We're back in the tidal lagoon south of the marina, the weather is fine and there are way less people here than last weekend.as americans tend to observe a boating season which officially ended on labor day.
The night of our arrival we were treated to dinner with friends whom we hadn't seen in over a year. We met them in Port Mcneil a few summers ago at anchor and shared many crab feasts with Lopez Larry's Habanero Mustard Sauce, which if you havn't tried yet I dare say you havn't lived. Now they are anchored on a new piece of property having sold their boat this spring. With forest all around a garden and fruit trees, trails through the woods, deer and owls to share their view of the night sky life has cast a favorable glance on all their labors. It is always wonderful to reconnect with old friends.
The next morning while making a monstrous BLT I was hailed from the shore by another friend long lost. James Reid who lives aboard his little schooner whom I hadn't seen since last summer. We ended up going out for pizza and drinks in Friday Harbor and today I will work with him on a large gelcoat repair here in the Roche Marina. It is good to have a little work and hopefully this will spool up into something more steady.
Either way, the sun is shining and everything seems to sing a little in this happy island life reminding us that soon we will find a proper way to anchor ourselves for the winter.
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Rain patters on the hatch tops as we sail north from the lagoon in the back of Roche Harbour where we spent the weekend..When we pulled in on saturday they fired the canon and played some nautical bit on the loudspeakers but we were wrong and it wasn't for us. Instead they were celebrating some holiday and the place was packed. We are glad to be out of there and 3 knots is enough to get us where we want to go. Gulls cry under ominous grey clouds interspersed with large shafts of light and rain drifting down to the sea. I don't even need to steer on a broad reach. The rain increases and gets harder but it can't reach us all comfortable and dry inside, and it wont last anyways. I think back to our attempted departure from Sucia and the near failure of the forestay bridle in a heavy wind. We were attempting to beat out of Fossil Bay from our snug spot in Mud Bay, it was blowing about 25-35 and there were a lot of boats to weave through. The log reads " The boat is moving fast already when the sails fill, wham, shudder, Badu is carving through the moored boats at 10 knots, we are heeling a little, close hauled for 5-10 seconds. Spray is rushing down upon us as we tack next to the rocks on the far side of the bay. Some of the reefing lines come undone on the main and a criminal flogging of the clew threatens our heads as the jib backs and we surge into the next tack. This bay is too narrow and full of boats for this sort of speed, we are making a lot of leeway and totally ripping the ocean up. We pass close to people having breakfast in a little powerboat, mouths a jar, fearing for their boats as we blur past a vision of spray and sails and freedom that few here can understand. Our headsail has no purchase and no winch for power and the jam cleat is failing, we are unable to control it in such high gusts. I bear off, ease everything and head back into Mud Bay to wait for better conditions"
Later in the day we got out of there and sailed to Roche harbour, the wind was less but we still made 6-8 knots overground against a 2 knot flood. Pulling into Roche we discovered that the stainless wire gate carabiners that clip the forestay bridle to the hulls are definitely not adequate. One was completely deformed, missing the wire gate and hanging on with only a little luck. I've since lashed them on and things look alright. Ultimately we will need to drop the rig and replace the wire with amsteel as I no longer trust any of it. It was the only element of the boat we did not completely overhaul, crossing our fingers was not enough. I will also replace the d-rings in the bow as they look rather light as well.
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Another day is whiled away in this sunny Sucian way. The wind has been non existent or from the south and it seems our window for going south is closing and a storm is on the way. The next few days should be wet with a lot of wind. Now that we are out here living in these beautiful islands the urgency of Mexico has subsided and the emptiness of our cruising kitty combined with failed gear prompts us to stay on here for the winter. If anyone knows of a house that needs sitting we are on the hunt. The winter will give us time to impliment all the things we have learned about cruising this little wind machine, mainly things are going to continue to get simpler, more water tight, and less tied to life on the hook. All the lexan in the rocket tops has begun to leak, the pin holding the tiller cross arm to the tillers is always trying to come out, we need more purchase on sheets, better jam cleats on halyards, a better way to cook in rough weather, and way less books and clothes. The deck is taking care of the clothes issue as I am down to only one pair of pants having blown out all the right knees of everything I own. Clothes are pretty much optional on these boats anyways so it really doesn't matter. I have taken to removing clothes when it rains instead of wearing foul weather gear. It keeps the inside space much drier-- I wonder at the wisdom of "savages".
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Another week drifts by like Badu on these windless summer days. Another raft party with Tsunami Chaser and hanging out with Helena 4 on the hook. Sucia is great with miles of good bouldering on the beach, all kinds of animals and various types of fruit This morning everyone departed for various ports leaving us to drift around in the bay trying to sail to another anchorage on the west side of the island, but with no wind we only made it to Ewing Cove. This small shallow bay is the perfect cat hole, restricted entrance, shallow crescent beach and crab apples. This evening Julia and I took a walk and watched an otter family catching fish, The young ones are definetly watching and learning from mom, unable to catch fish for themselves they wait on rocks for what she brings them. They never fight over fish but are content to wait their turn, perhaps hunting small crabs and fish under the rocks while they wait. They are so extraordinary.
We miss all our friends. These moments of life packed so full of riches are hard to love alone, and I find myself thinking of Sagstad and all our friends there. Today was a little melancholy as everyone pulled away and left us drifting in the bay.This enginless way keeps us busy though, each moment the seed of the next, creating flavour and texture and ultimately this flow of life. No longer having a destination while pulling up the anchor gives freedom to the boat riding soul, trusting that everyday the world will take care of you and give you what you need, be it storm or rest. Arriving at a place not of your choosing, the seed of today transforms into the life of tomorrow and soon your life grows out of these weeks into something beautiful and free, unhampered by the schedules and structures of the engine driven mind.
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The life of a spider web aboard an ocean satellite never lasts long, yet every morning there it is again. An undetermined future lies ahead shifting in my mind like vapor forming into shapes built of time and space and memory. Somewhere high in the trees a prehistoric squaking signals the disturbance of a heron, like an adolescent dinosaur it lumbers away in the clear morning air. Does it know where it is going? The tide is running out of this lagoon exposing all the little crabs as they run for cover; the herons have wings to drop quickly, soundlessly, no one hears them coming until its too late. Scuttling for a clam hole or a piece of seaweed the crab is driven through from above and eaten.
I stand at the door and knock, but no one answers. This mysterious nature has no window, I can't look in. Do I know where I am going? Stuck between worlds I wonder at my impulse to go ashore and build a home in the woods, a place I don't belong if I do it alone. I turn around inside and remember when I used to live in the city discontented and confused, wandering like a shadow through their streets, watching them live like puppets soon to be put away, puppets who act as though the play will never end. I left them there on the ship they'd worked so hard to build, their lives now a wreck pitched against an unforgiving coast. I left with no destination and little hope, dreaming of far of places that no longer exist. There are no more ports where man is not consumed by toxic fetish and insanity. So we are adrift as it were having no course to steer, only knowing that to return to the other way of life is to die a little more, to destroy the last vestiges of some distant home we still find burning inside us.
Today I spent the day sitting on a rock, climbing a little, eating a little, and contemplating the relationships between man's psychological needs and the modern way of living. From here on this rock it is plain that all the daily movement of goods and information in massive quantity is totally unnecessary. It is mans ideas that make the need, ideas about profit and money and ownership of little pieces of a planet passed from hand to hand. On the altar of a collective and selfish thought structure man has burned his last connections with the nature that sustains us. Both the physical nature surrounding us and the human nature within are lost completely in the modern way of living. The loss of connection to a common origin in simplicity as brought about by the mists of time and the socialization of this new way has turned the human heart into a desert. We are empty now having nothing left to give, nothing left to offer up to either the ghosts of the future or the past. With no identity apart from that given us by right relation to the natural order we cannot hope to perform the necessary tasks to save ourselves or even recognize what they may be. No false identity given by country or corporation can hope to restore man to the original simplicity as countries exist only in the minds of those enslaved by them. To the Otter playing below my sitting rock there is only one world one mind and one way to live, and something in the way it glances up at me reminds me that this law of Oneness is the only law, and by it one can leave the sinking ship and find home anywhere.
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08/19/2009, Watmough Bay
To cross the Stait of Juan de Fuca we left Kala Pt at 4:30 with a large ebb and a light southerly. Two hours with the spinnaker dropped us infront of PT. Much less current than I anticipated. Another hour of sculling, some paddling, finally some wind and we just barely made it out of Admiralty Inlet in time for the flood to start and sweep us backwards into Puget Sound. We had hopped to reach Rosario where the flood would have been a welcome friend to push us north. Luckily as we were sculling hard to stay off Whidbey Island a passing sailor offered a tow, which we accepted inspite of his warning that he might be one toke over the line. We were in tow for about an hour, listening to the whine of his outboard blend with the sound of the banjo he was playing. Turning us loose again south of Smith Island our tow continued on leaving us to wallow around drifting with no wind. Trying to get the spinnaker to fly while watching the breakers getting closer and closer as we drifted down on Minor Island, I was getting stressed. Julia on the other hand was happy to get a close up view of the birds and seals that make this exposed and sandy shoal their home. Then the wind came and saved us, shooting us north to Lopez island where we barely made it into Watmough Bay before the tide turned and once again sent us off in the wrong direction. Some lessons learned.
There is a ton of sweet deep water climbing in these islands. non of it gets climbed ever. Luke I need your muscles. i couldn't make the lip
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08/16/2009, Kala Point
Today we spent the day at Kala Pt. In the morning at low tide Badu was touching the bottom a few steps from the beach. This shallow draft is awesome. I pulled up two large horse clams which we made a chowder with for dinner. A few chores during the day like making an aft tramp, an evening walk, and somehow it is night again. The voyaging life is like a pleasant dream from which there is no awakening.
Life on Badu has been as expected with a few surprises thrown in to keep things intresting. One detail we overlooked is just how much damage is done to ones clothing and deck boots when living on 80 grit sandpaper. Foul weather pants and boots will be destroyed in a month or so, but we'll stick to the deck!
Before we left Seattle we filled the bilges with food and water leaving everything else a shifting heap that migrates around inside the hulls. We have some storage inside with nets strung down each side but they are full, and the space between is occupied by our bodies and the bags and rudders and books and water cans and tool boxes and fishing gear and boots that we share it with. This coastal cruising provides plenty of time for the shuffle of stuff that is necessary for tasks such as cooking or cleaning because we are at anchor so much. This wont work offshore so we are busy perfecting both the storage and practice of using it. With micro cruising everything becomes a practice like a martial art or meditation. In this case there is some contortion and confined scooting like living in a culvert under the road. Julia says its a pretty glamorous life, I would agree having tried the culvert and found it wanting.
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08/15/2009, Kala Point
Resting a stones throw from the beach at Kala Pt. near Port Townsend, Badus wings are folded and dinner is boiling on the stove. The water laps against the hull in a friendly manner while we watch an Otter rolling and throwing sand in the air. There is finally space inside to think a little, and after the madness of pulling out of Seattle its rather refreshing. We left that place by the blackberries and Andi's raft show under grey skies and heavy rain. After borrowing a slip for the night in some marina outside the locks we set sail for Kingston and spent the day sleeping there at anchor. Today the spinnaker pulled us north and we found this sandy spit a welcome home as the sun to the west lay low on our arrival, skipping off the tree tops it loves best. There is a peaceful lagoon here, full of birds and mystical reflections when the ripples cease; the revelation as I recline on the tramp and sip Dragonwell tea is that the pond and the sky occupy the same space. It is only when the wind is calm that this is revealed, that each resides in the common place of perception.
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A quick update. The boat is loaded with drystores, water, and all the sailing gear excluding the windvane which is half built. It has been a long process getting the boat put back together, going over almost every element and reworking all the pieces into a useable whole. We've only gone sailing a few times so most of our decisions are happening based on a combination of experience and visualization- I can't wait to push out of here and get to know the boat for real, I'm sure it will have a lot to teach us.
I think the hatch tops are solid and water tight enough for the ocean, its all rather beefy. Overall weight of the extra crossbeam, windvane (19lbs), and pilothouses is something near the weight of the engine we got rid of.
I'll throw a couple photos in the gallery. We hope to leave next week for california, beating out of Juan de Fuca and finding some ryhthm offshore to lead us south. What does this mean for you?? Finally, some entertaining sea stories.
until soon
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Fair winds & following seas, BADU!
Looking forward to SPOT updates.
I realize that some people who are checking this blog are getting bored with the boat photos., so heres one from the washington coast line.. a place we will soon leave to port as we pass
The channel where we live is full of boats, commercial and otherwise. Birds and animals share space with metal and fiberglass, eating styrofoam off the oil slicks and raising their young on white bread handouts, yet somehow they persist. The other night we took BADU out for the first scull with the sawyer oar and the scull lock. As bayliners cruised by, occupants staring at us uncertainly and pointing, it seemed we had joined the other species in exile, stuck in a techno world of motors and whirly jigs. We went slow sculling into a headwind; turning at the locks we sailed back down with just the jib. Sculling is good - tiring as it is. It allows one to slip back into the Other Place, even here in the channel there are totems in the mist if one stands at an oar. Perhaps something in the air of the Other Place gives the creatures staying power when everything is against them. Perhaps we will find a little of the same as we choose exile and join them.
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A place of aching for the Other Place,
A yearning,
A movement through space,
Continually turning,
To mark another mile.
