The Home Front

Landing in Seattle, six am and thirty four Fahrenheit, with light snow predicted is a shock even when you're ready for it. Re-entry is going to bite. Not only are we going to be boatless in Seattle, we've changed hemispheres and swapped climate zones. From Southwestern Tropical to Northwestern Temperate. Break out the woolies!

The flight from Honolulu was an overnight, arriving at the crack of dawn. The shuttle dropped us at the rental car lot where we checked out a Kia Sedona that was going to be with us for a week while we became officially American again. IE: driver's licenses, vehicles, insurance and a place to live. All of this comes with keys! Dubious symbols of civilization.

Once the preliminary dance was over, we rented a mini-storage so we can gather all our scattered possessions from our last life together in one place. Things that were so important five years ago have lost significance. Why we thought we needed all this crap is a mystery.

The first thing that is obvious is: a boat has everything built in place. A house requires stuff. Tables, chairs, sofa, bed... It would be so much easier if it came with everything and you left it behind when you moved on. Alas, it doesn't work that way. Everyone like personal stuff. Accumulate. It's the other side of the Landlubber equation.

As I write this, Argonaut has turned into a $ entry in our bank account. Looks like our voyaging adventures are over for now. I'm going to really miss that boat but the reality of sailing or shipping it back across the Pacific meant selling. They say the happiest times in a yachties life are when he buys a boat and again when he sells it. I disagree. There are damn few boats I'd trust to take me across the Pacific and a forty year old Cal 40 did - with fewer issues than boats costing 10 times as much! I'd say we got more miles per dollar than most cruiser will ever get.

My next blog entries will take up back where we started in 2006. The Pacific Northwest of the U.S., arguably the best, most protected, cruising area in the world with the most and safest anchorages anywhere... many with small (quaint) towns (villages) right at your boarding ladder! Don't just think NW U.S, either. Think SW Canada and even the Inside Passage to Alaska. The inland sea encompassing Puget Sound/Seattle-Tacoma to the northern tip of Vancouver Island Canada is the second largest inland sea in the world. B.C. (British Colombia) has 40,000 islands and 25,000 km of coastline between the Washington and Alaska borders.

My bad... Instead of starting with Seattle, I started where we started. With a day trip north to Liz's wee cabin on Orcas Island. The day started out cloudy with showers and ended in glorious sunshine. So... we begin.

The Washington State Ferries are part of the Washington State highways system. The San Juan Island run begins, for us, with a two hour drive north of Seattle to Anacortes. The S.J Island ferry services Shaw, Lopez, Orcas islands and Sydney B.C., Canada, next door to the city of Victoria on Vancouver Island. It's a great, scenic ride even if you have no particular place to go!

So much information is available online about the American and Canadian San Juans, Canadian Gulf Islands, Victoria and the route north to Alaska that I'm not going to go in depth in my blogs. Stay tuned for more adventures.