Six long years have gone by since the sound of the wind through the rigging, and the rain song playing on the cabin’s top, have met the ears of the old sailor and his first mate. Years that saw the sale of their beloved “Autumn Daze”, the Beneteau 423 they bought new in 2004, and sailed for 28,000 miles, from Oregon to Alaska and back, more than once, with many stops in Canada between.
While the past six years may have been happy years, where they were able to help raise grandkids from infancy to their teen years, the sounds and smells of the sea beckoned them back to the “salt chuck” of the Salish Sea. They decided to celebrate their twenty-fifth anniversary by chartering a powerboat. It was late in the year and many charter companies started to have their yearly maintenance. Following a few phone calls, they were able to obtain a charter from San Juan Sailing, located in Bellingham WA. San Juan Sailing didn’t have a Ranger Tug available to charter, so they decided to go with the twin engined, Meridian 368 named, Alta Levica.
OK, not too much of a problem, although the skipper had little to no experience operating a twin-engined boat, but with the thrusters, how much of a problem maneuvering a 36’ vessel could there be?
The Alta Levica was 15’ above the water line, with only 3’ below, leaving a hell of a lot of windage with forecast storms coming and well…
…the captain and his first mate decided that it probably would be wise to forgo chartering the powerboat. The crew at San Juan Sailing not only were able to refund part of their fee if they were interested in taking out a 37’ Beneteau sailboat. Interested? You bet they were! It was like coming home after being gone for years. They couldn’t stow their gear and food fast enough, and check out the differences between their old 42’ and the 37’.
San Juan Sailing’s check-out crew were just what the rusty sailors needed to reacquaint themselves with the ways of a sailboat. Bob Hulett came by that evening to go over the boat’s systems and showed the first mate how to tie flat sheets to make it a fitted sheet for the ‘V’ birth and the skipper to use the chart plotter and the boat’s other systems. Early Saturday morning Tim, a retired Coast Guard Master Chief, came aboard and having them pull the boat out and re-dock her before getting off on another dock, gave the rusty crew the go ahead to leave.
Rusty crew? You had better believe it. Right out of the Bellingham marina the course that they had plotted on the ‘new to them’ Garman plotter in the “Chinook”, didn’t seem to want to follow. OK, operator error may have been the problem, not the plotter. After stopping the boat and bouncing around with the wind waves, they finally were able to shake a little rust off the captain’s brain and off they sailed……maybe sailed is a little misleading, it was more like powered along the new course without sails.
They decided to try for one of their favorite Islands in the San Juan’s, Matia, where many years ago they had a well let’s say, a little problem entering the cove just off Puffin Island…OK, maybe a little more than a little, having put their beloved Beneteau on and rocks and only after working on the skippers little mistake for a few hours were able to get her off without help (checkout story of Matia Island, or Listen to Your First Mate, in Jim’s Blog). However, on the NW side is Rolfe Cove where there is a nice dock for two or so boats with access to the National Wildlife Refuge and the old growth forest trail, going through the island. Unfortunately, the Dock and one remaining mooring buoy had other boats on them.
Off they went to Echo Bay on Sucia Island to tie to one of the unoccupied mooring buoys to practice their skills mooring to them…instead they found it easier to just moor to the empty lateral buoy system, where they spent their first night back on the water, gently feel the movement of the Salish Sea rock them to sleep.
Early Sunday morning, as they sat in the cockpit having coffee enjoying the sights and smells of being back on the water again, another boater from Idaho who had been crabbing came by and offered them a couple of Red Rock Crab he said were Dungeness. They didn’t correct him, even though they themselves could see that they were indeed Red Rock, (who in their right mind would try to correct someone giving you crab?).
Now, our well-seasoned skipper agreed with his first mate that there probably would be enough meat to make crab cakes, which Red Rock is probably only good for. Off the swim platform he took the crab and grabbed the smaller of the two from the back, stepped on its two claws, put his fingers under the shell and jerked the crab’s shell off, stunning the crab, then breaking it in half to clean it. Some people like to just throw them into a boiling pot of seawater, but our intrepid skipper doesn’t like to hear them scream.
Now it came the grandfather crab’s turn. The skipper reached into the bucket to grab the back of the crab, but the crab kept turning to face the new threat coming at him with his claws outstretched. With a quick movement the skipper grabbed the back legs and oops…one leg slipped from his grasp and the old grandpa crab seeing his opening, grabbed the skipper by his ring finger closing his claw tightly around it!
The very surprised and pain ridden skipper tried to shake off the crab, but that grandpa crab just squeezed harder until the skipper shook his hand so hard that the claw holding onto the finger broke free from the crab. Back into the water went grandpa crab without one of his claws to tell all his friends about his adventures and to grow a new claw.
The skipper? Well, the claw was still clamped on his finger until he was able to remove it as blood dripped from the wound onto the deck. Of course, the salt water didn’t help the pain of the wound and even more so to our oh so wise skipper, pain of the crab getting the best of him.
That evening, they decided to try for Matia Island again, dropping their tie to the linear buoy and headed out of Echo Bay only to look over to Matia Island where the dock and mooring buoy were still full. Back into Echo Bay, they decided to practice tying to a buoy as the seas began to build as the forecasted storm began to hit the San Juan Islands. The first mate snagged the buoy’s ring and, with the skipper’s help, got one line through the ring and tied it off. As the evening darkened, the SE fetch began to build more, worrying the skipper who was concerned about chafe on the line to the buoy, went forward and spent the next half hour trying to get another line through the ring as the Beneteau bucked and pitched as the waves rolled under her hall.
Following a shall we say, not as restful night as the skipper had hoped for, they dropped the mooring line from the buoy early Monday morning, when the first storm abated heading back to Matia Island, where they tied to the dock in a now empty cove, to spend the next two days watching a couple of storms passing over and just hanging out and walking the old growth trail around the island. Thursday found them heading for Eagle Harbor on Cypress Island and a quiet night before heading back to Bellingham to fuel, pump out and spend their last night aboard, and began planning their next adventure.
Yep, it was well worth chartering as they both found that their confidence had returned, and they realized that they could indeed still sail with confidence. Their only problem now is that they still feel that they must transition to power, but as the now excited skipper does his due diligence looking for the right power boat, he knows that sailboats feel much more stable. Power boats, on the other hand, (in this writer’s opinion) tend to dance among the waves more, thus not as balanced. But there reaches a time in an old sailors’ life when they need to swallow one’s dignity and step aboard a power boat, if they still want to dance among the wind and waves of our Pacific Northwest.