Time spent

We slept that night on Simplicity, in Washington Park. As soon as it started to almost start to get dark, the deer started to come out, does, fawns, and even a forkie came out. This guy was driving by and caught a glimpse of the forkie, and he almost ended up in the bushes. I heard the wife yell, and the brake lights turned on. The Captain prepped for unstepping the mast. We decided to unstep in the morning. We didn't have to have the truck back until 11:45am. We have plenty of time. Roxi and I woke up to the Captain banging around up top, as usual. It was almost time to unstep. We got her unstepped without much trouble, The hardest thing really was moving the mast forward, the truck was hindering us from balancing the mast on the front rail. But we did it. 

Got it wrapped up, and Captain Carey got her all tucked in her corner, back to the car, gassed up, and back to the U-haul, only about 5 minutes late, and that didn't really count because the kids and I were there at 11:40. I loaded the truck stuff in the car, while the Captain took care of the paperwork. Then we went back to Simplicity to get her all wrapped up for the winter. Captain Carey got her tarped up, in the rain, and we headed home. We got home at about 5:30pm. And we are now working on getting things together for a yard sale. It seems like every time we go up and spend any time with Simplicity, We are reminded of our goal. Cruising.!!!   bunkmate

Plan "B"

There was no way we could pull her out of this ramp. It was way too shallow. It's a good thing he had researched renting a truck, and checked into some storage lots. He called U-haul  to check out their prices on renting a truck, it was $25.00 for the 10 foot truck, and budget was pretty close to the same, but, U-haul was closer so we hopped in the car, and drove over. So we chatted with the guy and come to find out, the 'lot' is actually some property that he has out by the airport, for only $40.00 a month. So off we go. We took the truck and trailer out to Washington Park. It was around 3:30 when we sailed away from Cap Sante Boat Harbor. And of course we were headed out, as the tide was headed in, so we ended up motoring all the way through Guemes Channel. On the way out we found a sea lion on the green buoy #5, by the ferry terminal, sleeping away, and did not want to be bothered by us humans. The Washington Park boat dock is a pretty busy little dock. So we couldn't dawdle. We didn't hurry or anything, and we got her in her cradle the first try. We both were happy about that. We make a pretty good team.  bunkmate

My Tow Car

Our weekend tucking Simplicity away for the winter went just like any other time when you make all theses plans, prepare like crazy, and one little thing happens, and everything is thrown in different directions, and you have to start completely over. o.k it wasn't that bad, but, here we go.  Our plan for the weekend was to sail Simplicity down to Oak Harbor, put her on the hard, under tarps, and left stepped, for the winter. Simple? Ha! Never.:  Last week the tow package for my car showed up, so husband spent the next couple of evenings installing it. He's kinda handy like that. We got everything together & done, so after work on Thursday we headed out, around 6:30ish. towing Simplicity's trailer. My Avenger towed the trailer without any trouble, even up the mountains. We arrived in Anacortes at 3:30am. We threw everything on board and had a couple of brews to unwind, and slept for a couple for a couple of hours. The Captain woke up @ 7:30ish to take the trailer to Oak Harbor, ride the transit back to Cap Sante, so we could sail Simplicity down to Oak Harbor, pull her out, on her trailer, and be able to leave her stepped, in case we are able to come up and maybe go sailing. And then it happened, BOOM. All the planning, gone. It wasn't so bad though. It was time to whip out the 'ol 'plan B'. The Captain has a pocket full of 'em.    bunkmate

WOW

Today I checked my e-mail, and,,,,, found an article that I had submitted to the Orca Network Whale Watch, on their web sight. I'm pretty proud of it. It's been a long time since anything of mine has been published, let alone on such a popular web sight.  bunkmate

Oak Harbor

So apparently I've known all along, haha, and it was my idea, to put Simplicity on the hard at  the Oak Harbor Marina. Because if we bring her home, the Captain will undoubtedly spend more of the 'boat fund' on her. Plus we can keep her stepped, so we can possibly go up for a long weekend, and go far a sail or two. I guess I didn't realize that, that was the plan we were sticking with. So off we go to Oak Harbor, drop off the car and trailer, then go by ferry, and/or the great transit system to Anacortes, and sail back down to Oak Harbor. My car will pull the trailer, but she won't be able to pull Simplicity out of the water, so we will cross that bridge when we get there.  bunkmate

Our plan??

Well the weekend to decide what to do with Simplicity is here. We got the tow package for my car, to pull her trailer back up to Anacortes. My car can't pull her back soo,, If we have a plan, I'm not aware of it. I'm still in the dark. I'm excited to see her again, and I'm afraid the Captain is ready to put her up for sale soon, and get on to the next step, 'cruising'. I'm ready to, too, but, I'm having issues not needing all the 'stuff'. I'm pretty sure that after all is done, I will only miss them sometimes.   bunkmate

Decisions, decisions

We are still debating on what to do with Simplicity.. Should we bring her back to Medford, Oregon,, or leave her in Anacortes, Washington, on the hard. Either way we are going to put her up for sale soon. We ordered a 'tow package' for my car, and will be going up, and pulling her out of the water. We are throwing a bunch of scenarios around, because we are going to downsize again soon, and we probably wont have anywhere to keep her. Hopefully we will be closer to knowing by the time we leave.

So cose yet so far away

Everyday, it seems like the big picture is 'so close yet so far away'. It seems kinda like summer vacation is 14 months away. You have to figure out what you want to do on vacation, yet you have to do all the work, for vacation, for 14 months. Then you get to have little tastes, every once in a while, a long weekend here, a whole week there, tons of practice, learning, researching, working, downsizing, reading other peoples adventures, learning, selling stuff, researching, working, checking out different kinds of boats, pricing, getting rid of stuff, working, checking out boats for sale, researching, learning, wow, it seems like it will never come. We have all kinds of ideas of the things we want to do, places we want to go, things we want to experience, adventures we want to have, the alone time with my husband, the ideas, the adventures, the unknown,,,

Destiny

It seems like a lifetime ago that we were drawn to the water, when we first got together we 'knew' the water was calling us. We moved down to California, Lodi California, to be by the water. First I got a job at Tower Park Marina. Then we fell into a houseboat, 30' pontoon boat. And we spent 3 years running around the Delta on our houseboat. Meeting a bunch of people, having alot of fun, and fishing practically everyday. We caught a bunch of stripper. Took alot of friends fishing. And knew then that we were destined to live on the water. Things happened and we moved to Medford, Oregon. And it seems that we spent the rest of those years trying to figure out where or what would make us happy. We tried the 'buy a house' thing. Then we started a mosaic tile business 'Shining Impressions' ,,, then one day we decided to go back to the water...

We put the archery stuff away, we put the snow board stuff away, we got rid of the house, we sold 'Shining Impressions' we put the golfing stuff away, we put all of the remote control car stuff away, or should I say,, we sold almost everything, because we are so ready to get back to the water, and sailing is going to be our life, not just a hobby. We are celebrating our 14th anniversary, September 14th, and it seems like he just asked me to marry him last week. It has taken us awhile to remember where we started, and where we wanted to go at that time, but we finally got back to the beginning, right back to where we started. And the circle of life starts over again, only this time we aren't looking for direction, we have a journey to look forward to, together....forever....  bunkmate

August 21st., 2010 Saturday, Our last full day of sailing

We (Roxi & I) woke up to red-dog whining, when the Captain rowed away for a bit of 'Carey time'. It was a great morning. It was foggy. We decided to leave early so we would be getting back to port when the fog burned off. It turned out to be a grand ride in the fog. We both stayed in the cockpit listening and watching for other boats. We heard a couple of boats, and never seen them. We seen only 2 of the 5-7 that we heard, but most of the time it was our own bubble. You could hear the ferry's horns when we got closer to Guemes Channel. Sometimes you could hear a boat and not see it, and sometimes you could see it and not hear it. It was challenging, yet comforting to know that we make a great team. And that is one of my favorite things about our relationship. The fog had almost completely burned off by the time we hit Guemes Channel (after a 2 hour chug up Rosario Straight). The sun finally came out when we got back to port. We started the pack and clean thing duties. We couldn't resist going out one more time before leaving.
So we went out for dinner and drinks. We made it home with out any adventure. Now comes the part when we decide whether to bring Simplicity home or leave her in Cap Sante Boat Harbor. We also have decided to down-size again. The Captain has decided to down-size our phones also, to no Internet, ouch, I'm thinkin' I might throw a fit at that time, and I really don't know how that's going to turn out,,,,,,This could possibly be the best vacation ever, towards our sailing lifestyle, and our future, our cruising, sailing, future... stay tuned if we haven't caught your attention,, enough,,, hehehe,,,,, bunkmate

August, 20th, 2010 Friday, small craft warning

Well.. again the wind came up. At one time during the night the Captain turned the VHF on... It was a crazy sight when I got up. During the night we had gale force winds come up. It was crazy, And i slept through the whole thing. Just before 11 the Captain woke up to flashlights flashing in the windows, and people yelling. He jumped into his pants and went topside. Every boat in the bay (except us, and the boat next to us) drug their anchor. The two boats that were rafted together, about halfway to the beach from us, was now behind us. To start with we were the farthest out from the beach. The guy that was closest to us had a boat come down on his anchor. The worst part is there wasn't anyone on board, so he had to get untangled, and get the boat off of him by himself. He tied the other boat off his stern and threw it's anchor off of the starboard side and put his dinghy in between them. The boat that was in front of us were almost on our anchor, but the had their motor running and were working on staying off our rode. That's what the yelling was about.The Captain turned on the VHF on to hear if anyone needed any help and caught warning from the Coast Guard, saying a small craft warning on the Straight of Juan De Fuca, gale force winds, which is on the other side of the island. It's a good thing the wind was blowing the way it was or all the boats would have been on the beach, or the rocks, or pinned up against the cliffs. Everyone made it through the 'bumper boat' action, with minor scrapes and no-one was hurt. The rest of the day was calm, the wind, the tides, the atmosphere,, calm. The small boat that was rafted with the other boat, left. The boat that didn't have anyone on board, came, and thanked the guy that saved his boat, and didn't just cut it loose, loaded some provisions and he left also.

We had a beautiful schooner that 'sailed' in, and anchored up closer to the beach. It was a family of 7? The ages of the kids ranged, at my guesstamation. from 16 to 5, and boy was it a great show. Everyone worked in total harmony. They all knew what their job was, and did it with very little guidance. the last night on the hook was too short. Watmough Bay, my new favorite place....   bunkmate 

August 19th, 2010, Thursday, cattle pss one more time

I woke up this morning a a panic. No Roxi! after further investigation, the Captain and HalfHitch were gone too. I looked overboard and zipper disappeared also. I looked on the table to find the 2-way radio laying there, and it was on. I picked it up and said "do you have my wienie?".... no answer... "hellooo, do you have my Roxi?" This time a laughing voice said "yes, I have her" He told me later that he didn't even hear me, because of the motor, Roxi was in his lap and he had the radio in his hoodie pocket, and she was doing the 'confused head cocking' thing. They had gone to shore early for potty. and didn't want to wake me. How sweet was that?? We were trying to decide what to do for our last couple days of vacation. We both decided that Sucia Island would be great but...

We thought that Stuart Island was fun but... So we decided that we should head through Cattle Pass one more time and spend the last couple of days in Watmough Bay. We wanted to catch the last of the outgoing tide through Cattle Pass. and the incoming tide to ride around the bottom of Lopez Island and into Rosario Straight.  O.K. We had to leave right now to hit Friday Harbor for the doodahs, and ice. It's a long haul to the other end of the islands. We decided to motor up Harney Channel, through the Wasp Passage, to cut through the Wasp Islands,an into the San Juan Channel to Friday Harbor. The place was a zoo. There wasn't enough room for us "28' end to end" to tie up at any of the waiting docks, or guest docks. We circled around and decided to drop anchor and row in. I took the kids up to go potty, while the Captain dumped the potty, we got back to the boat, and after we pulled anchor, and headed out, we realized that neither one of us grabbed ice, aaarrg.   Oh well, we can still have a block and 1/2, we'll be fine. As we sailed down the San Juan Channel it was kinda weird, because every boat was coming towards us,, none was going with us. By the time we got past Shark Rock we were the only boat in the whole channel.. Weird... We seen 2 sprays/spouts shoot like 9 feet out of the water,, so we kinda got to see a humpback or grey whale-s. We didn't see the sea lion until we went through Cattle Pass. Him and a bunch of girls were sunning on Whale Rock. 

There were at least a dozen of them. We put the sails back up and shot around the bottom of Lopez Island towards Rosario Straight. Watmough Bay is the first bay you come to on the port (left) side. It's so beautiful.. It doesn't have a dock, but the pebble beach is fun to walk on, and the water is warm-ish. We weren't very hungry because I made lunch on the way down @ 20* degree's. It's fun, but.. the knife slides when you let go,, YIKES!! It's fun to watch the seals (Lucy) do the roll and slap that they do it all the time, mostly right before the sun goes down. It took a couple of day's to figure out what what they were doing. On our way here there were 4 gulls sitting in the water, yelling like crazy, messing with a seal that was trying to eat a salmon that she had caught, nice big salmon, but the closer we got, we think the seal was messing with the gulls. The wildlife here is fabulous!! We've seen quite a few Bald Eagles, seals are everywhere. When your sailing, they'll pop their head up and watch you pass, then the dunk back down. Silly little creatures they are. We only seen a couple of porpoises today. Still no Orcas, or bodies, only sprays.   bunkmate

August 18, 2010, Wednesday, catywompus

The Captain woke up @1am to us rockin' and rollin', he poked his head out of the hatch and the rode was off to the starboard side where zipper was. The wind was howlin', the tide was rippin' through the bay. Just the opposite of when we went to bed at like 10:30ish. He got dressed real fast and put his shoes, and his life vest on. I guess the rode got twisted up with zippers line. I woke up to his banging around up top, and I could tell by the rockin' and rollin' of Simplicity that the wind was rippin' and whatever he is doing up top wasn't easy. So I jumped in my pants and threw my sweatshirt on as I came up the companionway. As I was yelling at him "What do you want me to do?" I noticed he was wearing his vest, and I immediately felt calmer. I was buckling my vest when he said, "I think I got us unwrapped, lets just watch for a minute." The motor was already started, so I sat next to the controls, awaiting instructions. The word 'catywompus' works well here, because it was, everything!!.. the wind, the rolling, the bouncing, the tossing back and forth, and we are calm.. As we were watching, and bouncing, and spinning, I asked the Captain if he just wanted to pull anchor and he said, in a laughing voice "that's the only thing holding here". So we sat for a minute Listening to the bangs, and the waves crashing on the cliffs just off the port side. We chatted out a couple of scenarios, and we decide on pulling anchor, avoiding the rock behind us, and anchor out in the middle for the rest of the night. The wind was howling, and as soon as the anchor was free from the bottom, the bow started coming around. I told the Captain to hang on, and I got us turned around and headed down wind. Thank goodness for Shirley (GPS), we missed the rock and headed to the center of the bay.

The bottom was pretty consistent at 28-30 foot deep, so we dropped anchor, and hung out for a bit to make sure we were holding. We decided it was good, so I went back to bed, with the Captain making one more line check, before coming down. He set Shirley's drag anchor alarm to tell us if we come un-anchored. Too bad she can't tell you when you get twisted up.!.  We decided not to stay another night in Reeds Bay. There is a front coming in from the south so we decided to head up to Blind Bay, which is on the north side of Shaw Island, to get some protection from the Southerlies. We headed North out of Lopez Sound. There was quite a bit of traffic as we went across Upright Channel into Harney Channel and into Blind Bay. There is a reef that crosses the entrance to 
Blind Bay with an island in the center of the entrance.

There is a ferry terminal on the eastern tip of the mouth. So if you stay (oh, and  a rock between the terminal and the island)in the center of the rock and island on the east side your alright. The reef is between the rock and the terminal. It's pretty shallow in there too, it runs 3-4 fathoms (18-24 feet) throughout. There is a cute little store where the terminal is on Shaw Island. The Captain took advantage of the calmer (not gone) wind to BBQ up some chicken and the rest of the polish dogs. We had a huge chicken salad for dinner, and we spent the rest of the evening drinking beer and listening to Jimmy Buffet and Sammy & the Wabos. Another wonderfully fabulous day in the San Juans. :-)   bunkmate

August 17th, 2010, Tuesday (lucky #) reeds bay

We decided to hit Friday Harbor and do the potty,ice, and shower thing, only I have been craving fish so husband took me to lunch for fish and chips too. Then we set sail through Upright Channel and down into Lopez Sound, through Spencer Spit. There is a cove right behind this tiny island at the bottom of Reeds Bay. We were way late getting there, the sun was just setting. Boy it's shallow there. There wasn't any wind to speak of really, but did i mention it was SHALLOW?? We set anchor by these cliffs, because there were already 2 boats there, one on each side of the tiny island. We had our anchor watch beers and went to bed.. What a nice evening.

August 16th, 2010, Monday, honkin'nachos day

We sailed off anchor in the morning, after a nice walk on the beach. We decided to leave early to catch the last of the outgoing tide, and ride the incoming tide through Cattle Pass to Fisherman Bay.  That huge sea lion was outside of Cattle Pass this time. We did see a Minke Whale just as we entered the Strait of Juan de Fuca. He was headed up into Rasario Strait. Cattle Pass was pretty calm this time through. We ended up motoring the whole up way to Fisherman Bay. There were quite a few boats, and the wind was pretty calm, coming from the south. We took the kids up to potty, then we went up to the Galley and played a game of pool,had a couple of beers with our honkin nachos, it was fun kicking husbands butt at pool,,, and relaxing, and another fabulous sunset............

August 15th, 2010 Sunday, pirate parade

We got up pretty early to get stuff done by noon,"Tide time." (I like that clock). I took the laundry, the laptop, the camera, the ipod, and the VHF. I plugged everything in to charge, down-loaded the pix, checked e-mails, (mostly junk), jumped on face book for a few, and posted a blog. Oh, and plugged the dead phones in, in the car. It was just after 11 when the last dryer stopped, only to find the whites still were as wet as they were an hour ago!!! I put in another $2.00 and packed everything up and headed back to the boat.   The Captain had almost everything wrapped up, Zipper tow ready, water, port-a-potty dumped, beer stocked and on ice, gas, and everything stowed. I dumped the laundry in "the hole", grabbed the kids for a last potty, and grabbed the rest of the laundry on my way back, and the Captain ran to Safeway to see if his coffee mug was still on the ice box. The clothes were dry and his cup was still there, and we were headed out of the marina at 12:07, ALONG WITH EVERYONE ELSE!!!  It was like a pirate parade. I swear there were at least a dozen of us headed out at the same time. There were only 2 or 3 power boats. It's funny how everyone wanted to hit the same tide as us. Sailors are crazy about their tides..   So we headed out Guemes Channel towards Rosario Strait. Everyone  started scattering in different directions, it was pretty cool. We decided to go south in Rosario Strait down to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, around Lopez Island, and... we hadn't made our minds up if we wanted to go through Cattle Pass again or keep going around San Juan Island up to Stuart Island. 

  There were a couple of bays that we hadn't checked out yet, so we decided to check them out on our way by. We stopped by Watmough Bay, and I think we found another favorite spot. It has a fabulous beach, protection most of the way around, and it is a long shallow beach, so the water is warm-er. We had so much fun wandering around. The kids had fun running around too. Red Dog swam for a stick a couple of times and Roxi almost followed him. We definitely will be back to this one!!!  Chef Shine made yummy tri-tip and garlic potatoes. mmm What a sunset..