This Time We’re Away!

Hello all,

We’re outta Dodge!  Our plans are a bit less ambitious than we’d expected, but we’re away nevertheless – Anacortes to Roche Harbor on Friday afternoon – starting mid-afternoon due to some last-minute glitches, then across to Roche Harbor Resort, planning to spend the next four nights here.

So much for our thoughts of getting back on the water with Flying Colours in quick order.  It’s now been six weeks since Kap’s “incident” – resulting in lots of hours of physical therapy each day.  Hopefully all that effort will show good results with her wrist articulation and strength. At her last visit with the surgeon on Monday, he pronounced her wrist “healing better than normal”, and he’s very pleased with what she’s done in physical therapy.  The surgeon estimates she’s missing about 10° of wrist articulation, and the next couple of month’s therapy should help.  With that, we felt comfortable we can safely cruise Flying Colours – but with a bit less ambitious plan than we hoped. For the next several weeks, there’ll still be weekly trips back to Seattle for PT sessions with a professional therapist at Seattle Hand Surgery, so we’re limited to the places that Kenmore Air flies into. Kap is now a “zipster” – by flying into the Kenmore Air base at the south end of Lake Union, she can pick up a Zipcar just a block away and use that for getting around town on her visits.  I’ll stay on Flying Colours with ZuZu, Raz, and Gator.

For the next couple of weeks our plans are to remain in the San Juan and Gulf Islands – relaxing (and reveling) in the 70-75°F temperatures that are forecast for the near term.

Getting Underway

It seemed like fate was telling us not to leave on this cruise.  One thing after another cropped up – the last being an incident with the “yellow dock line” – that’s the big heavy 50A shore power cord.  We moved aboard on Thursday night with the dogs and cat, got everything stowed aboard, and stored the cars at a self-serve storage facility on the outskirts of Anacortes.  As we set up the mooring lines on the dock for easy release I suggested I should unhook the shore power cord – the 25’ shore power line that was hooked up at the bow (just in front of the Portuguese bridge), snaked across the bow and plugged into the 50A power box on the dock – but I got sidetracked helping Kap with the lines and didn’t do it. 

At 1PM Kap cranked up the engines on Flying Colours and I released the lines.  She was driving from the cockpit helm station to back out from our slip, while I was moving from port to starboard advising on slip clearance.  All of a sudden – too late – I noticed the shore power cord on the deck.  Just at that instant a guy washing his boat a couple of slips away hollered to me, and I didn’t have to even think about what he was saying – he’d seen the shore power cord hanging from the bow, with the end in the water.  He came running down to our slip and unhooked the 3’ pigtail from the power box, and I could see four bare wires on the boat end of it – meaning it must have separated there as we pulled away, and the plug end for the pigtail was still on the cord that I now fished out of the water.  We returned to our slip and tied up again while we figured out what to do next.

A quick call to Mike Johnson – our local guy who is very knowledgeable about Flemings and looks after Flying Colours while she’s in Anacortes – and we found him at the marina next door.  He agreed to come right over to re-wire the plug.  Within the hour he had it fixed up and we tested it to make certain it worked.  At 3PM – with a bit of trepidation about what could possibly happen next – we headed out of the slip, determined to make it to Roche Harbor, if for no other reason than to prove to ourselves that we really were leaving on the summer’s cruise.

Cruise Route

Our route was across the north end of Fidalgo Island, through the Guemes Channel that separates the two islands, then across Rosario Strait – one of the two main heavy shipping channels towards Puget Sound.  I was at the helm as Kap fired up the generator to run our watermaker. There was very little traffic out – one large freighter heading south towards Seattle crossed in front of us, and we met a Washington State Ferry coming out of Thatcher Pass bound for Anacortes.  The tide was still running our direction for another hour, giving us a little over 1 knot push – we were making just under 10 knots at 1350 rpm.

Thatcher Pass, separating Blakely Island from Decatur Island, is just a little over a mile wide and a couple of miles long.  We turned north to go up the SW corner of Blakely Island, then turned left at the top end of Lopez Island, and entered west into Harney Channel.  I expected any minute to see a Washington State Ferry eating up our tail on the radar, as the San Juan Island ferry was loading at the ferry dock in Anacortes as we went by.  At 18-20 knots, they catch up pretty quickly, and in these narrow channels you don’t want any surprises from them.

Click on any of the photos to see an enlarged version.

As we came across the bottom of Orcas Island, I was also on the lookout for the Inter-Island ferry that runs between Orcas, Shaw, and Lopez Islands.  Harney Channel is quite narrow here, and the ferry often crosses in front of us with little notice, as both ferry terminals are tucked around corners when we’re coming from the east.  I could “see” the grey AIS symbol on our chart plotter screen for a ferry at the Orcas Island terminal, and figured it would likely leave just as we approached.  Instead, as we saw the ferry nose out from the right, it turned to the west in front of us, obviously heading for Friday Harbor.  As we approached Crane Island, the ferry turned south through Wasp Pass, and we took the right channel towards Pole Pass.

We’ve transited Pole Pass about 20 times now, and it’s always one of the more challenging parts of the route.  The pass itself is probably 150’ wide at high tide, but shallow enough at low tide that it’s barely 50’ across – shallows to 2 fathoms (12’ deep) in the center of the channel – our draft on Flying Colours is slightly over 5’.  It was essentially slack tide when we arrived, so there were no swirling eddies to push and pull the boat off course.  A kayaker was coming through from the other direction, and he maneuvered to the side when he saw us.  The transit was smooth and uneventful – just the way we like it.

Once through Pole Pass, Kap took the helm for the last hour into Roche Harbor.  Passing the familiar barren south-facing hillside of Spieden Island on the right, we always scan the brown hillside for game – in the 1970s the island was populated with exotic animals (Mouflon sheep from Corsica and Sika deer from Asia according to Wikipedia) for big game hunting.  Thankfully this was stopped and wild herds still roam the grassy hillsides. Ahead, Flattop Island comes into view as we near the entrance to Roche Harbor – so named because it looks like a large Navy aircraft carrier from a distance.  Kap elected not to take the shortcut passage into Roche Harbor, but rather, came around the west end of Pearl Island.  As we entered Roche Harbor, it was obvious this was a middle of the summer day, as the entire harbor was littered with boats at anchor.  We called the Roche Harbor Marina office on VHF channel 78A and they gave us our slip assignment – H-20, bow in, port side tie – and advised that one of the dock staff would be there to catch our lines.

Roche Harbor

It was 6:15PM when Kap shut down the engines, and after doing her engine room checks we settled in for a much-needed Happy Hour margarita – we’d finally gotten away, hopefully for the summer!

We had dinner on the deck of the Madrona Bar & Grill, and with really slow service it was almost sunset when we finished. Kap hurried back to the boat, as the dogs and cat aren’t thrilled with the loud bang at evening “Colors” – the canon salute and ceremonial lowering of the flags each evening.

Roche Harbor hosts boating rendezvous almost every weekend during the summer - this weekend, it's the Columbia River Yacht Club, with their boats completely filling the guest dock. Behind on the grass are cottages that can be rented.

The folks at Roche Harbor have a good sense of humor - as you can tell from the motto of the Phecal Phreak - "We take crap from anyone" proudly displayed. The resort staff is all college kids hired each summer from all over the world.

While walking the dogs one evening I toured some of the other docks and came across another Fleming 55 - this one the Alleluia, owned by the couple who also own Arrabellas Landing Marina in Gig Harbor. They must be out checking for ideas to see how others run their marina.

We’ve planned four nights in Roche Harbor. Typically, we just overnight on the way in or out on our cruises – having one last dinner at the wonderful McMillans Dining Room on the way out, and taking advantage of the nice Customs clearing available there on the way in from Canada. We’d hoped we could use our snazzy new hi-tech folding bikes to explore San Juan Island, but the surgeon thinks Kap should wait another month before doing that.

Sunday at midday Kap has a Kenmore Air flight booked to their Seattle Lake Union base, where she’ll pick up a Zip Car to get home for the night. On Monday morning Kap has a physical therapy appointment at Seattle Hand Surgery, then she’ll catch a 2PM flight back to Roche Harbor.

Tuesday morning we’ll head west across the border to Sidney – a short trip of just an hour and a half. We’ll be there for several days, so I’ll write more then.

Ron