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Chapter 2—Familiar Waters
West Point Buoy--seals sleeping in. Goodbye Seattle! [Unknown Lens, Unknown Exposure, Fuji Velvia] I get up early and we depart Elliott Bay Marina at Seattle at 4.30AM to catch the ebb tide. Amy sleeps while we buck into about a 10 knot northerly. The barometer is at 1033 millibars (30.50 in) and the sky is overcast. I have already had a few problems. It appears that one propane tank is empty. This is funny, considering I just filled them both a few months back. Perhaps I burned more propane off than I thought when I “superheated” the boat during our Valetines Cruise last winter. In addition, I have been having problems with the anti-siphon value on the head. I thought I had it fixed, but a small amount of water siphoned in last night. It appears my repair job did not work. The end result is that the morning turns out to be a little busier than I would have hoped, but not too bad overall. Have the water boiling for the coffee now.
By 8.00AM we are really rolling with the ebb, sometimes doing 8 knots over the bottom. I figure that this should be about as fast as we get going for today. Slack water is around 9.30AM. Per the VHF weather forecast, our straits crossing should be in about 15 knots of wind from the west. I hope that we will be able to sail.
Amy gets up at about 10AM as the tide starts to turn against us. I am hoping we don’t have a battle on our hands trying to get out of Admiralty Inlet with opposing tide and wind. The weather is starting to get nice and the early morning overcast is gone. Amy makes us a breakfast of bagels and bananas and starts reading People magazine out loud for me. Looking north at Point No Point. [80-200mm, F5.6, 1/200sec, Kodak RG 100]
We battle the current past Marrowstone Island averaging about 3 knots over the bottom. In the north section of Puget Sound , the currents are greatest near Admiralty Inlet. When you are headed north from Seattle, you don’t get really get devastating or helpful currents until you get near Marrowstone Island. From that point northward, the currents are quite strong. I have found the current particularly strong near Bush Point , Marrowstone Point and of course Point Wilson. I have seen very bad rip tides off Marrowstone Point when a south wind sets up against a flooding tide. The rips seem to develop pretty much exactly where the chart says they should—about half a mile due east of the point. You can also read about the scary experience we had in the rip tide off Point Wilson in my Around Vancouver Island story. This year it looks like it is going to be a long haul out of Admiralty Inlet. Amy and I start doing crosswords together.
Finally at about 11:30AM we crawl past Point Wilson. The flood is running now at 3.2 knots, making for very slow going. There is not much wind and it looks like it is going to be a beautiful day. The wind continues to ease. I still hope it picks up a bit so we can sail across the straits. Amy is putting on shorts. Conditions are significantly better than when rounding Point Wilson on our way home from Barkley Sound in 1996.
By 12.30PM we have finally escaped Admiralty Inlet. We are still fighting the flood, but it is less severe now and we are able to make better time. Admiralty Inlet is like a big funnel sucking water out of the Straits of Juan de Fuca and into Puget Sound and we are finally clawing free. It has turned into a beautiful day. The Straits of Juan de Fuca are like glass and it is about 70F (21.1C). There are just a few small rollers coming in from the west. Amy just plucked my eyebrows. This is a first for me. I felt like a garden having all of its weeds pulled. I am now sporting a more “clean-cut” look. Straits of Juan de Fuca--Glass Calm. Cape George & the Olympic Peninsula in the distant background. [20mm, Unknown Exposure, Kodak RG 100]
We end up having a beautiful crossing. There is no sailing to be had, but one cannot complain. We eat a delicious lunch consisting of grapes and cheese and crackers; one of our more healthy lunches. I polish the binnacle while Amy reads Elle Magazine. On our way through one of the shipping lanes, we decrease speed for about 10 minutes to avoid a collision with an oil tanker outbound out of Anacortes. The tanker has a tug tagging along behind it. This entire scene sparks my curiosity and I end up researching it a bit when we get home. If you want more information, read my appendix on Oil Tankers in the Straits of Juan de Fuca.
As we continue on towards San Juan Island we see a lot of whale watchers. The whales like to play along the south side of San Juan Island—particularly near Lime Kilm Point. We hope to see a whale or two, but don’t. We enter Roche Harbor through Mosquito Pass. In the last decade they have really upgraded the navigation aids in this passage. When I used to come through this same passage with my family in the '70s and '80s we inevitably would end up nearly running on a few rocks. We see a Cape George 36 foot (11.0M) cutter near the end of Mosquito Pass and wave to each other. As we enter Roche, we ponder continuing on to Sydney or Bedwell, British Columbia. It is 6.30PM and we have had a pretty long day. We decide to stay in Roche for the night. Mosquito Pass, looking south. Olympic Moutain range in background. [80-200mm, Unknown Exposure, Kodak RG 100]
As normal, we have an excellent time at Roche. We go up to the bar and have drinks and appetizers. The homemade chips were great, but the salsa was lousy (Amy thought it was Pace). Afterwards, we head back to the boat and watch colors. For those who are unfamiliar with this, it is a long-standing Roche Harbor tradition. Precisely at sunset, all operations in the resort shutdown and a ceremony for the lowering of the flags begins. The ceremony ends with a pretty cool canon shot (blanks only!) that reverberates around the harbor. Boaters honk their horns and sound their sirens. Pretty cheesy, but always entertaining. That night Amy and I sleep like rocks.
The next morning we get up, grab a latte and are gone by 7:30AM. We can’t find a wharfmaster or dockperson to pay, so we do what my uncle calls “docking-and-dashing”. Well, not exactly. We dashed, but left the staff at Roche a note to bill us at home, which they later did. God knows we wouldn’t want to be blacklisted at Roche—we go there pretty much every year.
We depart Roche sucking our coffees, enjoying a beautiful morning. As we leave the harbor and turn the Patience’s bowsprit northwards, we catch the last of the ebb and rock out of Speiden Channel at 9 – 11 knots. Maximum speed over ground was 12.2 knots. Currents within the San Juans and Gulf Islands are strong and confusing. You can be headed down one side of an island and have the current with you, then reach another island and have it right on your head. Today, Limestone Point shows current of 3.5 knots—certainly non-trivial. Roche Harbor Resort. Hotel De Haro to right. Bar & Restaurant to left. [Probably 20mm, Unknown Exposure, Kodak RG 100]
It looks like another scorcher. Definitely shorts and T-shirts weather. We have a breakfast of bagels. Today we are basically going to transit the entire Canadian Gulf Islands. The Gulf Islands are an archipelago of islands between the Straits of Georgia and Vancouver Island. Many of the islands are very long and narrow and oriented in a NW to SE direction. Many people spend weeks and weeks exploring these beautiful islands, but Amy and I have to rush through them in a day. As we cruise past beautiful harbors like Montague it is very hard to resist the temptation of stopping. However, we have a plan and a schedule. We push on. We are shooting for a Dodd Narrows slack at 3.00PM. To “escape” the Gulf Islands and continue east or north, you are required to transit one of several passages. All of these passages are subject to heavy currents as water rushes in or out from the Straits of Georgia to fill or empty the waters around the Gulf Islands and San Juans. Dodd Narrows is the northernmost of the passages and has extremely fast currents.
As we continue north, the weather gets better and better. By mid-afternoon it is over 80F (26.7C) with only a very light breeze. The teak deck in the cockpit is so hot you can barely walk on it with bare feet. I do some miscellaneous boat maintenance. My friend Dan calls this SDOS—Skipper-Dick-Around-Syndrome. I scrape off more of the varnish I missed in 1996. Amy power-reads and polishes off no less than 6 magazines... her magazine inventory was supposed to last her all the way to Prince Rupert—oh well. When we start to get near Dodd Narrows, I start to think that Visual Navigation Suite has miss-calculated slack by an hour (thought we hadn’t got the daylight saving time thing right). I double check Visual Navigation Suite’s calculation with the paper tide and current tables and am relieved to find that it is right on. We cruise through Dodd Narrows at perfect slack and continue on to Nanaimo. B.C. Ferry 'Spirit of Vancouver Island' exiting Active Pass westbound. [80-200mm, Unknown Exposure, Kodak RG 100]
At Nanaimo we moor at the outer wharf at Cameron Island Marina. I clear Customs by calling their 1-800 number on the cell phone. Amy tells me that she should do all future customs phone calls.
“You sound too serious. They are going to think we are a drug smugglers of or something.” Hmmmm. I always thought you were supposed to be serious with the Customs. More on me being too serious later.
We are moored across from a beautiful green Westport 118’ called After Eight. Given the color and name, Amy and I conclude that she is somehow related to the similarly named dinner mint. I later find out this conclusion is incorrect. We feel slightly grungy as we watch about 10 people get off the After Eight decked out in George Armani suits. Oh well, at least we are comfortable.
Next begins what I would call a classic s/v Patience exercise in logistics. We will be leaving the boat at Nanaimo for the next week. We will go home to Seattle, work for a week, then come back up to Nanaimo and depart on the main portion of our trip. Our initial plan had been to fly home and back on a Kenmore Air floatplane. Unfortunately this ends up being prohibitively expensive. Instead, we end up renting a car in Nanaimo, and driving the rental car back to Seattle. The trip back to Seattle involves a two and a half-hour ferry ride, a three-hour car drive, and one border crossing. We arrive home in Seattle at about 2:00AM Monday morning. What follows is a very long workweek for both of us. We keep the rental car during the week and then drive back up to Nanaimo the following Friday. We are finally ready to start our trip.






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Adventures in the Charlottes was written by Tim Whelan.
All pictures and text ©Tim Whelan 1998-1999.
For useage, please see my copyright notice.