We're looking for the trash fence...

Sorry for such infrequent updates, but we’ve been busy getting all of our friend married -- wedding number 3 in as many weeks is Saturday -- as well working on boat projects.

Wedding number 1, over the 4th of July weekend, was in Cle Elum. Lars and Jenny we’re absolutely beautiful and to be able to have all of our Burner friends together for a solid three days was an absolute gift. The weddding was meant to be a “Goofball Wedding” so I had to bust out my green PeaBear costume for the ceremony! (Have to find a pic of that still)

Wedding number 2 was in Roche Harbor and we took the boat up. The weather didn’t cooperate too much with sailing, but we did get a few hours in, used the Hydrovane and even had to put a reef in the main, I was glad I finished finished installing the reefing hardware on the main boom the day before!

Julia’s and Jason’s wedding was held at anchor on the biggest spinningest raftup I have ever been on. The AnderGuards (as we call them anyway) are an awesome couple and know how to throw a party. Some of us water people went ashore to partake of the Roche Harbor Bar as well. The lamb burger isn’t all that, skip it. The rum runner is delicious, have 3 instead!

On the way back we went to Blind Bay on Shaw Island. We went for a long walk on the island around the bay and enjoined some very good ice cream from the Shaw General store which first opened in 1899!! That night we took a dinghy of wood to Blind Island for a night of fire and marshmallows.

The night after was spent in La Conner, WA after handling the tricky navigation of the Swinomish Channel. The depths in Swinomish are supposed to be 6’8” at low tides, but can be a bit all over the place (usually deeper, but sometimes not) given that they don’t’ dredge it as much as they used to. La Conner is very cute town and if the Swinomish channel has been scaring you off, don’t’ let it. Just plan to go in with at least +X feet of tied where X = (7’ + Your Draft + 2 feet) and you should be fine. Also, don’t’ leave La Conner until you have similar depths. Aside from that I think it’s very doable but WAY easier for those shallow draft Bayliner wake machines.

Since we got back I changed the oil, installed new oil cooling lines which were leaking, changed the raw water impeller and the zinc in the heat exchanger.

Dawn has been working on organizing our medical kit and working on the sail covers. Because it was too windy to sew on the dock, we spent about 4 hours in the conference room at Windworks sewing all the main stitching for the covers. Dawn ran the machine and I manhandled the cloth to allow her to sew more easily. We can’t thank Greg and the staff at Windworks enough for loaning us the conference room. That was absolutely awesome!!

Wedding number 3 is tomorrow, I’ll save that for the next post, and we’ll do some more technical posts on the sail covers as well.

whew… I’m going to need a vacation after this 3 week vacation!

Written by Dawn again…

After we finally left the grip of the mainland (Port Townsend) we made our way across the Straits of Juan de Fuca early on a foggy morning.  Once we made our way into the Straits there wasn’t much of an eventful crossing (thank goodness) with the exception of getting a hail over the radio from s/v Hello World! They were crossing the Straits on their way to Port Townsend back from their circumnavigation of Vancouver Island, BC!  It was great to hear their voices again and to catch up briefly on their way to meet up with our other cruising friends, Kim and Fisher, who were about to head out on their voyage to the S. Pacific!  We crossed the Straits making good time to intercept with our other friends who made it up to Westcott Bay on San Juan Island.  As we rounded San Juan Island, we ran smack dab in the middle of a super pod of Orca Whales feeding off of the coast!  It was way cool!  But we were very respectful of the feeding whales and so we headed outside of their feeding ground and went around them.  We hailed our friends over the VHF and they escorted us through the channel into Westcott Bay.  We rafted up and settled in for a wonderful evening of story telling about our “incident” and listened to some other great tales.  That evening “someone” (ok it was Patrick) thought it would be a great idea to drop the crab pots (even after having a little too much drink).  I was awakened by the sound of giddy boys squawking about the size of the crabs they brought back to the boat.  They were busy killing and cleaning the huge Dungeness and Red Rock crabs that were already caught in the crab traps after dropping them for only an hour!  YAY!  (And a little side note, apparently, Patrick is very afraid of crabs!  It was very funny watching his reaction)  Our first crab of the season and so plentiful!  We were set for a few days with plenty of yummy fresh sweet crab meat.  That evening I cooked up some homemade crab pasta sauce and shared it with our friends.  How amazing was that???

I awoke early the next morning while others were still asleep and decided to go for a row in our dinghy.  If we do this trip again, I will have definitely make more of an effort to acquire some kayaks.  Although rowing the dinghy is nice, I would have much preferred paddling in a kayak.  I rowed around the bay visiting and watching the seals, tons of seals, and tons of water fowl and other birds.  I even saw a tree with five bald eagles hiding in the bows of the branches.  All I could make out were their prominent white feathered heads poking out here and there.  It was sooooo amazingly beautiful, relaxing and quiet.  The fact that we ran aground quickly melted away and became a distant memory! After spending the day and another relaxing evening in Westcott Bay the raftup decided it was time to head north towards Sucia Island!