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THE SOGGY SEADOG SAGA ©2001 Jeff Lindeman I've been meaning to finish up this narrative of last year's boys-out boating adventure for some time now. Hell, the 2002 version (4th Annual) is planned for the week of July 15, 2002 - in just two weeks! About half of this was written in the fall last year right after our return and the other half I finished in a fit of flying fingers late last night from log notes and memory. Jeff Lindeman - July 1, 2002  July 31 - August 4 2001 Vessel: Juanderer - 26ft Ciera 2651 Express Cruiser Captain: Jeff Lindeman First Mate: Steve Noe This year's two-men-in-a-boat retreat was a great adventure. Unfortunately the weather was not with us though and several of the days were a bit soggy. OK they were ALL soggy, but in the Northwest we learn to deal with such inevitables and carry on with what we have. The water was, for the most part, calm and flat and we basically devoured the Canadian Gulf Islands from north to south; putting about 500 miles on the boat. Day One - Thetis Island Day one started out quite nicely with the sun screaming down (Steve likes that phrase), though the wind made things a bit lumpy - I said calm and flat "for the most part." We left Bellingham Bay and proceeded up Hale Passage and across the north side of Orcas Island, stopping for a relaxing lunch on a mooring buoy in Fox Cove at Sucia Island. Carrying on to customs check-in to Canadian waters at Bedwell Harbor on South Pender Island, the waters eased and the ride became more comfortable. After an easy check-in with the border gestopo - one bottle of scotch and a six-pack sir... (don't touch my bags if you please...) - we continued up to Thetis Island where we stayed for the first night. This also proved to be the best fish and chips of the trip by the way - and you thought I'd make you wait until the end for this info - fresh ling cod, lightly breaded and cooked to perfection. They also served the favorite brew of the trip, Kilkenny Creme Ale on tap - Yum - all served up by the lovely red-haired daughter of the Irish bartender. I'm currently looking to find this in bottles - the ale, not the daughter - if anyone knows (PS I've found it's available in 14.5oz "nitrogen widget" cans, distributed by Guiness in Canada only). We found this at no other pubs - brew or daughter - only Tetley's and Sleeman's, both watery and bitter in comparison. Day Two - Montague Harbor The next morning dawned gray with only a cruel and teasing glimpse of blue now and again just to lead us on. We decided we just had to go up to Nanaimo to check out a little pub just off Protection Island known as The Dinghy Pub with surrounding docks that you tie up to as if you were coming to a 50's-style drive-in with your car. Fun little place and we voted the fish and chips numero doce - fresh halibut.  It was pissing rain as we left the pub yet we managed to maintain our good spirits and I remember feeling almost euphoric - in spite of the ocassional drip from the front window zipper landing right in the middle of my forehead. Then the wind picked up and the sky pretty much opened up and dashed our plans to go out into the Strait of Georgia around Gabriola Island and explore the Silva Bay area known as the Flat-Top Islands. So we headed back south through Dodd Narrows and back into the Gulf Islands proper. Now Dodd Narrows is the only outlet for water at the north end of the Gulf so it's quite an exhilarating passage. On the way north, going with the current, once we were in the center of the 75 foot wide channel, I took the boat out of gear and the GPS clocked us at about 8 knots as it dumped us out into the ripped and eddied Northumberland Channel beyond. On the return trip we were going against the current, so after watching two sailboats and a trawler slide helplessly into the bay, I put 'er up on plane and charged the entrance at 26 knots. As we started up the channel, though the mechanical speedometer still indicated 26, the GPS numbers slowly dwindled to indicate around 16 knots. Now THAT'S a current to reckon with, I reckon.
So we ran down the inside of Valdes and decided to poke our nose into the Strait at Porlier Pass when we spotted a little blue over our shoulders. Porlier Pass, between Valdes and Galiano, can be a dangerous place when the tide is running and the wind is up - which we soon found out. For any of you other mariners out there, on the south side of the pass at midpoint is a particularly hairy 6 to 8 foot standing wave - needless to say, don't go over there. ;-) We stayed to the north side of the pass and were greeted by 6 to 8 foot rolling swells and the wall of a nasty squall could be seen moving toward us down the Strait. We had the FM radio tuned to CBC and they were playing a very dramatic classical piece (probably something German - Ze Verboten Valkeries by Wagner or some such thing) as the Strait of Georgia kicked us in the ass and sent us running the 12 nautical miles down the length of Galiano and into Montague Harbor on the south end. The squall "chased" us all the way and we made it into Montague on the south end of the island as it caught us. Drifting in the smooth protected water of the harbor the rain pelting the canvas in a cacophany of noise, we decided that it was here we would spend the night. A retired school teacher live-aboard on Thetis had told us about a little pub named The Hummingbird Inn that sends out a bus to the Montague Harbor Marina hourly. His words were, "I think you boys might really enjoy that sort of thing, I sure did in my day." Well, he was right. The driver looks like a refugee American ex-patriot living in Mexico, and the bus lives up to the image. Oldies blairing a little too loudly over speakers that have seen better days, he takes turns just a tad too fast for comfort as the bus reels from side to side on the winding road. the vacationing crowd on board is laughing and shouting and it's all together a great time. The inn is placed in a bucolic setting on top of a hill and the convoluted floor plan ranges from dark and subdued to light and airy - hey I'm starting to sound like a flippin' travel brochure so I think that's enough! A couple games of pool and a few pints later we fell off the bus at the marina and managed to find our way back to the boat and our waiting bunks. Perfect. An enjoyable evening for sure. Day Three - Boat Pass to Maple Bay  The next morning, after a good helping of eggs and sausage (OK Jimmy Dean 50% Less Fat just to keep the wives happy) off we went to our awaited fate at another passage of some machismo. Boat Passage into Winter Cove is a beautiful little bathtub of a bay nestled between Samuel and Saturna Islands, and is described in one of my cruise manuals as follows:
"Vessels cruising to Winter Cove are advised to use Active Pass or other waterways into the islands when entering from the Strait of Georgia as Boat Passage is tricky, treacherous, and intimidating to all but the experienced mariner." Well, if that's not a gaunlet thrown at any true blooded mariner's feet I don't know what is! So, needless to say, we HAD to go. We even exited the island group and went OUT Active Pass into the "big water" of the Strait so we could come back in via the pass. Stupidity? Limpbrained machismo? Senseless bravado? Call it what you will. It's all those things and more. *hehheh* Let's call it a Test. The first part of the test requires negotiating three reefs just to get to the entrance. At the pass itself you're presented with an opening about 25 feet wide (the boat is 8 1/2 feet wide) with two rocks to negotiate on the right and then one on the left. The depth is about 8 feet in the center of the channel, so that's not a problem; but the water is rushing out of the cove into the Strait like a river. At your back are the series of reefs just conquered, but essentially trapping you; and the surrounding water is a torrent of eddies and currents. As I approached the turn around the first two rocks, the feeling that I was about to drive a 26 foot boat up a stream was inescapable. Slowly moving toward the entrance, it's not unlike the mental gymnastics of leaving an airplane with a parachute on your back (which I spent three years doing by the way). The mind races as your senses take in all the data - movement with the current, the two rocks, the envisioned manauver, turn right, then left around the third rock, accelerate to keep the boat moving forward and in the desired direction in the considerable current... the stomach tightens, the eyes dart, hand on throttle, running through the mental sequence again, being pushed sideways in the current, the adreneline surges... and then... calm and serenity wash over as you come to task, the brain sliding into an alpha pattern and without really thinking, you make the leap from nervous contemplation to sublime and calm action. Free of the tethers of decision, the moment has the same palpable sweetness as the leap from the door of the plane into the wild blue.  Throttle forward and right around the two rocks. The water rushes past entering the channel. More throttle to stay in the center. A little more throttle to keep from being pushed back onto the two rocks. Left turn and more throttle to finally rise over the "hump" of water next to the final rock on the left. Then the ultimate rush as you literally pop into the cove and drift out into a virtual bathtub of glassy water. And again CBC had provided the perfect soundtrack as the music seemed to build with our approach and passage, and then became calm and serene as we entered the cove.
(it is here that I became too busy with the other things of life - things other than writing about the poetry and wonder of life itself...*burp*... so now I will attempt to continue this narrative...) If the log and my memory serve me, at this point we made a slight error in deciding to go to Maple Bay. Not because of any dislike for Maple Bay, but for the flagrant stupidity that would drive two soogy and battle weary men desperately seeking the cuddling warmth of the sun, to head toward the lee side of the damn piece of real estate causing the fricking weather in the first place - Vancouver Island. Doh! Magic though. Mist enshrouded hillsides covered with evergreens diving steeply into dark green water. Sansum Narrows has got to be one of the great places in the Gulf Island chain. Massive Vancouver Island on the west, squeezed by Saltspring Island on the east, Sansum is an awe inspiring place. At Maple Bay, with it's quaint and creeky old docks, the first inclinings of crew grumbling could be heard. "*ucking rain," I think pretty much sums up our feelings about the weather by this time. But it was a beautiful rain. And persistent. It was raining lightly, but thickly, almost a very heavy mist, when we arrived in the early evening. And it continued to rain as we had our fish and chips - excellent - halibut - but voted number three.  It rained on into the night as we drank like fish below decks and I would honestly have to say that on this night we did not "retire to our quarters", nor "quietly bunk down" as gentlemen sailors would. No, I'm afraid we "passed out". I would like a film of that last hour because I remember only silliness and laughing until my sides ached.
At some time this evening the pump handle on the head broke. Fortunately there is a chandlery at Maple Bay owned by an old timer who simply asked the make and year of the boat and handed us a $30 assembly which took all of 30 minutes to install. I was happier than a pig in *hit - pardon the expression - cheap, quick and non-excrement handling. Surendipity comes in strange packages, because if the head had NOT broken down I never would of stumbled onto deck in the middle of the night to take a wizz and thus would not have been treated to possibly the most spectacular saltwater phosphoresence I've ever seen. As MY water hit the saltwater it virtually exploded into a green neon fireworks display about two feet across. Incredible. (Subsequently, later in the summer, I had the dubious adventure of flying down Eastsound (Orcas Island) in a buddy's 19 foot Glastron at 60 miles per hour around midnight. The phosphor was so bright it looked like we had green running lights around the hull and a 6 foot high, 20 foot long neon green roostertail trailing us. I don't suggest you try this kind of midnight manuaver, but it just goes to show you what two experienced mariners will do given familiar waters and a bellyful of scotch. *hoho*) Day Four and Five - Port Browning and Home The next morning Steve and I left Maple Bay (yes it was STILL raining! I mentioned it's persistance, remember?) and after a stupendous breakfast drifting in Sansum (it actually stopped raining for this hour as if some minor diety had taken pity on us alone) we headed for Port Browning on North Pender Island. It stopped raining for a while in the afternoon and we took the dinghy through the little pass between North and South Pender and down to Bedwell Harbor for one more fish and chips test. Now, maybe we were getting tired of the fish and chips scene by this time, but Bedwell's offering came in last on our list - halibut, from frozen, a little bland and mushy. This trip seeming to be as much about "passages" as it was about "fish and chips", we waited until the time was right and took The Juanderer through the same little pass (no name I can find on any charts) we had recently traversed with the dinghy. Again it rained all night and was quite soggy in the morning. The bridge canvas was leaking in four or five places and though we had the option of staying out a fifth night, we decided to pack it in and head for dry land, comfy slippers and the warmth of home and family. By the way, I replaced all the canvas and carpets this last winter and the boat is all tuned up and looking Bristol Fashion as they say. The 2002 version of our macho little annual outing is planned for July 15.   
Epilogue All and all it was a good and noteworthy, albiet wet, adventure. And may it serve the reader well in remembering that buying a boat is a foolhardy exercise in finance and frustration. Broken heads, leaking canvas to be replaced and all you get is rain and wind and trouble for your efforts. So if you live and boat in California, STAY THERE, you won't like the boating up here. And if you're a Northwesterner thinking about buying a boat... forget it! It's too much work and costs a lot of money. And besides, less of YOU means more for US. ;-) The waves I respect And the wind I revere If you want to know the truth It's the rocks that I fear Jeff Lindeman 2001 And where are the boys going in 2002 - as if you care? Well, it's been narrowed to three options at this point, depending on whim and weather. One is Princess Louisa, up Jervas Inlet behind Texado Island - one of the beautiful and dramatic inland waterways in mainland BC. Another is exploring the rugged, and fully exposed to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, southern coast of Lopez Island - I've been reading about the history of this area and it includes mystery and murder. And lastly I've been told by a good sailing buddy that heading south rather than north as most people do, can be quite a bit of fun. And he's offered to write some "must see" spots along with good pubs in places like Gig Harbor etc. So we shall see. Until the next installment, fair winds and following seas and I'll meet you outside the inlet. Cheers, Jeff PS On other nautical fronts I'd just like to brag a bit and mention that Shalom, the sailboat I race on in the fall and winter, won 1st Place in our division for the International Yacht Club's 2001-02 Winter Series. We also took the 2nd Place plaque for the 2002 Semiahmoo Bay Regatta. The photo below, shot from our stern, tells the story - Race 2 on Regatta Day (for which we took 1st) and everyone is BEHIND us! Right where they belong. :-) 
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