Crossing the Equator and Exploring Bali

We arrived in Bali four days ago, the end of the second leg of the trip from Langkawi to Cairns.  This leg was 1018 miles from Nongsa, and it took us 7 days and 23 hours.  Internet service here is expensive and slow and so I will not be sending any photos at this point. 

Some highlights of the trip:

It was absolutely magic arriving in Bali this morning literally at first light at 5:00 am.  I was on watch and was startled to see a swarm of small craft come flooding out from the shore.  They were slender pirogues with double bamboo outriggers, powered by brightly colored “crab claw” sails lashed onto a pair of bamboo poles. 

They whizzed across the water behind and ahead of us as they headed out to fish.  Once at their favorite spots, they were able to literally stop the boats dead with the sails flying like colored flags in the wind.  We motored down the east side of the island over the next few hours to Denpasar, encountering fleet after fleet…a couple of hours later, they all headed back in, and by 7 am there was not a single one left on the water.

Before leaving Nongsa, we had bent on the new mainsail, and installed the battens from the old mainsail.  Old of them had cracked and a neighboring cruiser had given us a spare.  This was fortunate since the Velcro tab system that the sail maker had used to enclose the battens was not very strong and the first time we needed to reef after leaving Nongsa, the Velcro yielded and two battens got flicked out, probably spearing some unfortunate fish on their way to the bottom.  After a review of the chart, we pulled over to the nearest likely anchorage, arriving at 3 a.m. and waited until morning to (a) install the spare batten, leaving one pocket empty and (b) sew all of the pockets closed. 

When we woke up we discovered that we were surrounded by dozens of bamboo structures – each one was a platform on stilts about 12 feet above the water, with a generator, several ice chests and a bamboo hut on the top.  These had been brightly lit at night by squid fishermen, who use the lights to attract squid to the nets strung beneath the platform. 

 As we worked on the sail, one of the fishermen came out in his brightly colored wooden boat to watch us.  We exchanged a few words and more in sign language before he took a couple of photos of us with his cell phone (!!) and buzzed away. 

Where are Kevin Costner and Tina Turner now?

We had not installed the new genoa in Nongsa, hoping to be able to get a few more miles from the old one, but the top seam on it also yielded in one of our brief opportunities to sail, and so we motor sailed the rest of the way with the main in various stages of reefing depending on conditions. 

We had very balmy weather for this entire leg, no adrenalin rushes like our adventure in the Malacca Strait.  We motor sailed most of the way, since the wind always seemed to be on the nose or there was too little to sail, although we did have several opportunities to take in and shake out the second and third reefs. Along the way we encountered rusty ferries, brightly colored fishing boats, and a few oil rigs, providing an interesting study in contrasts.  

We had fishing lines strung out the stern most of the time, and we caught more bonito than we could eat, as well as a Spanish mackerel and a Trevally.

We have been pleased and impressed at how well the boat, the engine and the autopilot have handled the various conditions.  We feel like we have mastered most of the electronics on the boat – we are VERY MUCH appreciating the AIS!  Bill managed to troubleshoot and rewire the Raymarine plotter so that it now works ALL the time, not just when the engine is running.

The entrance to Bali was a bit disappointing – the entry to the harbor is a bit tight, but clogged with tugs, working fish boats and tour boats blaring loud music.  On top of that, the jet skis and parasailors whip in and out, a bit disconcerting when you are trying to pick your way into an unfamiliar harbor. 

Bali harbor

Our main reason for the stop here was to refuel, bend on the genoa and fix (hopefully for once and for all) the battens in the mainsail…once again living the adage that cruising is working on your boat in exotic locations.  Being able to improvise is critical, since there is no West Marine around the corner.  Hooking up to the electrical panel in the marina was an adventure in hot wiring - this panel would give and inspector plenty to write up in the US.

Bali marina electrical panel

We got the genoa bent on the day we arrived and found a local worker who was happy to find us a piece of PVC pipe the next day.  We boiled and flattened one end to fit into the batten pocket and sewed the other end closed, and got the engine serviced – new filters, V-belt and oil.  We emptied all the jerry cans into the fuel tank in preparation for the fuel barge, which came alongside and transferred 480 liters of fuel into our jerry cans.  WHEW!

Fueling up in Bali

We tried to check out on the 15^th, but found that it was a national holiday, so we went provisioning.  Knowing little about the city we asked the cab driver for a recommendation to provision and he took us to the Bali version of a supermarket: Lottemart.  What fun browsing the aisles and deciphering the labels (few of which were in English) to find sugar and flour.  The produce section had all kinds of tropical fruit: mangosteen, mangoes, tiny pineapples, chayote, guava, soursop, starfruit and others I had never seen. 

With the boat stocked, the next day we rented a motorcycle for $10 and took off into the interior of Bali.  What an adventure!  Indonesia is by no means a third world country – the cities are teeming with small, clean, new cars, motorbikes and buses that thread their way seamlessly and without much use of horns, through the narrow streets.  We were hardly out of town when we were diverted to the side of the road for a routine traffic stop, along with every other motorbike rider.  Like many of the others, Bill had no international license and we were given the choice of going to court and paying a Rp 1,000,000 fine, or paying right there for a mere Rp 250,000.  I should mention that $1=Rp 11000, so after forking over a wad of cash the equivalent of $23 we were on our way.

The rest of our drive was a visual delight.  In Bali, streets are lined with intricately carved stone walls, stupas and shrines in the flowing and flowery Hindu tradition, Bhuddas, bodhisattvas and images of Hindu gods and goddesses.  Outside the town, we drove past terraces of rice fields where people were planting, threshing and plowing.  Even the banks and gas stations were built in traditional style with tile rooks and carved stone walls.  We marveled at the constant unfolding of visual treats.

Each time we stopped, a motorbike would pull up alongside us to ask where we were from and where we were going – this was very welcome as the lack of signs meant that we were often happy to have confirmation of our direction.  An hour into our ride, one such meeting turned into an invitation to visit a ecological preserve where they cultivated Bail coffee and offered tourists a real taste treat.  In addition to regular coffee, you could sample coffee that had been ‘processed’ in the digestive tract of civets, mongoose-like cats that looked singularly unfriendly in their cages.  I guess I would not be too friendly if I was expected to live on coffee beans either.

Cat-poo-cino - turd at the top, turd-freed beans on the bottom

Cat-poo-cino processor

They showed us the turds, lumpy with undigested beans, which are then put through the ‘standard sanitation and hygiene process’ before roasting and grinding and selling them.  We sampled this ‘cat-poo-cino’ (as they called it) and found that, as advertised, it was much smoother and richer than the Bali coffee.

From there we motored into Ubud and explored the local market, and tried, unsuccessfully, to get money from two ATMs before hitting the jackpot at the third one.  Flush with Rp. 500,000 ($45) we could afford lunch at a stall in the town square: rice and veggies on a paper-lined bamboo tray, topped with juicy pork sliced right off the carcass of a whole suckling pig.  We ran up a big tab with two vanilla ice teas each to wash it down, and the total bill came to Rp 40,000 – less than $3.50.

Then we had to find our way back, but being sailors it was easy to just keep the sun to our right and trust that we would end up headed to Denpasar.  We had to be back in time to check out, an administrative feat that involves stopping at 5 different offices, all in different buildings, none of which are labeled in English, to clear out of the port.  The harbormaster, customs, quarantine, immigration, even the Indonesian Navy all needed to see the boat papers, have us fill out forms with carbon paper and get copies of our cruising permit before signing and stamping all of our copies very officially.   It took us two hours and we barely made it before the offices were all ‘tutup’ (closed).

We leave today for Thursday Island, Australia, which we expect to take 12-14 days.  We are hoping to be able to sail, but since we are still in the tail end of the SE trades, we expect to do a fair bit of motoring, and so, if we run low on diesel, we will check into Dili in East Timor for fuel.

Transitting the Malacca Strait to arrive in Indonesia

Outside Langkawi Marina in Malaysia

We are now in Nongsa, Indonesia, just across the Malacca Strait from Singapore.   We left Langkawi under cloudy skies at 8 in the morning and have sailed or motor-sailed most of the way.  As this is a delivery, we are not stopping in every interesting nook, but moving the boat to Cairns as expeditiously as possible; this means that when the winds are light or adverse, we motor. 

We are checking into Indonesia here as a formality, which will allow us to stop in other places in Indonesia if necessary for supplies or repairs.   We will check out in Bali and then go on to Thursday Island to check into Australia.

Our passage to Indonesia was relatively uneventful (at least until the last day…more on that later).  The boat, being a former charter boat, is quite spacious, but lacks the tools and spares and manuals that our own cruising boats would have.  Bill did a very good job of anticipating tools and parts that would be necessary, so we at least have the basics.  So, when issues crop up, we need to be resourceful, which is part of what makes cruising so interesting.  

In the anchorage outside Langkawi

We moved out of the marina and into the anchorage on Saturday, giving us a chance to test the anchor, stow dockside equipment like fenders and lines and get our heads into living aboard.   Sunday morning we were out fairly early and, on raising sails, were confronted with the first of many issues:  the mainsail, which we knew to be well used, had already developed a tear near the clew patch.  Fortunately, the boat’s owner had already purchased new sails, which were aboard, so we decided to baby the old one to Nongsa, reefing once if needed.  

Then the technology issues started to crop up: the chart plotter, newly installed by Bill himself, quit working and refused to do more than flicker ‘Raymarine” before fading into black.   Not to be outdone, Bill’s navigation computer and handheld GPS that both kept shutting down for no apparent reason and his iPod that refused to shuffle.  At the same time, we were both learning the logic and operation of the AIS system and chart plotter’ touch screen system.  We needed a boat geek and we needed one badly!

It was almost a relief when we heard the thwap-thwap-thwap of a line caught in the prop, a problem that we knew how to solve!  Bill was overboard with mask and fins and we were back underway in just a few minutes.

First days are like this, though, so we started night watches with a long list of things to address at first light. 

Monday morning found Bill at work with the electrical tape, hotwiring the computer and the GPS to 12V circuits to bypass the need for a 12V plug and socket.  Problem solved.  This also freed up the two 12V sockets for iPod charging, important companions for night watches.  The chart plotter started to behave, so we crossed that off the list, and with some persistence I got Bill’s iPod to shuffle.   The sail continued to split, so we took in a reef, which pulled the tear into the bunt, and motored on down the Strait.

Two of the thousands of boats we passed in the Malacca Strait

The Malacca strait is a critical link in world shipping.   Like the Panama Canal, the Strait of Gibraltar, the Suez Canal and the Torres Strait, it is a narrow and shallow body of water on the shortest shipping route round the world.  Ships of all shapes and sizes, laden with oil, cars, coal and containers funnel into it and thread their way north and south…an incessant parade of behemoths.  

We motor along, just outside the shipping lanes, and watch them all warily on our AIS receiver, correlating the "targets" we see there with the vessels we see on the water.  ‘

Because the boat has an AIS transponder, other ships can also see us on AIS. This is very reassuring at night when all you can see is a profusion of red, green and white lights.  At one point, the AIS showed 160 ‘targets’ within a 6 mile radius!  And, outside the shipping lanes, we need to watch for the brightly painted Malaysian, and then Indonesian, fishing boats

Malaysian fishing boat

On Tuesday we finally figured out that the chart plotter would only work if the engine was on, so we will need to do some testing to determine if the issue is in the chart plotter itself or in the wiring to it.  But at least we had a reliable chart plotter.   So there we were, motor-sailing down the Malacca Strait with the wind just off our nose and feeling like we had pretty much solved all of the technology issues, when Bill’s computer went dark.  This time it refused to restart, letting us know that we needed to insert the setup disk…which of course he did not have with him.  Now we seriously needed that boat geek.

And then the uneventful portion of the passage ended.  I turned the watch over to Bill at 2:30am on Wed a.m. and woke up a couple of hours later to a strange motion that reminded me of slalom skiing.  Disoriented, I poked my head out to find a totally different scene than I had left.  When I went below, we were motor-sailing with two reefs in the main, barely making 5 knots, nearly head to wind, in relatively calm seas.  Now we were surfing down huge waves at 10 knots in pitch dark and winds that approached 40 knots…all while the stream of behemoths continued just a mile away.  We were in a ‘sumatra,’ a form of squall unique to the Malacca strait.  I put on my foul weather gear (it was raining buckets) and together we managed to strike the main, put out a bit of headsail and get the boat speed down to a mere 8 knots.   Taking down the main, we could see that it was completely shredded, the luff having separated from the body of the sail in the top third,

An hour later, the drama was over.  And by sunrise, we were motoring past Singapore under cloudy skies and lightening rain.  We pulled into Nongsa marina at 2pm, and hoisted the sail for pictures of the damage.  Bill ran into some sailing friends on the dock – the sailing community is a small one and it is typical to run into someone you have met in another port.  So the first task is to find out how to get groceries, if the water is potable, where to get parts that you have discovered that you need, etc.  All of that usually happens over a beer along with a few sailing stories.

Yesterday’s job was bending on the new sail.  We had lost a batten when the old one blew out, but another sailing acquaintance just one slip over happened to have a supply and gave us one.   Once again, there we were: working on our boat in an exotic location – the definition of ‘cruising.’

Preparing for Departure in Langkawi

Arrived in Langkawi via Taipet and Kualla Lumpur.  Taipei airport was very spare and practical, decorated with bright colors, orchid displays and lots of Japanese-inspired advertising.  "Hello Kitty" persists as a theme, 30 years after I first saw it in Japan, which is very interesting coming from the land of planned obsolescence and short attention spans.

It was interesting to see ‘prayer rooms’ located on each terminal, three small rooms designated for Christian, Muslim and Eastern.  I peeked into each one…the Christian one had an icon that was more eastern orthodox than Anglican; the eastern one had three images the looked vaguely Buddhist, hindu or Taoist.  And the Mulsim one had a big W on one wall, and a screen in the middle of the prayer carpeted floors with “women” stenciled into the floor on the side away from the door and ‘men’ stenciled on the near side floor.

View from Langkawi

On to Kuala Lumpur, where the only prayer room was Muslim, the dominant religen in Malaysia (also referred to by local westerners as ‘muslim lite.’  The Malysian women don’t wear the black burkas that sweep the floor and hide all but their eyes…those you see here belong to Saudis on vacation.  They wear bright head scarves secured with sparkling pins, and dress in jeans and long sleeves.  Even the swim garb covers all but hands, feet and face.

Local fishermen in a "longtail" skiff

Bill picked me up at the airport in a car he had rented for the week, and we spent the next day touring the island as we did reconnaissance of the various shops where we could do provisioning.  The next couple of days have been spent going from shop to shop, buying and stowing provisions and generally preparing the boat for the trip.

Monkeys all along the side of the road

Milliebella is a 43 foot Beneteau, owned by an Australian couple who is taking it out of charter and having us deliver it to Cairns.  Having checked out of immigration yesterday, we plan to move the boat to anchor tomorrow where we will practice hoisting sails and carrying out other sailing activities together to get our teamwork synchronized.  Then we plan to leave on Sunday, heading down the Strait of Malacca to check in at Nongsa Point in Indonesia.  We’ll sail down the Indonesian archipelago and check out at Bali before we transit the Torres Strait and turn right for the trip down the Australian coast to Cairns. 

The major challenges on this trip are not wind and wave (as in an ocean passage) but rather the shipping traffic (which we can see on AIS) and fishing boats (most of which are unlit).  As we will generally be going against the prevailing winds, we will be doing a lot of motoring, although we do hope to be able to sail a good portion of the time.  

Otherwise, I am acclimating to the heat, which is 20 degrees higher than what I left, and the humidity (about double).  I’m looking forward to being out of the marina, where we will have a bit more air over us, even as we cross the equator.

Impressions of Kuala Lumpur

It has been over 30 years since I was in Malaysia and the country is clearing thriving, if the airport is any indicator.  The airport seems to be a place where shopping takes priority over just about anything else, including efficient passageways...getting from the gate to the baggage claim required running a slalom through pricey kiosks and high end boutiques.

Malaysia is a muslim country, and most of the malaysian women cover their hair, but the black burka is rarely seen.  Here, the long skirts and headscarves are as brightly colored as the plumage of a tropical bird.  In contrast to the homogenous crowd in Taipei airport, Kuala Lumpur airport is a tossed salad of ethnicities...Malaysian, Chinese, Japanese, Indian/Pakistani, and a very few Caucasians.  Although I can't see it myself, I am sure my hair color stands out in this crowd from a distance.

Malaysia is quite conservative, it would appear, about certain things.  I was passing time reading the New York times and clicked on an article about Pope Francis' recent speech.  The article was blocked because it included the word "sex".  Interesting.

It has been a long day...shuttle to the airport at 9 pm, leave Seattle at 2 a.m., arrive Taipei 12 hours later, 4 hour layover, 4 hour flight to Kuala Lumpur, another 4 hour layover, and a 1 hr flight to Langkawi.  Fortunately I will be arriving there at dinner time, so it won't be long before I can get a good night of sleep!

What I did on my Summer Vacation 2013

Haida Heritage Center in Skidegate

Each year I say that this will be my last trip up the British Columbia coast.  And each year I discover new reasons to return.  This year, the reason was a visit to Haida Gwaii.

Haida Gwaii is the original name for the Queen Charlotte Islands, a collection of three relatively large islands and myriad smaller ones located approximately 100 miles west of the north coast of British Columbia.  The islands were originally settled by the Haida First Nations about 12000 years ago, and the remnants of their settlements are still visible today: slowly decaying totem poles, and moss-covered pits where longhouses once stood.

Sk'ang Gwaii on Anthony Island

 Rather than single hand this trip, I decided to take on crew.  Maryann and Mary, two other members from the South Sound Women Sailing Group signed up to do the northbound leg with me, while Joyce and Mike, two other fellow sailors signed on to bring the boat back south.

Because Mary could only take one month off, Maryann and I sailed from Port Hadlock Port McNeill, on the NE coast of Vancouver Island in June.  From McNeill Marynn returned to Olympia while I flew to Shanghai to meet my sister for a two-week tour of China (more on that later). In early July I returned to McNeill, where Mary and Maryann joined me to sail across Queen Charlotte Sound and up the East Coast of Haida Gwaii.  From there, Mary and Maryann would fly back to Olympia, and Mike and Joyce would help me bring the boat back down the east coast of Moresby Island and on down the West Coast of Vancouver Island.   That was the plan.

Prepping the boat in Hadlock

Because Haida Gwaii is so remote, I put a lot of thought into preparations.  I emptied and sorted all lockers, added a halyard for an inner foresail, and bought spares for anything I could think of.   I carted bags and boxes of grains, rice, canned goods and paper goods onto the boat, knowing that the provisions along the inside passage would be both scarce and expensive.  I lashed 2 jerry cans of diesel onto the shrouds to extend our range, and had the valves adjusted on the engine.  I took extraneous gear off the boat to make more room for crew and their gear. The plan was made…now all we needed to do was execute.

Sonrisa on Jedediah Island

Underway with dinghy in tow

We pulled away from Port Hadlock on June 2.  The one piece of equipment for which I had no backup was the autopilot, which gave up the ghost in the Strait of Juan de Fuca 6 hours later.  The only backup I had was the wind vane, an amazing invention that will steer the boat by the wind as long as the sails are up.  So, when we were sailing, we could let go of the tiller – otherwise, the two of us shared the steering all the way to Port McNeill.  In the meantime, when we had Internet, I researched replacement options and had a new autopilot sent to Mary to bring with her in July.

Lacy Falls in the Broughtons

The trip to McNeill was otherwise uneventful.  I have made this voyage many times and it was lovely to revisit favorite anchorages, and to discover yet new ones.  Because we had ample time on this leg, I had time to shakedown a few of the boat systems and do a few last minute adjustments.  We had lovely weather – warm and mostly dry – and the boat (minus the autopilot) gave us no trouble.

The trip to China was a fascinating diversion, worthy of a blog in itself.  My sister is a teacher in Fairfax County, VA, and had heard about another teacher, Chinese by birth, who led an annual tour to China that always got rave reviews.  Last fall, she asked me if I would be interested in going with her to share the experience and the room.  It sounded like a great opportunity and, as my summer plans took shape, I realized I could find a way to do it all by mooring the boat in McNeill.   In two weeks, we visited Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Guangzhou (birth village of our guide), Nanjing, Xi’an (site of the terra cotta warriors) and Beijing. We climbed the Great Wall, ate stir fry, visited the museum to the victims of the Rape of Nanking, ate stir fry, learned the many benefits of green tea, ate stir fry, watched silk worm cocoons being unwound, ate stir fry, tried to count the ten thousand warriors, ate stir fry, 

rode a bike around the top of a Ming dynasty city wall…and ate more stir fry.  Roni and I had a lot of fun sharing a room, pictures and observations.  We’re already taking about the next trip together.

Then I was back to Port McNeill, where I slept for 18 hours straight after the long flight from Beijing.  Mary and Maryann arrived the next day with the autopilot and took off to tour McNeill while I installed it.  After a day to provision and unpack, we took off.  After two nights heading to the north end of Vancouver Island, we set out to cross Queen Charlotte Sound with a forecast of southerly winds.  Unfortunately, the southerlies followed a few days of northerlies, and the seas were steep and confused.  Just a few hours out, my two crew were both suffering from ‘mal de mer,’   By early afternoon, 5 hours into an expected 24 hour crossing, when it became clear that they would not be able to stand a night watch, I turned on the engine and headed for the mainland coast to wait for better conditions.  Enroute, the new autopilot failed as the ram unscrewed itself from the housing. 

Morning calms

By the time we arrived at our anchorage, the seas and the seasickness had subsided, and the next day we did a short leg north on the mainland.  Two days later we made a second attempt, when the seas were so calm that we had to motor virtually all the way across Hecate Strait, arriving in Rose Harbor just 24 hours later.  

Multi-colored batstars in Burnaby Narrows

From Rose Harbor, we began working our way up the coast with a first stop at Sk’ang Gwaii on Anthony Island, a World Heritage site known for the aging totems and longhouse sites.  The Haida now have ‘watchmen’ stationed at the important sites who welcome visitors and provide a very professional and informative guided tour of the artifacts. 

 

It took us about 2 weeks to work our way up the coast, anchoring out each night.  We had some great sailing and wildlife viewing, including eagles, loons, sand hill cranes, black bear, orca and humpback whales.  We fished for rockfish, and caught two salmon as well as a couple of dogfish.  We visited 5 native village sites and were invited to do a potluck dinner with the watchman and watchwoman in Tanu. 

Unfinished pole on the ground in Windy Bay

We were especially privileged to see the new totem pole in Windy Bay on the ground.  Windy Bay was the scene of a historic standoff between members of the Haida Band and the logging industry in the mid 1980’s a standoff which resulted in the setting aside of much of Moresby Island as a preserve, known as Gwaii Hanaas (Beautiful Islands).  The totem pole was due to be raised on August 15, and it arrived by boat in Windy Bay the day before we did.  We could feel the anticipation and pride as we spoke to people about it, since this was the first pole to be raised in the preserve in 130 years. 

Shelf fungus

Because the preserve has not been logged for 20 years, the area is incredibly pristine and unspoiled.  It is not as rugged and wild as Alaska, but has a more serene beauty to it.  We saw few boats over those two weeks, as the area is visited by only 1500 or so people per season – most of those  being kayakers or people coming in on tour boats from Sandspit.

Sandspit Marina

After a couple of weeks working our way north, we arrived in Sandspit in early August.  Since we still had a few days before Mary and Maryann had to leave, we did a short side trip through the Skidegate Channel, a narrow, shallow, 5 mile long passage between Graham and Moresby Islands.  It is well marked with aids to navigation, but still a bit nerve-wracking to see the depth sounder saying 10, 11, 12 feet.

On our return, Mary and Maryann headed home while I changed the oil and prepared for Joyce and Mike’s arrival.  Mike arrived first, and the two of us rented a car and toured Graham Island, 

Sunset in Masset

Haida dance to open the music festival

stopping for 3 days at the Edge of the World Music Festival, an annual event in Tlell.  It is a low-key but festive affair, attended mostly by locals.  Mike and I too a hula hoop workshop - and I won a hula hoop...and found a place to stow it suspended from the V-berth ceiling.  We met a very fun couple from Alberta who were touring Graham Island on their bicycles.  The four of us had dinner after the festival at a local restaurant where the only other table of diners happened to be Justin Trudeau and his family (the son of Pierre and Margaret and the heir-apparent to the liberal party in Canada.

Once Joyce arrived, we all went to the Haida Heritage Center on August 15, where we watched the live streaming of the pole raising in Windy Bay with 400 other locals. 

Raised pole at Windy Bay

What a privilege that was!  We learned so much about Haida art and culture on this trip, and were constantly impressed by the generosity and pride of the Haida we met.  Joyce and Mike are sailboat racers, like me, and the three of us had a lot of fun sailing back down the coast, analyzing trim and debating tactics.  We visited some of the same places and some anchorages I had not visited on the way up – we were able to see the pole upright at last when we went to Windy Bay.

A few other observations and interesting events:  For reasons I don’t understand, the water in the Queen Charlottes is 10-15 degrees warmer than in Puget Sound…warm enough to swim in, in fact.  I know that after making two unplanned entries: one time to chip barnacles off of the depth sounder and the second time to unwrap the dinghy painter from the prop.  Both times I was pleasantly surprised to find the water to be refreshing, but not at all chilly. 

And then the weather turned.  All the way up Mary and Maryann and I had fair and warm weather – sunny, a bit breezy, and northwest winds - the typical summer pattern.  But on the way down the southerlies set in, along with wetter weather and higher winds.  In some anchorages we encountered williwaws of 35-40 knots at night, and on two occasions I put out 275 feet of rode.   

Fortunately it always seemed to clear as we left the anchorage so we had dry and pleasant days…until we arrived in Rose Harbor after a boisterous sail.  The winds picked up to 40 knots and it rained in buckets as we hung on the mooring.  It was so bad that even the fishing boats came in to hunker down, and the tour boats cancelled trips to Sk’ang Gwaii.  The good part of that was that we were able to completely fill one of the water tanks from the dinghy, obviating a trip to a water buoy.

Off the Queen Charlotte Strait on the mainland

Morning reflections

Day after day we listened to the forecast and after 3 nights, when it had finally eased, the forecast was for 5 more days of southerlies.  Continuing along the west coast of Vancouver Island in those conditions would not have been fun – and I could not guarantee to Joyce and Mike that we would get home when they needed to.  So we opted for plan B, crossing to Shearwater and heading south along the Sunshine Coast. 

Crossing Hecate Strait was lovely – we were able to sail for the first 18 hours and then had to motor for another 8.   After a night in Shearwater, we headed down the mainland coast under steadily dryer weather.  The sun came back out, the humpbacks visited in profusion, and we explored some new anchorages that were quite charming.  Fog set in from time to time - rounding Cape Caution we were in and out of patches - but in general the visibility was good.

Small slide in the Queen Charlottes

In the Broughtons we witnessed the fallout from the rain event: a debris field of logs and shredded timber that stretched from Tribune Channel to Johnstone Strait.  It turned out that there had been a massive landslide in Knight Inlet, on a scale that locals had never seen before.  This photo here is of a small slide in Haida Gwaii, but provides some idea of the devastation that can result.  The topsoil layer is only inches thin and the trees really are just hanging on by their fingernails.

Wind vane in action

All in all, our trip south was very pleasant.  Fortunately, we had received a replacement ram for the autopilot from Raymarine while we were in Sandspit, and it functioned flawlessly when we had to motor for lack of wind.  

 When there was wind, we steered ourselves or used the wind vane, which also served us very well.

All told, I was gone for almost 4 months.  I was very pleased with the boat's performance – other than the autopilot, we had no issues.  The engine functioned flawlessly and the boat was easy to balance under sail.  We got some good practice with reefing and anchoring, and even had a day or two to play with the drifter reacher.   

Now my plan is to put the boat on the hard for the winter and take off for warmer climes…I leave on Sunday for Malaysia, from where I will help deliver a boat to Cairns. 

Westward Bound

In the airport at 12:51 a.m. waiting for the flight to Taipei - followed by a 3 hour layover and a flight to Kuala Lumpur...followed by another 3 hour layover and a flight to Langkawi...hopefully to be followed by many hours of SLEEP. 

The last week has been a whirlwind of activity - putting the boat in winter storage, catching up with friends, going through my mail...hard to believe that just a few weeks ago we were sitting in Rose Harbor in 40 knot gusts and pouring rain!