Gulf Island's cruise 2011

Every year we take the Troublemaker on a cruise, this year we had two whole weeks and headed north to the Gulf Islands off the coast of Vancouver Island, BC.  The further north you go the warmer and sunnier it gets and the warmer the water gets, weird uh? 

Here I am at the wheel taking her out of Port Townsend, past Point Wilson and into the Straits of Juan de Fuca.  This is a tough day, 6 hrs on the water headed to Roche Harbor in the San Juans. About 4 hrs in the Straits.  This is a busy area with several shipping lanes and lots of traffic.

That's a large navy ship headed out towards the open ocean.  They were being followed by Coasties in those bright red RIB's with the M60 machine gun mounted in front.  Those guys must have been bored because as we were looking at the big ship (and I was taking photos) they came sneaking up from behind just to startle us.  Worked on me, I turned around and there they were, right next to the boat, you just don't expect to see anyone right there when your chugging along in open water.  It's like someone knocking on your car side window while your going down the highway.  Gives you a start.

Here they are racing back to the navy ship after telling us to stay 500 yards away from it.  Never mind that we were about a mile away already, going in the opposite direction and our top speed is 4.5 kmh.  Wish I had taken a photo when they were right next to the boat, but I had the big lens on my DSLR.

That wasn't the only scare of the day, as we started up the coast of San Juan Island, the fuel gauge showed we had used way more fuel than we planned.  In fact it showed we were just above E.  There are no fuel stations in Haro Straights and so to save what little we had left we hoisted the sails.  Since the wind was coming from behind, we sailed wing on wing.  Genoa out to the port and mainsail out to the starboard.  Winds were light but we were able to sail all the way to Mosquito Pass.

We motored into Roche Harbor and dropped anchor for the night.  Roche is a great anchorage, good holding and a very protected little bay.  The only disturbance is the folks who race their dinghies at high speeds around the bay.  I watch a teenager racing along who looked like he was texting, he cut right in front of a large yacht motoring out of the bay.  The kid never looked up.  The sunsets at Roche are very nice and every night they do this thing where they make a big deal of taking down all the flags flying at the head of the marina.  It's a fun place to anchor.

 


The next day we took the bus into Friday Harbor on the other side of San Juan Island, got some supplies and just rested from our 6 hr slog across the Straits the day before.  This is just a jumping off point, our real destination is the Canadian Gulf Islands.

Our cruise plan was to circumnavigate Salt Spring Island, stopping in Cowichan Bay, then up the Sansum Narrows and around the top to Wallace Island, from Wallace we head for Ganges Bay and then to Prevost Island.  From Prevost to Montague Bay on Galiano Island and then down to Sidney Spit.  Our last stop would be Oak Bay on Vancouver Island and then across the Straits of Juan de Fuca again and home to Port Townsend.

So after another restful night on the hook at Roche, we fueled up and headed for Sidney, BC to clear customs and start our cruise.  From Sidney we headed north to Cowichan Bay.  Cow Bay is not a great anchorage so we tend to stay at the government dock when we go there.

The government docks in Canada are a bargain for boaters, very inexpensive and with nice amenities.  You can always find the gov. docks in Canada because they paint the railings a bright red.

Edmonds Rendezvous with the Seattle Sail and Power Sqaundron

Since buying a tugboat we've been neglecting our little Troublemaker, so when the SSAPS Rendezvous came up I thought it would be the perfect excuse to get our SJ28 out of the slip for the first time since last summer. After spending Friday morning cleaning the boat and making a mental list of all the things we should have done last fall before we left the boat for the winter, we started the engine. Problem, no water was existing the exhaust, for a raw water cooled engine this was a major issue. After going through all the hoses and the pump Bill found the problem in the exhaust elbow, the vent hose coupling was completely clogged with sludge, after cleaning out the fitting the engine was as good as new, which is good since the darn thing is new! After loading up the dogs we set off for the Edmonds marina.

We were able to sail most of the way but a small storm was coming in and the wind dropped so we dropped the sails and motored the rest of the way. The wind came back up as soon as we dropped the sails and with an outgoing tide we surfed into the Edmonds marina.

Troublemaker at the dock at Edmonds

Our hosts, Martine and Ken were there to greet us and we spent a delightful evening tasting wine and noshing on cheese and bread on the Zella C, Martine's 1927 Lake Union Dreamboat.

Saturday morning Martine made us all crepes on the dock, (absolutely delicious!) and then Ken taught everyone how to tie a monkey fist knot. The weather was a bit cool with the occasional shower, but the Zella C was warm and dry and still smelled like crepes.

Ken helps Steve with his splicing.

Greg and Joyce work on a monkey fist knot

Here's my attempt, came out pretty well, Ken's a good teacher.

The function of the monkey fist is to make it easy to toss a line, the knot acts as a weight. Of course that meant we had to have a contest to see who could throw the farthest with the most accuracy.

Bill and Steve try out their monkey fist knots.

Steve needed to inspect 5 vessels with another vessel examiner before he can do it on his own for the SSAPS , so we volunteered to be his first exam. We passed and now have a nice sticker for our boat that shows the Coasties we have all the equipment required. If Steve had found a problem we just would have had to fixed it, if the CG finds a problem after boarding your boat, you may get a fine. We have been boarded before and passed but with the sticker maybe they won't bother us again.

Bill, Steve and Dick fill out the paperwork for the vessel safety exam.

That evening Martine and Ken hosted a fine french dinner at the Cafe de Paris in Edmonds.

Sunday Morning Martine and Ken set up an omelet bar on the dock and made ziplock baggie omelets for everyone before we set off back home.

Wylie helps out by keeping the dock clean while Martine takes orders for omelets.

The wildlife in the marina made for some nice snapshots.

a pair of geese with their gosling


A great blue heron sits on a nest on the marina breakwater.

This was our first SSAPS rendezvous and we had a great time thanks to our hosts Martine and Ken.

Our San Juan Islands cruise

We had been invited to a barn warming/retirement party on Whidbey Island, so we decided why not sail over in the Troublemaker and make it our jump off place for a week in the San Juans. We left Shilshole Marina at around 9:30 AM, of course there was absolutely no wind so we motored north towards Whidbey.

The Kingston ferry goes by on it's way to Edmonds

Our destination was the small town of Langley and it's even smaller marina. Everything you find online about the Langley Marina says they do not take reservations, that's not true. The marina changed hands in Januauary and the new owners changed that policy. But their catch phrase is "We will fit you in!" and they will, nicest harbor master we have ever encountered, Rick does a great job of fitting everyone in. :) We arrived around 1 pm and Rick was planning on having us raft up with 2 other boats, but we were the smallest boat in the raft plan and it would have ruined his "pyramid", so he had us squeeze around a corner and literally manhandled the Troublemaker into a slip on the inside.

This is the entire marina. Our boat is in the far left corner, just beside the sailboat with the solid blue stripe.

We had a great time at Jaime and Marilyn's party and the next morning we walked up to town from the marina and had a nice breakfast. When we finally left the marina around noon there was a bit of wind, so we sailed up the Saratoga pass. After several hours of tacking back and forth, we decided we better start motoring if we wanted to get someplace that night. After a bit of motoring we decided to spend the night in Coupeville. Coupeville doesn't have a marina but it does have a big long dock and for $15.00 you can stay overnight. There's also plenty of good anchorage if you prefer to anchor out.

that's us at the very end.


The Gleaner was anchored out at Coupeville, the Gleaner had been in the yard at the Boat haven at the same time we were there, it's a heck of a liveaboard!

We decided to try out our new (new to us anyway) folding bikes and biked the 2 miles to the local supermarket for supplies and a roasted chicken for dinner. They aren't hill climbers but they work pretty well. I have a 5-speed Dahon and Bill has a 3-speed Worksman, both found on Craigslist for less than what one folding bike from West Marine would have cost. I meant to get a shot of us on our bikes but somehow never did, but I do have a photo of where we stow them on the boat.

both bikes fit in the quarter berth and the chart table still fits over them. This was basically wasted space, so having the bikes there was perfect.

Our plan was to go through Deception pass, so we left early the next morning and headed north.

It was a bit foggy and the water was like glass, we saw quite a few fishing boats heading out from Oak Harbor.

We also passed a tug pulling a very substantial log raft.

Deception pass has some extremely strong currents and it's really important to time your trip through with the slack (little to no current), slack for that day was at 2:30 pm, we arrived at the pass at around 12 pm. So we tucked into Cornet Bay to wait for our window of slack current.

Cornet Bay is a state park so there are plenty of linear docks to tie up to and wait for the tide. There's also a small store for ice and other sundries. We bought a fishing license so we could do some crabbing while we were cruising.

more to come........
We went from Deception pass to Friday harbor and tied up at the visitor dock, the harbor was full so we spent the night there. Another San Juan 28 was tied up directly across from us, we had fun showing off our respective boats. :)

okay, long time coming but I finally found some more photos to update this trip. I'm missing some images but maybe I'll run across them later. :)

We usually plan our cruise to coincide with our anniversary, we have salmon and champagne.

This year we were anchored out off of Sucia, the view was incredible.

Not sure what mountains these are but we were looking west.



We went ashore and did some exploring.

The problem with waiting so long to update is you forget, this is Bill rowing the damn dinghy (that's what we call it) but I can't remember where or why I wasn't with him. :)

After Sucia we headed down to Roche Harbor, this place is full of huge yachts and is one of the pricier places in the San Juans. But if you anchor out just off the marina it's free! We anchored out. It's very protected and a lot quieter than at the crowded dock.

There's a very nice restaurant at Roche and it's always fun to watch them take down the colors just before sunset. We had the bikes on board so we planned a bike ride for the day. We pedaled from Roche all the way down to Lime Kiln state park, lots of rolling hills! We took the bus back to the boat at the end of our ride.

This is the bay at English Camp, a nice anchorage but no amenities nearby. English Camp is pretty cool and there is a nice hiking trail. I could write a whole thing about what English Camp is but just go here instead.
There's an American Camp as well but it was too far for us to pedal.




We past this on our bike ride. The Free Pile.

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The lighthouse at Lime Kiln Point State Park, this is suppose to be the place to see Orcas swim by, but we didn't see any that day. Still it's a cool place to visit. We hiked out to one of the Lime Kilns.

It's a popular area for kayakers, they paddle out looking for whales.

These guys go out without any real paddling clothes, if they fell in they would freeze!

We caught the local bus at Lime Kiln and rode back to Roche, somehow my wallet dropped out of my bag on the bus, I didn't realize until after we left Roche and headed back down to Port Townsend. Fortunately the nice bus driver turned my wallet in and they called me on my cell, they mailed it back to me the next day.

We decided to cruise down the west side of San Juan Island in the off chance we could see some whales. Right as we got to the lighthouse a small Orca came up right beside the boat, then the Sound Watchers boat came up to us and said there was two pods of Orcas heading straight for us. About 60 animals, it took almost hour for them all to pass by, so cool! We tried to stay out of their way but they were all around us and we finally gave up, shut down the engine and just drifted.

not the greatest quality photo, I had only brought a point and shoot with me on the trip and was too hard to enjoy the show and take photos so I put the camera down and just watched them go by.

It was a great ending to our cruise.

We left the dogs in Port Townsend the week before we left, so we decided to bring them back with us on the boat since we now keep the boat in Seattle at Shilshole Marina.

They have their own PFD's and just to be safe we keep them on jack lines.

The lines are long enough so they can go back down into the cabin or come out into the cockpit.

We left Port Townsend on a Sunday, which is also the day all the cruise ships leave Seattle for Alaska and Canada. We had 4 of these huge behemoths pass us on our way to Seattle.

We also saw our friends John and Jill out on their little sailboat, the schooner Merrie Ellen.

We tried to catch up but once she has all that canvas out there was no way we were going to catch her!

We try to plan our trip down the sound with the incoming tide, makes for a quick run. :) but sometimes the areas around points and passes can get a little bumpy, fun ride though. :)

A week in the San Juans

We've just returned from a great week cruising in the San Juan Islands. The engine performed just great, no problems at all. As soon as I find my card reader, I will update the blog with photos from our trip. We are now back at Shilshole, but someone was in our slip, so we're stuck at the guest docks until they can get the guy to move his boat.

New gauges

The new engine came with new gauges, since they weren't the same size as the old gauges, Bill made a very nice teak frame for them. He made the edge to match the cabinet doors in the interior of the boat. Looks really nice. We'll finish if off with a clear plastic cover to protect them from too much moisture.