Smooth Sailing on the Strait of Georgia

We finally got some sailing in today, a chance to shake out the new sails after several days of doldrums.  Quijote has a newer generation 50 horsepower Yanmar diesel that is smooth, quiet, and very reliable.  But as satisfying as it is to hum along all day with the engine doing the work, there is always a sense of relief when the sails go up and the engine is cut.  The exhaust system gives a final gurgle and then peace settles in, returning all the sounds usurped by the thrum of the engine: the sound of the hull gliding through the water, the wind in the rigging, the seabirds along the shoreline. It’s hard to do anything for the first few moments of sailing, so powerful is the urge to just sit and listen.

But fun awaits.  There are sails to trim, navigation to attend to, hazards to avoid.  

Always Learning

It’s the Gulf Islands tonight, a place called Pirate’s Cove.  The book describes this place as having wall to wall boats during the summer, which is why we’re here in the beginning of May.  Truthfully, if it wasn’t a Tuesday in the beginning of May, we’d be somewhere else.  Thankfully there is ample room tonight.

This cove has the dubious distinction of being the place where I first anchored my own bareboat about twenty years ago.  I was with a couple of friends who had even less experience than I did.  We floated in ready to drop anchor and the engine quit. Huh?  Turns out: when we slowed down, the dinghy caught up and the line it was tethered to wrapped around the prop.  Guess who got to go for a swim to cut it free with a kitchen knife.  That’ll make your teeth chatter.  It was one of many lessons on a relentless learning curve.  That’s one of the things I love about this sport: I never stop learning.

Lavanya's Port Townsend Photos

Photos by Lavanya

Quijote's New Drifter

Photo by Vi

Tina's Send off photos

Photos by Tina

What a difference a week makes

Yesterday was the official opening day of boating season, so today boats were streaming through the locks.  I counted 33 boats in the lock with us as we were lowered from the level of Lake Union to Puget Sound.  Compare that to last weekend when we were the only boat in the lock.  All proceeded in an orderly fashion though and we squirted out into the sound a mere hour and a half after leaving the dock - not bad, considering the stampede.

The day’s travel northward was relatively uneventful.  With no main sail and wind out of the north, we didn’t have an opportunity to do any sailing, but it was a lovely day and the spinnakers were out in force.  It’s Sunday night in Port Townsend. so moorage is plentiful.  Dinner in town was followed by hot showers and a look at tomorrow’s charts.  We’ll start the day at the sail loft where we’ll pick up a couple new sails, detailed in a previous post, and then head north into Canadian waters.

The Final Shakedown

The latest blog has morphed from one that was intended to be used between trips into one that will be used for the upcoming trip, essentially leaving the details about the maintenance that has been going on in the blog rather than starting up a new one.

Last weekend several of us launched out to put Quijote and a few of the crew through their paces, a shakedown cruise if you will.  It turned out to be a great time, as is most often the case when we venture out onto the water.

We started off with a minor crisis when, no sooner had we requested the Ballard bridge be opened than the engine temperature alarm started wailing.  We shut the engine down and drifted for a while to let the engine cool while we investigated the source of the problem. Several weeks ago I found that the previous owner had used the wrong kind of coolant in the engine, so I drained and refilled it with distilled water, warmed it up, then repeated the process a couple of times to get most of the old coolant out, before filling it up again.  Going though all this, I noticed that more coolant was drained than it was taking to refill, so I was sensitive to the fact that there might not be enough coolant in the engine.  After the engine cooled I pulled the coolant cap off and found that it was indeed dry, so it was just a matter of adding more as coolant worked its way into the nooks and crannies.

With that problem resolved, we headed out the locks.  We actually had the lock to ourself for the first time that I can remember.

The first order of business once we had poked our nose out into the sound was to test the water-maker.  It was inoperable when I first fired it up many months ago, and it took several weeks of troubleshooting, ordering and replacing various parts as one problem and then another was fixed.  I finally got it to a state where I was confident that it was working properly, but sitting in a clean freshwater lake, as Lake Union is, didn’t allow me to test it fully.

For the first time had the opportunity to actually make fresh water out of seawater and I’m happy to report that it works like a champ!  I installed a sample valve while I was working on it that allows me to divert the flow to a tasting cup before sending the desalinated water to the fresh water tanks.  When I diverted the water into a cup and tasted it, it was wonderful.  Ain't technology amazing!

We followed our footsteps of last year’s preparation cruise and headed around the south end of Bainbridge Island and up into Liberty Bay.  The weather was a little dodgy, but at least it wasn’t raining.  It took us a couple of tries to get ourselves docked after getting kicked out of the first place we tried, but we were finally able to step off the boat and wander around Paulsbo for a while.  When we made our way back to the boat intending to head out into the bay for a little anchor practice, we found the winds had kicked up enough that getting out of the slip had me a little worried.  I pictured getting blown sideways in 25 kts wind with no flow over the rudder to give me any control.  It probably wouldn’t have been a problem, but the crew was happy to wait it out and when the winds finally gave us a lull, we jumped at the dock lines and charged out of there.

We were glad we did.  Even with the winds snorting again, it is always more quiet in an anchorage than it is in a marina.  It is also the case that boat naturally points its bow into the wind when at anchor, so the cockpit stays relatively dry behind the dodger.  That’s not the case when tied to a dock.  So it was a good decision.  The anchoring was well done by the crew and we enjoyed a terrific meal before settling off to sleep with the weather raging around us.

The following morning we pushed out early to make slack water in Agate Passage, so we were back in town relatively early.

All in all it was a very successful weekend.  We learned a few things and added items to our shopping lists that will be helpful to have when we make our departure next Sunday morning.

Quijote Crew makes their way home through the Ballard locks

A pot of gold in Paulsbo?