(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.
Michelle Esteban from Komo 4 “Problem Solvers”has made a short local interest news piece which aired on Komo 4 Problem Solvers at 11pm, Thursday Oct 8th.
On Friday, July 31st, Whisper joined up with Sustainable Ballard for the first
ever camping trip to Blake Island, gathering up the local Puget Sound sustainability communities for a weekend away. (We tossed around names like “Camp Carbon Feather” but never arrived at a name that felt right. Maybe next year!)
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. 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!
This is the time of year when seal pups are leaving their mums and venturing out on their own. Three deliveries ago a baby seal swam up to Whisper and began playing with the sculling oar, which was deployed in the water as there was no wind. This was as we passed Protection Island in the Straits in the morning; this is frequently a calm spot. My route in these conditions is to scull out into the main channel to pick up the flood current which will take us into Admiralty inlet, wind or not. As the seal swam around and under the boat at one point actually playing with the oar, which was an almost unbearably cute sight, I had to think of the difference between this and standard motorized land or sea transport. I guess it’s not a smart idea for wildlife to play with our regular transportation system. I actually got this on video and can send it to anyone interested.
Whisper is anchored in Sequim Bay, waiting to load tomorrow. Alec and I walked into Sequim to write email. The wind is picking up and we are going to turn right around to get back to the boat as the East Entrance is forecating W 20-30kts. I’ve got two anchors out on mud but there is nothing as insecure as watching trees blowing and wondering where the boat is.
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.
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.
Jackie left Seattle for Sequim at around 10:30pm Monday Feb 23rd to take advantage of weakening wind before it dropped. Arrived for overnight stop in Pt Townsend, Point Hudson Marina after 15 hrs at 1:30pm Tuesday. Seas calm. Jackie is an engineless Yankee 30 equiped with a 15ft skulling oar used for docking.
Left Port Townsend at 9:30am Wednesday and experienced very light to no wind all day. We used the spinnaker, tidal current and a lot of skulling to arrive at John Wayne Marina around 3 hours after sunset that night.
Produce was delivered from Nash’s farm on Thursday by Sid Marony of Sequim Locally Grown in his electric truck. Bob was disappointed he didn’t get to transfer the entire load with his bike trailer, though he did move all the kale and half of the cabbage by bike.
To take a break from Sailing and to send out customer mail Sarah and I walked the 4 mile round trip into Sequim, hitching a ride on Bob’s trailer for a section.
Jackie was loaded and we cast off from the dock at around 6pm Thursday evening. Our plan was to rely extensively on the main flood tides to get us back through the Straights, Admiralty Inlet and into the Puget Sound. The best tides were all between 9pm and 3am both Thursday and Friday. We ran a rotating 4 hour watches and made it back to Seattle in just over 30 hours at 12:30am Saturday morning.
This whole trip was characterized by extremely light wind for this time of year. Making way engineless in these conditions is a lot about managing tide changes efficiently, especially making sure to be in position to drop a hook if the wind is still dead when the tide changes. Without the great sculling oar setup and light air sail plan on Jackie, this trip would have taken a lot longer.
The highlight of the trip back was clearly seeing a pod of Orcas heading north past Kingston. All of us on board had seen Orcas in ones and twos but never 6 or 7 all out of the water at once.
Once back in Settle we unloaded at the boat loading ramp using two cargo bikes to move the produce to the drop-off point at Kickit in downtown Ballard for people to pickup in person. Door to door deliveries were made by Seques Fisclin’s electric assisted Trike.
During the entire 5 days of this trip and delivery no fossil fuel was used in transporting the load from Nash’s farm to the dropoff or to customers doors in Ballard.
Whisper returned from two day trip Seattle to Poulsbo. Honey from Buck Hollow farm. Wind was 5kts to 10kts sea calm. Return trip was in record time despite relatively low wind due to calm sea and no dead zones on entrance to Liberty Bay. Crew Dave, Tom and Alec.
This is the time of year when seal pups are leaving their mums and venturing out on their own. Three deliveries ago a baby seal swam up to Whisper and began playing with the sculling oar, which was deployed in the water as there was no wind. This was as we passed Protection Island in the Straits in the morning; this is frequently a calm spot. My route in these conditions is to scull out into the main channel to pick up the flood current which will take us into Admiralty inlet, wind or not. As the seal swam around and under the boat at one point actually playing with the oar, which was an almost unbearably cute sight, I had to think of the difference between this and standard motorized land or sea transport. I guess it’s not a smart idea for wildlife to play with our regular transportation system. I actually got this on video and can send it to anyone interested.
Last update June 11, 2pm (Dave)