Monday, March 1, 2010

Asters Coffee Lounge, 7pm to 9pm

5615 24^th Ave NW

Ballard

(Very likely progressing to Snooze Junction for beer and pizza later)

Please join us for a social night. This is a great time for sailors, customers, business or other interest’s friends and family to get to know us and find out what sail transport is all about. More and more people have lots of questions and ideas about what we do or how to become involved, this is a great informal time to find out.

·         Meet the crew.

·         Learn about our upcoming sail transport delivery schedule for 2010

·         Share tall sailing tales from the moderate to light seas of the Washington Inland Waters.

·         Share your business ideas

·         How we manage to transport produce 100% petroleum free.

Fair winds

Dave

The honey will be sailed from Poulsbo to Seattle on August 15th.  Not one single drop of fossil fuel will be burned by STC to make this delivery possible. My congratulations also to the local beekeepers on the Olympic Peninsula who continue with love and dedication to produce a real whole honey even whilst under severe economic duress from competitive  industrial farming which threatens the very existence of what should remain a natural product.

For this or be on the notification list for future  orders  for  regular or special deliveries email sailtransportcompany@gmail.com. 

Dave

(posted 7-17-10)

And now to the Abyss I pass
Of that Unfathomable Grass…

1.
Dear relatives and friends, when my last breath
Grows large and free in air, don’t call it death –
A word to enrich the undertaker and inspire
His surly art of imitating life; conspire
Against him. Say that my body cannot now
Be improved upon; it has no fault to show
To the sly cosmetician. Say that my flesh
Has a perfect compliance with the grass
Truer than any it could have striven for.
You will recognize the earth in me, as before
I wished to know it in myself: my earth
That has been my care and faithful charge from birth,
And toward which all my sorrows were surely bound,
And all my hopes. Say that I have found
A good solution, and am on my way
To the roots. And say I have left my native clay
At last, to be a traveler; that too will be so.
Traveler to where? Say you don’t know.

2.
But do not let your ignorance
Of my spirit’s whereabouts dismay
You, or overwhelm your thoughts.
Be careful not to say
Anything too final. Whatever
Is unsure is possible, and life is bigger
Than flesh. Beyond reach of thought
Let imagination figure

Your hope. That will be generous
To me and to yourselves. Why settle
For some know-it-all’s despair
When the dead may dance to the fiddle

Hereafter, for all anybody knows?
And remember that the Heavenly soil
Need not be too rich to please
One who was happy in Port Royal.

I may be already heading back,
A new and better man, toward
That town. The thought’s unreasonable,
But so is life, thank the Lord!

3.
So treat me, even dead,
As a man who has a place
To go, and something to do.
Don’t muck up my face
With wax and powder and rouge
As one would prettify
An unalterable fact
To give bitterness the lie.

Admit the native earth
My body is and will be,
Admit its freedom and
Its changeability.

Dress me in the clothes
I wore in the day’s round.
Lay me in a wooden box.
Put the box in the ground.

4.
Beneath this stone a Berry is planted
In his home land, as he wanted.
He has come to the gathering of his kin,
Among whom some were worthy men,

Farmers mostly, who lived by hand,
But one was a cobbler from Ireland,

Another played the eternal fool
By riding on a circus mule

To be remembered in grateful laughter
Longer than the rest. After

Doing that they had to do
They are at ease here. Let all of you

Who yet for pain find force and voice
Look on their peace, and rejoice.

To see the video on Komo click here

Someone posted the show on youtube

See how your veggies get from Sequim to the Seattle. Komo filmed the August 22 delivery.

As most of us in the Sail Transport crew didn’t actually have TVs we celebrated appropriately at the Sloop Tavern.

All the best

Dave

Now, any sailor worth his or her sea salt knows that no trip is complete without good libations, and we were lucky enough to receive a generous donation of Naughty Nellie and Pike Pale Ale from Charlie and Rose Finkel, owners of Pike Place Brewery. Somehow, Whisper wound up being the boat to sail that beer over.

About 40 people arrived at the island from the following groups:

• Sustainable Bainbridge
• Sustainable Greenlake
• Sustainable Bremerton
• Sustainable Vashon
• Sustainable West Seattle

Part of the group headed to the reserved Group camp site, while a couple others grabbed beachside campsites below. The Group site promptly got dubbed “Upstairs”, the beach site, “Downstairs”. One of the cooler decisions we made was to bring over two open festival tents which provided shade from the hot sun: Upstairs received its chaise lounge and banner of “Relaxation Cabana”, and Downstairs received its lounge and banner of “Pirates for Sustainability”.

We co-mingled supplies as one person discovered they had overlooked packing matches, another missing cooking oil–in the tradition of camp, it all evened out.

We found the mooring balls on the east side of the island, and Whisper dropped two anchors. We rafted up to Soliton, a 35-foot Catalina which has made the produce run up to Sequim several times. The rafting up, however, wound up a bit of a mistake. The water proved choppy and the boats started grinding too hard against each other. Just as we decided to unraft,
one of Whisper’s stanchions bent under the pressure.

On Saturday, the beautiful gaff-rigged schooner from Bainbridge Island, Shan, moored nearby (picture follows below).

Saturday morning dawned surprisingly foggy, with the muffled thickness broken occasionally by passing boats’ horns. By noon, however, the fog had burned off and people relaxed into different activities: kayaking, chatting over beers, hiking around the island trails, or the familiar summer routine of simply heading down to the water’s edge, sunscreen and good book in hand.

We were spoiled by the fact that Blake Island is an unusual state park—it has a concession stand—so dripping vanilla ice cream cones made an appearance in the 90 degree heat. On Saturday afternoon, too, a couple parents arrived with their children, so our adult conversations became punctuated by the high pitch of the children’s voices and energy, darting in and out like the dragonflies along the shoreline.

Saturday evening after dinner, we enjoyed guitar-playing from Sustainable Bremerton’s musicians, and danced by the beachside campsites. The merriment continued into the evening, just barely crossing that fine line so that we got a visit from the polite ranger, cautioning us to keep the noise down.

On Sunday, we headed Upstairs for breakfast in the form of an omelette-making contest, where campers got creative with vegetables and eggs in intense pursuit of The Grand Prize: a genuine plastic rooster from Archie McPhees!

Pizza rounded out the uneventful sail home. While it can’t be delivered by boat in Ballard, we do enjoy bicycle delivery from Snooze Junction Pizza. Moon Dog called ahead as it approached the Shilshole docks, and sure enough, the bicyclist met the sunburned but happy crews at T dock for dinner delivery.

All in all, a fun way to spend a hot summer weekend!

The flip side to this is walking back around that last corner in the trees to find Whisper solidly in place.

The sail back had me amazed at how with all our technology the NOAA forecast can be so off. 15 to 25kts in the staits turned into 0 to 10kts everywhere. After sculling out of John Wayne marina at the start of the ebb (which is probably the only reliable way to get around the Travis spit on an engineless vessel) we were becalmed on a glassy sea. All our attempts to scull out to find wind resulted in having to scull back to avoid the edd in the staits. That’s one problem with Sequim Bay to Seattle under pure sail in light wind. The current that gets you through the spit so easily turns against you in the Straits. Eventually we dropped a hook to hang out. At one point I was convinced we would not make the delivery, in fact I was concerned we wouldnt make it to Admiralty.

Like so many times sailing whenever you settle down to hang out in the sun and prep a salad the wind came back. The wind knows when you’ve given up on it and really doesnt like to be ignored. After seriously believing we wouldnt make the delivery we made Seattle in 14 hours cleat to cleat without a single drop of fuel being burned. The monster flood current in Admiralty was an absolute pleasure. Watching the Pt Wilson lighthouse glide by so fast when we were barely moving through the water is part of what engineless navigation in this area is all about. I love the currents here. I love rip tides, 4ft white capping standing waves, whirlepools, back eddies and all the turbulance they cause. When you plan right they are always going in the right direction and they are free. Its great having a moon.

Dave

Bob Hall and I are anchored in Sequim Bay waiting load for the June 14th delivery.

This trip started from Fairhaven (near Bellingham) where Jackie (Bob’s Yankee 30) was moored. We spent the last two days cruising through the tide rips of the San Juans into Sequim Bay. Engineless entry into Sequim Bay is always interesting and this time was no exception. The last time we did this entrance was in complete darkness, in very light wind. The Sequim bay entrance is cool because you navigate the channel between two long spits then between some mud cliffs (which give very variable air) and a real shallow bar. The navigational markers are not lit ensuring this entrance is a worthy navigational challange. This time was no different but at least in broad daylight. The challange this time was the wind was up and our closest point of sail turned out inconveniently to be exactly the heading we needed for navigating the channel, 240 degrees. Meaning lateral drift would ensure we would have to short tack at least once in the channel, which is what we did.

We anchored Jackie in Sequim Bay not far from John Wayne marina where we will load the produce at the loading dock.

The forecast is looking really good and we are looking forward to making our record time for the trip to Seattle.

Well we did make it back in our record time 11 hours 15 minutes after flying both spinnaker and genoa at once from Admiralty to Seattle.

June             14, 28
July              11, 25
August          8, 22
September     5, 19
October         3, 17, 31

To Order or to be on the Sail Transport list simply click on the “Click here to order” link on the left hand pane. The Downtown Ballard Pickup location is:

Kick It Boots & Stompwear
2607 NW Market Street, Ballard
(10am to 12noon on delivery date)

Tote Contents

The selection changes with the season. We try wherever possible to make the half and full totes the same selection. If we have to leave something out of the half totes for example we try to limit it to variation rather then pure ommission for example the full may have three types of chard where the half has two. Here is what’s anticipated in the Saturday October 17th delivery.

Small box ($25 single person):
Purple potatoes, detroit beets, carrots, apples, leeks, chard, bok choi, turnips.

Large box ($40 small family): More of everything in the small box plus, basil, Italian parsley, Savoy cabbage, bunched Walla Walla onions, cauliflower, garlic, red wheat and Yukon potatoes.

Look forward to meeting you at the pickup.

Dave