Our 2.5 month shakedown cruise was everything it needed to be. We learned stuff (refill your propane tanks when you have a chance). We broke stuff (alternator, hatches, Dylan’s piggy bank). We figured out what we needed (a functioning fridge). We figured out what we didn’t need that we thought we did (clothes).
The examples could obviously take up pages, but instead I thought I might give you a glimpse of what we’ve spent the last week and a half doing, and you, too, can do the math and figure out how all of this got done in a 13-day time period. Let’s just say there were A LOT of people involved: Tom, me, two sets of grandparents, one handy friend, one rigger, one canvas maker, three boat engine and electronics experts, and who knows how many SSB experts at ICOM in Kirkland who managed to get our radio fixed and back to us despite being backed up a month in orders. A herculean effort by all. We’re tired.
But we did it by making a lot of lists, being really task-focused, prioritizing and de-prioritizing as necessary, working as a team, and – um – begging. Never underestimate the power of begging. Here’s what we’ve accomplished in the time we didn’t have (bear with me, this is a good list):
- Replaced one toilet and one associated pipe so that the old toilet doesn’t keep trying to sink the boat or drive us away with grossness.
- Replaced the engine starter, which worked fine for the whole trip until we got home.
- Replaced the fridge condenser motor and associated electronics, which apparently requires exotic certifications that we don’t have. But we must have been successful because we have cold beer, and the ozone is still in tact.
- Serviced our sea strainer so that the next time we suck in a jellyfish (like we did in President’s Channel), we can get it out by hand.
- Tried to install our used SSB radio, which – turns out – didn’t work, so we sent it down to ICOM, who graciously prioritized our rush order.
- Ordered a back-up short wave radio in case that one didn’t make it back in time.
- Replaced the engine’s impeller again.
- Replaced the generator’s impeller, with paid help, a whole lot of swearing, and a tool that nobody had.
- Fixed two hatches, one of which had been torn off by a dock line on the first day of our voyage and hung precariously for an hour before we finally noticed and rescued it!
- Added three more anchors to feed Tom’s obsession with anchors. We now have a total of 5, which Tom says isn’t as bad as it could be.
- Installed a life raft, because, well, yeah.
- Re-tuned both masts of the rig.
- Had a crew meeting, disrupted by 4 tired, crazy kids who couldn’t care less about waypoints, watch schedules, and tethers.
- Ordered and received solar panels, but installation got de-prioritized. The solar panels get to make the trip south on top of the RV instead.
- Replaced a 30-amp breaker.
- Fixed two bilge pump float switches, which are located deep underneath the engine in a space only a small stick can get into.
- Tried unsuccessfully to get our paddle wheel connected to our chart plotter data. Again.
- Fixed our radar so that the heading isn’t 10 degrees off of straight-forward.
- Had canvas covers made so that the Mexican sun doesn’t toast us.
- Installed hatches so we can access more lazarette locker space.
- Mounted the dinghy so it can’t get swamped by ocean waves.
- Did oil changes for both engines.
- Changed all navigation lights to LED.
- Made and installed lee-cloths on three of our berths so people don’t fall out of bed.
- Purged the whole boat of unnecessary things (God, did that feel good).
- Did about 10 loads of laundry.
- Put together the provisioning puzzle of how to feed 5 men (all tall and hungry) over the course of 9 days.
- Did massive shopping trips to Costco, Fred Meyer, and the Commissary to provision for the coast trip.
- Did a lot of cooking and freezing.
- Loaded all of it into nooks and crannies on the boat.
- Got a new foam mattress cut for our extra berth.
- Reorganized the boat.
- Vacuumed and cleaned the boat.
- Dealt with all of the documentation hassles: changing our mailing address, prepping documents for Mexico, etc.
- Attempted (unsuccessfully so far) to finish videos of the Broughtons and Desolation Sound.
- Threw a birthday party for Dylan.
- Hung out with as many friends as we could possibly see.
- Went for one very satisfying swim in Whistle Lake.
- Kept our kids alive (and got their hair cut!), if not fully entertained.
- And made 4 dozen cookies, because calories.
Anybody else tired just reading this? I don’t really have any good pictures of all of this, because, well, did you read the list?
Tom’s ready to head down the coast in the boat. The kids and I are ready to head down the coast in my parents’ RV. The cat just wants attention, love, and food, regardless of how she gets down the coast. We’re tired of spending money. And we’re all ready for that moment when we’re back out there again. When we’re able to just BE again rather than DO. When the to-do list isn’t creeping into your dreams and time doesn’t need to be invented from nothing.
“Time did not exist; or if it did it did not matter, and perhaps it was not always sunny.” M. Wylie Blanchet starts her iconic memoir of sailing the British Columbia inlets in the 1920’s and 30’s with her five children. “Standing in the Present, on the highest point of the curve, you can look back and see the Past, or forward and see the future, all in the same instant.”
Following this curve, I see the summer memories pass behind us – watching whales breach and sea otters play, swimming in chilly waters, struggling to get our sea legs, planning and navigating, scrambling over rocky shores, running from biting flies, fishing and crabbing, dealing with whiny toddlers awake past their bedtimes, exploring the remains of cabins and middens, running from waves, competing to find the best shells, bushwacking through rooty trails. There is a special feeling – an almost palpable presence of that curve of time – when you realize that this is what Blanchet and her kids did a century ago and what Native American kids have done here on these shores for thousands of years.
Simultaneously, you can’t help but imagine what the early explorers must have gone through- Vancouver, Drake, DeFuca, Fidalgo, and others – coming into these waters without charts or GPS, thinking that down every deep inlet was a route to an inland sea, wondering all the time where dangerous rocks and reefs were lurking below the surface.
As we have followed the curve of land and time around the island, our perspective began changing. A few days ago, we found ourselves looking squarely toward the future, which looms large in the Unknown up ahead. There are voyages into less familar waters to prepare for – the western coast of the U.S., and then Mexico after that. And in a very short time, it will become our Present.
It feels odd to be finishing this leg of the adventure – a journey that has certainly been a shakedown cruise, but also a huge adventure and a massive accomplishment in its own right. I’ll reflect later on many of the specific and practical things we’ve learned along this trip, but for now, I just want to express appreciation for the ability to do it, to be able to see and explore a coast that so few people get to see, to live a little off the land with its rich resources of berries and fish, to get used to a new lifestyle, and for a moment to slow our lives down enough to feel – sometimes fleetingly and sometimes deeply – that curve of time upon which we all travel. I feel joy in becoming a small part of of this island’s story and the anonymity of all those who have gone before and will yet go.
As the parents of young children, we’ve spent much of the last six years in search of beaches. At the start of the 4:00 crazy hour(s), we sought out beaches. On what-should-we do-today weekend days, we sought out beaches. On short boat trips, we anchored and immediately went ashore to explore the beaches. When we traveled to the UK and Iceland two years ago, we wisely booked our rooms on beaches. And when we started on this new boat adventure, we expected to be going from beach to beach with our sand-crazy kids. But expectations are meant to be dashed, I suppose, and we have found it difficult to find that elusive sand.
After heading north from our San Juan Islands backyard, we found no end to oyster strewn beaches, kelp-covered rocks, and expansive low tide mud flats covered in bivalves. We would see a light strip of land from afar, point Tinker in its direction, and then feel our faces drop as the light color was yet more oyster and barnacle shells, crammed in so tightly together that they looked like white sand from a distance.
The kids, to their credit, learned to walk carefully on those rocky oyster beaches, and they are becoming more adept at at navigating slippery kelp covered rocks (not without some falls along the way). But mud flats are now avoided, as we have had to retrieve one too many shoes from the mud and had to carry overwhelmed kids one too many sticky steps back to real land. And so we are willing to drive our little Tinker around every inch of an anchorage to find any hidden strip of sand.
One of the great joys of the west coast of Vancouver Island – other than its stunning desolate beauty – has been the reappearance of sand. Real sand. Sand castle sand. Sink-your-toes-into-the-softness sand. I never realized sand could be stunning. The joy on Dylan’s face as doffed his shoes and ran around on a strip of silk in the Bunsby Islands was priceless. “Mommy, this is the best sand in the whole world!” he joyfully declared. Absence makes the heart grow fonder – and more appreciative.
Rugged Point Marine Provincial Park at the entrance to Kyuquot Sound was a child’s heaven. A long, powdery gray beach stretched for a mile in front of our wavy-but-worth-it anchorage. Dylan happily rolled in the powder and ran down the beach in utter amazement. A short half mile hike to the ocean side of the park opened up a wild playground for the boys. Beach after beach of “rainbow sand” (Dylan’s term) extended for miles upon this shore, separated only by small volcanic peninsulas covered by low-tide abundance.
The kids aren’t yet wondering about the geologic reasons why a watery terrain so dotted with rocky reefs and pillars can also be home to the softest, sandiest beaches. They aren’t yet wondering why some beaches are white, some are gray, and some are mottled rainbow. They might later. For now, they are simply experiencing the pure joy of a resource whose value we used to take for granted.
