Bright Spots in the Sky and on the Sea...

It's another soggy day up here in the Pacific Northwest, but we managed to find the only spot of sun yesterday, and we used every scrap of it. Good Old Boat magazine's Karen Larson and Jerry Powlas drove up from where they were staying on the Kitsap Peninsula (at GOB writer Richard Smith's house) and we set off: Karen, Jerry and Jim in Sockdolager, and me aboard Minstrel. It was a glorious sail and lots of good photos were taken. Sockdolager had to put the pedal to the metal as the chase boat under power in order to keep up with Minstrel under sail. From shore it probably looked like a Keystone Kops chase scene. Karen and Jerry, who had cooked us a STEAK DINNER the night before we sailed, are flat-out fun to be around, and I look forward to enjoying their friendship and writing for their magazine for many years to come.

This photo is not from yesterday, but it shows you what Minstrel under sail looks like.

By now you may have guessed that we'll be taking Jim's boat to the Queen Charlottes this summer. Minstrel will stay behind, and I am renting out my house for the summer to a colleague/friend from the Fish and Wildlife Service, who is moving to Port Townsend from Portland, OR. I'll be reachable by email or via Jim's cellphone. We'll email that number separately.

We're assembling cruise materials (thanks to friend/sailor/musician Bertram Levy for the loan of many Canadian charts) and are route-planning now. The route will include some offshore passages, the first of many, we hope. Life is good, in spite of the economy. It is, frankly, as good a time as any to take off and go sailing. You can live pretty cheaply on a boat if you're careful. And in the wilderness of islands and remote peninsulas we plan to visit, the absence of traffic and TV and shopping malls will be a sound that rings as clear as echoes off a mountain fjord. Okay, so we don't own a TV, Port Townsend has no shopping malls, and the traffic is minimal here. But we still won't miss those things.