Today is the first post of Ron’s Blog for Flying Colours – our Fleming 55 – getting ready to be underway on our cruise to SE Alaska for summer, 2010.
Since I didn’t get a cruising log out last year, I thought I’d sprinkle this introductory post with some photos from Summer Cruise, 2009.
Flying Colours at anchor in Farewell Harbour, August 12, 2009, on our way to Port McNeil during last year's shakedown cruise.
Nothing like a mimosa on a quiet morning - particularly with Gator curled up next to me, and Raz sleeping alongside him.
Kap, Gator, and Raz on a hike above Greenway Sound in the Broughton Archipelago (near the top end of Vancouver Island), August 16, 2009.
(Note – for all photos on this blog, I’ll insert most of them as thumbnails, and you can click on them to see an enlarged version.)
It’s Sunday, May 23, 2010 – almost exactly one month later than we expected to depart – and if all goes well with final preparations, we’ll leave the dock at Anacortes Marina on Wednesday, May 26. Coincidentally, it was on May 26, 2008 that we headed out for SE Alaska on Cosmo Place, our 42′ Nordic Tug. So we’re still in plenty of time to get where we’re going and to have a good time, but we just won’t have as much time on the water as expected.
Once we depart Anacortes, if you wish to follow our cruising progress, I’ll have our SPOT tracking device set up to record our GPS location every day. When you log on to the URL below, it will take you to a Google Map where you can see where we were for the previous seven days. The map opens in Map format – which is OK, but I prefer to switch over to Satellite (click on the option at top right of the map).
https://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0FOG9TBGyBdkbde3YCWOXhbyfalQtYB0I
Towards the end of our long shakedown cruise last year - November 7, 2009 - we spent a week at Bell Street Harbour, a great marina at the foot of Pike Place Market. The afternoon sun on Seattle's downtown building was fabulous.
- ZuZu – our 6-year old Bengal cat – is really a princess, and she’s very fond of sleeping on the matching (to her) pillows that we keep in the flying bridge.
Cruising south on Johnstone Strait on August 23rd last year, Kap spotted a large number of Orcas heading our direction, about 1/4 mile away. She immediately stopped dead in the water - and a few seconds later, two Orcas split off from the pods and headed straight for us. They approached us at a 45 degree angle, then dove underneath our keel at the last second, coming out the port side, and continued on north. Their actions were obviously for curiousity or maybe just for play.
On board Flying Colours on this summer’s cruise will be Kap as Skipper, me as First Mate. Gator and Raz – our two Basenjis – are First and Second Deck Paws, and ZuZu – our Bengal cat – is Co-Skipper.
This year, I’m sure I’ll have almost as many photos of them as I do of scenery and wildlife on shore.
As we cruise along, I’ll introduce everyone on board in more detail, plus I’ll try to include more information in advance about our cruising plans.
That’s all for today.
Ron