We Are Home

Hope Island, will be one of our six hour cruises next year

I'm not sure what home means, or where home IS. Whatever it means, I suppose we are there now.  For three months this summer we woke up each morning trying to remember exactly where we were.... presuming we were some place to the north of Olympia.  First we bumped around Puget Sound for way too many weeks, then we visited various islands in the San Juans, then we crossed the border into Canada and gunkholed our way up the inside of Vancouver Island.

106 days out, we anchored 60 times, many of those stern ties in steep terrain. We grabbed free reciprocal moorage 26 times thanks to our memberships in the South Sound Sailing Society and the UW Sailing club.  Our Washington State Park pass netted us 22 mooring balls or docks, well worth its purchase price.  Of course we used some diesel, by cruising in the no-wind summertime bliss of the Pacific Northwest, but we did have some sailing time.  The key there is to get into open water like the Strait of Georgia or the Strait of Juan de Fuca or to take advantage of the inflow daytime wind up fjords.

Ada and Rick on Clara June - Mystic Journeys

We ate lots of crab.  Also harvested shrimp and oysters.  Provisioning was not a problem as there are big stores in the big towns and little stores in the little towns and we were quite pleased with the variety and quality of foods in Canada.  We were pleased as well with the welcoming attitude of the Canadians.  It seemed to us that the default attitude in Canada was to just be nice... always. (Maybe they felt sorry for us given our current political situation...)


Back on G dock at Swantown Marina in Olympia we have some projects (always projects) to take care of before we leave for sunny California for a month at the tomato farm.  On our return October 30, Obrador, a band Connie played in for many years, has a show at the Rhythm and Rye that will be lots of fun. (It's a costume party!)  Come November we'll move into Connie's rental house so that this winter we will have a warm, dry place to stay, unlike last winter when we struggled with rain, rain, and freezing temperatures.

Harbor Days this weekend in Budd Bay out to watch the tug boat races with friends.

We've started the process of taking on the charter business, Mystic Journeys, from Rick and Ada, doing ride-along crewing with them to see how they manage their charters. This winter we'll be spiffing up old Traveler and morphing the Mystic Journeys web site to accommodate the change in owners, crew, and boat.

The other day we took out five friends for a three hour cruise on Budd Bay to watch the tug boat races.  From that experience I'm convinced our sailboat Traveler will do just fine running 6-Pack charters out of Olympia. There is plenty of room up deck, in the cockpit, and down below in the cabin.  She's a sea kindly, stable vessel who loves to have fun!

Come next spring we'll be offering skippered charters, two, three, four, and six hour cruises here in Budd Bay as well as overnight and multi-day trips. We'll offer dinner cruises, music cruises, kid's cruises, wine/cheese paring sunset cocktail hours, and just about any kind of cruise you can dream up. Nothing too kinky, though.  If our experience is anything like what Rick and Ada have been doing, we'll be jam packed during the months of July and August.

Like as not, our hair-raising adventures of these past years will probably mellow out somewhat over the next few seasons.  But we'll do our best to catch the boat on fire, run aground, sink her, run into nefarious characters, get ripped off, break the law, starve, feast, and break stuff left and right.  Connie will continue to play music when she can and I'll be immersed in boat and house projects.  Gosh darn, it's a good life.