August 14th, 2010 Saturday, pirate party

We went o Costco and bought some beer for the next weeks vacation. We also bought some raviolis for the pot luck this evening before the party at the Elks club. We took showers and went and played at the puppy park with the kids.  It was husbands first time at the park, and he had fun playing with all the toys. We made plans for our departure in the morning, and decided laundry early and leave by noon, with the tide. Today is dress like a pirate day, so I got to wear my 'stuff'. The raviolis were a hit, by the time we got up to the table there were 3 left. We each took one, and left one for someone else. The party at the Elks Club started at 7ish. Dang it was soo hot in there. They opened the front and back doors to cool it off, and that wasn't working, it was still probably 25* hotter inside. Good thing they had the beer garden next door. That's where most of us pirates hung out. It was fun, we met a couple that lives in Canada for 6 months, and 6 months in Florida on their catamaran. We decided to call it a night around 9:30ish and head back to the boat. We had fun.   bunkmate

August 13th, 2010 Friday, Typical friday the 13th

I woke up this morning to the Captain banging around up top with the anchor. We were rolling pretty good, and I could tell the wind was  rippin' pretty hard. I was trying to see if I could fall back to asleep once we got underway, when the Captain hollard down below "Hey!! I could use some help up here, RIGHT NOW!!" So I come flying out of bed, Roxi goes flying, big eyeballs and everything. I'm grabbing a t-shirt as I come out of the v-berth, being bounced around pretty hard, and the first thing I noticed is the Captain does not have his life jacket on!!! ( I still let him know exactly how I feel about that ). As I'm grabbing our life vests, he says "take the helm". I get to the cockpit just in time to start heeling over. And he's headed below to put the keel all the way down. He says in passing "Maybe I shouldn't have put the Genoa all the way out." Here we are headed back to port in Anacortes. Headed through Thatcher Pass with an apposing wind, and a huge tide. A northerly wind with an incoming tide. This is a true test. I'm just saying's all.. It's wasn't so bad cutting across Rosario Strait, but once we got into Guemes Channel, the wind was coming out of the Bellingham Channel was heeling us over 20 degrees plus, again!
At one time on the trip over we were heeled over, tipping the genoa in the water, and getting water coming over the toe-rail. The kids were freaking out, Roxi was halfway in my lap, and HalfHitch was in the other side, and we were standing on the settee, everything was flying everywhere down below. What a ride!! We got into Cap Sante Boat Haven at 9ish. We took showers, got ice, and walked the kids all over, and goofed off or a while. The Latts and Atts party on the dock started early,they popped the kegs around 2ish, and the "crawl" started just after 4. We decided not to crawl , with the 5 or 7 people going. We decided to stay and drink free beer on the docks, with some rum and pepsi mixed in.    bunkmate

August 12th, 2010. Thursday, Spencer Spit

We headed out of Friday Harbor up the San Juan Channel through the Wasp Islands and had a fabulous sail in the West Sound. When we were headed out past Alegra Island, there was a seal jumping clear out of the water. She was having a ball, and we were too, watching her. After that we headed through Harney Channel, down into the Lopez Sound to Spencer Spit. We anchored on the north side of the tip by Frost Island. We took zipper to the beach and it was almost high tide. The water was just starting to run into the spit. It was cool to watch the water spill in. The beach was sandy, most of the beaches are pebbles. Wow, some places are more beautiful, but just in a different way. It was pretty packed on both sides, and we have an early departure in the morning, I don't think the Captain will get much sleep.   bunkmate

August 11th, 2010, Wednesday. Captain Careys birthday

It's Carey/Captain/Husband/Best friend 's birthday, he just wants wants to have a chillax day. We started the foggy morning slow. We decided to take the kids potty, get some ice and have an early lunch. It was pretty cool, so the b'day boy made some warm bagel sandwiches, and we sat around and drank some beer and waited for happy hour at Dos Diablos, to have some hot wings, and throw our peanuts on the floor. Best wings we've found in a looong time. mmmm Pretty uneventful, but that's what the Captain ordered!!

August 10, 2010 Tuesday, Menke whales

Today is my sister Robin's b'day. Today's plan is to head out through Mosquito Pass, into Haro Strait, and around into the Strait of Juan De Fuca. To see if we can find me some whales to look at, from our own boat. They like to hang around out off shore at Lime Kiln Park, There sure were a bunch of people hanging out on shore there. The water was pretty flat, which means little or no wind, and the tide was going with us, so we tacked out to sea to get some headway. Before we knew it we were almost to Canada, so we tacked back towards the San Juan Channel. We seen a couple of porpoises and seals, no whales, I'm beginning to think its just a ploy to get people to come up here... We were almost to Cattle Point, when we noticed 3 Whale Watcher boats come out of the San Juan Channel. They stopped, so we decided to go check out what we could see. They were all in a row and turned back towards us. We were almost there when I saw my first whale. It was a Minke whale. There was a couple of them. It appeared they were feeding. One came fairly close to us. We had the best seat in the sea. Ha ha. They would come up for air like 3 times, then dive for a few minutes. One of the boats came over by us, and the Minkes came up right where they were. I finally got to see some whales. Minkes are almost as big as Orcas, but they have a small dorsal in over half the way down their back. We were the last to leave and head to shore. The current was ripping through Cattle Pass.

Our hull speed is 7 knots, and we were going 10 knots at one point. It was like riding the rapids. After we made it through we saw a huge sea lion. That sucka was huge!!! He was almost as big as Simplicity, and shes 28ft, tip to tip. We decided to head to Friday Harbor, and see what was going on there. We anchored out, and took zipper in. The kids really like to go for a ride in zipper to go potty, and they get so many comments on their cute life vests. We got to do a bunch of anchor tests this time. This big green eye-sore has a magnetic pull. Every time you drop the anchor, it pulls you right towards it. We reset the anchor 4 times. aaarrg.   bunkmate

August 9th, 2010.. Monday part 2, garlic, sausage,artichoke, fettuccine

We checked everything out and decided to take showers, etc. tomorrow. Two slips down the music started. It was pretty cool listening to them sing all the old songs,,, like me. While we walked around and ate our ice cream we watched some people getting wedding pix taken all over town. Back at Simplicity the Captain stayed busy making some polish sausages with fettuccine garlic, artichoke, and bagel bread for diner mmmmm. We ate up in the cockpit listening to the music. What a fabulous day.   bunkmate

August 9th, 2010,, Monday, ginormous ice creams

What a wonderful night.. Today we are going to head for Roche Harbor.  It was a nice motor over, we saw some porpoises, and have decided to call the seals, Lucy/Lucille, as in loose seal, haha,,. We swung by Jones Island for a potty break. The Captain took the kids to shore in zipper, and I circled around the harbor a couple of times, dodging the boats coming and going. The Captain rowed  back out, I picked-em-up, and we headed across the San Juan Channel to Speiden Channel. I was looking through the binox at Speiden Island and saw a pair of bald eagles. One was eating something on the ground, and the other was waiting on a rock not far away. As we turned to go into Roche Harbor it started to rain. We called ahead on the VHF and they assigned us slip 34. Two young dock boys were there to assist us in our slip. The docks were way up out of the water. It was only a step over, not a step down, to the docks. They are really nice docks. The Captain bought us an ice cream cones, and they had so much ice cream on then it took like a 1/2 an hour to eat them!! They had a nice patch of lawn for the kids to potty, right by some cool yard art.    bunkmate

August 8th, 2010.. Sunday, no hurries, no worries

Snoring Bay

When I woke up this morning, I couldn't believe how many boats had already left Echo Bay, by 10am'ish. It was a full house when we got here yesterday. We decided to go for a walk on Sucia Island, over to Fossil Bay to see if there were any open mooring buoys open. When we came in to shore the tide was coming in, so we didn't want to leave zipper for too long. We were over half the way across Sucia Island when Captain Carey decided it was time t go back and check zipper. So he headed back, so the kids and I kept going. Wow, what a beautiful place this is. I saw 3 mooring balls open when we came around the meadow just before the bay. So we were just shy of power walking to get back and tell the Captain our findings, when I noticed that HalfHitch (red dog / old man) was limping, his poor feet, so we slowed to just a fast walk, and he quit limping. If we got one, we got one, no big deal, no hurries, no worries. As it turned out we were on our way over to Fossil Bay when we saw an opening in Snoring Bay, so we snagged it. So we hopped in zipper and headed over to Fossil Bay to pay our $10.00 for 1 night. What a wonderfully fabulous place this is. The sun came out, I have my umbrella for the sun, and the Captain is in the galley cooking up something to go with the ribs he's grilling, mmm yummy, delicious ribs,,,   bunkmate

Saturday, August 7th, 2010, sailing in the rain

We woke up to the drizzling rain, and just got wet air. We contemplated about just staying in port, but I decided 'that's not what we came on vacation for', an if we are going to do this forever, we better get used to being wet... So we stowed, and set out for Sucia Island, via the Strait of Georgia. I stayed below and made some bagels sandwiches with honkin pieces of jalapenos. While I was down below the Captain was up top getting soaked in his winter gear. I went and got him one of the plastic ponchos out of the head, and that seemed to be the ticket. He didn't get any wetter, hmm, now we know. I came up top to relieve the Captain so he could 'check the head'  Then it quit raining,,, So I skippered the rest of the way. It was still kinda foggy the rest of the way. We cruised past fossil bay, but it appeared all the buoys were taken, all 16 of them, as were the 2 in Snoring Bay. So we decided Echo Bay was going to be our spot for the night. The beach was fabulous, rocky, but great for 'on and off' potty breaks. We anchored out,, lots of boats. We kept hearing huge splashes, and we finally saw what was making the splashes, a seal, the cute little bugga's they are. So cute.  bunkmate

August 8th, 2010,, friday. new breakaway pin

O.K. So we got to Anacortes just in time to figure out everything that we forgot,,, my hat, my deck shoes (I thought we left them on the boat), puppy food, and that's just what we found today. This morning-or-weekend, there is an artist fair that blocks all the streets, it's kinda cool, they block all the streets just for us, to check out every one's artwork, every week time we come up.. We started the morning going over to Cap Sante Marine, to hoist Simplicity out to properly fix the breakaway pin. Plus the Captain put a swing line on just in case!!! I got to go for a ride in zipper (the new dinghy) for the first time, it was fun. We are planning on heading out first thing in the morning to the Sucia Islands, woohoooo..... For tonight's entertainment we got to listen to the band, from Simplicity's cockpit. And watch a drunk naked man run around his boat while his girlfriend tried tried to get him back inside,,, haha been there, done that. Lets see what tomorrow brings..   bunkmate

Vacation Logs

I kept a journal of our vacation. It's going to take some time to get all of the vacation down, with the work factor. With all the challenges we had,, some days were longer than others, and some were more fun than others, but every one of them were an adventure, and every one of them were spent together, and every one of them were fun.    bunkmate

We Made It

Well we made it through the first week, survived the Latts & Atts party, and are getting ready to head out for another week of sailing. We haven't seen any Orcas yet, but not for a lack of trying though. We did see some Menke Whales, They are the size of Orcas, but they have a little dorsal fin, farther down the back. When you hear them breathe, you have to take a deep breath with them, it's pretty cool. We have seen a bunch of seals, (we call them Lucy, short for Lu-seal.. haha). We saw a seal goofing off, jumping clean out of the water, she was having a ball. We also saw a huge sea lion,, I swear it was almost as big as Simplicity!!! We celebrated the Captain's birthday in Friday Harbor, having some delicious wings at Dos Diablos. More later, It's time to go sailing.....





 

Playing Tetrus

We are down to the wire. All our planning and provisioning is fast approaching. The Captain took the new dinghy out to Emigrant Lake yesterday, with the kids, and tested out the rowing ability and tested the motor. Both features passed the test. Or should I say three, because the kids enjoyed the ride with their new life vests. The hard floor works great with their little toenails,except we are probably going to need a towel to lay down so they have some gription. They don't like to slide too much. We are going to be packing the car all week, cause we got allot of stuff to take with us, with limited space. But we didn't play tetrus all those years for nothing. I have faith in the Captain, he's pretty good about getting allot of things to fit in little places. We also need to find some kind of bag to pack the oars and floor for the dinghy. The Grey whale that has been hanging around the islands, washed up on shore in Rosario Straight last week. The whale watcher blog said, that most of the time when they spend allot of time up there, they are coming up there to die. It probably didn't help that the transient Orcas attacked it every time it went into deep water. So it will be interesting to see the carcass, and just get a feel of how huge they are, and the greatness of their being. All the things that we have been planning, are going to be going on in the next weeks to come,       bunkmate