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___ Howdy friends! We've been bad with the email updates. What can we say, Desolation Sound is in fact quite desolate. Not much in the way of emailing capability up there. Here's a run down of where we've been.
July 9th, 2003 - Greyhound bus...somewhere in Montana July 10th, 2003 - Vancouver, BC...Della encounters a naked Marky Mark look alike in the toilet of the hostel. July 11th, 2003 - Cortes Island...saw a yert for the first time! JUly 12th, 2003 - Cortes Island...waiting for the wind to calm...Nail, Sail, and Bail contest. July 13th, 2003 - Cortes Island...Too windy to pull up anchor July 14th, 2003 - Cortes Island...Too windy to pull up anchor July 15th, 2003 - Roscoe Bay July 16th, 2003 - Roscoe Bay July 17th, 2003 - Prendrel Sound and Tenedos July 18th, 2003 - Rope swinging at Tenedos July 19th, 2003 - Sailing south towards Texada Island July 20th, 2003 - Sailing south towards Nanaimo July 21st, 2003 - Arrive in South Pender Island July 22nd, 2003 - Poet's Cove swimming pool July 23rd, 2003 - South Pender Island July 24th, 2003 - Sailing toward Pt. Townsend July 25th, 2003 - Sailing towards Bainbridge Island July 26th - 31st, 2003 - At anchor on Bainbridge Island August 1st - 8th, 2003 - Seattle, cleaning and painting everything in site. August 9th, 2003 - Bike south to Tacoma August 10th - 11th, 2003 - Hang out with Eric and Lesley August 12th, 2003 - Ride to Tenino August 13th, 2003 - Ride to Vader August 14th, 2003 - Ride to Scappose August 15th, 2003 - Arrive in Tigard August 16th - 18th, 2003 - Hanging out in Tigard August 19th - 21st, 2003 - Hanging out with the Grandfolks Summary: Much has happened since our last update. As often happens in life, the things you plan on doing don't quite work out exactly as you planned. It's not always a bad thing when that happens, but it is always a learning experience. After much thought on the subject, Della and I have decided to sell our boat and explore the earth via other means. It's tough to explain. I'm sure there are folks out there thinking, why would they give up on this dream? The simple fact is, we discovered that while we like sailing, we in fact enjoy traveling much more than sailing. It's a subtle distinction, but it's how we feel. We both love sailing, especially day sailing. But sailing as a means to travel to some far off exotic land is filled with it's own bag of tricks that we'd never experienced before. We've always gone on sailing trips for a week or two at a time. That's all the vacation time we'd ever had before. After two weeks in the San Juans, we always felt that we'd have a much more enjoyable time if we only had more time. Three months would be wonderful. How could we ever get sick of it? The truth of it is that after three months of hanging out in places like Desolation Sound, I found that I really enjoy the company of people much more than I ever thought I did. It's a mighty lonely feeling to pull into an anchorage, and be the only boat there. Our sailing friends tell us that it isn't always like that. You sail down to San Diego and drop anchor and wait for three months for the hurricane season to be over with in Mexico. You have three months to hang out there and meet people. Now, while this is true, we began discussing what it would be like to be anchored in San Diego for three months straight. We'd be effectively trapped there, watching after our boat, and waiting for a weather window to go south. It slowly dawned on us, that if we didn't have to worry about our boat, we could just go ahead and go wherever we wanted. No waiting for huricane season, no hanging out in San Diego for three months waiting for the weather. We also began to realize that moving further south into Mexico traps us down there in other ways. The easiest way to sail up from Mexico is to basically sail out to Hawaii and hang a right as you get close. You can't just sail north very easily. We knew that after being in Mexico a year or so, we'd be mighty ready to come back and visit folks in the US again. We'd be lonely and getting back would mean spending extra money to care for the boat while we were away as well as spending extra money to transport ourselves where we want to go. A nice lady from the marina we used to stay at asked us what we did all day when we were out sailing and traveling around. A fellow nearby jokingly answered for us saying, "It's simple, you sit with most of your weight on your left butt cheek, and then after an hour or so you shift your weight so most of it is on you right butt cheek. People chuckled, but I didn't because after three months sailing, I knew it to be true. We found that sailing really isn't as active of a lifestyle as you might think. There's really only so much you can do in a day when your home moves at 5 miles per hour. You basically sit for long stretches at a time. We sailed for 42 hours straight, single handing and taking turns on watch. By the end of the 42 hours, I had such an intense feeling of clausterphobia, I could barely stand to be on the boat any more. The ocean is truely a desert. You see one patch of water drift slowly by, repeat. Being on a boat far from land is so confining because if you take one step away from your home, you're dead. I equate it to traveling across country in an RV that moves 5 miles per hour, only where if you step outside the RV, you're dead. Who would want to do that? The big difference between sailing and the RV analogy, is that sailing also makes you sea sick and once you get away from land, you no longer have any landmarks to hold your interest. You get to stare at your GPS and slowly watch the miles slip away. I don't mean to sound so negative, it's just that after spending 42 hours straight sailing our boat, neither one of us could fathom the possibility of spending 42 days sailing from the Red Sea to India. Nor spending 18 days sailing to Hawaii. Nor even spending 7 days to sail to San Fransisco. We love sailing where we can stop and anchor every night, get out, stretch, see the sights. We hate sailing non stop. In a lot of ways, once we leave this neck of the woods by boat, you can't hop along and spend the night when you're tired. So why sell the boat? Why not keep her and just sail around BC and the San Juans? We thought about it and decided that it would be fun, but we've seen much of it, and are ready to see more of the world. We didn't want the obligation and expense. The boat would still require moorage and maintainence, and then we'd feel obligated to spend every summer sailing around BC with her. Our boat would become some time share condo that we'd feel obligated to use since we paid for it. We still plan on seeing the world, it's just instead of spending three weeks sailing to get somewhere, we're going to get there quickly and use those three extra weeks to see the place and have fun. I've ranted too long. On with what we've been doing. We returned from North Dakota via Greyhound and both swore it off forever. Such a shame that company doesn't have it more together. It's a great way to see the countryside, it's just too many smells and other problems associated with it to make it worthwhile. We returned to Cortes Island and were very happy to see Music still sitting happily at anchor. We spent a day swimming off the boat and resting up from the bus ride before continuing on. As the weather would have it, it got windy the day we decided to pull up our extra anchors so we could leave. It made it very difficult. So we waited. and waited. We ended up being stuck in the Gorge for three more days until the wind stopped enough for us to raise up and get our travel on. But during this time, we attended the Cortes Day festivities. Our favorite event was the Nail, Sail, and Bail race where teams of two are given two sheets of plywood, some 1x4s some 2x2s, a bucket of nails, duct tape, and plastic sheeting. They have two hours to build a seaworthy vessel that they can race on a course. We enjoyed watching the teams build. The race was the highlight though. One boat ripped in half as soon as it touched the water. Another boat pulled a Titanic routine. The stern sank in and the fellow up front gave a heroic dive off the bow as it went under. The other teams paddled their course. The last place folks were the boat that ripped in half. They swam the wreckage around the course and finished about half an hour after the other boats. Also at Cortes Day, we ran in to Teresa Hargraves from school. We hadn't seen her in years. It just proves what a small world it is. We knew Teresa had a twin sister, so we thought this was either Teresa, or the twin. It was good to have the surprise reunion. We left Cortes Island and headed over to Roscoe Bay. It's a narrow shallow entrance that actually goes dry at low tides. We had to hit the tide just right. Inside, the bay is well protected from weather and there are millions of oysters growing on all the rocks. The water is warm and there is also a great swimming lake just up the trail. The lake is called Black Lake. We spent two nights in Roscoe and loved it. After Roscoe, we went up into Pendrel Sound. This sound has the warmest sea water north of the Gulf of Mexico. The tide doesn't move the water much and a layer of fresh water builds up on the salt water during the summer. There is very little mixing between the layers and the fresh water layer warms to about 75 degrees. There are tons of oysters here too. We anchored for the day, got out the snorkle gear, and had a great time swimming all over a little bay. It was also this day that we reached our furthest point north. 50 degrees 17.707 minutes North. We went back to Tenedos that night. The next day we played on the rope swing some more. I tried out cliff diving. It's amazing how painful the water can be when you jump from a little ways up. I jumped off a cliff one time and the impact ripped my swim trunks to tatters. The seams split! I looked like Tarzan wearing a loin cloth the rest of the day. Oh, and duct tape doesn't work worth a hill of beans when it comes to mending ripped swim trunks. We rested up a bit in preparation for our overnight sail to Barkely Sound. We left Tenedos and began sailing in shifts. The wind was light and it took a while to get far. During the night watch, I managed to sail our boat 1.25 miles in only 4 hours! Incredible! Oh, and it was raining the entire time. We didn't want to motor at all. We really wanted to sail all the way down south to prove we could. But the wind was dead. So we motored for a couple hours to get down by Texada Island. That was all it took. In the morning the wind was blowing about 35 knots out of the south across the Strait of Georgia. We reduced our sail area and headed out across the Strait. We were actually sailing pretty fast during all this. The waves were steep and the largest we've ever been in. They weren't any bizarre waves like you'd see in the movie "The Perfect Storm" but they were big enough to shove us here and there as we sailed. It made resting during your off watch difficult. But we kept going and made it past Nanaimo by the afternoon. We continued south and the wind died as the sun set. So again, we had to motor just to keep going. Around this time, our boom vang parted from our boom and we had a winch literally come loose and bust apart into a million little pieces. I was glad the wind was zero. We got the winch back together and repaired the boom vang a bit. Enough to keep going. We motored on. In the morning we decided to pull in to South Pender Island to make some repairs. It was a much needed rest. It was also here that we spent a lot of time discussing whether or not we wanted to travel in this fashion for weeks on end. I know not everything breaks during a sail and there were many parts of the sail we enjoyed. But, in the end, you know how we decided. We hiked around on South Pender Island and realized that so much of what we enjoyed about the last few months, was being able to get away from the boat. To take a break. So much of what we love is on the land or very close to it. Swimming off a beach, hiking, biking, etc. Sailing is a part we enjoyed too, but not so much that we wanted to spend 90% of our time doing it. We like the opportunites for exercise you can get on land. South Pender had a great resort nearby called Poet's Cove. They have a pool that we used and a general store where they sold fresh raisin, cinnamon, peach bread everyday. It was hard to think of leaving the place in exchange for even more sailing. We decided we'd sail down to Seattle while we considered our options more. At the very least, we wanted to get in one more visit to Portland before heading down the coast. We sailed south into the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the wind completely died. It does that this time of year. So we motored into Port Townsend and cleared in through customs. We anchored out in Port Townsend and then motored on (in no wind again) to Bainbridge Island. By the time we got there, we'd made up our minds, sailing is a slow, effort-filled way to try and get somewhere. It's a great sport, and we've enjoyed it, but we didn't want to consume the time we're able to have off work by slowly sailing somewhere. We'd rather get there and enjoy it and not have to worry about if the boat was anchored well or if some local bureaucrat would stop by and slap a fine on our boat for being anchored in the wrong place or for us hanging the laundry out to dry. We called up Mike, the broker who sold us our boat six years ago and met with him to discuss what we should do to get our boat ready to sell. We stayed in Bainbridge a few days, cleaning and ebaying equipment, then we headed across into Seattle. Della had never been through the locks before, so it was a new experience for her. It being Seafair weekend, it took us three hours to clear the locks and get in to Lake Union. We passed through three drawbridges on the way and came to rest at the broker's slip. The next week, we spent painting and waxing and cleaning. In the end, Music was looking very good and we had our bike bags all packed and ready to go. Our plan was to ride the Seattle to Portland bike race route to Portland, and visit folks. We left Seattle and had a fun ride south to Tacoma. I can't recomend bike riding through Auburn. Too many nails and broken glass. After a week of cleaning and painting, it was a good feeling to be away from our boat. We stayed the night with our friends Eric and Lesley. While we were there we caught up with them and visited. We also found time to catch up with our friends Tim and Stephanie and Steen and Angela. It's wonderful having such interesting and fun friends. We rode on south a couple days later. We joined up with the STP route in Puyallup. We had to ride back and forth through the town a couple dozen times to find the road we were looking for, but we found it eventually. Traffic was heavy until we cleared the Spanaway area, after that, it was smooth roads and we zoomed along pretty good. We both saw a bull with large horns. I guess they call them Texas Large Horns or something like that? Anyway, he was an impressive fellow, and I was glad to see that there was an iron clad two foot high chicken wire fence separating us from him. We rode about 60 miles the first day out of Tacoma and stayed in a little town called Tenino where they let you camp in the city park. We called our friends Jeff and Erin and they drove out to meet us and even brought us Thai food for dinner. We were going to have Chili, but after eating the Thai for a bit, the chili just didn't seem too tastey. We had a good visit with them and walked through the town. The next morning we rode out of town towards Centralia. Morning fog dampened the sounds as we rode along pooltable fields and orchards. Except for a handfull of cars, we had the road to ourselves. In Centralia, I treated myself to a brand new set of tires (with whitewalls...hooosh!) An innertube had been desperately trying to crawl out of my tire the last few miles. We rode on and stopped for a burger in Winlock, Washington. Winlock is home of the worlds largest egg! I know, you're probably thinking that the world's largest egg is some cheesey plastic egg thing that someone stuck in their front yard and painted. Well, it's just not true. The world's largest egg looks to be made of fiberglass, not plastic. It was painted red white and blue and erected on a tall steel pole. I just have to wonder what the guy's wife thought when she came home one day to see her husband building the world's largest egg and preparing to set it up in their yard. We arrived in Vader in the afternoon and stopped at City Hall to check about camping. They told us we could camp out back of the jail. Della and I both traded looks that said, 'er...great...the jail.' We rode over and saw that this particular jail hadn't incarcerated anyone in probably 70 years. It was more of a city jail museum. We set up our tents out back among the apple trees and shade. Vader has a bit of a sad history. In 1910 they were a thriving logging town. Then, Weyerhaeuser bought the sawmill and shut it down. Two years later, the clay firing plant burnt to the ground. The town lost all it's sources of employment and everyone started leaving. People were desperate for money, so many of the townsfolk burnt their homes to the ground to collect insurance money. Today, not much of the original town remains. Pretty much just the jail. Oh, and contrary to popular theory, Vader isn't named after Darth Vader, it's named after Darth's brother, Marten. Eric and Lesley drove down to camp with us out back of the city jail. We played cards and hot dice and had a pleasant evening together. Early the next morning, they loaded up their car to drive back for work and Della and I headed south. We crossed the Longview bridge in the morning. It was loud and crammed with traffic. The bridge wobbles and jumps when a Mac truck drives over it. We were both glad to cross over into Oregon and get off that bridge. In Oregon, we rode through Rainier on our way to Scappose. In Scappose, we found the county park and set up our tent. The vending machine at the park was out of Coke, so we asked another camper if he knew where we could find a Coke nearby. He stepped in to his camper and came out with two cans of Colorado Coolaid (Coors). That was close enough we figured. His name was Dan. He and his wife were in town working on some fellow's floatplane. Dan was an aircraft mechanic (semi-retired). After chatting with Dan and his wife and drinking our can of Coors, we stumbled around like the lushes that we are. We've never done too well with beer. Everything starts spinning. So we cooked our dinner and called it a night. The next morning, Della had a flat, so we fixed that first thing, even before leaving the campsite. A mile later, she had another flat. So we figured it was something hidden within the tire causing it. We couldn't find anything but something was doing it, so we switched tires. No more flats that day! We rode in to Portland on some terribly industrial roads. Not our favorite type of riding. We both love those rolling country roads. We worked our way through town, asking directions several times. We've noticed that people are very willing to give you directions, even if they have no clue where you're trying to go. They usually get you a little closer, but then you must ask someone else. We rode out on 99W into Tigard and pulled in to Scott and Susan's drive way. We went to the Intel Picnic the next day and had a great time playing with the kids on the inflatable slides and water toys. Intel knows how to throw a picnic! After visiting a couple days, we headed out to see Della's grandfolks. Tonight we head on out to Las Vegas. We're not bike riding though, we're flying. Too hot this time of year to ride across Nevada. That's about it for now. I hope you continue to enjoy our updates. We're going to be selling Della and Rob's Wacky Adventure T-shirts sometime on our website, so get your orders in early for all those people on your Christmas list! Love and bunny kisses, Robert and Della
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