So, Mark, you say you want to join me for a few days somewhere up here.

I look forward to seeing you! But there will be some ~challenges.

1. Where shall we meet? North from Washington is a vast wilderness with little in mass-transit access. Possibilities are the largest towns: Prince Rupert, Ketchikan, Wrangell, Petersburg, Juneau.

2. When? Altho i know more or less my route, i have no itinerary. I havent done this before. I truly dont know how long it'll take. Maybe i'll get a clue as i do more. But for now at best i can give a few days warning, and of course even that is subject to weather & breakdown.

3. What will we do? I imagine 2 scenarios possible. 1)You stay in a nice hotel on land and we boat each day touring surrounding islands, fjords & such. 2)We actually go anchor out overnites. But if the latter: it'll be very crowded (i barely fit hunched over thru the doorways, i keep bumping my head), and the bed will likely be rolling around all nite and there will be many strange sounds to keep you (us) awake.

4. What shall you bring? Sleeping bag. The full range of clothing. But not too much, because there's so little space. (Yes i'm a slob. I've been sitting in port a couple days. Before i put to sea, most of the mess may be stowed.)

There are cushions for the bed and you can use a PFD for pillow. I have the accessories: bug goo [none needed so far], sunscreen, & such. When i pick you up in port we'll load up on groceries and beer.

4. Accommodations? It's like camping out, except you cant leave the tent. There's a stove. Heat, but only when the engine's running. No shower. No toilet. There is The Groover, but nowhere to hide.

The good news is: it's indoors, dry, out of the weather, with big windows on wonders.

It should be fun!

"No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company." - Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784

Spent an hour on the front porch of a coffee place this morn, no computer, just staring. Must do this more often.

It's downright HOT today. Fiddled with docking lines and fenders, getting them right where/how i want them. Added chain to the older anchor, wishing i'd got the next larger size instead of what West Marine (who does well know what it's doing) recommended.

Then analyzed anchor/rode options. A normal config utilizes a hawsepipe into an anchor locker in the bow (what Jon Snow mite refer to as "the pointy end"). But i dont have a hawsepipe hole, and even if i drilled 1, the interior is covered with carpet (walls/floor/ceiling) and i'd also have to drill a drain. Too complicated.

For the 2 anchors' rodes, I could permanently mount Home Depot buckets on the foredeck. No, i dont think so...

So i settled on doing it the way i did in my 1st sailboat. I kept my 2 anchors in the open cockpit astern, tossed them out, fed out the rode, then transferred each rode to secure it on the bow. Trouble is: moving it to the bow was easy on the sailboat, you just walked it up there. But on my present boat, despite its style which they call a "walk-around", as a practical matter: there is no walking around. I tried it for the 1st time today while docked on a calm day, and it was scary. The footpath is narrower than a foot, and the boat heels from the imbalance.

So here's the plan: secure the so-called "bitter end" (the very end of the rode) to the bow, but then feed it back astern where the remainder will reside in a bucket. Upon the desire to anchor: toss the anchor over, feed out the rode, cleat it, give it a tug to hook the anchor to the bottom, then uncleat, go to the bow via the interior+hatch, then pull all the excess rode up there and cleat it off at some appropriate point.

I think this'll work ok.

The mechanic hasnt called yet. :(

Canadian Navy training/patrol vessels.

Got a day-pass for BC-Transit, $4.50 Canadian, and spent the day bussing about the island. Lovely.

At some point my iPhone decided to update itself, then refused to let me do ANYthing with it til i connected to WiFi. But, bussing about the island, there was no WiFi i could access. This is so frustrating, they entice us to do everything by phone, then make the phone unusable. Finally back to the dock, i had marina WiFi and i was ok again.

Maybe you recall my voltage regulator problem. The mechanic called, then came rushing right over to me, yes, a house call. Young man, very intense. He couldnt find the alternator, which made me feel better because yesterday *i* couldnt either. I texted the former owner, who explained it's not belt-driven, it's built onto the crankshaft. OK, the mechanic figured it out, yes it's a bad volt-regulator, which is what i thot. He's going to do some more research & get back to me tomorrow. But the other good news is: as he was sprawled on the deck searching for wires & such in the engine compartment, he spied the shoreline inlet, which neither i nor former owner knew existed! The "shoreline" supplies 110-volt electricity from shore to the boat, via an extension cord. Hence now i am recharging the boat's batteries, plus my computer, phone, SpotX, an auxiliary device-charger battery, and even a 12-v battery-jump-starting unit, as we speak.

Today still high wind warnings, but i was antsy. How bad could it be. I untied and took off.

It was a beautiful day, and as it turned out there really was no problem at all at sea, small waves, i could plane at 15mph+ the whole way. In an hour or so i was to Ganges.

Cathy had recommended the place (ask her how she happened upon it) and truly it's very nice. Very warm/sunny.

On my test run months ago, my inverter was cutting out, which i found was probably due to the volt regulator allowing 16+ volts, which is too hi. When i arrived back for this trip, i did some checking and it seemed ok, so i did nothing, praying the issue had magicly disappeared.

It didnt. All indications, since i left OakHarbor, is that now the batts are not charging at all.

So i checked in with the hyper-efficient Harbor Master. He recommended a marine repair place, i walked over there, talked to the nice folks, told em i was in no hurry, they promised to fit me in by friday.

[Well, a bit more complicated than that, i actually have the manuals for the engine, i looked at it close, i couldnt find anything that looked like an alternator, but i did finally finds the voltage regulator. That, only because the very dilligent previous owner had prophylacticly replaced the volt-regulator (and many other parts) before the sale, and retained the old (working) parts aboard. So i went thru the old parts, found 1 odd looking black plastic thing that i never would have imagined to be a volt-regulator except that it was hand-labeled, so now i knew what it looked like and i found it on the engine. The thing is water-cooled, very odd. I could put the old 1 back in myself, except for 1 thing: the new 1 has 5 wires, the old 1 only 4. I can only screw this up.]

Done at the marine repair place, i checked the Pub next door.

It's tuesday, Stuck on this paradise isle ~4days. O too bad. Hahahahahaha.

Yesterday it was said to be very windy out there so i sat in the Bedwell Harbor bay. Actually spent like half the day blogging, it really takes too much time, including the photo processing.

At 1 point i looked up from the laptop to notice the shore was markedly closer. Then closer. No doubt about, the anchor was dragging.

My first 'cruising' experience was 2 months in the Gulf of California (Mexico) in the 1980s. I had almost no sailing experience, but i did a lot of research, learned a lot, geared up. I had 3 anchors: the tiny 5-pound Danforth that came with the boat; and then i bought a very large Danforth, and a 30 or 35-pound CQR. The 2 new ones were much bigger than what my little 26' sailboat ~needed, but i knew anchors were important. i also upgraded the chain and rope rode beyond all reason.

And they worked really well. I generally set both of the big anchors as additional assurance. It was windy in Baja, and the anchoring spots often small, marginal. Early in the trip, after a very long day of sailing which began at 2am and went to after dark, i double-anchored in a bay and went to bed; but it wasnt long til a huge blow came up, from exactly the wrong direction. The wind was blowing unimpeded up the bay. If the anchors dragged i could be impaled on the close rocks. But i couldnt up-anchor and move somewhere better, because, alone, as soon as i got the anchors up (from the bow), the wind would blow me to the rocks before i'd get to the outboard (at the stern). So i rode it out (i wrote at the time, it felt like being in a washing machine), trying to stay awake in case the anchors slipped, but when that became impossible i'd sleep but wake every 15minutes for a check. (Sleep-deprived, i hallucinated the voices of friends telling me what to do, but i couldnt understand what they were saying.) Finally i did fall uncontrollably asleep, waking before dawn to find the storm abating and boat intact. The anchors held.

And there were other times like that (tho' less extreme personally), Baja and later down the East Coast, Maine to Florida. I considered myself a good anchorer.

(In fact the only time they didnt work was once in the Florida Keys, notorious for its slimy "poor holding ground". We'd gone ashore for Thanksgiving Dinner, returning after dark. A steady breeze had just come up, and when we motored out in the dinghy, the boat was gone! Hurrying downwind, we caught up to it in the dark. It was headed out to sea at several knots, anchors slipping thru the slime.

So yesterday i fired up the outboard, then went to the bow to pull up the single Danforth. It was covered in kelp, and an odd brick-like rock stuck between its teeth. I motored back out to a safe spot, dropped anchor, played out some line, and even pulled on it with outboard force to make sure it was well set.

It was good all day. Tho there is wind here, it isnt strong in the cove and the wind waves are tiny.

Last nite i was wakened by a loud clunking on the hull, right by my head, like a log was beating there. Investigating, the source was a mooring buoy. The anchor had dragged hundreds of yards, luckily snagging on the mooring, otherwise i'd maybe gone all the way to the harbor.

So i tied off to the mooring buoy and here i'll stay thru this 2nd hi-wind-warning day.

Nite before last i tunneled into bed (low ceiling, it's kinda belly-crawl), and i thot: this is turning out exactly as hoped. I am again absorbed in real things (survival) instead of the trivial B.S. of normal modern existence.

And my chronic back ache has disappeared.

Up yesterday early, sought out the nearest breakfast at a fancy hotel overlooking the marina, then some final preps and i was off, which is to say filled up on gas. Luckily there was no waiting, no crowd of boats, and so little to crash into. As it turned out, i docked perfectly. Amazing. The young woman attendant had me wield the nozzle myself, so that i, not she, would be liable for environmental cleanup. It took 53.5 gal, $213. O my, but whadya do? If i'm gonna motor to alaska, i'm going to buy gas. (I am told the boat has an 80-gal tank, can go ~300miles on it, so <4mpg. It's very roughly a 2000-mile round-trip.)

Aweigh. It's a lovely day. No wind, sea glassy, til i get out in it. Initially little 1' wind waves, but as i move on these build to 2 or 3', and, as i get out among the islands, completely chaotic (waves from all directions, mixed up). So it's very rough. I consider putting in to some calm spot, but fact is: this is a good day to try out the sea-handling capabilities of this new-to-me power boat. I sailed this kinda mess before, but never motored it.

See the video from the last post. Pretty crazy for hours, but all went fine.

Ha but right off i made a navigation error. Working off the Lowrance electronic chart screen, i aimed around the southern point of a distant island, then turned north. Very soon i realized it was the wrong island! A dumb mistake, but not a critical one; i'd just continue on south of a chain of islands instead of north of them. (Too bad, the previous eve i'd given Cathy a detailed screen shot of my intended route for SAR purposes, which i was proud of, now here i was going a whole different way.) Cell-phoning the new plan to Cathy, and also today sending periodic "CheckIns" via the SpotX, she tracked the progress. Also this day i put SpotX in Track mode and hung it outside (unfortunately exposed to the salt spray) in hope that would work better, and in fact, it did work perfect all day. [The purple lines on the chart are traffic lanes for big ships.]

With the route change, i could also change my choice of Canadian Customs station. Boats entering Canada must of course check in with Customs. I selected Pender Island, designated on their website by a 'pin' stuck in a Google map. By ~3pm i was there.

It was a resort at the head of a calm lake-like recreational bay. Suddenly the waves were gone, and it was very warm/sunny. I docked perfectly.

A friendly man, Pierre, greeted me outside the resort. I explained my purpose. He directed me into an admin office. The young man there expressed concern that i hadnt cleared Customs.

"I thot that that was what i was doing here," i replied. (There were numerous 'pins' on the agency's Google map, and i just assumed resorts handed out the paperwork.)

He pulled out his phone and brought up a map, directing me to the actual station in another bay of the island cluster.

He advised me to go there right away, don't get any coffee at the restaurant or anything, i could get in trouble with Immigration.

I'd inadvertently become an illegal alien. (With the current U.S. political situation, i wish i'd applied for asylum.)

Outside, i explained the situation to Pierre (i think he runs the restaurant?), thanked him for not turning me in.

So i reluctantly left this perfect place, left the perfectly-docked dock, headed halfway out the bay, to duck thru a tiny passage between N & S Pender Isles. It was quite narrow & there was a strong current flowing against me, but no problem.

Out the other side into a 2nd beautiful bay, i remembered i'd been told that Canada Customs will confiscate any fresh unpackaged food. I had an ice chest half-full of fresh veggies. So i stopped, floating, for a big lunch salad.

Continued to the site, which was another lovely resort with several docks, but, from a distance, 1 had an official-looking sign with 2 columns of text, which i knew must be a government sign, since Canada government always repeats everything in English + French. 2 rich sailboats were docked there, 1 per side. I chose the left side, where there was space behind the current occupant. They had a big inflatable in tow behind them. I was already thinking of how i'd joke as i walked by them on the dock that i'd chosen the spot because the dinghy was a big rubber bumper on their stern. With the recent docking successes, I didnt anticipate any trouble, despite the direct staring glare of 1 of the folks in the big sailboat.

i approached slow & careful as always, & it was only at the last seconds i realized the crosswind breeze. I tried a quick reverse but it was too late and i hit the dock corner hard. Dang! Embarrassing.

So i made another attempt and this time 1 of the folks (not Mr.Glare) came over to help ease me in.

Thanks :)

At the head of the dock was a small building which was the Customs Office, but it was locked up, no one there. But a man was there outside at a phone with receiver to ear, and i realized this is something i'd heard of, Call-In Customs.

The man was not saying anything to the phone so i figured he was listening to some long message, or was on-hold. I took photos as i waited.

After awhile of this, the man said to me that he had been on-hold a very long time, and that if i too was checking in, i should probably use one of the other phones.

Absorbed in the lovely day and place, I had not even noticed that there were more phones. So i picked one up, and waited.

Signs warned that tho marijuana is now legal in Canada, importing it privately is not, hence it must be declared.

I wondered, with no one here to confiscate them, what would happen to my remaining veggies?

Finally, it wasnt too long, maybe 15min, a tired bored man who talked fast, because he'd said it too many times, came up on the line, took my info. ("Passport expiration?" Looking at the it, i read "april 1, 2010". "That doesnt sound right," he said fast, bored. "O that's issue date, expiration is 2020. Sorry."

So he asked about weapons, drugs, products for sale, and more than $10,000. None of above. "Alcohol?" "~8 beers." "Any food?" "Vegetables," i admitted. He didnt even pause. "How long will you be in Canada?" "2-4 months." "Purpose in coming to Canada?" "I'll go to Alaska, turn around and come back." This time he paused, finally: "Yeah."

I'm sure what he was thinking was: some of us have jobs.

He gave me a Report# and we were done. It was easy and i still had a half-head of lettuce, a couple tomatoes, 3 bananas, and a pile of tangerines and oranges, some past prime.

Question what to do now. I could actually keep going. But it likely was even worse out there, it was so nice here, and i was beat.

So i moved up the shore a bit and anchored in a tiny low-rock-lined cove, spent the nite. Various seabirds close made their various comic sounds, and at bedtime in the dark i could hear a seal doing its seal thing.

I'm in a completely new environment, doing a new thing. I feel (as they say now) 'woke'.

and there i sit now, writing this to y'all, as, i woke up still feeling beat. I decided to sit another day, maybe get something done on the list: Inflate my new raft; tie the new battery into the system, then wire electronic devices to it; find the bag of sugar (still getting sorted out), assemble the new anchor+rode, and store it in some efficient/useful way, check the oil, glue the little rim thats coming apart around the engine cover. And i wish i could move the battery switch to someplace more accessible. But more likely: stare.

Except dang i swear the anchor must be dragging, despite little wind or waves, i'm much closer to shore than before. Will check and get back at ya.