We left Newport bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Tuesday afternoon. We were fully provisioned and prepared for a 30-hour sail to Coos Bay. We anticipated a combination of motoring and sailing as the wind was suspected to be inconsistent from the east. The sky was orange with smoke and very eerie.
Around midnight, under motor, we heard a loud clunking, and our motor shut off.
We had run over a crab pot, fixed to a line & buoy and coiled the rope tightly around our propellor shaft, enough to shut off our little diesel motor Greg. With a newly acquired anchor, we got bashed by waves for a bit until we were able to cut free the crab pot but still had a rats nest bound around our propellor.
We did our best to sail, staying optimistic about fixing things when the sun came up, or sailing into the next safe harbor. When I woke up for my 2:30 am shift, it was clear that wasn’t going to work. Winds were too light to make meaningful progress, the odds of us sailing across a dangerous bar to calm waters were slim, and the prospect of having one of us dive and cut the prop free in ocean swells without a mask or goggels while the boat bashed up and down in the waves seemed too dangerous.
So for the second time in a short journey, we hailed the Coast guard. They were professional, sympathetic, and asked all the protocol questions about our vessel taking on water, having food, life jackets, other hazards etc.
They sent the same model ship out to us, tied off, and began the 5 mile tow into Florence.
We got into Florence at 5:30 am, humbled and pretty worried the trip was over. The motor was bound up, and wasn’t all that trustworthy to begin with.
No one in town had any dive gear. the best we could come up with were youth sized swim goggles at the dollar store.
Joe dove in with his tiny goggles, and a freshly sharpened knife. Praise God, and a big shoutout to Joe’s tenacity. He was able to slice through the corkscrew of rope and free the prop shaft.
Amazingly, the shaft wasn’t bent, and the motor restarted with a cough and spun corrrectly and freely in forward and reverse. We were back!
A few hours of planning, organizing the boat, and a pizza dinner sponsored by Nelson, and we were ready to ship out. We called the draw bridge in Florence and scheduled an opening at 6 AM Thursday morning. Ready for the next stretch.
It’s been a big week, and it’s hard to process as we try to figure out what our next week looks like.
First, we left Port Townsend, enjoyed a bouncy first night shift, and made Sekiu by 5 am. We enjoyed pancakes and a slow morning at anchor while we waited for the tide to rise. Apparently their fuel dock is shallow. Tide rose, we got terrible instructions from their marina and motored in confused. We tied off to a random dock, shuffled jerry cans to top off our tanks, and got back underway.
We rigged up fishing gear, and motored out the straights. We landed a beautiful 22 inch Coho Salmon! We felt like that was a good omen for our first stretch of the Coho Hoho Rally.
Leaving the straits we encountered the largest waves I’ve ever seen on Scooter. Probably 8+ foot swell with a few more feet of wind waves on top. The waves are called square waves when the waves leaving the sound are about perpinducular to the waves running along the coast. She behaved admirably. We saw a whale. Taylor saw it breach and splash so that was special, plus it was about 2 minutes before she barfed from seasickness.
The wind turned in our favor the following morning and we put up sails. Finally, after years of prep, we were sailing on the open ocean. Aside from seasickness, the next 24 hours were without incident.
We kept sailing, being sick, reading, having fun, and not sleeping very well. However, it was everything we had hoped for.
Evening of the third day out, the winds built to 25 knots, and Scooter flew south. We were screaming along at 10 knots. Nelson and I listened to podcasts calmly while we drove down each 10-foot swell. I got jealous of the autopilot having all the fun surfing our 14,000 lb boat so I disengaged the autopilot.
We were able to have the emergency tiller (trusty rusty, the 18 inch steel pipe) engaged on the rudder, and Taylor pulled down the sail. She fought like hell, didn’t have feet touching the deck of the boat at times, and hauled the sail down in a minute or two.
At the time we were 50 miles off the coast, northwest of Newport. Our tiller sits about 8 inches off the deck of the cockpit so the most efficient location to steer from is laying on the floor of the cockpit. We took turns laying on the cockpit all night. Every 12 seconds a wave hit and knocked us off course. We also coudln’t really see the map from the floor, so we’d get a course dialed in, gage our direction using the stars and the moon, then go back to our ‘celestial navigation’.
At some point we hailed on the VHF radio that we were limited steering and vessels in the area should use caution. The Coast guard responded and asked for more info, and got our phone number, and offered to monitor our situation.
After a 10 hour slog, (probably the hardest 10 hours of my life) dawn arrived and we were approaching Newport. We reached out to the coast guard asking for bar crossing advice, and they suggested they had a lifeboat in the area and could tow us into Newport. We said ok, as long as it was free. Their definition of a “lifeboat” is loose. It was a 40-foot twin-engine aluminum boat, designed to be rolled and self righted in the worst ocean conditions.
We’re pretty sure they used us as a training exercise. There were mostly rookies on board, a few repeated orderers, confusion, and lots of overkill. They had a second lifeboat come block traffic around the jetty as they pulled us in.
They also apparently had to tow us in at 12-14 knots. much faster than Scooter is designed to go, and I was convinced everything on the old girl would be torn off. She held thankfully.
Once in the harbor, they delivered us to a slip at the marina, inspected our boat for safety requirements, and were impressed at our preparedness. The captain called us ‘the most prudent sailors she’s seen’. That was a hell of a compliment to our recently blemished pride.
Then the formalities were dropped and they let us tour their boat in exchange for letting them hold Eunice.
Next, we began the long process of putting our house back together. In the 10 hours of fighting back to land, we had been pounded by waves on our beam. Everything inside was on the floor or out of place. The evening’s stir fry was sprayed on the interior, the TV screen had slammed into a wall and exploded everywhere. It was like everything we owned was tossed into a saltwater washing machine and dumped into the boat. The only clear spot on the boat was a 3-foot section of the couch where we slept for 30-minute shifts with our foulies/harnesses/life jackets still on.
First of all, my last post was a little severe. I do believe we’ll be fine. We pass three of the worst capes in the world but we’ve done everything we can to mitigate the risk. We’re leaving in the low wind season, we’re prepared for offshore sailing, we trust our little vessel, and we have several ways to contact the coast guard.
Tomorrow, we depart on the largest adventure so far in our lives.
Thank you for following along. I want to thank everyone in our lives who have helped us make this dream possible, reading my posts, loving us through the delays, and being enthused about the idea.
Our location is going to be updated every 30 minutes on our website, and on the Coho Ho Ho website (their tracker is better than ours).
We have survival suits, and several other (less fun) safety features.
Logistics have changed. We’re going to leave Sunday at 1 pm. We’ll follow the long ebb tide out of the Straits. We might stop in Seiku to top off diesel, but then the next planned landfall is Newport, Oregon. If things are excellent and weather is right, we might skip Newport, and sail straight through to SF.
We anticipate the sail will take 4 days to Newport, and 10 days if we skip it and send it straight to San Fran.
Tonight we had a conversation with a captain who has done the passage 8 times. We nervously expected him to doubt our vessel, preparation, and sailing acumen. We were pleasantly surprised to have him confirm we are well prepared and he anticipates we’ll be in California having a drink on the dock with him a few days after them.
Most importantly, there won’t be an official update this Tuesday. We’ll be 60 miles off the coast and won’t have any cell service. But they say no news is good news.
This week was amazing. Leading up to the adventure went as well as it could’ve. We left Port Orchard at 4:45 am and made it to Port Towsend by mid-afternoon. We gathered our friends and spent a rough night at anchor in the bay. Wednesday we sailed the 50 miles to Bellingham to visit a huge part of our Bozeman Community and pick up our Sea Peoples Co apparel.
We turned around and found anchor at a beautiful cove on Cyprus Island. Anchoring was miserable as the sun had set and everyone and their mom was anchored out in the san Juan islands. Fortunately, Tanner had an amazing seafood boil waiting for us.
Thursday was a long return to Port Townsend. We made port at 8 pm in a fresh breeze and had some fun docking our boat.
Friday morning we made it to Portland, gathered Hannah, Joe, and Nelson, and returned to the boat.
Today, we finalized provisions, replaced our fuel filters, did laundry, showered, cleaned the boat, and tied up loose ends with our electrical system. Now, after 2 years of preparation, we’re ready to go. Wish us luck. See ya in Califonia.
We knew the week leading up to departure would be hectic but it feels even more so when everything is stacked up.
Tomorrow morning we check out of our marina in Port Orchard. We have to be cast off by 4:45 am to (barely) beat the tide and sail (motor) up to Port Townsend. There, we pick up our last guests before the adventure. My elementary school friend Tanner, married Taylor’s college track mentor and they’re visiting this week. Small world. Then our last task is to sail to Bellingham to meet Nate, our college buddy and apparel guru to pick up the highly anticipated, limited release shirts.
Then we need to be back in Port Townsend Friday morning to hitch a ride back to our truck, drive to Portland, collect our crew (Joe and Nelson) & support staff (Hannah & Max) drive back to Port Townsend in time for the send-off meeting on Saturday.
Then it actually starts
There is trepidation in sharing plans. Plans can fail. I can fail. I know everyone reading this has heard us talking about nothing else for the last two years, and I’m sure it got annoying. It’s easy to talk about ideas. Ideas are fun.
Sunday morning we’ll leave for Neah Bay. It’s an 80-mile sail upwind. We’ll likely leave at 2 am to have a following tide most of the way, but when the tide and wind are opposite, waves stack and sailing is uncomfortable.
Neah Bay is largely shut down. It’s an indian reservation and has been hit hard by Covid. The resupply will be short, and mostly for fuel, water, and rest.
After Neah bay we pass Cape Flattery.
This summer I read about a guy who had sailed all of the oceans, in the worst conditions and he lamented how treacherous North Carolina’s Cape Hatteras was. He said it was every bit as bad as the three notorious North American capes which he avoided: Cape Flattery, Cape Blanco, and Cape Mendicino.
Anyway, once we pass Cape Flattery, we charge south and take our last refuge at Newport Oregon, before setting off to pass Cape Mendicino and Cape Blanco.
Oof
The first thousand miles of this adventure will really show us if we like ocean sailing, if we can survive, and if Scooter is up to the task.
Anyway, for those of you who are more concerned with how the past week went, here goes:
The spray dodger is complete! This is huge for Scooter. Our comfort level at sea just went through the roof! Taylor is amazing for learning to sew and taking on such a daunting first project.
The Autopilot works. We wired, re-wired, and re-read the manual, and then re-wired again and got it functioning. Sunday was the test run and in light wind and under motor it worked great.
The AIS connector I found in the woods last weekend worked and we can officially see other boats without the aid of cell service. (and the installation looks pretty professional if I do say so myself)
Saturday night we drove to Seattle to buy a fourth Survival suit, so now all crew members have a safety device. We also negotiated hard for another one! FIVE survival suits! Craigslist deals are the only reason we’re not broke…yet.
Eunice got fixed and got a new necklace. She looks like a martini glass.
Taylor went up the mast again! We installed the wind vane we got as a gift and its totally functional!
Stay tuned for a second update this week. We have a lot in the air and I have more to share.
But right now I have a 3:45 alarm set, and a purring lampshade on my chest.
We’re within two weeks of departure which I think is significant for two reasons. First, comparing where we are now to last year is stark. We have much more confidence in our preparation and understanding of our little vessel. There’s a lot of unknowns but one ‘known’ is that we’re in a way better place than last year.
Secondly, I think (hope) the weekly updates are going to get more exciting. Instead of boat projects and dabbling in the sound, we may get into a chapter of big water, new states, grocery lists, and other high adrenaline topics. So feel free to share the emails.
We left off in Anacortes for some sail repairs. We carted our sail to a loft and had the professionals inspect our silent motor.
Our sail is ancient, but not without hope. The mainsail got a couple 2-mile walks in a cart, and some new material on the ‘leech’ (the back edge) and some patches. Also, a huge victory as this was the first boat task that came in under budget.
We opted to omit some sail maintenance to save money, knowing that we had needles and thread back on the boat. So crossing the straights of Juan De Fuca, I threw some stitches into our 3rd batten. Hopefully it’ll hold.
We had drinks with the other remaining Coho Hoho boat crew in Port Townsend, discussed logistics, inherited their hand-me-down anemometer (they’ve been a blessing. Their upgrades have resulted in our upgrades a number of times). Hopefully, by tomorrow, our ‘new’ wind speed and direction indicator will be mounted atop our mast.
We sailed (that’s right, sailed) back to Port Orchard. We had great wind all day on Wednesday and cruised down the sound, and even sailed through the narrow Rich Passage. It was nice to make progress toward a destination under sail instead of the norm: using the motor to cover miles, and the sails to entertain.
Here’s our sail, highlighting that nice leech patch that we sailed 2 days for and spent $300 on.
Our former boss (from our bartending days in Cincinnati) flew in for the weekend. Sunara’s the best manager I ever had (sorry dad) and has become an awesome friend to Taylor. We visited Seattle, saw Pike Place, ate seafood on the water, and conquered Elliott Bay. (We’ve had a bad experience in the Elliott Bay marina)
We sailed hard into Seattle. We also learned to warn our guests about how far we lean over and that we won’t, in fact, tip over. Sorry, Sunara.
Taylor was the ultimate sailing babe and I had to include some pictures of her. She’s the bee’s knees.
The big highlight of the weekend was borrowing Rydell’s crab pot, with newly acquired buoys. Sunara was the good luck charm because not only did the crab pot not drift away in the current, but when we pulled it up…CRABS!!!
Yes, we lost our bait box last week so I poked some holes in a Gatorade powder jar and stuffed a chicken breast in. (Sponsor us Gatoraid!)
Red rock crabs are not quite as meaty as the more sought after Dungeness, but they’re way more flavorful and in my humble opinion, more fun to look at.
We feasted on crab, sun-dried tomato pasta, and a green salad. That meal is easily a podium finish for most gourmet food in Scooter’s galley history.
My personal highlight and maybe the best example of the Lord providing, was on our hike. Backstory; I’ve been searching high and low for the right adapters to get our VHF radio antenna to work with our AIS receiver. AIS is a system used to see other boats on the water without the use of Radar (kinda like find-my-friends for all boats). I’ve poured money and time into trying to get our system functioning, and its the last outstanding safety feature for the passage.
On a hike on Blake Island, we stumbled upon the state park’s dump, full of old pipe, fire rings, and other metal junk. We poked around for fun. I just so happened to find the exact coax cable adapter in some garbage radio box.
Today, I connected everything and got AIS running on our boat. The system can read the area, convert the signal to Wifi, and send the data to our iPad which overlays every other boat’s position on our charts.
Some things just seem to be falling into place.
Required Eunice pic: The good captain approved of our sail repairs.
Boat improvements are still at the forefront of our minds and always will be I suspect. But this week, we finally got out to explore.
Wednesday we motored up to the cute little town of Poulsbo. The bay was relatively warm and the day was hot so we dove in. It was refreshing and we seized the opportunity to scrub the hull of our dinghy ‘Scootie’. We later found out from a local that they ‘wouldn’t dip their feet in the gross bay’. Oh well.
Thursday it stormed. We were dedicated to plowing 25 miles north to Port Townsend so we sat in the wind, rain, and waves for 5 hours slogging along under diesel power. We could’ve sailed. Probably should’ve. But for a list of reasons, we chose not to. A tear in the sail (the reason for heading north) and the discomfort of beating into a 20 knot rainy wind were the top reasons. Eunice got sea-sick. Our first sea-induced barf on scooter goes to Captain Eunice.
We got to Port Townsend, dropped the hook, and enjoyed a beer with the other boat crew still signed up for the 2020 Coho Hoho (the rally to San Fran). Back at anchor, waves kept pounding us until about midnight when, mercifully, the sea returned to glass.
this picture was taken several days later when we weren’t getting tossed around.
Rydell and Kyla, our college friends, pulled into the parking lot as we pulled up to the fuel dock as planned at 6:30 am. Side note, it’s been the biggest blessing in the world having Kyla & Rydell living nearby. Having generous people who love boats, boat projects and have tools and laundry machines has been incredible. If we make it south, it will be to the credit of the Reinbolds.
We shoved off and headed north for a Tour-de-San-Juan. The Straights of Juan de Fuca were calm, we didn’t catch any fish, but we did learn that ‘San Juan’ and ‘Juan de Fuca’ are not the same ‘Juan’.
We popped into our favorite anchorage, Watmough bay, and went for a hike. A rope swing and an astounding view of the bay awaited us.
We pulled the hook, continued to fish, and sailed north. The rain returned but we would not be deterred from breaking our single-day distance record.
We crossed the 60-mile line just east of Sucia Island, the “Jewel of the San Juans”.
En-route, Rydell spotted a washed away crab pot buoy. Hoping it would be attached to a lost crab pot, and maybe full of crabs, the girls took control of the boat, and Rydell and I took command of Scootie.
The 3 buoys were just connected to a severed line, but for what Westmarine charges, we were thrilled with our find. Ironically, Rydell had a crab pot but didn’t bring it for lack of a legal buoy.
Thankfully Saturday was dry for the hikes & dinghy rides.
the china caves on Sucia island, keeping us all entertained.
We returned to the water and waved at the Canadian gulf islands as we headed South. The port of Friday Harbor was packed too tightly for Scooter to find a safe anchorage so we pressed on. Thank goodness we did because the wind picked up and we were finally able to show Kyla & Rydell what all the hype was about. Sails filled, Scooter leaned, charcuterie spilled, but we were all so filled with joy.
The highlight of the weekend for me was the Saturday afternoon hike with Eunice.
She’s a lousy hiker but is pretty good at riding contently on our shoulders.
It was a treat to be hosting friends and under sail again.
Now that we’re moving again, the next stop is to visit a sailmaker in Anacortes. Today we sailed 35 miles North and removed our Main Sail. Hopefully, they can help our aging sail without ruining the budget.
Scooter is Naked and docked next to a 150-foot megayacht but still manages to be our little proud ship.
Living right on a knife’s edge of being overwhelmed.
We got back to the boat last Wednesday and immediately got back to work. Taylor is taking on the spray dodger. Basically the windshield and roof of the cockpit. These are generally canvas and vinyl and professionally sewn are $2000-ish. Way outside the Scooter budget. She found a sewing machine on facebook marketplace for $80 and got all of the necessary materials for $400.
With the help of her vast Instagram following, some youtube videos, and a ton of hard work, she’s well on her way to having the dodger made.
I got going on Scooter’s electronics.
Last week, we installed a new battery system. We upgraded Scooter’s house battery bank to a 200 amp-hour AGM battery, replaced the main switch to separate the battery banks, replaced the battery charger with something from our lifetime, and hooked up our charge controller for the solar panels. 12v DC systems are not my forte. Electricity isn’t really my forte. The extent of my knowledge comes from wiring subwoofers in my honda civic in high school. Needless to say, I barely squeaked passed circuits in college.
The boat looks like a catastrophe in project mode.
I ran the wires for solar and fitted the panels. This went mostly smoothly except our fiberglass top deck can (apparently) be almost an inch thick in places and no waterproof wire pass-through I found would work, so some industrial sealant (throwback to our window project) will have to do the trick.
Now Scooter has solar and we can move our projects off-shore and still have power!
This leads us to the last major electronic project scooter needs before her voyage. Our Autopilot. This has gotten me thoroughly whelmed. Our boat doesn’t have much of a binnacle so this requires some creativity. I got a 6”x6” electrical junction box for houses and started jigsawing.
This took the better part of a morning and I was so proud of my creation but so ashamed I didn’t take a better picture of the process, or mounting location. I have a lot to learn about documenting projects.
The housing didn’t fit between the top of the bar and the current compass mount. At this point, I was committed so I went after the compass mount with the trusty jigsaw. It was too large anyway. It turned out perfect, which is a relief cause I didn’t get permission from Hannah and Joe ahead of time. We’ll find out if they read their emails.
Nothing is mounted yet, unfortunately. Raymarine sends a 1-meter cable to connect the electronic compass to the interface screen with the EXPLICIT instructions not to mount within a meter of your existing compass, as if everyone wasn’t mounting the instrument right next to their compass. Whoever made that decision ruined my weekend. So I have a 3-meter cable in the mail and hopefully can wrap this up later this week.
The real fun started this weekend when Hannah and Joe were able to visit the boat. We got a little motoring in, a lot of laughs, and some key decisions made for the voyage.
Max and Eunice didn’t get along (to no one’s surprise), the crab pot drifted away in a hard current, the anchor got in a fight with the fiberglass dock box (Anchor won, security deposit lost), we gig’d some horse clams, and experienced the best bioluminescence to date. It was a blast having the original crew back together.
This was the first time we’ve seen them bright enough to capture on a camera. This 20-minute splashing session alone was worth every penny we spent on the boat.
Big news on Scooter. We found a fourth crewmember for the passage to San Francisco. We were nervous about getting enough rest with only 3, as shifts at night would be 4 hours awake, 2 hours sleeping. Better sailors might only need one person awake, but in our novice state, that doesn’t seem entirely safe. So it’s my pleasure to introduce:
Joe and Tay met Nelson years ago on a spring break trip gone awry. They were en route to Zion to meet me and some friends but pit-stopped in Colorado to do some Younglife-Backcountry-ministry-training. Their car broke down, and they were forced to spend the week at a Young Life camp and hang out with Nelson. Then a couple years later Joe ended up guiding for RMR together and became fast friends. His energy is unmatched (except maybe by Taylor). Nelson is a fly-fishing guide, ski patroller, and just really good at doing adventures. We’re so excited.
But if you were thinking about joining, we definitely have room for a fifth person!
Finally, If you’ve seen Taylor or me in the last 11 months, you know we have lived in our Sea Peoples Co hoodies and beanies. They have fantastic designs and materials and have partnered with us on some gear this year. Our first run is an organic cotton long sleeve shirt.
They’re $28 and will be available in 2 weeks. If you’d like to pre-order, get ahold of me. We’ll have more products coming out closer to our departure to SF but everything is a limited run so don’t wait!
P.S. Thanks for following along on the projects. I hope there aren’t going to be this many project-based weekly updates in a row in the future. I know boats are never-ending maintenance but I hope this weekend marks the beginning of the adventuring aspect. TBD.
My Uncle passed away last Wednesday morning. Thursday we drove the 9 hours to Montana, Friday was his memorial, and the weekend was dedicated to helping tidy my aunt’s property.
Jim Scott was an inspiration for this adventure. He was an example of non-traditional twenties turning into a storied and fruitful career. I knew my uncle as the classiest professor. He always wore a suit and tie and was the dean of classics at the University of Montana. Years later I learned his dress-shirt sleeves covered the tattoos of his rebellious days when he worked for a traveling circus as a carnie. Jim performed as a sword swallower with the circus in the summers while he finished his masters in Latin at the University of Michigan. He found the U of Montana while hopping a train from his hometown Chicago to Seattle where he was working on his Ph.D at UW. He continued to ride the rails even while acting as a suit-and-tie professor.
Jim was also the first adult to talk to a kid like an adult. He asked grown-up questions, cared about our answer, never patronized (even when we were certainly stupid kids) and genuinely engaged with us as early as I can remember.
This week I was excited to write about the re-wiring of Scooter, with a new battery, new battery charger, solar panels, improved switches, relays and the whole nine yards, but that update will be a few days delayed.
I’m sorry to the followers who were hyped for their Tuesday morning boat update, and it’ll be in your inbox shortly. In the meantime, here’s my favorite Jim story:
Jim Scott, fresh out of his Ph.D at the University of Washington applied for a teaching gig in Chicago, at Northwestern. After the day-long interview, the committee took the prospective hire out for drinks in downtown Chicago to a blues bar. Anyone who left before midnight was nixed from the list. Midnight to two a.m. had a good shot, and anyone who closed down the bar became the frontrunner. The idea was recognizing that they may be at the best jazz bar in the world that night, and going home to be well-rested for a flight was a huge disservice to themselves.
So years later, Jim implemented his version of the test at the U of M. He’d drive the prospective professor north from Missoula, through Arlee, toward Saint Ignatius, Montana. This gave him an hour each way to talk and vet the interviewee. Coming over the Arlee hill, the Mission Mountains erupt. Snow-covered and towering over the valley.
In Jim’s words “if their jaw didn’t hit the floorboard, the drive home didn’t matter.”
Also sorry for the wall of text, we brought the laptop but not the charger so here’s my attempt at a weekly update with the remaining 6% of Tay’s battery life.
Yesterday was my 1 year anniversary of leaving GE. It’s been a different 12 months than I expected. More time on land than I hoped, but more time with our families. I don’t regret anything.
I recently finished a book about the source of our food called ‘Closer to the Ground’. The author lives in the Puget Sound area and describes a life based on the natural food available. From gardening to hunting, it was a detailed manual for finding food in western Washington.
We fished constantly last summer with limited success. We crabbed occasionally with zero success, we collected blackberries and apples a lot but we only tried once for shellfish. The night we collected oysters was one of the most memorable nights on Scooter. Grilled oysters in garlic-butter and hot sauce remain my top meal on the boat.
This year my goal is to do a better job of collecting food. We had friends up for the weekend with the intent of fishing, sailing, and enjoying the boat life but at the last minute, (from an uber driver’s inspiration) we decided to plan the trip around the low tide and the legal shellfish areas.
We found a rocky beach at low tide and beached the dinghy. Then we found an old man gardening and asked for permission. He was friendly and approved as long as we re-filled the holes. He also added that he hadn’t really looked for clams in the last 20 years, but figured they might still be there. Clams were not very abundant. Passing kayakers suggested digging to 18 inches which is fairly difficult in wet rocky sand, by hand. After 2 long hours of digging, we had a small prize.
Due to our small haul, I cooked the planned land-lubber dinner of pork tenderloin, couscous, and a home-dressed Ceasar salad. After dinner and merriment, Taylor and Alex set to preparing the clams while I prepared the crab pot.
These small varnish clams were fantastic. Purged, blanched, cleaned, and sauteed in white wine & garlic, I’m confident no one on the Puget sound had a better midnight snack than us.
The next day the crab pot was hauled (empty as always), and the dinghy was launched toward Blake Island. Between a failing battery system on Scooter, and an overloaded Scootie (our dinghy) no one brought a phone so the clamming went un-documented. We met a family with two little kids clamming away and got some advice. This felt like a good omen because the author mentioned above wrote about the joys of clamming with his kids and showing them where their food comes from at a very early age.
We set to digging and started the easter-egg-hunt. It was glorious. A clam every 30 seconds. Mostly Butter clams which were unharvestable due to levels of toxins, but every now and then a ‘steamer’; a Manila clam. We filled our bucket and set off to hike some of the island. We didn’t make it far because, in the first 20 yards, Taylor spotted a disturbance in the sand. A little spout of water. I started digging and felt something soft. I kept digging and felt the soft ‘thing’ running away from me, deeper into the sand. I was too intrigued to give up. So clawing at the sand and rock with rubbed raw fingertips I finally pried the animal from the beach. A Horse clam!!!
Horse clams look a lot like a geoduck and are a ‘gaper’ in that they can’t fit all their clammy bits inside the shell. Our clamming energy had returned. The next 2 horse clams were every bit as difficult to extract but we finally prevailed.
A few hours later, we were back in port and ready to prep.
The horse clam siphon is a delicacy, but it looks… less so. For our first foray into this much sought after phallic sea creature, we opted to batter and fry.
The fried clams were great, as can be expected for fried foods, but we’re looking forward to more experimentation with our next haul.
As for the rest of the clams, when our friends set off for home, we set about preparing a clam chowder.
The first order of business this week: buy a shovel and hand rakes.
Troy, Hank’s best man, flew in at 9, and ubered straight to the boat. Weather predictions were a steady 12 kts from the SSW, and although anything above 10 knots leaves us with some rough water, we figured a downwind sail would be smooth, and comfortable couple hours to Seattle and the Elliott Bay Marina. We did safety briefings underway, and bobbed our way up to the city. It was a little rougher than we hoped but I (hank) was having a blast cause we had never gotten the boat to go this fast. 11 knots on the nav system. We were FLYING!
The view coming into Elliot Bay with zero wind.
About a half mile out from our home for the night, we turn the motor on, turn the boat into the wind and get the sails slack in order to bring them down. Only problem is we kept turning. Our first thought was our motor wasn’t strong enough to overpower the wind and waves. The wind would hit the port side of the sails, and lean us over hard, we’d spin, have a second or two of slack, then the wind would hit the starboard side, flipping the lean. This made it very dangerous for Tay to bring down the sail, let alone stay standing on the deck. I was at the helm, furiously turning back and forth trying to get some control of Scooter, as we bobbed and spun. Taylor finally found a stragegy. One arm around the mast, one arm on the sail, pulling down hard to fight the on-and-off wind. Unfortunately, with only one hand available, the wind would pull the sail back up as she went for each higher handful of sail. So, for 10 minutes of hard work, 3 feet at a time, she pulled down the sail, grabbed the sail with her teeth, and steadied herself against the thrashing waves and spinning wind.
Meanwhile, I realized something was wrong. Scooter refused to respond to the steering wheel I was furiously spinning back and forth, and I realized I hadn’t hit the stopper in either direction in a few minutes. I decided to test it, and spun the wheel as hard as I could to the left. It spun like a pinwheel in a gale. We had no steering.
“Taylor come back” I hollered above the wind and waves. “I’m almost done, let me tie off” she replied.
“THATS NOT OUR FIRST PRIORITY”
That got her attention. Fortunately we had cleaned our storage lockers a dozen times in the previous two months and there was always a short, rusty pipe we knew to be an emergency tiller buried somewhere. The next 5 minutes were wild. We poured the contents of our ‘garage’ into the cabin, found the rusty pipe, removed the rudder post cover, and fitted the pipe to the top of the rudder. All while listing back and forth, and spinning wildly. We had control, albeit limited.
We called the marina and asked for a tow in. “sorry, not a service they offer, call TowBoatsUS. TowBoatsUS was based out of Tacoma, and said they’d be happy to, they’d be there in 2 hours and it would run us $2-3,000. Crap.
We called back the marina and said send all your spare bodies out to the slip and help us dock our wounded vessel.
My heart was in my throat as we maneuvered into the marina past the breakwall, and slipped, swerving and scared, past hundred million dollar yachts, while the wind did its best to provide us with an insurance nightmare.
I’m not good at docking. I’ll be the first to admit. In hairy situations, I had usually given the reigns to Joe, and helped with the docklines. But Joe was a couple hundred miles away. I’m proud to say, that day, by the grace of God was the best I’ve ever done parking ole Scooter. The marina employees who had offered themselves up as bumpers were impressed and un-needed.
It took a few hours for my heart rate to come back to earth, and my hands to stop shaking.
When I went to pay our nightly dues, the Harbormaster had an anemometer behind his desk, with a max gust readout exceeding 45 knots. Our previous limit had been around 10.
