Little Beach at Shilshole

Little Beach is kinda little


Brad is out of town and I had a little project that I need to re-measure down on the boat. So I promised the boys that if we went down to the boat to do my measuring. we could blow up the kayaks and go on a little adventure. I figured that we could leave them inflated so that we would have to mess around with re-inflating them next weekend when we are off on a little weekend with the Harangs. It turns out, this was my first time, that getting the inflatable kayaks inflated is really no big deal. I have to figure out how to install the skegs so that we can go straighter. We didn't deflate them anyway, but back to the adventue.
On the west side of the breakwater at Shilshole, at very low tides, there is a small sand beach. The signs say "No Trespassing on the Breakwater", but I am pretty sure that the beach does not count. Once we got the kayaks launched. We headed down the fairway between E and F Docks towards the breakwater and out the south end of the marina. As we rounded the corner, out into Puget Sound, we could almost see our reflection it was so calm. A perfect day for our maiden voyage outside the protection of the breakwater.

The Mighty Kayaker

We got going a little later than I had planned and by the time we made it up-current to "Little Beach" it was very little (about 3 feet wide and 8 feet long). Austin was worried about touching the breakwater and in effect trespassing, so Bryce beached his kayak and we took some pictures. It was a nice trip to the north end of the marina. Bryce even paddled part way back to the dock before he tied on to Austin and I for a tow. We went nice and slow close to the rocks, both boys noticing the huge variety of critters that live in and amongst those rocks.
When we got back to the boat, I did my measuring and the boys went on one short little voyage to retrieve a piece of paper that they have been noticing for about a week on the bulkhead near our dock's ramp. It turned out to be a notice from the marina management that had been laminated which explained why it had not disintegrated submerged in that water. All in all, the kayaking was successful and Capaz now has a flap that we can use instead of hatchboards as the weather gets cooler.

Off to solve the mystery of the piece of submerged paper

Boat Show Done!

Where have we been? Well, we have been Boat Showing: one of the greatest "perks" of the marine industry. At least twice per year, we "get" to participate in the boat shows. The Seattle Boats Afloat Show was last week. We spent the week before that prepping for the show and getting the kids off to their first week of school. Then, we have spent the last week decompressing and cleaning up from the boat show. If you are feeling like this post is laced with sarcasm, you would be correct. Boat Shows are not my favorite thing.
Anyway, we are making progress on Capaz. Brad has almost completed the first new head installation. Beyond that, I have been working on little projects on the boat and at the house trying to prepare for the transition to living on the boat hopefully, around the first of the year. We are not sure what is happening with our live-aboard status as we seem to be moving the wrong way on the waiting list. On August 22, we were #8, then last week we seemed to have moved back to #11 and now as of Friday, we are at #12. It just makes you wonder a little bit about exactly how the Port of Seattle's priority system is set up.
So we hope to make some more progress and spend a little more time on the boat now that the Boat Show is over.

Gig Harbor

Capaz at Anchor in Gig Harbor
August 30 - September 1

So, you have been out in the ocean on a sailboat for 7 days and you are about to fly home and see your family who you miss and your husband says, “Do you want to go out on the boat this weekend?” If you are me, you say, “Sure.” That’s how it is with us. I get off the plane from Oakland, get dinner, stop by the boat to see what we need and drop off my gear. We all got a good night’s sleep at the house and then, packed up and headed off to Gig Harbor. The weather is iffy – a little shower coming down Colvos Passage on the west side of Vashon Island. When we arrived, not only did we see s/v Mentor, but also that the SYC outstation has been full-up of powerboats for the last two days. What were we thinking? Oh, did I mention that Bryce drove most of the way from Seattle while Brad did whatever it was he was doing with a soldering iron and the windlass motor? Also, Austin and I pumped up all of our fenders!!! I am happy to report that after dropping the anchor with a non-functional windlass, we have repositioned ourselves using the now-working windlass. Nothing like the prospect of raising a big, heavy anchor and 120 feet of also big, heavy chain by hand to motivate one into fixing something. Not only that folks, but we also ate our dinner of hotdogs cooked on our now-functional barbecue!!! We are really making great strides here. The boys built “the color fleet” which are a series of lego ships where each one is built using a certain color of lego pieces. The evening was capped off with a glass (or 2) of wine with Cindy and Dick aboard their friends, Jim and Ann’s powerboat.

The color-coded lego fleet

Sunday was kind of a mixed weather day. Partly cloudy with a shower here and there, but when the sun was out it was nice and warm. There was even one lightening strike mid-afternoon as a particularly dark cloud went over. I went on a bike ride in search of the grocery store to find something to go with the coffee that Lydia was going to pick up at Starbucks and bring out to the boat. Plans changed though as Lydia had hurt her back and getting in and out of the dinghy didn’t sound like much fun. So, we had coffee on land and she unsuccessfully chauffeured me around on a domestic errand. We ended up back at her house where we enjoyed lunch. Back at the boat, Brad worked on lots of little jobs and the huge task of emptying the “garage” which is a cavernous storage locker in the stern of the boat. We needed to get to bottom of it, so that we could figure out what there was, if we wanted to keep that same stuff back and just generally organized it. The boys watched “Jimangi” and later went to the beach at the SYC outstation where they built a rock and seaweed island which they tried to keep above the level of the incoming tide. Bryce and I also played a game of Scrabble in which we used every last tile!!1 Back at the boat, we had dinner and I taught Bryce to play Solitaire and then we played Double-Solitaire.

Sunday morning comics

Austin partway up the mast

Monday’s weather capped off a truly mediocre summer. It wasn’t really warm or sunny but we did have wind most of the way home and sailed from Gig Harbor to West Point up Colvos Passage. With the option of the autopilot back on the table, it was a leisurely trip back to Seattle. We even flew the spinnaker for a couple of hours. Before we used the windlass (that part is very exciting) to raise the anchor, Bryce and Austin had their maiden voyages up the mast in the bosuns chair. Bryce made it all the way to the top on his second hoist and took some pictures. Austin wasn’t so sure about the whole thing, but smiled for a picture. We were also boarded by one of the Gig Harbor water officers. Luckily, he is an old friend of Brad’s and was just saying hi. On the way home, we spotted Ann and Jim who we shared drinks with on Saturday night by their bright green kayaks on the bow and were hailed by Wendy Hinman on Vallela. As we got stuff together on the boat to off-load and head back to the house, Austin asked what was going on. I told him that we were getting ready to go home to which he replied that the boat really felt like “home”!

Looking down at Mom and Dad
Looking South ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Views of Gig Harbor from the top of Capaz's mast ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Looking West

ALL "AERIAL" SHOTS COURTESY OF BRYCE BAKER

Alameda, Here We Come!

August 27 -28, 2008
Sat phone call "Safely around Mendocino"



So after I learned and won at Chicago Rummy, we tried to eat at the Chart House, but it was closed. There was a little restaurant called the Bistro that let us order the awesome 4:30-6:00 Special at 6:05 (we were seated at 5:55 after all). Anyway, again, we were all bunked early 8:30ish even though I read for a little while. We were on our way by about 6:15 Wednesday morning and after a quick little touch of the bottom near the gas dock, we headed out from the breakwater. We really saw some great wildlife: more sunfish, whales (almost always while I was asleep, so I feel as though my crewmates may have been pulling my leg), scores of seals, the cutest little birds that were always in pairs, something that jumped in the night - twice, and dolphins. We had about 10 hours til (the dreaded for PJ) Cape Mendocino. At that point, the weather models indicated that we would probably have skirted the worst of the winds that were building steadily off-shore. Well, for anyone who is watching the developments with Hurricane Gustav and New Orleans: weather models are helpful, but aren't a crystal ball. Anyway, we all breathed a collective sigh of relief as we passed the Cape around 4:00 pm. However, maybe because it was late afternoon and the temperatures inland had been high (over 100*), the winds picked up for about 3 or 4 hours. We, and by that I mean Jamie and Behan as I was trying to get some sleep, saw sustained 30 knots of wind with a couple of gusts to 50 from the north. By the time I came on watch at 1:00am, things had started to slack off and continued to do so pretty much for the next 18 hours til we hit the Golden Gate in almost completely calm conditions. What more could you ask for? We came in close around Point Ryes which I have only seen in the dark and in the daytime has to be one of the coolest lighthouses ever.
Point Reyes Lighthouse - How was it built????
It seemed like most of our wildlife sightings were between just off of Point Reyes and the GG. We kept getting confused that we were really in San Diego at Seaworld. Behan was downright giddy, seeing San Francisco (where she spent a sizable portion of her childhood) from a new perspective - the other side of the Golden Gate. Going under said bridge, we toasted Totem with Dark and Stormies. Next we swung in towards the St. Francis Yacht Club where the Gifford children, having just arrived with their grandparents on a flight from Seattle - with just enough time to get the rental car, waved at us from the beach. Niall spotted that bright yellow kayak lashed to the foredeck immediately!!! Then, the real excitement began. We were passing by Alcatraz enjoying the wharfs on the city's waterfront, when from where we had just come horns started blaring. An outgoing tanker was having issues with an incoming freighter who had not left it enough room to get through the Golden Gate. Well, as they honked and belched smoke reversing their engines, from our angle, near disaster was avoided. I must say that I did get out my camera and start filming just in case there was something worthy of U-tube. And there might have been as the Coast Guard bombed out towards the scene. But that wasn't all the excitement, there's more. As we turned our attentions ahead to the Bay Bridge, we noticed a fire boat. It spraying water at Treasure Island. It seems as though there was a brush fire on the cliff where the Bay Bridge comes from SF into Treasure Island before continuing across on the Oakland side. I don't know how it turned out, from our vantage point, it seemed like a pretty stubborn fire with a fire boat that couldn't quite get the water far enough up the cliff and no way to really fight it from above. Remember that freighter who seemed to be at fault under the GG? Well, it was now bearing down on us, so we continued on to Alameda where a slip labeled "Swiftsure" awaited us. It made me feel at home (or work, or something - I believe in signs). Oh, did I mention that in the blazing heat? There were also cold beers and ice packs waiting for us courtesy of the Jessies!!! How could you top that off? Try pizza, green salads and beers at Linguini's. Showers and flights home were all that were left to round out this trip. Oops, I almost neglected to mention a quick visit to the Seattle Embassy - yes, you guessed it: Starbuck's early on Friday morning for lattes before it got too hot!

Toast to Totem

News from SV Totem

Newport Oregon Bridge

August 24, 2008

Once in Newport, we all enjoyed showers and then visited the Rogue Nation headquarters where we wound our way through the brewery to the eating facilities and had some chow. By 8:30, we were all pretty much in our bunks. Sunday “dawned” overcast and not many sport fishers headed out with the glum forecast. We boarded the new loop bus and on our way to and from Fred Meyer (both the chandlery and Radio Shack were closed on Sundays) saw a decent portion of the greater Newport area. We are guessing that since the gas dock had opened early and there really weren’t many customers and they dwindled to nothing throughout the day as the wind and rain came in, that they decided to close early which made out departure decision easy: Monday after the gas dock opens! Like all good sailors we took the change in plans with a grain of salt (actually glass of wine) and enjoyed a warm dry evening aboard the boat.

August 25, 2008

Two nights in Newport, OR and we awoke this morning to fog and fairly calm winds. Last night we enjoyed watching a Rodin Williams comedy show and The Wedding Crashers. We followed a commercial fishing boat out under the Newport Bridge and the skies immediately began to clear. The bar was a little rough but it was the side swell that almost did me in. I quickly took a Gravol and had luckily had a good breakfast, so I able stay outside for a little while and rack in my bunk, waking up a couple hours later doing much better. We went by the famous dunes midday and had a great view of them because we are staying fairly close to shore so that we can head into Crescent City ahead of some weather tomorrow morning. Behan made some great sandwiches out of the last of the sourdough bread that I made for the trip. We have finally been able to put up the sails and are making good time still motor sailing. Not much wildlife today other than birds. We did see a couple of seals and Jamie and I are pretty sure that we saw some kind of small whale. We hope to hit Crescent City around sunrise tomorrow and wait out the weather, getting an early start for our final push on Wednesday morning.

Crescent City, California

August 26, 2008

A little after sunrise, we rounded the breakwater that protects Crescent City. The gas dock attendant came right down and lower the pump down to us. The gas dock is about fifteen feet above the water. There are some lovely barnacle covered tires strung on a log that you tie up to. Quite an adventure just getting gas. The wind is starting to pick up and there are other boats ducking in here – one from Port Hadlock across the way and Friday Harbor right next to us. Anyway, we got some local knowledge on where to go for breakfast and we all filled up at “Fisherman’s”. We have heard that the Charthouse is where the fishermen go for their fish n chips and so it sounds like that might be our dinner stop. We are thinking about getting a very early start in the AM to take advantage of a supposed lull between here and Cape Mendacino. It looks like we will be staying close in to the coast for the rest of the trip except right before San Francisco where we do not want to be in the Potato Patch if there is wind. I will try to find some pictures to post and hope that my next posting will be from Alameda.

PJ Helps deliver Totem to SF

Leaving Neah Bay!

Saturday, August 23, 2008

My “squishiness” seems to have passed so here I am 9 miles off of Oregon, ready to do a little typing about our trip down the coast on Jamie and Behan Gifford’s s/v Totem. The skies are pretty clear with some thin high clouds and the ocean swell is way down. But let me start at the beginning which is really about an hour into my good friends’ dream of “go cruising”. It is so exciting to get to be here at the beginning. Anyway, the Giffords and their other crew member, Curtis Edwards, left the home port of Eagle Harbor on Bainbridge Island about noon on Thursday, August 21^st. They stopped into Shilshole to get gas and me about an hour later. As with all great adventures, there are bumps along the way. Their big bump was that the auto pilot and all of its backup parts Buoy off Neah Bay decided not to work the day before. I had hastily picked up a new Raymarine autopilot and handed it off to Behan for Jamie to install. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite functional by pick up time at Shilshole. However, about 5 hours later it was and off we went at about 6:00pm. Looking at the weather and tides, we had pretty much decided to do a red-eye run to Neah Bay. With Dall’s porpoises beside us, we headed for the Straits of Juan de Fuca and hoped for the best. We were also toying with the idea of waiting out a small weather system in Newport, Oregon. Yesterday, the sun dawned to some low clouds and fog and about an hour to go to Neah Bay. By the time we hit the gas dock there, it was about 8:00am and the sun was starting to burn off the remaining clouds. Rounding Cape Flattery, the ocean swell was small to medium but was almost straight westerly which put it right on our beam. And so the squishiness began, but my Gravol did its work and I was just a little sleepy which, since we were not racing was not a problem. We have seen lots of birds – many brown pelicans which Jamie says are not supposed to be here. I spotted a sunfish and then Behan thought she saw another one a couple hours later. The sun kept a few clouds at bay, but it did get a little cool when the sun would go behind a cloud. Sunset was a non event and I hit the rack for a few hours around 8:30. I awoke (was not woken up because again we are not racing) around 12:30 and joined Curtis for some night watch. Towards the end of our watch around 4:00am, we spotted what we think was a NOAA buoy. It had both a red and a green light down near the water, long white lights along the sides leading up to the “not blinking” yellow light on top. Anyway, it was either a NOAA buoy or a UFO. I couldn’t keep my eyes open for another minute, so I hit the hay. Sleeping has not been a problem on this trip which is most excellent especially for my crew mates. I awoke to the smells of sausage (and it actually smelled GOOD) around 9:30 but no one was interested in food (except me) because they had just seen some humpback whales. They got to see them breech even. I got to see two more whales about an hour later and yes, I did get breakfast (Behan made those sausages into egg wraps). We are still steaming (not enough wind to really sail and make it into shelter before the low goes over us) towards Newport with hopes of a grocery store for a few forgotten things and wi-fi for . . . . . . you know, all that computer stuff! Until then, the skies have some high thin clouds that are allowing it to be toasty warm, a light breeze off our starboard quarter and only small swell – what more could we want.

Sunset off Oregon Coast

PJ's Last Thursday

I will be heading off down the coast to San Francisco on the SV Totem with Jamie and Behan Gifford as the begin their cruise. I am not sure if Brad will get the boat out for the last Thursday night next week, so I let people know that this might be their last chance. My strategy worked and the Larson/Scholls and my brother and sister-in law finally made it out. The entire Toland family made it on board (just barely) as well as my friend from college, Dave and his family. On the kid-front, we had everything from serious lego-ing to serious sailors. Brad had had enough of the Cruising Class and entered us in the Racing Class. There was wind and we had great racers on board, so we definitely had a great sail. We really got going once the foredeck figured out how that spinnaker sock worked. There was one mark that we didn't quite make, so we just left it to port. Back at the dock, Dave and Austin did a little swimming off the stern to the cheers of everyone else. Talia was our only dunker. I think everyone venutred up to the party shoreside. Thursday was the first of these extra warm evenings with a fantastic sunset followed by an equally amazing moonrise. Rose and I just sat in the cockpit in awe of the almost full moon over our city. I cannot believe how much fun we have had on these Thursday nights. Thank you to everyone who has come out with us and basically made it possible. If you haven't gotten to go out on Capaz yet . . . . well, we will just have to get out there. If I can figure out how to send email on the sat phone, I will keep you all posted on my progress down the coast.

Austin and Mikah just bring the legos out on deck

Jack is part of our foredeck crew

Laurian relaxes pre-race

John just wanted to go on a boat ride