July | 2014 | Sailing Silver Lining

Too busy doing this.

Hard at Work
Dang it. I did exactly what I said I wouldn’t. Can I just pretend that 6 months haven’t gone by since my last post? I’m not really sure what my excuse is this time. We are both working full-time? Boat projects? Our life being comparatively less interesting these days? Whatever, prepare to have 6-months barfed out in one post.

Elan accepted a job at a regional fiber optics company in March. I did my best to make sure he didn’t take a job that let him work from home, but I lost the battle. He is proving me wrong though – the dinette table actually does the conversion from office desk to dinner table every night when I get home. I was just sure that I’d kissed dinner at the table goodbye once and for all, but so far so good.

What I DID kiss goodbye was my house-husband. No more laundry washed and folded or dinner ready when I get home. Now we are back to the ol’ “but IIIII worked all day so you should cook” whine-off. Please, he gets to sit around in his boxers all day, so I can’t help but feel entitled.

Escape to Sucia Island
We took Silver Lining on her first outing of the year (Christmas lights and all – it’s June, seriously how does this happen??) to Sucia Island. Sucia is a gorgeous emerald-green park island in the northern part of the San Juan Islands. The good/bad thing about its 6 anchorable bays is that it can fit a ton of boats. Its one of my favorites islands around here, but I always have to talk Elan into it because of the full anchorages. As we approached the island we discovered that Snoring Bay, a long, skinny, unanchorable inlet with only two mooring balls, was open, so we jumped at the chance to have it almost all to ourselves.

Silver from the beach at Snoring Bay

Our first day there was peaceful and calm. We hiked to the West side of the island and checked out China Caves.

China Caves and Shallow Bay

Mountain dog

Grow crabbies, grow!

Swimming in his work uniform

One of the few people we ran into on the island was the Park Ranger who warned us to expect 20-30 knots of wind that night. Pish-posh, is that all you’ve got? We were tucked up inside the protected bay and are seasoned sailors after all.

We’ve only slept in the v-berth a handful of times ever. For as long as we have had the boat its been our junk storage zone. We recently completely redid the whole area, but that deserves its own post… coming soon- I promise! I have heard lots of cruisers complain that the V-berth is actually a really uncomfortable place to sleep in rough conditions. The idea being that, like a rocking horse, when a boat rocks, the bow and stern travel the greatest distance up and down, making it more uncomfortable than the pivot point in the center of the boat… As it turns out, a v-berth IS actually a really terrible place for try to get quality sleep on a rough night. I assure you, there was no snoring in Snoring Bay that night – the swell ricocheted back and forth off the high rock walls and kept the boat bucking all night. Halfway through the night, we both bailed on the V and went back to our old bert in the main salon (so much for that “upgrade”) but it was too late. I spent the rest of the night getting more and more worked up about not sleeping and trying to fix tiny squeaks and rattles with whatever materials I could grab in the dark. We woke up to bandaid packets scattering the floor and shoved in all of the cracks of the companionway. Was it necessity or insanity that was the mother of invention?

The only thing that made us feel better about our crappy night of sleep was seeing the haggard faces of the people on the 26 foot cutty-cabin power boat that moored next to us as they gunned out of the bay at sun-rise. Elan and I shared a wordless fit of laughter and then, guiltily, felt a lot better about ourselves. Apparently we slept better than some.

Repaired by a few cups of coffee, we again dinghied to shore to go for a hike to Johnson Point, the long outcrop that ‘protected’ our little bay the night before. What a beautiful place – ragged sandstone covered in twisted madrona trees and wildflowers.

Wildflowers

Sandstone formations

Johnson Point

Looking down on Silver from the cliffs above

View down into Snoring Bay

Being out on the water makes us miss full-time cruising. We really do. But we are pretty lucky to have great escapes like this one just a few hours away and still be close enough to hang out with our families and watch our niece and nephews growing up.

Here is a completely random assortment of photos from this spring.