Back into the San Juan Islands we motored on the afternoon of Tuesday, September 17. Walt’s lower back was still somewhat painful (an ultrasound has revealed no kidney stones, so some sort of muscle damage must be the source of his recent miseries), but his movement was not restricted, so we loaded our food and gear onto Braesail and pulled out of our slip after experiencing some difficulty in starting the engine. There was no wind, the sea was beautifully blue and happily relaxed, and we motored for about four hours in the direction of Patos Island to the northwest. Upon finding that there were no boats attached to the mooring buoys in Ewing Cove on Sucia Island, we picked one of the four and ran a line from the boat’s bow through the ring at its top. We enjoyed a peaceful evening of reading, writing, experimenting with Large Language Models (Walt’s latest area of computer interest), and watching a PBS detective series, and were pleased to be the only boat in the quiet cove.
Several more boats arrived on a pleasantly-autumnal-feeling Wednesday and attached themselves to the remaining anchoring buoys. Walt showed me how to lower our dinghy, Coracle, from its elevated position above the stern into the water, and I spent a delightful late-afternoon hour rowing around the cove. I made my way through a rippling current, along the standstone-lined shores,
across in front of the wide, gravelly, driftwood-edged beach, along beside several whimsically-sculpted rock clusters that had been turned into islands by the rising tide and upon which seagulls perched and fluttered, back to Braesail and along the shore behind her, and finally, after waving to an inquisitive harbor seal poking its head out of the water, to the bathing platform in the stern of the boat. I clambered onto the platform, and Walt, who’d spent the afternoon on his computer investigations, suggested that I pull and tie the dinghy alongside the “mother ship” for the night to reduce lumping and bumping outside the “captain’s cabin” in the stern, and I did so. A glowing sunset washed over the quiet water as we ate dinner, and we watched a few videos, enjoyed cocoa and biscotti, and slept well.
On a sunny, windless Thursday morning, Walt served as instructor as I hoisted Coracle out of the water using the davits at Braesail’s stern (davits form a small crane used for lowering and raising a small boat from the deck of a larger vessel). We again found that Braesail’s engine was very reluctant to start as I pulled our deck line out of the mooring ball’s anchoring ring; Walt suspected that a failing relay was to blame for the problem.
Once the engine was running, we made another attempt to snag the single mooring buoy in the snug little cove on Patos Island, but, when we approached the lighthouse on the island’s seabird-strewn point,
we saw that a small power boat was hooked to the buoy there. We decided therefore to return to Sucia Island and to catch one of the buoys in spacious and aptly-named Shallow Bay, which features forested shores and three beaches from which trails wander off around the island. After attaching the boat safely to one of the buoys, we enjoyed a very warm and tranquil afternoon. While Walt worked on his computer at the nav-station desk, I had a wonderful time watching and listening to the white-foamy surges of seabirds that swelled along and over the rocky spit at the bay’s northwestern rim. As we ate supper, the golden light faded into a stunning sunset that filled almost the entire sky above the bay with streaks and streamers of color.
A rushing wind rose during Thursday night to a strength that had not been predicted, and the wide mouth of the bay, open to Harrow Strait to the west, began to swallow large gulps of rolling sea swells that rocked the boat about uncomfortably for about half the night and made sound sleep difficult. After a brief breakfast time, we prepared to detach a bouncing Braesail from her bounding buoy, but her engine refused to awaken at all. Walt went below-decks and jump-started the diesel engine, and we motored the short distance along Sucia Island’s southern shore to sheltered Fossil Bay. We were very glad that the starter relay had failed when we were on the boat and not when charterers were aboard!
Walt spent most of Friday at his navigation station desk working on his Large Language Model project (it will lead to further analysis of the works of St. Augustine), and I enjoyed sitting up in the sunny cockpit, watching a variety of watercraft entering and exiting the bay, and observing, through binoculars, a rollicking raft of six river otters swimming, twisting, diving, and resurfacing near one shore while a line of raucously-honking Canada geese trailed along another. At last, the otters clambered onto the rocks, shuffled into a dark den, and disappeared from view, and I returned to my reading, email writing, and French and Norwegian lessons.
Friday night was blessedly calm, and after we’d packed most of our remaining food and our clothing, Walt jump-started Braesail’s engine, I freed her from the mooring ball, and we motored back to Anacortes on a shiny, bracing morning. After stopping at the holding tank pump-out, jump-starting the engine, circling for a bit while waiting for a spot at the fuel dock, filling Braesail’s tank with diesel, and jump-starting the engine again, Walt at last backed the boat into her home slip in the Anacortes Marina. I handled the dock lines; we made certain that Braesail was comfortable and snug in her bed; we unloaded our gear, hauled it up the dock, and stuffed it into the Prius; and we then drove back to our Everett condo, stopping for much-appreciated ice cream cones on the way and looking back on another relaxing, doing-nothing-much boating “vacation.” Now to buy and install another (expensive!) relay before Braesail goes out on charter on September 29 . . . and we prepare for a month-long exploration of Scandinavia during October.
Braesail - A grand yacht in the Salish Sea 