Ship Of Fools
15 July 2008 | Friday Harbor
Joe
Friday 7/11 The "Ship of Fools" has been anchored in Mark Bay off downtown Nanamio since Wednesday. To set this story up...lets go back a couple of days. Monday we left Victoria after seeing Hump off on his flight home to Oklahoma. We had a great day motoring back up to James Bay for the evening. Susan and Joe slept the whole way, I got to spend time reflecting on sail vs. power when two 100ft plus schooners sailed by headed south. The next morning we had a beautiful downwind sail to Clam Bay. We put up the spinnaker along with the main. This called for tacking downwind. Ok so we wrapped the spinnaker around the head stay 2 or 3 times and only ran over the spinnaker sheet twice (lucky for us it didn't wrap in the freewheeling prop). None the less, we had a great learning experience (next time forget the main). We went swimming that evening...it was cold but worth it. The next morning it was blowing hard on the nose so we decided to motor in order to reach Dodd Narrows by high tide. As we were clearing the reefs in the northern end of Trincomali Channel, the engine quit. Ok no problem we're a sailboat...did I mention we lost our dingy under tow, recovered it and had just realized that the tow line was about to part again? Quick action and we got the engine restarted. We had run the port tank dry...thank heaven we had replaced the primer pump only last week because without it the engine would have never restarted. We snuck in behind Round Island and hung the dingy on the davits like we should have in the first place. Ok with all that behind us let's transit through the narrows. I did mention it was 11:20am...and high tide was 11:20am...so why am I fighting a 3+ knot current (that's 11:20am in Nanamio and I didn't make the correct adjustment). It was a wild ride and it's a good thing that we can make 8 knots at 2300 rpm. Are we seeing a pattern here? Now let's talk about that fuel starvation problem. I've been diligent in managing the fuel use from tank-to-tank so they should both have the same amount. It appears when I fueled in Portland I ASSUMED that the same amount of fuel had been used from each tank over the past few months because of the depth of the pickup tubes. I won't even go into the assume thing...but the bright side is I can make an accurate dip stick as we refuel the port tank...how ironic "dip stick"...seems appropriate. Ok it's now Wednesday night...the winds are blowing 20 knots gusting higher...Susan and Joe are going to sleep in the cockpit...I'm going to have a restful night of sleep...ya right! About 11:30 they start yelling at me to come on deck "some guy is anchoring right on top of us". I yell at him on the loud hailer and he picks up and moves, end-of-story...wrong. They decide to hit the sack and leave me on anchor watch. Well about 1:00am a small boat drifts by. I yell but no response. So I call the Coast Guard. They send a small craft with four guys out and pick me up and we go search for floaters and recover the boat...that part was pretty cool. It's now 2:30am the winds have settled to 15-20knots and the boat seems to be holding fine...so I try and get some sleep. Thursday was Joe's 17th birthday. We took him out for lunch, a movie then dinner. We walked all over downtown then took the bus out to the mall. We enjoyed the cannon shot at noon at the old bastion along with the Scottish dancers and piper. We may be weathered in here for a couple of days we should have left today...oops sounds like I'm assuming again. Joe