Marinas – Riveted

Hood Canal to Port Townsend to LaConner

Laura Domela — Wed, 14 Feb 2018 23:07:54 +0000

We had a wonderful weekend exploring Hood Canal with our friend Kathy, and we wrote all about it here on Slowboat.

We left Alderbrook on Monday morning and cruised all the way to Port Townsend (~58nm in about 8 hours). The weather was perfect, so the long cruise was chill and productive. It’s easy to work while we motor along at 7.5 kts in calm water.

Leaving Alderbrook with a view of the Olympics

We arrived in Port Townsend just before 4pm and took a walk into town and back before it got dark.

Point Hudson Marina at Port Townsend

Back on Airship after our walk, we broke out the two dozen Shigoku oysters we’d picked up the day before from Taylor Shellfish Farms in Shelton, did some shucking and then had those for dinner along with a salad and a cup of soup. Delicious!

Beautiful view of the sunset from Airship

We left Port Townsend yesteday morning by about 8:30am and headed for Deception Pass and LaConner. The clouds were rolling in, but it was still calm and beautiful out:

Deception Pass

We knew we’d hit Deception Pass right at max flood, but the current would be going with us and at just about 4kts, so it was really no big deal.

Looking back at the Olympic range.

We arrived in LaConner just after noon and met the folks over at American Tugs to take a look at their new model called the Waypoint 36. We’ll be writing an article or two about this new boat on Slowboat…stay tuned.

LaConner from the Swinomish Channel

Last night we had dinner in town at the tavern (LaConner Pub and Eatery) and tonight (Valentine’s Day) we’re going to have dinner over at Oyster & Thistle (one of our fave restaurants in LaConner). We’re still trying to decide whether to stay in LaConner and walk the 15 minute walk to dinner (potentially in the rain), or continue on in Airship to Anacortes and drive the 20 minutes or so. It seems to have stopped raining for the moment, but you never can be sure around here in the winter! I think we’ll stay put. We’re getting a lot of work done, and we have rain gear if it’s raining later!

Port Harvey to Shoal Bay via Whirlpool and Greene Point Rapids | BC

Laura Domela — Mon, 19 Sep 2016 02:00:59 +0000

Last night after catching up with George and Gail about how their season was and the progress they’ve made on rebuilding the restaurant and store, we headed back to Airship to cook up some dinner. Tonight turned out to be tostada night! We grabbed some of the pulled pork (the stuff we made and brought from home) from the freezer, cooked up some black beans with jalapeno, garlic, and shallots, and then got all the toppings together: lettuce, shredded cheese, homemade salsa, sour cream, and some fresh lime to squeeze over the top. I’d picked up a bag of chipotle tostadas in Port McNeill last week thinking it had been ages since I’d had or made tostadas. We heated the crunchy tostadas in the oven and then built on with the toppings. They turned out great!

Port Harvey this morning:

Sabby on the dock:

George came down just after 8am with fresh cinnamon rolls. We took two to go, chatted a bit more and then headed out for Shoal Bay.

The rain started (again) just as we were leaving. We pulled the crab traps we’d set out on our way into the bay, but we only had one male keeper…the rest were females so back in they went.

We saw several sets of Pacific White-Sided Dolphins on our way through Johnstone Strait and into Sunderland Channel:

Our route today took us through Whirlpool Rapids and Greene Point Rapids. Both Whirlpool Rapids and Greene Point Rapids run to 7 knots at max ebb and flood, but can be safely traversed at any time as long as your boat has enough speed, stability, and rudder authority.

We had about 4.5 knots of current with us at Whirlpool Rapids…nothing too dramatic.

Even with what look like pretty good boils, our autopilot kept us on track with not much work.

We arrived at the Greene Point Rapids right AT max flood, and had about 6 knots of current going with u, but not much drama:

A little squirrely back toward the Cordero Islands and lodge:

We arrived in Shoal Bay and docked at the government dock (no other boats when we arrived besides the owners’ boat, but there are two more now). We walked up to the “pub” (the pub that’s never in pub mode when we’re here because it’s either too early or too late in the season) but we met Will inside…he’s from England and has been working here for most of the summer…and he said “Well guess what? It’s a pub right now!” so we had a beer and chatted with him for a half an hour or so. It’s rainy here too right now, but still so beautiful.

Tomorrow we’ll head on to the Octopus Islands. We’ve heard great things about them but never been. We’ll also go through more rapids tomorrow (the Okisollo Rapids). Unlike Whirlpool and Greene Point Rapids, you do not mess with the Okisollo Rapids at any time besides slack (which is exactly what time we’ll be there). During non-slack, there are large whirlpools, and an overfall/standing wave than can be between 5 and 8 feet tall! Eeeek.

Sounds like there’s some great kayaking and/or dinghy exploring around the Octopus Islands, but it’s not supposed to clear up until Tuesday, so maybe we’ll need to spend two days there.

Echo Bay to Port Harvey | BC

Laura Domela — Sun, 18 Sep 2016 02:43:11 +0000

We arrived at Echo Bay early in the day yesterday (since we got out of Booker Lagoon by 7:30am). It was rainy all day.

Dawnbreaker arrived later on (still pouring rain). Luckily, they had these fancy umbrellas onboard:

Thomas and Urban, above…doing the umbrella spinning thing for drama. Not pictured, Lars at the helm, being serious (but probably not really).

It rained all night. But hey, that means nice freshwater wash down for Airship, so it’s okay.

We slept in this morning (after a not-that-late-but-still-kinda-late evening hanging with the Dawnbreaker crew). After dinner last night, Thomas, Lars, and Urban brought over a homemade apple pie (and a bottle of wine) and we got out the pint of vanilla bean ice cream we brought from home (and still hadn’t eaten yet! How did THAT happen?) … fun conversation, stories, dessert, wine, espresso…

It was great catching up with Pierre, as always. He’s making some expansions and improvements to the store and the restaurant, and he’s got a new, darling cabin for rent (plus suites in the lodge) so if you don’t have a boat but want to come to Echo Bay, there are options!

We wandered around a bit this morning chatting with the other boaters (there were 7 boats at Pierre’s last night…that’s a lot for this time of year!)…and then made breakfast before heading out. (Our default breakfast is…breakfast tacos. Today’s were the last of the chorizo scrambled with some eggs, sliced avocado, homemade salsa, a dash of habanero hot sauce in flour tortillas…yum!) We left around 10am and headed over to see George and Gail at Port Harvey. The rain came and went, but it was a beautiful cruise:

We went around the west side of Gilford Island through Cramer Passage and Retreat Passage to Knight Inlet (bottom of Gilford Island) and then through Chatham Channel to get to Port Harvey. We were timed to hit Chatham Channel at max flood, so the current would be going with us, but at potentially 7 knots. We read up on Chatham Channel, and nothing sounded too dangerous (no whirlpools or eddies or overfalls), and it’s a smooth-bottomed channel, so the flow is laminar which is just fast, but not turbulent. We went through with no issues at all. We had 4.5 knots of current with us at the narrowest/fastest part, but that’s it. Nothing weird or nail-biting or anything.

We dropped our crab pots just west of Range Island on our way into the dock at Port Harvey and then caught up with George and Gail here for a bit. The rebuild of the store and restaurant are coming along nicely, and should be fabulous and better-than-ever for next season!

George said they’d seen a big grizzly on shore near their house next to the apple tree for the past two days, so to keep an eye out. We did, and then there he was!

George waited while I took a few photos before he fired his rifle to scare the bear away.

Now, we’re just hanging out on Airship (one other boat here tonight, the Jacari Maru, a Puget Trawler) and about to make dinner. We aren’t sure of our plans for tomorrow yet. Maybe Shoal Bay, and then the Octopus Islands…and then maybe Heriot Bay or Rebecca Spit on Quadra Island (in the spirit of trying to also go some places we haven’t been before). I could explore like this indefinitely.

Behm Canal | Helm Bay

Laura Domela — Tue, 31 May 2016 18:00:00 +0000

Airship Goes to Alaska 2016

Yesterday morning we left Fitzgibbon Cove and continued on around the canal. We had the current with us and decided to go all the way to Helm Bay. We’d originally thought we’d go to Yes Bay, but then thought no.

We saw a big black bear on the shore near Bell Island:

We got a spot on the Forest Service float, which is quite nice and has room for several boats. We were the only ones we’d seen all day though, save for a little fishing boat or two.

Our new view:

We took the dinghy out for some exploring, but the wind and waves picked up as soon as we were out from behind our little protector island, so we turned back. Plus, no bears.

Just before we turned into Helm Bay we saw a humpback or two out in the canal, close to shore. Nothing too dramatic, just some spouts and a few humps.

I watched this kingfisher fishing from his spot high on this piling for a while. (It was low low tide, so he was WAY up there):

I made crab curry for dinner in Fitzgibbon Cove, and last night I put together some penne with a crab/spinach/cream sauce. (Yeah, the crab thing’s gonna need to chill out a bit soon.)

Here’s a map of yesterday’s route from Fitzgibbon Cove to Helm Bay: 44.2 nautical miles, 5 hours 55 minutes

The weather sounds like it’s going to turn a bit worse today (20kt wind, 4 foot waves in nearby Clarence Strait) so we got up this morning and headed for Ketchikan on the early side (meaning, we arrived at the city floats in Ketchikan just barely after 9am).

Here’s this morning’s route: Helm Bay to Ketchikan: 22 nautical miles, 3 hours 7 minutes

There are only two cruise ships in port today (woohoo). It’s gray and rainy here and we have a bunch of work to do, so it’s just as well.

The city floats (also known as Casey Moran, but everyone just calls ’em the city floats) are first come first served. The other two main marinas in Ketchikan are Bar Harbor, a ways north, down by the Safeway, and Thomas Basin, a few blocks south, nearer to Creek Street. They both have space for transients, but they hot berth you…meaning that they’ll put you in a spot that belongs to someone else (say, a fisherman who’s out for a few days fishing) and then when he radios that he’s coming back in, they’ll ask you to move to a different spot. So if you’re out doing something or sightseeing or whatever, it can be a little tricky to need to move. Anyway, we stayed at Bar Harbor last year with the flotilla and it was fine. (They actually had a spot for me that didn’t belong to someone so I could stay in it the whole week that Kevin flew to the bay area for a business trip without having to move the boat on quick notice. Downside was that it was a spot right next to the boat launch where all the Duck Tour boats go in and out all day, full of cruise shippers singing along to the theme from Hawaii Five-O and Gilligan’s Island. Can’t have it all.)

Anyway, we arrived at city floats and woohoo, there was a spot! One spot! I spun Airship around and docked her (not quite like a pro, but pretty close), and as Kevin is tieing the lines, the guy from the larger boat that’s behind us comes over to warn us:

Nice yachty guy: Hey there’s been a big fish boat here and he’s apparently got this slip reserved for the month.

Us: Hmmm, these unpainted sections are first come first served, as far as we know.

Nice yachty guy: Yeah, that’s what I thought too, but he assured me that he’s reserved this space for a whole month. He can come and go, but this is his spot. You might want to check on that before you get too comfortable.

Us: Okay! Thanks for the heads up…we’ll give them a call.

Reserved. Heh. We call the harbormaster’s office to let them know we are here at the end of finger 3 or whatever this is, and tell them that the guy behind us said a fisherman told him he’s got this space reserved for the month. They say “Nope, he certainly doesn’t. All the unpainted bull rail spots are open to whoever comes first.” Yep, just like we thought. They said if we had any problems just to call the harbormaster on 73. (Problems? Like big fishboat guy comes over to kick us out of “his spot”? That should be interesting.)

An hour or two later, nice yachty guy comes back to see what the deal is (since we’re still here) and we tell him we called the harbormaster’s office, and we tell him what they said. He says “Well I wonder what that guy’s try’n’a DO!!?” and I said “He’s try’n’a get you to save his spot for him, that’s what!”

Airship to Alaska | Day 1 | Anacortes to Roche Harbor

Laura Domela — Sun, 08 May 2016 16:18:34 +0000

Airship Goes to Alaska 2016 – Here we go again!

We were finished with all of our boat projects and provisioning a little sooner than we expected, so we decided to head out a couple days early. We left Cap Sante in Anacortes and cruised over to Roche Harbor on San Juan Island today. We figured we'd rather do the one load of laundry we had left over here instead of at Cap Sante. It's beautiful here, and now we're just that much closer to Canada.

The weather started out a little dreary, but morphed into a gorgeous day.

Airship, all expedition-ready!

I guess we've never been to Roche Harbor in the "On Season" (which started Friday, apparently). The moorage was $65 for tonight…not $30-something as it normally is when we're here (in the Off Season). But we did have the very charming Hailey come out to our boat to take our payment right there, rather than having to go over to office to pay. Also, there are now trash cans right ON the dock…no walking up to the top to take your trash. So there's all THAT going for the On Season. :)

We did Mother's Day festivities with my mom last Sunday (brunch, some copter aerials of her home in Kelso, WA, etc.). Here are a couple of the copter shots (that's my mom in the second photo, throwing the ball for her three White Shepherds):

Kevin flew the copter while I used my iPhone and the other controller to control the camera and take photos. It was fantastic! We'll do more of this on our trip north (and show you the setup next time…it's very cool!)

Hawk on a mast, back in Anacortes:

We're going to cook dinner on Airship tonight (risotto, kale, mushrooms) and probably before dinner we'll head to the upper deck and sip an Aperol Spritz while enjoying the sunset, and the first(ish) night of our second trip up the Inside Passage to SE Alaska. We're super excited, and glad to have you along with us again!

The plan for tomorrow is to clear customs in Bedwell Harbor on Pender Island, and then stay tomorrow night in Ganges Harbour on Salt Spring Island.

Today's route from Anacortes over to Roche Harbor. 4 hours 27 minutes, 27 nautical miles:

Back in Anacortes

Laura Domela — Sat, 09 Apr 2016 14:05:55 +0000

The view from our deck last night, post boat show.

There are a bunch of neat boats up here at the annual Anacortes Boat Show. If you're nearby, come check it out! As you can see, the weather is perfect boat show weather!

Last Day in Port Townsend

Laura Domela — Wed, 10 Feb 2016 23:41:54 +0000

Here we are all cozy tonight at Point Hudson Marina:

It rained a bit this morning. Today we mostly worked here on Airship, except when it stopped raining we walked into town to get a stubby screwdriver so we could finish the fix of the Wallas diesel heater. We picked up our overnighted glow plugs up at the marina office and once we got back the heater didn't take too long to fix and put back together. Yay heat!

I took some iPhone photos while walking through town today:

And there we are on the far right:

Kevin didn't take any photos with his iPhone because his iPhone is underneath our boat about 20 feet down. Sad face.

On to Port Townsend (and another thing to fix)

Laura Domela — Tue, 09 Feb 2016 22:15:22 +0000

I got up this morning around 7 and turned the generator and the electric heat on and then got back in bed until things warmed up. With the extra Pendleton on the bed we were cozy all night…but it got down to 48 degrees F inside last night without the Wallas heater running as usual.

Bunch of seals coming into foggy Port Gamble Bay:

At 9am Kevin called Scan Marine in Seattle about our Wallas diesel heater. The guys at Scan Marine were SUPER helpful. They described to Kevin over the phone how to pull the bottom of the unit off and remove the glow plug. They said once we did that and verified that was the issue, to call them back and they'd overnight a new glow plug to us. (We ordered two so we'll have a spare.)

Kevin and I worked this one together. The positions one must achieve to work on boats is pretty crazy sometimes! The Wallas is inside this little vent in the wall beside the steps down to the front stateroom. Not a lot of room to maneuver (and with tools!!) in there:

Glow plug removed:

Glow plug. (It's the thing that lights the diesel fuel on fire, by getting red hot, to make the heat):

So once we had that all worked out and got a bunch of other "work" work done, we pulled anchor and headed for Port Townsend.

Exiting the entrance to Hood Canal:

The Olympics above the fog:

We could see more fog up ahead, so we made sure we had our radar going.

And pretty soon, bam!

But boy, when it cleared (mid-Marrowstone Island) it was just stunning.

Mount Baker:

Marrowstone Point:

We got our same slip at Point Hudson Marina that we usually do (Slip No. 2) with a great view of the Olympics to the south and Mount Baker and the cascades to the north. We walked into town to get a few things…the things we got included a bottle of champagne for tonight. Tonight is Night No. 300 aboard Airship since we bought her in September 2014, and we're right back where it all started, looking at those Ranger Tugs here in the marina from our Airstream that day. We plan to order pizza from (yum!) Waterfront Pizza for dinner and have a little pizza and champagne toast to all of the boating fun!

View from the back of Airship, as the sun is setting:

And then OMG this (no filter…this is straight from the camera):

We should get our overnighted parts from Scan Marine in the morning tomorrow, and then we'll decide whether to stay another night in Port Townsend, or head over to Deception Pass State Park a day earlier than we planned.

Here's today's track (about 19 nautical miles):

Oh, Just Boring Stuff

Laura Domela — Thu, 03 Dec 2015 14:44:55 +0000

We've been kickin' it on Airship back in Anacortes for a few days just working and doing a few boat projects. We've looked at a few new boats and a few used boats (thinking about the "one size up" we'd like to get to store guests more comfortably…and stuff…guests and stuff).

The past two days have had gale warnings and some stronger-than-usual winds, but honestly it hasn't seemed that bad. The clouds today are haulin' fast across the view off the stern while I work though:

Today is Kevin's birthday! We're working here on the boat this morning, and then later on we'll head up to Lummi Island (by car) and we'll stay tonight at The Willows Inn. Looking forward to another incredible, creative meal by Blaine Wetzel. Here's a post from the last time we were at The Willows.

There's a mooring buoy out front of The Willows, but so far we've never stayed there. It's not a very protected anchorage, and the weather isn't exactly calm this week. One of these days though it would be fun to anchor or moor out front and dinghy in to dinner.

Matia Island to Anacortes

Laura Domela — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 12:40:00 +0000

After hiking (and ALL THOSE MUSHROOMS) yesterday morning, we left Matia Island and decided to take our time getting back to Anacortes. We went the long way 'round the west side of Orcas Island. We didn't see any whales, but it was a lovely cruise.

Oh yeah, this was the sky at sunrise Sunday morning at Matia:

Airship, from the hiking trail:

Mount Baker and friends toward the end of the day in Guemes Channel:

Even the refinery looked cool:

As we approached the marina though…that's when the sky went crazy. Such a great sunset!

Here's today's route (32.5 nautical miles):