By Erik Dolson
My daughter left on the ferry this morning. God, there’s nothing like child leaving your ambit to give one a dose of melancholy, if not a sense of mortality. It’s not more acute than losing a partner to the vicissitudes of life, but it rings different bells, one might say those with deeper voices.
On Thursday I picked Roy up in Friday Harbor to deliver him to Anacortes. Two odd things about that: I only had to go to Anacortes from Eastsound, and Friday Harbor would add two hours in the wrong direction.
But Roy could have taken the ferry and arrived in Anacortes several hours sooner than it took us to motor there on Foxy. I don’t know why he elected to accept my ride, but I enjoy his Zen and always learn something about the boat or boatmanship.
Friday Harbor was stupid busy when I arrived, there was no room at the overflow docks and the gas dock was crowded and chaotic. I finally went out to my buoy and fought to bring the kelp-tangled chain up through the mooring ball to where I could attach lines while fighting the current.
I busted my thumb open somewhere in there and didn’t notice until I grabbed my coffee cup and noticed it was slippery with blood. At that moment I quit researching about how to best attach to the mooring ball. It was time to actually do something.
Roy noticed the blood splatters and said they would be a bit of a turn-off to someone else. I said I really hadn’t had time to clean everything up before he came aboard and the blood would come off with the pressure washer that very afternoon! I mean, it was a trail of drops, c’mon!
He also barked at me for leaving a ten-inch kitchen knife point up in the dish rack at the bottom of the gangway. “You fall on that, it will kill you.” His tone was not gentle and there was no reply possible except to nod in agreement.
He also saw whipping of the helm wheel by the autopilot. I’d noticed that going up Eastsound last week, to the extent that I turned the autopilot off thinking the severe movements might have been due to the magnetic anomaly up there.
Or perhaps the dials had been bumped, or possibly I reset them in a moment of “action beyond knowledge.” That happens a lot. While Roy watched the wheel, I played with the settings down below. Turning “counter steer” down and the “yaw” close to zero allowed the autopilot to relax and be more gentle with course corrections.
Docking in Anacortes was a bit of a mess, too. They’d given me a slot next to the end wall, with huge boats all around and not a lot of room to turn. In that situation I like backing down the fairway, and turning in when past the slip with a simple 45 degree run to bow in, port side tie, so I can use prop walk to tuck the stern in if needed.
Don’t look for a translation, it doesn’t matter.
The bow didn’t come around enough in the light wind, and I had to regroup and come into the slip from the other side. Roy called out to hug three feet off the dock, and though he has drawn as much blood from the side of my boat as I have, he was right and we ended up right where we should.
Roy left and I hooked up shore power, filled the water tanks, and retrieved the power washer from its depths in the stern locker. Then the wind that bedeviled my docking really picked up. I’ve been downwind of somebody washing their boat. I stopped but left everything out for the morning.
Instead I headed to the marine store to buy six feet of chain, a buoy for one end to keep it afloat, and shackles to attach it all to my mooring ball to make that work safer.
My daughter arrived after fighting after-work traffic. We had a great dinner and conversation over too much iced tea for me. I called it a night but was unable to sleep for thinking I had no business running a boat and worried that the marina needed Foxy out of the slip the next morning because there was a festival in Anacortes and the marina was booked full and winds were forecast.
But when my feet hit the deck the next morning the water was glassy. The yacht that had shared our slip was gone, so I decided conditions were perfect for departure. I put away the unused pressure washer, rolled up hoses and cords, cleaned up some of the mess. My daughter was still asleep on cushions in the salon, but since she’s usually up at 3:30 a.m. for her 5 a.m. shift as a welder, I let her be.
After untying the boat I took advantage of a bit of current that separated the stern from the dock, did a perfect J turn and we were off and looking like I knew what I was doing. We hovered in line at the fuel dock and backed in there just right when it was our turn. I estimated Foxy’d take 75 gallons, she took 70. Paid, untied, and slipped off the dock and out the channel with zero drama. Dammit, why couldn’t Roy have seen THAT?!
We sped down Guemas Channel on a 2 knot ebb but when we hit Rosario Strait the wind was blowing against the tide and waves were steeper and in our face. Foxy loved it, leapt and bucked with wind on her port beam and tossing spray over the bow. I unfurled the jib and we picked up about three knots, hitting more than ten, and the ride intensified. A stack of soup cans fell in the pantry.
THAT woke my daughter, who struggled against the motion while getting dressed, then came above.
When we arrived at Thatcher Pass the wind died and I put the sail away. We motored down Lopez Sound, sticking our nose into bays and avoiding rocks. We finally anchored at the end of the sound in Mud Bay, took Bug out to drop a crab pot, took a nap.
No crab, but I pulled meat off a Costco chicken and cooked it with spinach, rice, Parmesan and a can of spicy Thai soup that I use for a base.
Wind picked up over the evening and sang through the rigging. Weather was unsettled and due to get worse. I suggested to daughter that we head on to Friday Harbor the next day: she could help me install the new tackle to the mooring ball, we would have dinner at our favorite restaurant and she could take the ferry the next morning to Anacortes, getting back to her car earlier than if we tried to make it there on Foxy.
The new tackle worked well: six feet of unkinked chain spanning two buoys, easy for zooming boaters to see and easier to pull up than 40 feet of kelp knotted links. We had take-out on board the boat and this morning were crossing the channel at 7:10 a.m. to get a cup of coffee and breakfast just in time for the ferry. She called me when back at her car.
I’d stayed in town, had breakfast then lunch while using wifi at the café to write, then bought a wrench to bleed the carburetor on the outboard motor, went to “The Suicide Squad,” the first theater film I’ve seen in about two years but a disappointing movie that just followed the sequel formula of too many explosions and too much mayhem tied together with too little plot for far too many minutes.
It’s mighty quiet out here this evening. I may head up to Roche Harbor tomorrow, or if there’s a space at the marina here, I might do some laundry and dig that pressure washer out again to go after those spots on the deck.