canoe . It just takes up too much room in my storage locker. What do I learn when I’m talking to the Western Canoe guys at the boat show , really there to lust after their pedal boat, is that they’re consider a trade in. I love this. It’s always a hassle upgrading unless I can trade something in as I’ve no time to sell on line even if there’s more profit. So while I didn’t find a folding boat I found a solution. So many times I’ve been at the boat show talking with people and learned what I needed to learn in just this way.
I even discussed sailing down the Eerie Canal or up the Lawrence with one of the Blue Water Cruising Association folk. Laura and I had been on their watch for years helping get the advertising and maintain the Current’s Magazine when Blue Water Sailing Association was only volunteer organization. It was a lot of work maintaining the funding for the magazine, hunting down contributors, getting new folk to advertise. We learned a lot.
Blue Water Crusing Association really was a great place in those volunteer only years with mostly folk who had been offshore or were going offshore. But organizations get bigger and often better. I stopped going one year where there seemed to be too much coastal sailing stuff. Everyone has their preferences. Work always overrides and competes with recreation. I got more involved with writing too. Living aboard for years, and always sailing.
I enjoyed talking with the BC Marine writers at their booth. I really must write another book, I say, seeing such productivity present there. It’s just that a book takes more time than a blog. I’m really so busy with adventures now I don’t seem to get around to recording them in a form for books and stories. It’s on the bucket lists. I’ve got miles of film and journals from several offshore trips and whole lots of stories. I remember when I thought I’d give a presentation but never got around to it. I used to teach offshore wilderness medicine courses to cruisers but even that fell by the wayside.
There just never is enough time to do the things you want to , to quote Jim Croce. When I was docked in San Diego I remember so enjoying eating crayfish in Ingrid Croce’s awesome restaurant. Those were the days I was playing guitar a lot and singing Jimmy Buffet’s iconic sailing song, “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes. We sang and playing a lot of music on the back of my boat in Mexico. Where does the time go?
There are young and old and whole families at the boat show each year. I laughed at my doctor friends who we sailed with who loved having their small kids in the cabin knowing where they were. They were doing all those family things together that so many land lovers miss out on. Theres’ a real ‘vacation’ and ‘summer’ feel to the boat show. People in Vancouver have that ready for summer look in their eyes. You can almost feel the sand underfoot. Such a contrast to the cold dreary rain outside.
This year I was alone. Other years I’ve gone with so many different people. In the past I’ve enjoyed the lectures but now it’s like I’m over the hump. I’ve been there, done that, got the t shirt, wear the ball cap and worry I sound like a boring old man. I suppose I can rest on my laurels. It’s a place where I’m truly an authority. I’m part of an elite group. We know each other when we meet. It’s good to talk together. This a few of us reminisced about our silly running aground experiences. I am planning more sailing for sure. It’s too much fun. One day I’ll turn in the offshore sailing boat for a coastal 26 footer and water ballast with 50 hp. I sailed around VAncouver Island with a couple of guys who had these and loved them. Because they’re trailerable they’re not only all round less costly but easier and cheaper to store.
These days I’m mostly interested in inland camping and fishing. I want a folding boat that I can take on top of my new Mini Cooper S. I’d like to go out for a day, and keep it easily at home without having to go to the completely full storage locker. I have a little Honda 2.5 hp kicker that I want to use more too and a flat bottom boat will be easier on Gilbert the dog now that he’s blind.
I loved truck camping last year and am already preparing for the weekends fishing with Gilbert even if we never seem to catch fish. Hunting in the fall were’ more than lucky. Sailing I caught so many salmon and ling cod in tidal waters. I just dragged hooks behind the boat and reeled in supper. Lake and stream fishing requires more patience. I’m not known for my patience though I keep believing I’m working on it. Sailing is a lesson in patience.
Another great Vancouver Boat Show year for me. Thank you all, you incredible people who make it all happen. Thank you for those who make the great stuff, those who supply the great stuff and those who sell the great stuff. You’ve made my life so much richer with your incredible equipment and advice.
Sunday, September 20, 2015
Expeditioning and the SV GIRI
SV GIRI was finally outfitted for offshore sailing again. On the last trip back from Hawaii, the mast broke in a gale. We jury rigged a solution with a Spanish Turnkey and limped back to North America. Since the mast footing had to be welded, I had the whole cabin taken out to avoid fire. Surveyors used ultra sound to check the depth of steel and where there was decrease I had 2 huge steel plates welded on. After that major procedure, the mast and hull of the GIRI were good to go for a few more decades. My friend Tom who I’d sailed with and had undertaken the work said,
“I made sure that if something went wrong on the GIRI on her next ocean passage it wouldn’t have anything to do with the mast or hull."
I replaced the old workhorse Yanmar engine last year with a new Volvo D40. Everything on my sailboat has been replaced 2 or 3 times in the 25 years I’ve had the boat. It’s the third radar and second autopilot. I’ve upgraded the winches to a larger size and better quality. I replaced the wind generator recently too. I’m on my second generation of self steering vane. Everything has back up and redundancy. Three anchors and even a portable electric winch along with a Honda 1000 cc generator.
Meanwhile I’ve sailed the boat around the San Jaun Islands, Desolation Sound, Beyond Desolation Sound, the Gulf Islands, Queen Charlotte Islands, the Alaska Coast, around Vancouver Island a couple of times, my ex wife Sherry and I sailed to Mexico, then I solo sailed in winter to Hawaii. Tom and I sailed the Hawaiian Islands together. Then we sailed back to Vancouver from Honolulu. That’s the trip the mast broke. Between refitting I've continued sailing in Georgia Strait and off and on lived aboard the boat for months or a year or two at a time. I found that it was only when I was actually staying on the boat that I would ensure repairs and maintenance stayed on track. I’d actually planned with Tom to begin sailing down the coast last year with a view to completing my original planned sail to the Caribbean through the Panama.
I still need to do a topside paint. It’s a steel boat and the rust marks coming through my last painting a few years back make it look a bit of a scow. It’s not. I’ve sand blasted it three or four times over the years, each time at a cost of $10,000. The last time we brushed and sanded and I painted it myself. I’ve epoxied and painted the bottom countless times, every 1 to 2 year on average. Topside painting was the task left to be done. Sailing in April with Laura I found that one of the cockpit drains needed replacing too. The Stem to Stern Marina guys , who had done a skookum job with installing the Volvo and upgrading matters in the bilge had pointed the damaged drain out to me. I’d forgotten till I was in a gale and with water coming over the side had to tack mainly to allow the cockpit to drain so I didn’t have to bail.
Pro Tech rigging had done the inspection and had cut all the new rope so that’s going on next spring when I restep the mast. They did an amazing job preparing the boat for hauling out by Lynnwood Marina and shipping across the country by Andrews Trucking. Just last year Pro Tech installed new guy lines around the perimeter and I had some new hardware to replace the stuff we designated as worn. I haven’t replaced the main sail but I got a new genoa and Pro tech installed that and ensured the foresail furling system was in good shape.
The boat was finally ready for another expedition. Another grand adventure. Any bits that needed doing still could be done along the coastal hops that would come before any ocean crossing. There’s always fine tuning to be done in the first few weeks of sailing. Before last heading out to Hawaii my antennae on top of the mast came lose and needed new fittings that would last an offshore beating. I also had to get the leech of the old foresail reinforced in San Francisco before heading out.
The question for the last couple of years had been where to sail to next..
I’d wanted to sail around the world. The standing joke in boat world is everyone buys a 25 foot or more sailboat with just that intention but less than half a percent or less actually get the sailboat our of the main harbour. Most don’t leave their slip for years on end. That was the plan too when I got to Mexico and stayed the year in the Sea or Cortez. I was headed for the Northern Marianas Islands with a view to sailing around the world when I last stopped in Hawaii.
Pirates is the number one reason I don’t set out again to cross the Pacific. Also I’ve always loved the idea of sailing to New Zealand and Australia but I have a dog and dogs are simply not welcome in the Pacific. Stuart the Scotty I’d sailed with before had to endure horrible quarantine in Hawaii and later in Saipan. The people were wonderful but the poor dog lost months of his short life to jail through no fault of his own. I have Gilbert the cockapoo now. I really don’t like going anywhere where my dog’s not welcome.
I was in Dublin this spring. I’ve always dreamed of sailing the British Islands. Scotland and Ireland are where my grandparents are from. I met an 85 year old solo sailor after he’d crossed the North Atlantic in a little sailboat for the umpteenth time. Tom says he’d love to sail to the Azores.
My brother became ill this spring. That really brought matters to a head and finalized the course of the future. I’ve always wanted to sail with my older brother. He taught me to canoe. I’d fish from our little skiff with the Johnson motor every summer of my childhood with him and my Dad. My brother is the mensch in the family, a true salt of the earth man . He was always the brightest and smartest of the family. I actually hated following his genius going through school. Everyone remembered him fondly. His teachers would always tell me how smart and accomplished he was . Meanwhile I got by muddling along at times, even excelling.
The beauty of Europe is that they welcome dogs. I truly love the history of Western Civilization. I was humbled by the 5000 year old architecture of the Palace of Knossos on Crete. They actually had indoor plumbing back then and used natural lighting in amazing ways. I loved standing on shore and looking at the little harbour of Jaffa in Israel where Jonah set out for Ninevah. That sent chills up my spine. I’ve loved harbours the world over but those in the Mediterranean are so rich with western history that I find every view awe inspiring. Athens was particularly breath taking. Last year I loved being in Istanbul, previously called Constantine, taking a ferry on that fabled strait that separates Europe and the East. In Israel I felt in my very soul that I was walking in the steps of Jesus but in Greece and Turkey I felt like I was following St. Paul. And even Alexander the Great. I loved Italy and Rome and would love to return. The art and people are so enriching. I was in the south of Spain and Morocco in my 20’s crossing the Strait of Gibraltar in ferries, once in a horrible blow.
The ports along the northern coast of France and especially the sea farer Mecca of Amsterdam have always touched my heart. But London is my all time favourite city, a place where I lived for a year with my gorgeous brilliant first wife when I was an intellectual and couldn’t get enough of the libraries and museums of that great city. True I’ve always wanted to return to study at Oxford and Cambridge but other universities captured me with their more mundane designs. But the Thames has never failed to beckon. Then Glasgow and Edinburgh and last year Dublin and Belfast were the places I was most enamoured with.
I read the Kon Tiki for sure. But the voyage of St. Brendan is the one that always captured my heart being done in the ancient north Atlantic by Irish monks in leather boats. As a sailor I’ve read hundreds of books by sailors. It’s been my passion. While I’ve loved the countless true stories of persons who set off in little boats to sail the seas I’ve also liked the historical fiction of the sailing vessels. I’ve especially liked reading the tales of our naval explorers like Captain Cook and Captain Vancouver. The story of Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic adventure and survival is simply miraculous.
There’s the great wealth of historical fiction of the great sea battles of the Imperial navies of Britain and France and Spain that I’ve thoroughly lost myself in during a Canadian winter ashore. I’ve had thousands of hours of technical reading to do but never has a day gone by that I’ve not read adventures and mostly sea adventures for the sheer joy of it. Many a trying week of work and a difficult winter has been made less so by reading of the stories of fellow cruisers in small boats. Joshua Slocum is the great grandfather of the movement for sure. My ex wife and I setting out to sail around the world but got only from Vancouver Canada to Quaymos, Mexico We both most loved the stories of the Hiscocks and Myles and Beryl Smeeton. Not only were they made of sterner stuff so were the marriages of those earlier days. No doubt the men were more courageous. Like many a couple that’s gone offshore one stayed with the boat and one returned happily to home on land. My ex was a fabulous helmswoman who could get the best out of sails coastal day sailing. I still love the adventure of the sea and love to read stories of all those who’ve travelled upon her vastness and mystery. Tales of endurance and passage and arrival in exotic places still enthral me.
The trouble is pirates. And governments. I’ve found that wind and sea and boat maintenance challenges are more than sufficient for my appetite. I’ve not particularly liked crew including myself. The fact is I prefer my dogs company and all else is a bit of work. In fairness to my lovely ex wife I found when I was a couple of weeks alone at sea with my own thoughts I wanted to divorce me. The thought of having to deal with unfriendly strangers wanting to kill me and steal my boat is simply too overwhelming to consider.
I chose to sail offshore with the trusty marine nickel plated defender shot gun. It’s fairly standard equipment for commercial fishing boats since some times one actually has to shoot the big halibut to get them aboard. I have spear guns for scuba and flare guns as well. I even have a cutlass which though real has a greater ornamental function in my rustic below deck Captains cabin. Some might say it’s phallic. The fact is the shorter cutlass is made for ship fighting as there would be no room to swing my Scottish broadsword. I have these more for fashion or as one might pay for life insurance. I don’t want to use them. I have a life raft on board too and am truly glad I’ve never had to use it and hopefully never will. I studied fencing as a youth and as a hunter am an excellent marksman.
However the thought of taking another human’s life, even in self defence, would, to say the least, put a damper on a vacation, for me, a physician who has devoted his life to saving lives. I remember the joy I felt off the Baja coast when we rescued a couple of men in a dinghy whose boat had caught fire and sunk. I especially loved the time when my ex and I and a couple of other cruisers saved a baby whale that had got it’s self disoriented trapped and partially beached in some mangroves. I would rather not have to tell a story of blowing the brains out of some psychopath trying to board my boat. There’s more than enough adventure without that sort of nonsense. In fact going away to sea is especially enjoyable because it gets me away from some of the drug addicted psychopaths who seem unable to change their mind about seeing other humans as potential food rather than companions. These blokes have been part of my work especially when I worked with the jails. I certainly don’t want to meet this sort at sea. That would be a busman’s holiday for sure.
In fact I’m happy to be alone with my dog and only just tolerate friends and lovers. If there weren’t merit in numbers I’d probably just solo sail. The fact is I get rather lonely after a week or two and actually enjoy my companions at times. There’s a great deal of laughter when one sails with people who are adults and have got over that “I’’m a victim” stage of emotional development. As a captain I really don’t have patience for whining and passive aggressiveness or attitude.
I have heard that the cruising community has taken to hiring ex American navy personnel in guns boats to accompany the fleet as they passage south and east of Malaysia. I was in Singapore a few years back and loved it dearly. I loved the rule of law and the order in the community. The harbours in the area are magnificent as well. Unfortunately the el Quaeda has taken hold in nearby villages so that stories abound of pirates killing foreigners, mostly Christians, or at very least stealing their boats and leaving them stranded. I’m very much a Christian but not the better sort that does a fine job of being martyred. I was thankful that the Lord did this for me and know I’d do a very bad and messy job of dying for my beliefs.
Then there’s the Somalian muslims, a particularly uncivilized lot whose dangerous stupidity and lack of civilization are becoming epic. I confess I’ve loved reading of American cruisers who have been attacked by these high speed gun boats with 50 mm machine guns blazing. The best story is of two ex marines who were sailing together on their separate yachts when a couple of these drug crazed Allah Akubar swearing criminals charged their boats. The frightening thing was that they opened fire from far off targeting the cockpit and hoping to kill anyone on board. One American armed with a 12 gauge shot gun popped up at the last moment when the pirates came along side with their AK 47 assault rifles in hand ready to board. With combat trained reflexes and skills he blew all aboard away with repetitive shots from his defender. Meanwhile his friend at the last moment veered his 7 km maximum speed sailboat into the Somalian high speed tobacco boat riding right over it and sending that boats pirates to the bottom of the sea.
I read the story while I was in charge of advertising for Blue Water Cruising Association out of Vancouver, BC. Discussing it with cruisers we all cheered the Americans. I think even the vegetarian pacifists were impressed. Yet its not something I personally want to have to do. When I was in Bombay, now called Mumbai, I loved the harbour and so wanted to one day sail there. I love India and must return. The people are the most fascinating and so many of my friends are Indian ex pats here in Canada. Yet the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea seem like places one would only want to go with an American flotilla of war ships, not on a little sailboat with a cockapoo dog.
The other problem has been the governments. Carrying weapons on board is a major issue with each port. Most cruisers as a consequence don’t declare their guns and most authorities turn a blind eye but it suddenly puts one in a difficult position. Even if one declares them there’s all manner of insanity attached to this placed there by beaurocratic fools who have never been in a boat themselves. In Mexico I was expected to turn in my shot gun at the first port and then pick it up again when I departed the country. The only problem is I was coming from the north and expecting to leave the country hundreds of miles to the south. Government stupidity is impressive in Canada but by world standards Canada is a genius compared to the silliness of paper work and restrictions elsewhere. So who wants the hassle especially when a single corrupt official ,and corrupt officials are extremely common in the third world, can impound your boat and arrest you. Increasingly every other nation in the third world seems intent on taking Canadians hostage either officially or unofficially for extortion and ransom.
When I was younger Canadian tourists were welcome overseas and sailors were able to anchor free in harbours so the whole process was pleasant and relatively inexpensive. Now Canadians, indeed all westerners, are seen as mega rich, like Mini Fatuous Kardashians, and a source of easy income. There are the pirates for sure, then the rapacious businessmen and finally the corrupt extorting government officials. Friends tell me that everywhere they were charged to anchor and even a fee was charged for landing their dinghies on shore. Prices go up the minute you speak English. too. Whites are thought of as racist but they’re the least racist today compared to the racism they can encounter and the tribalism in primitive nations.
Further, the United Nations has created this Social Communism idea of the West being the bourgeoisie. Meanwhile the local businessmen in all these countries are richer than the richest Canadians. The key to world poverty is not east and west but rather financial distribution within the countries themselves. In Muslim countries the rich are obscenely rich while the poor are poor yet in Canada while we have rich, wealth is more widely distributed. Our poor indeed are the richest poor in the world. To the third world though we’re now the enemy. Especially if one is Christian.
I love all the Fillipino nurses and doctors I know and would love to sail to Manilla but that country was only a decade back taken off of the international list of places that are not recommended for small boat cruisers because of pirates. The South China Seas are completely off the list. Yet I’d love to sail into the magnificent Hong Kong harbour. I’ve flown there repeatedly and love the city and people. The harbour is one of the greatest natural harbours in all the world. Yet who wants to be killed a day or two out to sea by dozens of ignorant communist Chinese who see all westerners as bourgeoise capitalists. Communists have forever been poor at creativity and live to steal. Without theft their thug dominated system would expire because none of the truly creative are rewarded in these principally totalitarian gang lead social systems. Communism is so often confused with socialism which it is not.
So while I’d love to sail more in the Pacific it’s increasingly been the plan to get to the Caribbean and the Mediterranean and Great Britain. I loved being in the Bahamas. It was a truly inspiring moment when I visited Vera Cruz in Mexico where Columbus had landed. My parents took a Cruise Ship tour of the Caribean Islands and spoke of the variety and diversity of every island for years after. So yes, I’d love to sail there.
Now my sailboat has been shipped from Vancouver British Columbia here in the west to Bath, Lake Ontario in Eastern Canada.. My brother has developed cancer so the best way for us to sail together was for me to get the boat to Lake Ontario. Overland was the fastest, and probably the cheapest too, at $10,000 cost. I have to consider how much time I’d lose from work if I tried again to sail it down the coast and cross at Mexico or Panama. I really am looking forward to sailing in the famed Thousand Islands near Kingston. Fresh water sailing and fishing will be a welcome change. I’ve got nephews too that want to crew. Then when my brother is better we can take the 350 mile canal motoring cruise down to New York. I’d love to have my sailboat in the New York habour and take a train to Manhatten to take in more Broadway plays. My friend Laura would love to do some more motor sailing with me as well. She’s not fond of being in the boat when the wind gets up a bit.
I know Tom would be up for a sailing across the Atlantic. His eyes light up at the sound of the Azores. I would love to have my brother along for that passage. I’ve found it’s only men that want to join me on ocean crossings whereas women have often said they’d fly to meet me in exotic places. These are dreams to come. For now the boat is going East. I still want to visit Australia and there’s a medical meeting in Sidney I’ve wanted to attend for years. I may just have to fly there like others do. I’d leave my dog here because frankly it seems everything in the Australian wild wants to kill us, from spiders to lizards.
imagine Gilbert would rather be with us in Bath. He’ll be definiely up for sailing on Lake Ontario with his cousin cockapoo Eva. I can see them turning the deck into a dog Indie 500 chase. As a cockapoo I also expect Gilbert would gladly go ashore in France and England. There he could proudly tell countless stories of his many adventures to his distant canine relatives.
I love that Europe loves dogs.
“I made sure that if something went wrong on the GIRI on her next ocean passage it wouldn’t have anything to do with the mast or hull."
I replaced the old workhorse Yanmar engine last year with a new Volvo D40. Everything on my sailboat has been replaced 2 or 3 times in the 25 years I’ve had the boat. It’s the third radar and second autopilot. I’ve upgraded the winches to a larger size and better quality. I replaced the wind generator recently too. I’m on my second generation of self steering vane. Everything has back up and redundancy. Three anchors and even a portable electric winch along with a Honda 1000 cc generator.
Meanwhile I’ve sailed the boat around the San Jaun Islands, Desolation Sound, Beyond Desolation Sound, the Gulf Islands, Queen Charlotte Islands, the Alaska Coast, around Vancouver Island a couple of times, my ex wife Sherry and I sailed to Mexico, then I solo sailed in winter to Hawaii. Tom and I sailed the Hawaiian Islands together. Then we sailed back to Vancouver from Honolulu. That’s the trip the mast broke. Between refitting I've continued sailing in Georgia Strait and off and on lived aboard the boat for months or a year or two at a time. I found that it was only when I was actually staying on the boat that I would ensure repairs and maintenance stayed on track. I’d actually planned with Tom to begin sailing down the coast last year with a view to completing my original planned sail to the Caribbean through the Panama.
I still need to do a topside paint. It’s a steel boat and the rust marks coming through my last painting a few years back make it look a bit of a scow. It’s not. I’ve sand blasted it three or four times over the years, each time at a cost of $10,000. The last time we brushed and sanded and I painted it myself. I’ve epoxied and painted the bottom countless times, every 1 to 2 year on average. Topside painting was the task left to be done. Sailing in April with Laura I found that one of the cockpit drains needed replacing too. The Stem to Stern Marina guys , who had done a skookum job with installing the Volvo and upgrading matters in the bilge had pointed the damaged drain out to me. I’d forgotten till I was in a gale and with water coming over the side had to tack mainly to allow the cockpit to drain so I didn’t have to bail.
Pro Tech rigging had done the inspection and had cut all the new rope so that’s going on next spring when I restep the mast. They did an amazing job preparing the boat for hauling out by Lynnwood Marina and shipping across the country by Andrews Trucking. Just last year Pro Tech installed new guy lines around the perimeter and I had some new hardware to replace the stuff we designated as worn. I haven’t replaced the main sail but I got a new genoa and Pro tech installed that and ensured the foresail furling system was in good shape.
The boat was finally ready for another expedition. Another grand adventure. Any bits that needed doing still could be done along the coastal hops that would come before any ocean crossing. There’s always fine tuning to be done in the first few weeks of sailing. Before last heading out to Hawaii my antennae on top of the mast came lose and needed new fittings that would last an offshore beating. I also had to get the leech of the old foresail reinforced in San Francisco before heading out.
The question for the last couple of years had been where to sail to next..
I’d wanted to sail around the world. The standing joke in boat world is everyone buys a 25 foot or more sailboat with just that intention but less than half a percent or less actually get the sailboat our of the main harbour. Most don’t leave their slip for years on end. That was the plan too when I got to Mexico and stayed the year in the Sea or Cortez. I was headed for the Northern Marianas Islands with a view to sailing around the world when I last stopped in Hawaii.
Pirates is the number one reason I don’t set out again to cross the Pacific. Also I’ve always loved the idea of sailing to New Zealand and Australia but I have a dog and dogs are simply not welcome in the Pacific. Stuart the Scotty I’d sailed with before had to endure horrible quarantine in Hawaii and later in Saipan. The people were wonderful but the poor dog lost months of his short life to jail through no fault of his own. I have Gilbert the cockapoo now. I really don’t like going anywhere where my dog’s not welcome.
I was in Dublin this spring. I’ve always dreamed of sailing the British Islands. Scotland and Ireland are where my grandparents are from. I met an 85 year old solo sailor after he’d crossed the North Atlantic in a little sailboat for the umpteenth time. Tom says he’d love to sail to the Azores.
My brother became ill this spring. That really brought matters to a head and finalized the course of the future. I’ve always wanted to sail with my older brother. He taught me to canoe. I’d fish from our little skiff with the Johnson motor every summer of my childhood with him and my Dad. My brother is the mensch in the family, a true salt of the earth man . He was always the brightest and smartest of the family. I actually hated following his genius going through school. Everyone remembered him fondly. His teachers would always tell me how smart and accomplished he was . Meanwhile I got by muddling along at times, even excelling.
The beauty of Europe is that they welcome dogs. I truly love the history of Western Civilization. I was humbled by the 5000 year old architecture of the Palace of Knossos on Crete. They actually had indoor plumbing back then and used natural lighting in amazing ways. I loved standing on shore and looking at the little harbour of Jaffa in Israel where Jonah set out for Ninevah. That sent chills up my spine. I’ve loved harbours the world over but those in the Mediterranean are so rich with western history that I find every view awe inspiring. Athens was particularly breath taking. Last year I loved being in Istanbul, previously called Constantine, taking a ferry on that fabled strait that separates Europe and the East. In Israel I felt in my very soul that I was walking in the steps of Jesus but in Greece and Turkey I felt like I was following St. Paul. And even Alexander the Great. I loved Italy and Rome and would love to return. The art and people are so enriching. I was in the south of Spain and Morocco in my 20’s crossing the Strait of Gibraltar in ferries, once in a horrible blow.
The ports along the northern coast of France and especially the sea farer Mecca of Amsterdam have always touched my heart. But London is my all time favourite city, a place where I lived for a year with my gorgeous brilliant first wife when I was an intellectual and couldn’t get enough of the libraries and museums of that great city. True I’ve always wanted to return to study at Oxford and Cambridge but other universities captured me with their more mundane designs. But the Thames has never failed to beckon. Then Glasgow and Edinburgh and last year Dublin and Belfast were the places I was most enamoured with.
I read the Kon Tiki for sure. But the voyage of St. Brendan is the one that always captured my heart being done in the ancient north Atlantic by Irish monks in leather boats. As a sailor I’ve read hundreds of books by sailors. It’s been my passion. While I’ve loved the countless true stories of persons who set off in little boats to sail the seas I’ve also liked the historical fiction of the sailing vessels. I’ve especially liked reading the tales of our naval explorers like Captain Cook and Captain Vancouver. The story of Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic adventure and survival is simply miraculous.
There’s the great wealth of historical fiction of the great sea battles of the Imperial navies of Britain and France and Spain that I’ve thoroughly lost myself in during a Canadian winter ashore. I’ve had thousands of hours of technical reading to do but never has a day gone by that I’ve not read adventures and mostly sea adventures for the sheer joy of it. Many a trying week of work and a difficult winter has been made less so by reading of the stories of fellow cruisers in small boats. Joshua Slocum is the great grandfather of the movement for sure. My ex wife and I setting out to sail around the world but got only from Vancouver Canada to Quaymos, Mexico We both most loved the stories of the Hiscocks and Myles and Beryl Smeeton. Not only were they made of sterner stuff so were the marriages of those earlier days. No doubt the men were more courageous. Like many a couple that’s gone offshore one stayed with the boat and one returned happily to home on land. My ex was a fabulous helmswoman who could get the best out of sails coastal day sailing. I still love the adventure of the sea and love to read stories of all those who’ve travelled upon her vastness and mystery. Tales of endurance and passage and arrival in exotic places still enthral me.
The trouble is pirates. And governments. I’ve found that wind and sea and boat maintenance challenges are more than sufficient for my appetite. I’ve not particularly liked crew including myself. The fact is I prefer my dogs company and all else is a bit of work. In fairness to my lovely ex wife I found when I was a couple of weeks alone at sea with my own thoughts I wanted to divorce me. The thought of having to deal with unfriendly strangers wanting to kill me and steal my boat is simply too overwhelming to consider.
I chose to sail offshore with the trusty marine nickel plated defender shot gun. It’s fairly standard equipment for commercial fishing boats since some times one actually has to shoot the big halibut to get them aboard. I have spear guns for scuba and flare guns as well. I even have a cutlass which though real has a greater ornamental function in my rustic below deck Captains cabin. Some might say it’s phallic. The fact is the shorter cutlass is made for ship fighting as there would be no room to swing my Scottish broadsword. I have these more for fashion or as one might pay for life insurance. I don’t want to use them. I have a life raft on board too and am truly glad I’ve never had to use it and hopefully never will. I studied fencing as a youth and as a hunter am an excellent marksman.
However the thought of taking another human’s life, even in self defence, would, to say the least, put a damper on a vacation, for me, a physician who has devoted his life to saving lives. I remember the joy I felt off the Baja coast when we rescued a couple of men in a dinghy whose boat had caught fire and sunk. I especially loved the time when my ex and I and a couple of other cruisers saved a baby whale that had got it’s self disoriented trapped and partially beached in some mangroves. I would rather not have to tell a story of blowing the brains out of some psychopath trying to board my boat. There’s more than enough adventure without that sort of nonsense. In fact going away to sea is especially enjoyable because it gets me away from some of the drug addicted psychopaths who seem unable to change their mind about seeing other humans as potential food rather than companions. These blokes have been part of my work especially when I worked with the jails. I certainly don’t want to meet this sort at sea. That would be a busman’s holiday for sure.
In fact I’m happy to be alone with my dog and only just tolerate friends and lovers. If there weren’t merit in numbers I’d probably just solo sail. The fact is I get rather lonely after a week or two and actually enjoy my companions at times. There’s a great deal of laughter when one sails with people who are adults and have got over that “I’’m a victim” stage of emotional development. As a captain I really don’t have patience for whining and passive aggressiveness or attitude.
I have heard that the cruising community has taken to hiring ex American navy personnel in guns boats to accompany the fleet as they passage south and east of Malaysia. I was in Singapore a few years back and loved it dearly. I loved the rule of law and the order in the community. The harbours in the area are magnificent as well. Unfortunately the el Quaeda has taken hold in nearby villages so that stories abound of pirates killing foreigners, mostly Christians, or at very least stealing their boats and leaving them stranded. I’m very much a Christian but not the better sort that does a fine job of being martyred. I was thankful that the Lord did this for me and know I’d do a very bad and messy job of dying for my beliefs.
Then there’s the Somalian muslims, a particularly uncivilized lot whose dangerous stupidity and lack of civilization are becoming epic. I confess I’ve loved reading of American cruisers who have been attacked by these high speed gun boats with 50 mm machine guns blazing. The best story is of two ex marines who were sailing together on their separate yachts when a couple of these drug crazed Allah Akubar swearing criminals charged their boats. The frightening thing was that they opened fire from far off targeting the cockpit and hoping to kill anyone on board. One American armed with a 12 gauge shot gun popped up at the last moment when the pirates came along side with their AK 47 assault rifles in hand ready to board. With combat trained reflexes and skills he blew all aboard away with repetitive shots from his defender. Meanwhile his friend at the last moment veered his 7 km maximum speed sailboat into the Somalian high speed tobacco boat riding right over it and sending that boats pirates to the bottom of the sea.
I read the story while I was in charge of advertising for Blue Water Cruising Association out of Vancouver, BC. Discussing it with cruisers we all cheered the Americans. I think even the vegetarian pacifists were impressed. Yet its not something I personally want to have to do. When I was in Bombay, now called Mumbai, I loved the harbour and so wanted to one day sail there. I love India and must return. The people are the most fascinating and so many of my friends are Indian ex pats here in Canada. Yet the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea seem like places one would only want to go with an American flotilla of war ships, not on a little sailboat with a cockapoo dog.
The other problem has been the governments. Carrying weapons on board is a major issue with each port. Most cruisers as a consequence don’t declare their guns and most authorities turn a blind eye but it suddenly puts one in a difficult position. Even if one declares them there’s all manner of insanity attached to this placed there by beaurocratic fools who have never been in a boat themselves. In Mexico I was expected to turn in my shot gun at the first port and then pick it up again when I departed the country. The only problem is I was coming from the north and expecting to leave the country hundreds of miles to the south. Government stupidity is impressive in Canada but by world standards Canada is a genius compared to the silliness of paper work and restrictions elsewhere. So who wants the hassle especially when a single corrupt official ,and corrupt officials are extremely common in the third world, can impound your boat and arrest you. Increasingly every other nation in the third world seems intent on taking Canadians hostage either officially or unofficially for extortion and ransom.
When I was younger Canadian tourists were welcome overseas and sailors were able to anchor free in harbours so the whole process was pleasant and relatively inexpensive. Now Canadians, indeed all westerners, are seen as mega rich, like Mini Fatuous Kardashians, and a source of easy income. There are the pirates for sure, then the rapacious businessmen and finally the corrupt extorting government officials. Friends tell me that everywhere they were charged to anchor and even a fee was charged for landing their dinghies on shore. Prices go up the minute you speak English. too. Whites are thought of as racist but they’re the least racist today compared to the racism they can encounter and the tribalism in primitive nations.
Further, the United Nations has created this Social Communism idea of the West being the bourgeoisie. Meanwhile the local businessmen in all these countries are richer than the richest Canadians. The key to world poverty is not east and west but rather financial distribution within the countries themselves. In Muslim countries the rich are obscenely rich while the poor are poor yet in Canada while we have rich, wealth is more widely distributed. Our poor indeed are the richest poor in the world. To the third world though we’re now the enemy. Especially if one is Christian.
I love all the Fillipino nurses and doctors I know and would love to sail to Manilla but that country was only a decade back taken off of the international list of places that are not recommended for small boat cruisers because of pirates. The South China Seas are completely off the list. Yet I’d love to sail into the magnificent Hong Kong harbour. I’ve flown there repeatedly and love the city and people. The harbour is one of the greatest natural harbours in all the world. Yet who wants to be killed a day or two out to sea by dozens of ignorant communist Chinese who see all westerners as bourgeoise capitalists. Communists have forever been poor at creativity and live to steal. Without theft their thug dominated system would expire because none of the truly creative are rewarded in these principally totalitarian gang lead social systems. Communism is so often confused with socialism which it is not.
So while I’d love to sail more in the Pacific it’s increasingly been the plan to get to the Caribbean and the Mediterranean and Great Britain. I loved being in the Bahamas. It was a truly inspiring moment when I visited Vera Cruz in Mexico where Columbus had landed. My parents took a Cruise Ship tour of the Caribean Islands and spoke of the variety and diversity of every island for years after. So yes, I’d love to sail there.
Now my sailboat has been shipped from Vancouver British Columbia here in the west to Bath, Lake Ontario in Eastern Canada.. My brother has developed cancer so the best way for us to sail together was for me to get the boat to Lake Ontario. Overland was the fastest, and probably the cheapest too, at $10,000 cost. I have to consider how much time I’d lose from work if I tried again to sail it down the coast and cross at Mexico or Panama. I really am looking forward to sailing in the famed Thousand Islands near Kingston. Fresh water sailing and fishing will be a welcome change. I’ve got nephews too that want to crew. Then when my brother is better we can take the 350 mile canal motoring cruise down to New York. I’d love to have my sailboat in the New York habour and take a train to Manhatten to take in more Broadway plays. My friend Laura would love to do some more motor sailing with me as well. She’s not fond of being in the boat when the wind gets up a bit.
I know Tom would be up for a sailing across the Atlantic. His eyes light up at the sound of the Azores. I would love to have my brother along for that passage. I’ve found it’s only men that want to join me on ocean crossings whereas women have often said they’d fly to meet me in exotic places. These are dreams to come. For now the boat is going East. I still want to visit Australia and there’s a medical meeting in Sidney I’ve wanted to attend for years. I may just have to fly there like others do. I’d leave my dog here because frankly it seems everything in the Australian wild wants to kill us, from spiders to lizards.
imagine Gilbert would rather be with us in Bath. He’ll be definiely up for sailing on Lake Ontario with his cousin cockapoo Eva. I can see them turning the deck into a dog Indie 500 chase. As a cockapoo I also expect Gilbert would gladly go ashore in France and England. There he could proudly tell countless stories of his many adventures to his distant canine relatives.
I love that Europe loves dogs.
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Plumper Cove, Keats Island, BC
I motored my Folkes 39.9 cutter rigged steel sailboat from Coal Harbour to Plumper Cove, anchoring Friday night . We just had time to barbecue shish kabobs steaks bits and have with boiled potatoes and carrots. In the morning after a marvellous breakie of fried eggs and hash browns from the left over potatoes, Gilbert and I got in the dinghy and rowed ashore. I love the Plumper Cove Marine Park. Great dog walk into the backwoods. There's a creek that runs down the backside of the little hill. Gilbert sniffed everything and peed on everything else.
Then we got back to the dinghy and rowed out to the boat at anchor. It was a tough day of reading and napping and nibbling. I had a shower at some point. The sun was so out that I put on sunscreen. Despite this my face is red after the weekend. I read Spirtual Theology by Diogene Allen and Inferno by Dan Brown. I even did a couple of chapters of Biblical Hebrew homework. Four more to go to catch up. I've a tutor planned as well. All to be able to read genesis. And hopefully visit Jerusalem again. I loved the holy city.
Somehow with very little effort on my part, the day passed. I fished a bit off the deck and eventually almost bored settled down for the night and slept another great sleep at anchor.
Today I weighed anchor early, well 9 am. I'd woke at 8 am. On the way back I noticed i needed to add oil to the engine and everything was well after that. There's a harmonic on the shaft and prop around 2000 rpm but not there at fishing speed of 1500 or travelling speed at 2500 rpm. It was a great moment when I caught a fish. Wow. It was a cod and very quickly ended up on the barbecue. I boiled some potatoes and peas to go with it and was delighted.
Gilbert even liked some bone free bits.
Then it was motoring home. I almost put up the sail but I'm not that well stowed below. Besides I was enjoying reading Brown's book and sailing would mean running about on deck instead. So lazy 'iron jenny'. Great help from my neighbour docking. A good outing. Gilbert was glad to be back on dock.
Then we got back to the dinghy and rowed out to the boat at anchor. It was a tough day of reading and napping and nibbling. I had a shower at some point. The sun was so out that I put on sunscreen. Despite this my face is red after the weekend. I read Spirtual Theology by Diogene Allen and Inferno by Dan Brown. I even did a couple of chapters of Biblical Hebrew homework. Four more to go to catch up. I've a tutor planned as well. All to be able to read genesis. And hopefully visit Jerusalem again. I loved the holy city.
Somehow with very little effort on my part, the day passed. I fished a bit off the deck and eventually almost bored settled down for the night and slept another great sleep at anchor.
Today I weighed anchor early, well 9 am. I'd woke at 8 am. On the way back I noticed i needed to add oil to the engine and everything was well after that. There's a harmonic on the shaft and prop around 2000 rpm but not there at fishing speed of 1500 or travelling speed at 2500 rpm. It was a great moment when I caught a fish. Wow. It was a cod and very quickly ended up on the barbecue. I boiled some potatoes and peas to go with it and was delighted.
Gilbert even liked some bone free bits.
Then it was motoring home. I almost put up the sail but I'm not that well stowed below. Besides I was enjoying reading Brown's book and sailing would mean running about on deck instead. So lazy 'iron jenny'. Great help from my neighbour docking. A good outing. Gilbert was glad to be back on dock.
Plumper Cove , Keats Island, BC - journallingI
It's lovely here, anchored, sitting below in the cabin of my sailboat drinking coffee and blogging. It was hot on deck when I went topsides and threw the dinghy overboard for a later row ashore with my first mate, Gilbert, the cockapoo. I'm grateful today. Grateful that the sun came out and that the boat repairs were sufficiently complete that I was able to motor here easily.
I'd taken Thursday afternoon off hoping to get away. I vaguely thought of crossing Georgia Strait and going to anchor off Nanaimo. That's best done as a three day trip given it's about 7 hours to get across the Strait. I had errands to run and as usual at the end of a week my head isn't quite in the space it needs to be for starting an adventure. I wasn't even sure I'd take the boat though that was the plan. When the weather turned cloudy I thought of heading south in the Miata for a weekend in Seattle. I imagined getting a pedicure and staying at some place with a hot tub. Places like Harrison Hot Springs are the only way to recuperate when it's rainy and cold. I fancied a massage even.
Alternatively I thought it was the end of spring bear hunting season and I could head out to the backwoods with a rifle and hike mountains in search of a freezer full of meat. That was countered with the though I preferred salmon to bear meat and really a long drive in the truck on Thursday afternoon wasn't what I had in mind for r and r. So I stocked the boat going with the first plan, clearing the decks of stuff that needed to go to the storage locker and provisioning for a weekend in case the weather turned. I took Gilbert for a couple of walks. We actually got dressed up with the idea of going out to a club but only got as far as taking Gilbert for a walk before returning and watching a movie seemed the better idea. My mind is so ambivalent at the end of the week. All week I've 'answers' and 'questions' but at the end of the week it's just a muddle for me. I pray and ask God what I'm supposed to be doing. Know I'm supposed to be recovering and don't know if it would be better to just had a long nap or go for a walk. Gilbert usually settles that by climbing on my chest when I lie down, looking me in the eye, and suggesting I reconsider. He does love drives in the Miata with the top down. I look over and smile at his dog face in the wind hair blowing all over as he stands with his forepaws on the elbow rest and tries to get as much of his head out the window as he can.
Waking Thursday I was lonely. I'm so much with people when I'm working, overwhelmed with the human predicament. happy to be with people, happy to share their lives but not particularly happy with people out of the office.
Thursday afternoon I'd sat for a late brunch on Commercial. A very attractive woman had sat down beside me wearing the most red shoes I've seen. It was like one of those black and white photos where someone had added red to the picture except that the world was in colour and this red was just really really red. She had a contraption, a vaporizer for 'smoking' without smoking'. Some nicotine delivery system that she proceeded to talk about at length without any sense of her addiction to nicotine focussing her attention to this. I was thankful I'd quit smoking 15 years ago and thought it good she was struggling. Sad though that something that was initially so attractive turned into a demon. The conversation seemed fine for her but for me it was a bit like a bus man's holiday. Especially when she began talking about AA and other addictions. She was so critical and unaware of her criticalness. I saw myself in her, those times when I was negative and critical and found an external institution or event to vent my frustration on. She was critical of life and God in a sense as well and I found myself almost back at work asking, what alternative is there. What's a better solution. As is so often the case, there wasn't one. All that time and energy spent in tearing down something and none spent in building. It's an adolescent thing really. I probably even said , "boys and going destroy, men and women create."
I think the anger and frustration comes with nicotine. It's worsened by it really, fueled in a way. It also could be youth. She was younger than me by a decade at least, like everyone seems these days. I was so 'opinionated' when I was younger, trying out new ideas, trying to figure things out, breaking down and building and hoping for a new age. Hopeful really. I'm probably just jaded. I've turned a corner and don't have much hope for the world or is it for myself. I don't think if I just change this , everything will be all right. Now I'm mostly trying to change me and feel alright with what is. She was mostly objecting to the 'spirituality' of AA and going on about Buddhism like most westerner do who haven't read 'Trungpa' or even Buddha. Just like the communists of old who would idolize some distant land where 'real communism' worked, so she was celebrating a religion which was fine but not in comparison. Or maybe I just didn't want to talk comparative religion after years of studying it and thinking always Buddha, Mohammed, Moses, Jesus would behave better together at a tea party than any of their disciples. She was pretty and enthusiastic and angry like so many young women. Rebel's without causes. I just couldn't help but think as I so often think listening to women is that I heard men saying the same things 10 years before. So is it a gender thing, women coming into their own, developing all the diseases of the workplace, dying the same as men once they left the protection of the home, suffering in the workplace, or is it just youth. Was she no different from her male cohort and I was just registering the ideas we tore apart a decade or two ago when we were all so intellectual and all the 'ideas' seems so fine on the couch and in the coffeehouses before reality took over and messed with even the best of ideas.
There are so many 'binary' ideas, like all of the Marxist notions, all the I'm right you're wrong groups, my brain is healthy , yours isn't. I tire of that paranoid ideology and want to hear the trinity, god, not god, and god and not god. Can't people even begin to grasp quantum physics and what is says about our minds. The courts and politics are so often binary which goes with sports and choice. Maybe it's just me at the end of the week unable to think so well any more, weary with worry and concerns for those I'm privileged to care for. I've read so many articles recently but none have the answers that I need in my work. All the 'solutions' I see in the 'learned texts' have been tried on the people that I see. The paradigms are exhausted. Meanwhile all the government offers is marijuana and euthanasia and arguments again about the fat cat Senate. I'd really like to be a senator though I'd hate to be caught stealing and have to pay back all the money fraudulently taken. In my work if I did that though I'd lose my job or go to jail. I miss "security". Everything seems to be hanging on a thread these days.
When she left to return to work where she obviously struggled with injustice and defended the weak I was glad to move on, thinking talking with people isn't really a break for me and that if I'd known the weather wasn't going to stay sunny I'd have best worked. Better to be working on a rainy day than sailing though that's not necessarily true. It's a Vancouver thing, the office buildings explode with people when the sun is out and we all scurry back to work inside when its raining.
Perhaps that's why all dressed up I preferred to walk the dog than go out to meet strangers. I like the feel of a new shirt though. One I've not had time to spill coffee or food on.
Thursday morning I was thankful for a meeting. I knew some folk who get together at lunch time and decided that's just what I needed. A little coffee and company would do the soul good. The drive to Davie street from North Vancouver was a bit of a chore with the road construction but a convertible like a motorcycle makes that all tolerable. I liked joining the discussion about homophobia. Ingrid shared with me that she had not been invited to a wedding she thought because she was lesbian. That may well be but as she knew it could be other reasons. We focus on the difference we struggle with and the sexual differences are most difficult. I like this group. Sitting in the coffeeshop beside Little Sisters on the patio where Gilbert could be with us we talked about relationships, homosexual and heterosexual and bisexual. Everyone had a relationship of their own to contribute with mostly light hearted humour. The discussion even got into prostitution and much was said about money and energy. I thought about Buddhism and 'right livelihood' and the strictest religious view in some Hindoo and Christian sects that sex was only to be used solely for reproduction and not to be much fun either. Very stoic in that sense but not at all epicurean in a Greek sense. The thing I enjoy most about these friends is that their conversation is always 'us' and 'I' centred. We call it the 'language of the heart'. Each person was sharing their difficulties and strengths and not criticizing some external agency. There's a truthfulness is the 'subjectiveness of experience'. Each person spoke about what they themselves had experienced as opposed to the formulation of the intellectual and assumed objectivity. I felt we all had shared Heidleberg and knew something of limitation. The youngest too was in her 40's and waxed poetic about her home and garden. Phil was good to see again. A handsome man who ran a hair salon. For some reason I remember Charlotte's name most because she was talking about art and vision and expression. We laughed together about the Lulu see through yoga pant recall, how the girls had objected but that when the story got out gay men were lining up to get a pair. I was happy to see the fellow from the tax department enjoying our conversation about money as an 'idea'. I'd hate to have him be having a bus man's holiday.
I had a parking ticket by the time I got back to the car but I didn't feel lonely any more. Back at the boat I threw off the dock lines and was just heading out when I noticed I'd not disconnected the shore power. That provided a little excitement, backing up, docking, jumping down, grabbing up the electrical cord and jumping back on board without hitting either of my neighbours fore and aft. I got away with my heart pounding thinking how stupid of me. But it's been a year since I took the boat out myself. I'm experientially into so many complex and frankly dangerous activities that it's hard to remember every detail especially after gaps of months. I just went through recertifying in scuba diving with a dry suit in cold water and had the same process. Now I was getting back into solo sailing.
The autopilot is a charm. I love that it holds the course. Fueling up I found I only needed 80 liters. The forward tank was mostly full so I suspect I'm running off the back tank.
I actually got the down rigger out and fished on the English Bay side of First Narrows. No luck but I figure if I do the right thing enough it eventually pays off.
I always enjoy passing Pt. Atkinson. A pretty lighthouse. I enjoyed passing Whitecliff where I scuba dove a few weeks past. That was in Howe Sound. The sea was fairly flat and I was making good time. I'd started late and thought to go to Plumper Cove but almost turned off to Gambier thinking I'd not get into Plumper till after dark. Thanks to the clean bottom I've been getting 5 to 6 knots so decided to go for it. I made it to Plumper Cove while there was still light. Anchoring went without at hitch.
Then I got out the marinaded beef shishkabobbs (spelling?) (beef chunks skewered on sticks). Save on had a deal on them. Gilbert was happy to have half. For a little dog he can put down a lot of barbecued meat. I boiled little potatoes and had those with sour cream and butter. The hagen daz ice cream didn't stay frozen in my freezer but was tasty as a milkshake. I watched the Ghost Writer dvd and figured I'd seen it before but enjoyed it once again.
Now I've slept a wonderful sleep at anchor and risen to make coffee I've enjoyed and written this journal, grateful for my day, my dog, my boat, my fingers and toes, this incredible scenery, the great british columbia outdoors and no real demands. A trip ashore for a walk in the woods is all I've planned though I could go fishing too. I think I'll make breakfast now. Another cup of coffee.
I' ve been reading Dan Browns newest thriller Inferno. I love the Tom Clancy writing like a good rock and roll song but in Dan Brown's case all the art and history and ideas are thrown in as well. A delightful romp so far. Thanks to the autopilot I got a lot of reading in yesterday evening. Nothing better than sitting on a boat reading a great mystery or thriller , looking up all the time to make sure nothing untoward is happening. I remember when I studied the shore but now the gulf island are a bit like the drive to work. I know them well and enjoy seeing the occasional eagle and maybe do miss things like deer on shore or a surfacing whale but the fact is I've seen a lot , am constantly looking about but enjoy so much reading at the wheel and drinking coffee while I'm doing it. Gilbert lies at my feet in the cockpit and doesn't appear at all guilty about sleeping a whole lot.
I've also been reading Diogenes Allen's "Spiritual Theology'. It's my second go round. That good a book. I loved reading last night, his quote from Walker Percy, "I have learned that the most important difference between people is between those for whom life is a quest and those for whom it is not."
Life is a quest for me.
Bolen texted me on the iPhone when I was in Howe Sound that he'd heard I had a poetry manuscript completed. He shared that he had too and we're planning on exchanging ours for a good read. I liked the tech experience, the 'grid' experience. I've got a 'Wind" "hotspot' here being generated by a little device they gave me. I didn't know it was good here but sure enough I've got wifi. The iPhone operates on the Telus network. I was planning on checking out my internet satellite phone connection sometime too. I've got lots of things to do if I ever feel like a task or two on this boat. I'll be lucky though if I simply read and get breakfast.
I'm behind in my Biblical Hebrew studies so planned to catch up on those this weekend with a few hours of study. Cohen at the online Jerusualem university has been a delight so far. Not at all too onerous and I'm actually hopeful I'll get some ability to better understand Genesis. I'd love read some parts of Isaiah and maybe learn a psalm or two too. It seemed such an insurmountable goal when I realized it had it's own alphabet. I prefer the study of Spanish and French and Latin from that perspective. I've got some basis. This is daunting in comparison but the teacher makes it 'seem' easier than it is. I think with the sunshine though lying on deck with some sun tan lotion might be a better alternative.
Time to make a mother coffee. It's like a summer day as a child during summer vacation. Then I'd ask my mom what I should do. She always had ideas, some of which weren't at all what I was hoping to hear. Now I'd just love to hear her voice and see her smile. If Dad were here we'd be out fishing for sure.
Right now I think I'll have another coffee and read more of Diogenes. I was meditating already this morning and pleased to have Gilbert join me thinking my cross legged position was a perfect place for him to rest his head. Right now he's got his little bum pressed up beside me. I know he'd like us to go for a walk or play ball but that seems a bit energetic as yet. Another coffee and maybe some fried eggs with hash browns is the next order of business. Decisions, decisions, decisions.
I'd taken Thursday afternoon off hoping to get away. I vaguely thought of crossing Georgia Strait and going to anchor off Nanaimo. That's best done as a three day trip given it's about 7 hours to get across the Strait. I had errands to run and as usual at the end of a week my head isn't quite in the space it needs to be for starting an adventure. I wasn't even sure I'd take the boat though that was the plan. When the weather turned cloudy I thought of heading south in the Miata for a weekend in Seattle. I imagined getting a pedicure and staying at some place with a hot tub. Places like Harrison Hot Springs are the only way to recuperate when it's rainy and cold. I fancied a massage even.
Alternatively I thought it was the end of spring bear hunting season and I could head out to the backwoods with a rifle and hike mountains in search of a freezer full of meat. That was countered with the though I preferred salmon to bear meat and really a long drive in the truck on Thursday afternoon wasn't what I had in mind for r and r. So I stocked the boat going with the first plan, clearing the decks of stuff that needed to go to the storage locker and provisioning for a weekend in case the weather turned. I took Gilbert for a couple of walks. We actually got dressed up with the idea of going out to a club but only got as far as taking Gilbert for a walk before returning and watching a movie seemed the better idea. My mind is so ambivalent at the end of the week. All week I've 'answers' and 'questions' but at the end of the week it's just a muddle for me. I pray and ask God what I'm supposed to be doing. Know I'm supposed to be recovering and don't know if it would be better to just had a long nap or go for a walk. Gilbert usually settles that by climbing on my chest when I lie down, looking me in the eye, and suggesting I reconsider. He does love drives in the Miata with the top down. I look over and smile at his dog face in the wind hair blowing all over as he stands with his forepaws on the elbow rest and tries to get as much of his head out the window as he can.
Waking Thursday I was lonely. I'm so much with people when I'm working, overwhelmed with the human predicament. happy to be with people, happy to share their lives but not particularly happy with people out of the office.
Thursday afternoon I'd sat for a late brunch on Commercial. A very attractive woman had sat down beside me wearing the most red shoes I've seen. It was like one of those black and white photos where someone had added red to the picture except that the world was in colour and this red was just really really red. She had a contraption, a vaporizer for 'smoking' without smoking'. Some nicotine delivery system that she proceeded to talk about at length without any sense of her addiction to nicotine focussing her attention to this. I was thankful I'd quit smoking 15 years ago and thought it good she was struggling. Sad though that something that was initially so attractive turned into a demon. The conversation seemed fine for her but for me it was a bit like a bus man's holiday. Especially when she began talking about AA and other addictions. She was so critical and unaware of her criticalness. I saw myself in her, those times when I was negative and critical and found an external institution or event to vent my frustration on. She was critical of life and God in a sense as well and I found myself almost back at work asking, what alternative is there. What's a better solution. As is so often the case, there wasn't one. All that time and energy spent in tearing down something and none spent in building. It's an adolescent thing really. I probably even said , "boys and going destroy, men and women create."
I think the anger and frustration comes with nicotine. It's worsened by it really, fueled in a way. It also could be youth. She was younger than me by a decade at least, like everyone seems these days. I was so 'opinionated' when I was younger, trying out new ideas, trying to figure things out, breaking down and building and hoping for a new age. Hopeful really. I'm probably just jaded. I've turned a corner and don't have much hope for the world or is it for myself. I don't think if I just change this , everything will be all right. Now I'm mostly trying to change me and feel alright with what is. She was mostly objecting to the 'spirituality' of AA and going on about Buddhism like most westerner do who haven't read 'Trungpa' or even Buddha. Just like the communists of old who would idolize some distant land where 'real communism' worked, so she was celebrating a religion which was fine but not in comparison. Or maybe I just didn't want to talk comparative religion after years of studying it and thinking always Buddha, Mohammed, Moses, Jesus would behave better together at a tea party than any of their disciples. She was pretty and enthusiastic and angry like so many young women. Rebel's without causes. I just couldn't help but think as I so often think listening to women is that I heard men saying the same things 10 years before. So is it a gender thing, women coming into their own, developing all the diseases of the workplace, dying the same as men once they left the protection of the home, suffering in the workplace, or is it just youth. Was she no different from her male cohort and I was just registering the ideas we tore apart a decade or two ago when we were all so intellectual and all the 'ideas' seems so fine on the couch and in the coffeehouses before reality took over and messed with even the best of ideas.
There are so many 'binary' ideas, like all of the Marxist notions, all the I'm right you're wrong groups, my brain is healthy , yours isn't. I tire of that paranoid ideology and want to hear the trinity, god, not god, and god and not god. Can't people even begin to grasp quantum physics and what is says about our minds. The courts and politics are so often binary which goes with sports and choice. Maybe it's just me at the end of the week unable to think so well any more, weary with worry and concerns for those I'm privileged to care for. I've read so many articles recently but none have the answers that I need in my work. All the 'solutions' I see in the 'learned texts' have been tried on the people that I see. The paradigms are exhausted. Meanwhile all the government offers is marijuana and euthanasia and arguments again about the fat cat Senate. I'd really like to be a senator though I'd hate to be caught stealing and have to pay back all the money fraudulently taken. In my work if I did that though I'd lose my job or go to jail. I miss "security". Everything seems to be hanging on a thread these days.
When she left to return to work where she obviously struggled with injustice and defended the weak I was glad to move on, thinking talking with people isn't really a break for me and that if I'd known the weather wasn't going to stay sunny I'd have best worked. Better to be working on a rainy day than sailing though that's not necessarily true. It's a Vancouver thing, the office buildings explode with people when the sun is out and we all scurry back to work inside when its raining.
Perhaps that's why all dressed up I preferred to walk the dog than go out to meet strangers. I like the feel of a new shirt though. One I've not had time to spill coffee or food on.
Thursday morning I was thankful for a meeting. I knew some folk who get together at lunch time and decided that's just what I needed. A little coffee and company would do the soul good. The drive to Davie street from North Vancouver was a bit of a chore with the road construction but a convertible like a motorcycle makes that all tolerable. I liked joining the discussion about homophobia. Ingrid shared with me that she had not been invited to a wedding she thought because she was lesbian. That may well be but as she knew it could be other reasons. We focus on the difference we struggle with and the sexual differences are most difficult. I like this group. Sitting in the coffeeshop beside Little Sisters on the patio where Gilbert could be with us we talked about relationships, homosexual and heterosexual and bisexual. Everyone had a relationship of their own to contribute with mostly light hearted humour. The discussion even got into prostitution and much was said about money and energy. I thought about Buddhism and 'right livelihood' and the strictest religious view in some Hindoo and Christian sects that sex was only to be used solely for reproduction and not to be much fun either. Very stoic in that sense but not at all epicurean in a Greek sense. The thing I enjoy most about these friends is that their conversation is always 'us' and 'I' centred. We call it the 'language of the heart'. Each person was sharing their difficulties and strengths and not criticizing some external agency. There's a truthfulness is the 'subjectiveness of experience'. Each person spoke about what they themselves had experienced as opposed to the formulation of the intellectual and assumed objectivity. I felt we all had shared Heidleberg and knew something of limitation. The youngest too was in her 40's and waxed poetic about her home and garden. Phil was good to see again. A handsome man who ran a hair salon. For some reason I remember Charlotte's name most because she was talking about art and vision and expression. We laughed together about the Lulu see through yoga pant recall, how the girls had objected but that when the story got out gay men were lining up to get a pair. I was happy to see the fellow from the tax department enjoying our conversation about money as an 'idea'. I'd hate to have him be having a bus man's holiday.
I had a parking ticket by the time I got back to the car but I didn't feel lonely any more. Back at the boat I threw off the dock lines and was just heading out when I noticed I'd not disconnected the shore power. That provided a little excitement, backing up, docking, jumping down, grabbing up the electrical cord and jumping back on board without hitting either of my neighbours fore and aft. I got away with my heart pounding thinking how stupid of me. But it's been a year since I took the boat out myself. I'm experientially into so many complex and frankly dangerous activities that it's hard to remember every detail especially after gaps of months. I just went through recertifying in scuba diving with a dry suit in cold water and had the same process. Now I was getting back into solo sailing.
The autopilot is a charm. I love that it holds the course. Fueling up I found I only needed 80 liters. The forward tank was mostly full so I suspect I'm running off the back tank.
I actually got the down rigger out and fished on the English Bay side of First Narrows. No luck but I figure if I do the right thing enough it eventually pays off.
I always enjoy passing Pt. Atkinson. A pretty lighthouse. I enjoyed passing Whitecliff where I scuba dove a few weeks past. That was in Howe Sound. The sea was fairly flat and I was making good time. I'd started late and thought to go to Plumper Cove but almost turned off to Gambier thinking I'd not get into Plumper till after dark. Thanks to the clean bottom I've been getting 5 to 6 knots so decided to go for it. I made it to Plumper Cove while there was still light. Anchoring went without at hitch.
Then I got out the marinaded beef shishkabobbs (spelling?) (beef chunks skewered on sticks). Save on had a deal on them. Gilbert was happy to have half. For a little dog he can put down a lot of barbecued meat. I boiled little potatoes and had those with sour cream and butter. The hagen daz ice cream didn't stay frozen in my freezer but was tasty as a milkshake. I watched the Ghost Writer dvd and figured I'd seen it before but enjoyed it once again.
Now I've slept a wonderful sleep at anchor and risen to make coffee I've enjoyed and written this journal, grateful for my day, my dog, my boat, my fingers and toes, this incredible scenery, the great british columbia outdoors and no real demands. A trip ashore for a walk in the woods is all I've planned though I could go fishing too. I think I'll make breakfast now. Another cup of coffee.
I' ve been reading Dan Browns newest thriller Inferno. I love the Tom Clancy writing like a good rock and roll song but in Dan Brown's case all the art and history and ideas are thrown in as well. A delightful romp so far. Thanks to the autopilot I got a lot of reading in yesterday evening. Nothing better than sitting on a boat reading a great mystery or thriller , looking up all the time to make sure nothing untoward is happening. I remember when I studied the shore but now the gulf island are a bit like the drive to work. I know them well and enjoy seeing the occasional eagle and maybe do miss things like deer on shore or a surfacing whale but the fact is I've seen a lot , am constantly looking about but enjoy so much reading at the wheel and drinking coffee while I'm doing it. Gilbert lies at my feet in the cockpit and doesn't appear at all guilty about sleeping a whole lot.
I've also been reading Diogenes Allen's "Spiritual Theology'. It's my second go round. That good a book. I loved reading last night, his quote from Walker Percy, "I have learned that the most important difference between people is between those for whom life is a quest and those for whom it is not."
Life is a quest for me.
Bolen texted me on the iPhone when I was in Howe Sound that he'd heard I had a poetry manuscript completed. He shared that he had too and we're planning on exchanging ours for a good read. I liked the tech experience, the 'grid' experience. I've got a 'Wind" "hotspot' here being generated by a little device they gave me. I didn't know it was good here but sure enough I've got wifi. The iPhone operates on the Telus network. I was planning on checking out my internet satellite phone connection sometime too. I've got lots of things to do if I ever feel like a task or two on this boat. I'll be lucky though if I simply read and get breakfast.
I'm behind in my Biblical Hebrew studies so planned to catch up on those this weekend with a few hours of study. Cohen at the online Jerusualem university has been a delight so far. Not at all too onerous and I'm actually hopeful I'll get some ability to better understand Genesis. I'd love read some parts of Isaiah and maybe learn a psalm or two too. It seemed such an insurmountable goal when I realized it had it's own alphabet. I prefer the study of Spanish and French and Latin from that perspective. I've got some basis. This is daunting in comparison but the teacher makes it 'seem' easier than it is. I think with the sunshine though lying on deck with some sun tan lotion might be a better alternative.
Time to make a mother coffee. It's like a summer day as a child during summer vacation. Then I'd ask my mom what I should do. She always had ideas, some of which weren't at all what I was hoping to hear. Now I'd just love to hear her voice and see her smile. If Dad were here we'd be out fishing for sure.
Right now I think I'll have another coffee and read more of Diogenes. I was meditating already this morning and pleased to have Gilbert join me thinking my cross legged position was a perfect place for him to rest his head. Right now he's got his little bum pressed up beside me. I know he'd like us to go for a walk or play ball but that seems a bit energetic as yet. Another coffee and maybe some fried eggs with hash browns is the next order of business. Decisions, decisions, decisions.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Saltspring Island 19th Annual AA Round Up
I was at the Whitecliff Thursday night Meeting with George when Bill reminded me the Saltspring Island Rally was that weekend. Bill had sailed with me one weekend to Silva Bay. We've a lot more stories over the water and under that bridge than that, though! Hearing about Saltspring from him seemed a message I should go even if everything would be last minute.
The fact is, I love Saltspring Island. I especially love the AA Rally every summer there. I've been more than a half dozen times, sometimes arriving on motorcycle, sometimes tenting with everyone else, or sometimes arriving on my boat or staying in one of the great Salt Spring Island bed and breakfasts. Everyway has had it's own unique pleasures. For a couple of years the Brians have made the trip memorable. Great friends and great fellowship. Then there's been the guitar playing around the tents, singing campfire songs. There's always great outdoor musicians and talking sticks too. The lamb roasts have been beyond the gourmand! Kiwanis breakfasts have been the best. All that plus reliable August weather, Ganges Harbour, great meetings and oftimes speakers whose stories illicit tears of joy and sorrow. We celebrate life, joyous and free!
I'd hoped to get away Friday but I forgot about an interview which I foolishly got caught up in. I must schedule interviews early morning rather than end of the day at the end of the week. Fridays now .I'm so often utterly exhausted, mentally and even physically with the sometimes chronic pain. I rarely feel like more than watching tv and eating pizza and literally can't think. Yet, it just seems like yesterday I was crossing the Strait every Friday night, motoring or sailing through the wee hours of the morning, so I could wake up Saturday in some scenic Gulf island anchorage. Those days were mostly 5 or 10 years ago. These last couple of years of accidents remind me my body is actually aging or at least taking longer to heal.
I didn't get away Friday. I crashed in bed and slept the sleep of the dead. I ran the errands I had to do early Saturday morning. That caused me to missed the tidal window. So I got away late. I was optimistically thinking I'd maybe get to Saltspring for the evening speaker. Then I had to fuel up. But really, I didn't care, once I'd untied from the dock I on the water just loving the boat and the glorious August sunshine. The view of mountains and city from English Bay is always utterly beautiful.
I motored. The day was spectacular, blue skies, light winds. I eved slowed enough to troll. I didn't catch any salmon this time. So many times in the past I've been more than blessed. My crew were as lazy as I was, though. I had a "good guy saves world from terrorists book, adult male comic reading, lots of gingerale and snacks. The Yanmar engine Jim had fixed again was working just fine. The new exhaust manifold appeared to be doing the trick. The autopilot turned my boat trip to as close to a train ride as solo sailing gets. Mid Georgia Strait I was alone for hours sunning nude on deck with cat and dog buddies along, loving the sea, blue sky and great BC outdoors.
Late evening I made Active Pass. I had a bit of excitement going through the east end watching the depth sounder , chart, radar and occasional angry whirlpool. Round the bend though it all got easier, the ebb helping me along.
Soon I was through and headed for Ganges Harbour on Saltspring. I'd been this route so many times at night I actually knew my bearings despite the confusion that night entrance can be.
10 30 pm I dropped anchor. I'd missed the Saturday program but was really contented I'd made it. I made a light dinner before falling asleep at anchor.
Morning in Ganges was glorious. My cat, Angel, loved being on deck early. Gilbert, the dog was really pleased when after coffee I got the dinghy in the water. A trip ashore is dog heaven. He only tolerates his life jacket because of what it means.
Pretty soon I had the 4 hp Yamaha engine on the dinghy and left first mate Angel in charge of the Giri. The sun was already filling the sky and warming the day. We tied up at the municipal dinghy dock and walked on up the hill past the High School Gilbert's friend, Robyn, attends.
The Farmer's market field and building really isn't that far from Ganges. Tents, campers, people and coffee machines flourished. We'd arrived just as the speaker was being introduced. Gilbert and I sat at the back just like we had last year. A half dozen other dogs and owners were there about the rear entrance much to the dogs entertainment.
The speaker, great on service, shared a wonderful tale of inspiration and life, leaving us all laughing through tears and thankful to be alive together. As the hundreds or so stood to close the meeting in prayer I was so thankful I'd made it another year.
The coordinator announced that next year will be the 20th Annual Saltspring Rally so that's going to be a landmark year. I'll really want to arrive Friday night for that.
Leaving I saw Brian with his new Big Foot camper. He's living the dream planning on heading south for a road trip by to the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone. He's achieving all the things he'd once only talked about.
A half dozen of us who'd been together the year before carried on those continuing conversations that happen among friends. So much had transpired in the time since we'd last met sometimes months since a meeting or even a year or two, yet it's like it was just yesterday.
Waving in departure I felt again how much I belonged. It was good having friends who shared a common journey. There was no need for that terrible aloneness that still sometimes could haunt the night or make the crowd seem terrifying. Hugs, smiles, fond words, and always 'see you again next year!" We sure do hope so!
Enjoying the summer day even more, Gilbert and I walked back to Ganges Harbour. Ripe red and green apples were falling off the trees along the road. Beautiful yellow, white and red flowers were being pollinated by big gold and black bumble bees. Birds flitted everywhere.
The harbour soon opened in front of us with ships and sailboats at anchor, the marinas full, and a sea plane taxiing to take off. It's a really bustling summer vacation spot. I sail over in winter sometimes when it's not nearly such a bustling place. I love Ganges everyway though. I could get lost in Mouats but only made necessary stop at the book store for more summer reading, looking in the shop windows at the fetching island fashions before heading back to the docks.
I bundled Gilbert into his life jacket for the dinghy ride back. More boats were leaving and with another plane taking off I had to keep my eyes open to avoid getting in their way. What a lovely day to be on the water though.
Back on the Giri, Angel made her report, giving her Siamese cat opinion on all that had gone on while we were off gallavanting. I wrestled the outboard motor and dinghy on board while Gilbert rubbed noses with her, licked her ears and telepathically relayed all the sights and sounds he'd experienced. She wasn't interest ed in the dogs he met and chided him no doubt on not paying more attention to the cats.
Soon I had the anchor up and was steaming out of the harbour too late to catch the turn in Active Pass. I headed up Trinicolli Channel instead to cross at Porlier Pass. The wind was perfect for sailing and I could have gone wing on wing for a while like I have so often before but the autopilot isn't well set up for sailing right now. I'd have to balance sails and autopilot and run around on deck like a deck monkey and.....well.... instead I made another cup off coffee and decided I was a motor boat. I was enjoying sunning with my book looking up at the occasional circling eagle.
Porlier Pass was a cakewalk even though I was off the turn but catching some of the flood to move right along. The current even high was only 1-2 knots this day when Porlier can actually be running 6 or more at other times. Then the chop and whirlpools can be exciting.
At first there was a little wind in Georgia Strait, mostly 5 to 10 knots,what the weather station means when they say 'light and variable'. That's easy pleasant sailing though 15 to 25 is best. With my anticipated return ETA around midnight I preferred the iron jenny steady 5 knots speed. My book was exciting and my hands were free to eat salad and fruit on the way back.
There was a beautiful sunset on Georgia Strait. Before too long I was in English Bay heading under night lit Lion's Gate Bridge at First Narrows. I got confused by a tanker docking and was hailed by a tug to go round its stern. Only then did I realize the tanker was going to sandwich me if i continued on that side of her. Night can be so confusing.
Thankfully my neighbour was away so I had lots of room to dock. Midnight then, I was all tied up with power cord, attached. Both Gilbert and Angel running up and down the dock. I got them back in the boat so I could to to sleep having had a great weekend on the water.
Making the AA rally even if only for Sunday morning was still worth it. There's comfort in traditions. It just felt good to celebrate and share in gratitude. Angel and Gilbert had a great time but unlike humans they 've got the bar set low for good times. They both aren't as likely to be restless, irritable or discontent. If Angel is, it's usually because of something obvious like her litter box needing changing.
That night I fell asleep with the cat at my neck and the dog resting his head on my leg. I'd been really glad to see my friends. I do look forward to Salt Spring 20th Annual Rally next year.
The fact is, I love Saltspring Island. I especially love the AA Rally every summer there. I've been more than a half dozen times, sometimes arriving on motorcycle, sometimes tenting with everyone else, or sometimes arriving on my boat or staying in one of the great Salt Spring Island bed and breakfasts. Everyway has had it's own unique pleasures. For a couple of years the Brians have made the trip memorable. Great friends and great fellowship. Then there's been the guitar playing around the tents, singing campfire songs. There's always great outdoor musicians and talking sticks too. The lamb roasts have been beyond the gourmand! Kiwanis breakfasts have been the best. All that plus reliable August weather, Ganges Harbour, great meetings and oftimes speakers whose stories illicit tears of joy and sorrow. We celebrate life, joyous and free!
I'd hoped to get away Friday but I forgot about an interview which I foolishly got caught up in. I must schedule interviews early morning rather than end of the day at the end of the week. Fridays now .I'm so often utterly exhausted, mentally and even physically with the sometimes chronic pain. I rarely feel like more than watching tv and eating pizza and literally can't think. Yet, it just seems like yesterday I was crossing the Strait every Friday night, motoring or sailing through the wee hours of the morning, so I could wake up Saturday in some scenic Gulf island anchorage. Those days were mostly 5 or 10 years ago. These last couple of years of accidents remind me my body is actually aging or at least taking longer to heal.
I didn't get away Friday. I crashed in bed and slept the sleep of the dead. I ran the errands I had to do early Saturday morning. That caused me to missed the tidal window. So I got away late. I was optimistically thinking I'd maybe get to Saltspring for the evening speaker. Then I had to fuel up. But really, I didn't care, once I'd untied from the dock I on the water just loving the boat and the glorious August sunshine. The view of mountains and city from English Bay is always utterly beautiful.
I motored. The day was spectacular, blue skies, light winds. I eved slowed enough to troll. I didn't catch any salmon this time. So many times in the past I've been more than blessed. My crew were as lazy as I was, though. I had a "good guy saves world from terrorists book, adult male comic reading, lots of gingerale and snacks. The Yanmar engine Jim had fixed again was working just fine. The new exhaust manifold appeared to be doing the trick. The autopilot turned my boat trip to as close to a train ride as solo sailing gets. Mid Georgia Strait I was alone for hours sunning nude on deck with cat and dog buddies along, loving the sea, blue sky and great BC outdoors.
Late evening I made Active Pass. I had a bit of excitement going through the east end watching the depth sounder , chart, radar and occasional angry whirlpool. Round the bend though it all got easier, the ebb helping me along.
Soon I was through and headed for Ganges Harbour on Saltspring. I'd been this route so many times at night I actually knew my bearings despite the confusion that night entrance can be.
10 30 pm I dropped anchor. I'd missed the Saturday program but was really contented I'd made it. I made a light dinner before falling asleep at anchor.
Morning in Ganges was glorious. My cat, Angel, loved being on deck early. Gilbert, the dog was really pleased when after coffee I got the dinghy in the water. A trip ashore is dog heaven. He only tolerates his life jacket because of what it means.
Pretty soon I had the 4 hp Yamaha engine on the dinghy and left first mate Angel in charge of the Giri. The sun was already filling the sky and warming the day. We tied up at the municipal dinghy dock and walked on up the hill past the High School Gilbert's friend, Robyn, attends.
The Farmer's market field and building really isn't that far from Ganges. Tents, campers, people and coffee machines flourished. We'd arrived just as the speaker was being introduced. Gilbert and I sat at the back just like we had last year. A half dozen other dogs and owners were there about the rear entrance much to the dogs entertainment.
The speaker, great on service, shared a wonderful tale of inspiration and life, leaving us all laughing through tears and thankful to be alive together. As the hundreds or so stood to close the meeting in prayer I was so thankful I'd made it another year.
The coordinator announced that next year will be the 20th Annual Saltspring Rally so that's going to be a landmark year. I'll really want to arrive Friday night for that.
Leaving I saw Brian with his new Big Foot camper. He's living the dream planning on heading south for a road trip by to the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone. He's achieving all the things he'd once only talked about.
A half dozen of us who'd been together the year before carried on those continuing conversations that happen among friends. So much had transpired in the time since we'd last met sometimes months since a meeting or even a year or two, yet it's like it was just yesterday.
Waving in departure I felt again how much I belonged. It was good having friends who shared a common journey. There was no need for that terrible aloneness that still sometimes could haunt the night or make the crowd seem terrifying. Hugs, smiles, fond words, and always 'see you again next year!" We sure do hope so!
Enjoying the summer day even more, Gilbert and I walked back to Ganges Harbour. Ripe red and green apples were falling off the trees along the road. Beautiful yellow, white and red flowers were being pollinated by big gold and black bumble bees. Birds flitted everywhere.
The harbour soon opened in front of us with ships and sailboats at anchor, the marinas full, and a sea plane taxiing to take off. It's a really bustling summer vacation spot. I sail over in winter sometimes when it's not nearly such a bustling place. I love Ganges everyway though. I could get lost in Mouats but only made necessary stop at the book store for more summer reading, looking in the shop windows at the fetching island fashions before heading back to the docks.
I bundled Gilbert into his life jacket for the dinghy ride back. More boats were leaving and with another plane taking off I had to keep my eyes open to avoid getting in their way. What a lovely day to be on the water though.
Back on the Giri, Angel made her report, giving her Siamese cat opinion on all that had gone on while we were off gallavanting. I wrestled the outboard motor and dinghy on board while Gilbert rubbed noses with her, licked her ears and telepathically relayed all the sights and sounds he'd experienced. She wasn't interest ed in the dogs he met and chided him no doubt on not paying more attention to the cats.
Soon I had the anchor up and was steaming out of the harbour too late to catch the turn in Active Pass. I headed up Trinicolli Channel instead to cross at Porlier Pass. The wind was perfect for sailing and I could have gone wing on wing for a while like I have so often before but the autopilot isn't well set up for sailing right now. I'd have to balance sails and autopilot and run around on deck like a deck monkey and.....well.... instead I made another cup off coffee and decided I was a motor boat. I was enjoying sunning with my book looking up at the occasional circling eagle.
Porlier Pass was a cakewalk even though I was off the turn but catching some of the flood to move right along. The current even high was only 1-2 knots this day when Porlier can actually be running 6 or more at other times. Then the chop and whirlpools can be exciting.
At first there was a little wind in Georgia Strait, mostly 5 to 10 knots,what the weather station means when they say 'light and variable'. That's easy pleasant sailing though 15 to 25 is best. With my anticipated return ETA around midnight I preferred the iron jenny steady 5 knots speed. My book was exciting and my hands were free to eat salad and fruit on the way back.
There was a beautiful sunset on Georgia Strait. Before too long I was in English Bay heading under night lit Lion's Gate Bridge at First Narrows. I got confused by a tanker docking and was hailed by a tug to go round its stern. Only then did I realize the tanker was going to sandwich me if i continued on that side of her. Night can be so confusing.
Thankfully my neighbour was away so I had lots of room to dock. Midnight then, I was all tied up with power cord, attached. Both Gilbert and Angel running up and down the dock. I got them back in the boat so I could to to sleep having had a great weekend on the water.
Making the AA rally even if only for Sunday morning was still worth it. There's comfort in traditions. It just felt good to celebrate and share in gratitude. Angel and Gilbert had a great time but unlike humans they 've got the bar set low for good times. They both aren't as likely to be restless, irritable or discontent. If Angel is, it's usually because of something obvious like her litter box needing changing.
That night I fell asleep with the cat at my neck and the dog resting his head on my leg. I'd been really glad to see my friends. I do look forward to Salt Spring 20th Annual Rally next year.
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