Leaving Port Townsend

29 Jun 85.

Underway: 0700. Set sail and under sail left PT for Friday Harbor.

Hung over skipper puked 0800, relieved by mate and went below and rested. By noon I felt fine. This was the aftermath of trying to drain a barrel of beer the night before. I believe we did manage to empty it.

1300: Fired up the Honda as the wind had dropped off to little or nothing.

1500: Fetched Friday Harbor. 

We ate ice cream upon arrival.

We met a friend's ex husband and he showed us around and the house he built. 

My mate's navigation skills are excellent but they should be. He's a licensed commercial pilot.

Friday Harbor is full of honeys
Beaucoup Canadian vessels
Sort of reminds me of Provincetown, MA with all the overpriced shops and little artsy craftsy stores. The place is mobbed with people coming out the wazoo.

San Juan Channel was a tide ripped place.

What's her face didn't show up on time so we left without her. Actually she very well may have arrived on time. We left early so as to be underway before she got there as she is a confirmed pothead and no matter what she's going to bring her dope with her.

Normally I would not have cared but we are crossing international lines and I don't want my boat impounded.



30 Jun 85

0750 the friend's ex husband woke us up. He showed us a house he built. He does excellent work. I like him.
1400 Left Friday Harbor headed to Bedwell Harbor in Canada on a beam reach. 

While underway we swapped the jib blocks around and rerove the jib sheet. It's the way we want it now and we're in better shape than we were when we left PT. Friday Harbor was a pretty good port for the night.

We need a chunk of lead or iron as a skellet for the anchor rode but the friend's ex gave us a piece of cherry we can use as a tiller extension.

1830: Karen Lee has taken a Canadian motorboat in tow. We're headed to Bedwell Harbor to the customs office.

1930: Customs. We got a blast  of shit about taking a Canadian boat in tow before we cleared customs and I politely shot back that according to International Law the Safety of life at sea over rode the rules he was following. He caved in and agreed.

1940: Karen Lee has been issued a cruising permit by the Canadian government. Number B-XXXXXX.

15 miles (?) to the good.

2100: Mate decided to stay aboard and I went ashore to make an ass of myself or something along these lines.

2345: Returned to a spit shined boat and a lit anchor light.

Log sketchy here. I think we anchored out for the evening, most likely to avoid dock fees. as there is a position here. There is also a note that we had arrived on the eve of the Canadian Fourth of July, Canada Day. Leave it to us to arrive at the party on time!


1 July, 85
0900: Left Bedwell Harbor.
2000 We beat out brains out against a NW wind. No wind. Some wind but not a steady wind. We anchored in Clam Bay that was some kind of a little nook between two islands. It looked like a high tide small boat passage.

Sketchy log note: Kuper is an Indian reserve and the scenery is gorgeous. Tomorrow? on to Nanaimo Harbor on Vancouver Island.

By the way, I am going to start sleeping in the starboard quarter berth so we can actually use the table for meals like civilized people.

I haven't worn shoes all day. Shoes-no shoes- what a wonderful feeling. I checked my feet in PT and saw my jungle rot acting up between my toes. A few days on the boat will sure help things. What is nice is the soles of my feet are pretty clean.

Tonight's dinner: Tristan Jones Special. Canned corned beef and spuds. Bland. We forgot the ketchup.

I wish we had a gun and seasonings like we did on the XXXXXX (a boat i fished commercially on)

The three gallon gas tank finally ran out. Gas is running us about $1.25/day figuring we used a gallon a day. If some good wind would come up we'd be in great shape. We set anchor under sail---sailed up to the anchorage, luffed and dropped the hook. We looked great.

I wish I could score a job doing something. Zero cash is a drag. It's a good thing the Canadians didn't ask to see how much cash we had or we'd have been refused entry.

Canada day was great. As I said earlier, leave it to us to hit the Canadian Fourth of July.

You know, there are about 10 million little things that make a sailor. Not all of them what you would think. This came to me as I was trimming the wick on the anchor light. I have to become a man of many talents. Who else but a cruising sailor uses a kerosene dioptic lens anchor light?

24 miles to the good.


2 July, 85.
0700: 
Little John's surprise for breakfast. It's salt cod, spuds, onions and crumbled bacon mashed together. It's good. As I write this it reminds me I have not had that in decades. Maybe I'll make some soon.
1000: underway. Left Clam Bay.
1330: Fetched Nanaimo. Groceried up, fueled, each had an ice cream cone and the mate bought ice for some reason I do not remember. We're going to go somewhere else. Sailors have more fun.
1730 Left Nanaimo. A shame. I was running around shopping and found the people friendly and the woman pretty. The whole town was in a good mood. I really wanted to go and meet the locals and see the sights.
2000 We are tied up to a Canadian Navy buoy of some sort for the evening off of Winchelsea Island. Some sailor said it would be OK if we did this so long as we hung an anchor light so whomever could keep an eye on us.

We have trolled the past 2.5 hours and the Honda acted a little funky at an idle. We twiddled with it. The charger says 12.5 volts which is good. The charger built into the Honda is great! 

The scenery is breathtaking. I love it. The only bummer is we motored today. Motored in a sail boat. Not a bit of wind.

Nanaimo was great. I'd love to stay a few days. Partly because of pretty girls. Part of it was the scenery and part of it was just why the hell not! God, I wish I had a year to make this trip!

Canadian cookies. Oreos taste the same but here they don't come in a cellophane pack. You don't have to devour the whole pack because they are resealable. The again. the little clip really doesn't work worth a shit so they might just as well used a cellophane bag.

Oh yeah! We shot through the Dodd Narrows and it scared the hell out of us. For a full minute and a half I had no control whatsoever of the boat. All I could do was try and make an effective response. I'm OK so I musta done good, huh?

25 miles.

Later back in Kodiak a few months later I was told I was lucky I didn't get shot for tying up at Winchelsea. He said it was some kind of ubersecret Canadian Navy thing and said that most likely I was covered all night by a machine gunner.

3 July, 85.
0845: Woke up and cut loose under sail as we were tied to a Navy buoy used to tie up a ship of some sort. It really wasn't a Kosher thing to do.
1500: Still under sail and have not fired up the iron jib. About 1230 the mate got the idea to run up the working jib in addition to the Genoa and we Mickey Moused it to take advantage of the following wind. The rig isn't in Chapmans but it worked pretty good.

This is a pretty good time to tell you that I had no experience sailing before we left Port Townsend. We were both learning along the way. I had a book that showed the various points of sail and we'd look at it when the wind shifted.

Speed? 4-4.5 knots. Wind speed? about 6 knots. 
1830: fired up the iron jib abd continued to Tuxedna Island.

Note here. I can not find the island on Google which probably means I didn't spell it right in the log.

Little nook. up and down and sleep is gonna be easy. Went ashore, met some locals and had a beer with some on the beach.

Tuxedna is a little Kodiak.

30 miles.

4 July, 85. Hey, Mate! It's the ruddy yank Fourth of July!

0800. Up and about.

By the way we are navigating with the Marine Atlas and a chart of Vancouver Island. NOTE: If memory serves the afore mentioned atlas is kind of a comic book designed for trip planning and not serious navigation. Back then we did what we had to do.

Onward and upward! Underway.

1700: Pasting! We had seven bells of shit knocked out of us a few hours shy of Campbell River. God, it was funny! A career as a sailor can be yours at the Colombia School of reefing down mainsails! It was a Chinese fire drill.

Today we went through the Genoa, the working jib and even bent on the storm jib. We reefed down to the second reef.

Learned a lot. Spending the night in Campbell River. Seven bells of dog snot.

Broke spinnaker eye(fixed), bent whisker pole and thank God we had on harnesses.

Spent night in Campbell River.
43 miles


5 July,85.
A day of repairs (about a dozen minor ones)
Fixed tiller handle
Fixed spinnaker pole
Fixed hole on Genoa
Replaced screw in eye.

Sure had a hard time finding things on short notice in a faraway place.

Fixed spinnaker pole
Plug for outboard well installed
Jib halyard bungee installed. 

I helped a pretty girl move her houseboat. She was an expat and I believe she was there as a former spouse of a Vietnam war draft dodger.

Log says we had pizza and beer for dinner. (If so, it's pretty damned likely she bought it because we were really scratching our asses financially. We were not quite broke but we were really counting our pennies)

Sailor's Nirvana.

PS Missed scoring a job by a couple of hours.


6 July 85
0500 Up. On to Seymour Narrows
2000 CQR'd anchor along W. Thurlow Island.
We had gone through the Seymour Narrows, a real treacherous piece of water. Back to the log.

I took a snooze today for a bit. Took advantage of the tides where we could and sailed our asses off for a total of 36 miles to the good.

We're in a mass of tidal riffs and all sorts of other good shit. The tide shifted on us and we found a couple of good eddies and we had to tack like an SOB
The Seymour Narrows was a letdown. It was like glass and we just meandered through, mainly under sail. I'm sure glad it wsn't the ruckus the Dodd Narrows was.
By the way, I'd like to rebatten the jib and move some rails around to stretch the leech of the jib tighter by changing the angle of pull back from an acute angle to about 45 degrees. Fifteen inch sliding rails would be great.

Dinner tonight is Tristan Jones (canned corned beef) chili and it's good, too.

We hit the Johnstone Strait at about the right time as far as the tides went. I think we'll have fair tides for the rest of the week.

Had we left a week earlier we'd have clawed and fought the entire way and made maybe a quarter of the distance. Also we ought to add battens to the working jib.

I cut the reefing lines and boom vang lines and halyards to a more reasonable length and whipped the ends. I marked the reef points on the mainsail halyard. These are little things that might save our asses later.

21 days in PT was plenty. Campbell River was a nice visit and leave it to us to us to et moored next to the (name hidden), a salmon troller crewed by a 14.5 year old boy, two women and three dogs.

Thank God they were simply hard working fisherman instead of weird feminists.

We also met XXXXX, a gal divorced a year ago with 2 kids. They were a trip. She built a nice houseboat. What a pretty, sweet woman she is. She was born in the States and moved here and became a landed immigrant at 18 back in '73.

Margot (one of the salmon troller women, not her real name) called her country a sattelite of the US. While we were eating a Shakey's pizza, drinking a coke and watching MTV I had to agree. It's a shame and all but when I come to Canada I want to see Canada and not northern Detroit ot Northern Seattle or whatever. I want to see CANADA. 

What a flavor this place had back in '70! (I visited Ontario then) 
I'd have loved to see it in '55! The British Isles and Canadian flavor. Margot attributes thus to all kinds of shit-people being too comfy, laziness, the USA being too greedy etc. Not much (Canadian) national pride. 

By the way, there's another thing bugging the piss out of me. For the past two days we tried to find the Campbell River warfinger. We couldne't screw around any longer  as we had made our repairs and had to go on to catch the Seymour Narrows tide.

We left our address with Margot and so they can bill us for our slip and I hope she squares things away. She said she'd call the Port McNeill warfinger so they could collect our money there.(at McNeill)

I sure hope so because I am not looking to be boarddby the RCMP unless it's by Sgt Preston personally and King better not shit on my deck!

I guess all the floats are federal so it's no biggie unless  it's a major paperwork shuffle.

Still, things don't sit good. I like to pay my bills

I wish I had done this years ago.