Don’t try making an omelet on a trampoline

I have realized a few things since leaving our beautiful Granville Island dock on August 31^st.

Firstly, living on a boat when it is nice and snug on a dock and living on a boat when it is charging forward in the Pacific 24 hours a day for over a week is not the same thing. My visions of baking bread and making nice warm meals while we were on our voyage turned into eating beans directly from a can and countless energy bars as meals.

Secondly, 8.5 days at sea without showering or changing your clothes does not foster a romantic environment.

However, the best lesson I learned is that you should not try and make your first omelet on the roughest seas you have encountered to date. About 6 days into our voyage to San Fran, I decided that a good delicious omelet would be in order. I also thought it would be a great idea to boil sweet potatoes to have for lunch at the same time.  I felt as though as I had conquered the motions of the oceans and could do anything!

Meanwhile, inside the cabin, it felt as though I was on a trampoline with (as Dan puts it) Sumo Wresters at each corner continuously bouncing and at different, constant, yet unpredictable times. This resulted in me being thrown about the kitchen, hitting the same darn drawer handle about 50 times, getting hit in the head  not once but three time by our swinging basket of fruit, dodging a flying cheese grater as it flew across the width of the boat leaving cheese residue in its trail, tap dancing around falling hot water overflowing from the potato pot to the floor as we rocked steadily from side to side,  watch the scramble egg mixture  spill form the bowl and then slide from side to side on the counter then on to the floor and finally dodge (once again), a fling spatula full of finally cooked omelet mash to see it splatter all over the cupboards and floor. We did eat omelet that morning, but the entire ordeal took about an hour and it took me about 3 hours afterwards to built up the strength to clean up the disaster.  Although the omelet was mediocre, after 6 days at sea eating energy bars and canned beans- it was delicious!

 

Extra extra, Sylvie blogs on the blog.

Well, I thought it was about time for me to write a little blurb on the blog.  Dan has been superb at keeping the Blogees up to date and it’s my turn to pitch in and write down a few.

We have been exploring the beautiful Californian coast and have picked some beautiful spots along the way. San Fran, as always, was wonderful and although it was hard to leave the comforts of the friendly yacht club there we thought it was time to hit the road after a week of indulgence.  While in San Fran we packed in as much as we could including several visits with Dan’s 98 year old grandmother, Yo-yo Ma with the SF Symphony, an Oakland A’s game on a Wednesday afternoon…. $2 tickets, and we explored the city as much as we could in his aunt’s sports car.  

Since then, we have been to Monterey (loved the Tuesday farmer’s market and the food) and are now anchored at a cute little place called Morro Bay. From the boat, we can see this interesting big rock (called, you guessed it, Morro Rock), sea lions, pelicans, otters, beautiful sand dunes, fishing boats and, of course, the massive nuclear power plant. It’s a friendly small town but we have decided to not eat the three-eyed fish from the bay.

Once again, the only wind we seem to experience is when we are at anchor, but hopefully this will change as we move south. Little Ustupu is starting to have an identify crisis with all this motoring… 

Monterey

Looking for a Coca Cola sponsorship.

We inquired about a driving range and were pretty much asked to leave.  Dan should have bought the $300 Pebble Beach polo shirt.

This used to be a guest dock for visiting boats at Morro Bay...

Morro Rock

GPS Location (Spot)

I think I've got this thing figured out.  You should be able to follow our progress with this link:

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0Gzlodea39gXpNWtWI4u8x2lQ6SK8Dxq4

Sometimes you need to zoom out on the map, otherwise you only see a blue screen (which is water).

Leg the first - Vancouver to Cali

Dear Blogeroos,

We have arrived, roll out the red carpet, pour us some champagne and toast us your finest toasts!  We'll meet you in ummmm, well, Oakland.  Ok, well just bring some beer and your least stained track suits.

It has really been one hell of a journey.  Since we bought Ustupu last October we have been working on her non-stop, mostly while still working full time jobs.  As we quit our jobs and began working on her all day every day things became a bit routine and we sometimes lost track of our ultimate goal, but on Aug 31st when we finally set sail for San Francisco this all changed.

Leading up to our departure we became somewhat "socially unavailable" as one friend described me, so it was great to see all of you who made it to our dock party and who came to visit us individually.  Speaking of the dock party, what a party.  A pirate showed up (he was actually a modern day man stuck in a pirate's body, but a pirate none the less), there were young and old people dancing in the boat until 3am and we even got some visitors from South Sudan.  Anyway, thanks for coming out and seeing us off at the dock, we won't soon forget you.  In fact we'll return before you know it and it'll be like nothing changed, except for my beard.

So here are some of the highs and lows of our 750 mile trip from Vancouver to San Francisco.

-The people who showed up at the dock to see us off on a cold Monday morning.
-Our friends from Transport Canada doing a fly-by and snapping some cool photos as we crossed the Straight of Georgia.  No loop de loops but a funny waddle. (See photos below).
-Having a 3rd crew member for the journey to San Fran.
-Not having a 3rd crew member for the journey, yikes!  Our 3rd crew member sailed with us from Vancouver to Victoria.  Then in Victoria at the last minute of the last hour he opted to not join us for the rest of the journey.  He had to bow out for personal reasons, which we understood.  The timing of the situation just left us in a somewhat precarious situation.  We went from having a crew member who'd been offshore and knew the ropes back to just us, a couple of fair-weather harbour sailors.  In the end we were really happy that it was just the two of us.  This trip isn't one that two people can't handle, it's just psychologically and physically easier to have a 3rd person around to help with night shifts and scary situations.  The end result hopefully made us better sailors and allowed our 3rd crew member to sort himself out.
-Seeing dolphins, then porpoises, then whales.  We had dolphins swim on our bow wave a few times which is so magical the first time you see them rushing alongside your hull and jumping out in front of the boat.  We saw schools of porpoises all over the place, including just under the Golden Gate Bridge.  We had a number of whale sightings.  These whale sightings were possibly the most nerve wracking experience for me on the entire journey as I was concerned that our hull may look like a whale and that it was mating season.
-On one of Sylvie's watches she saw a seal tracking a tuna, both out of the water at some points.  And later a shark fin (probably chasing the seal that ate the tuna that smiled at Sylvie).
-Rounding Cape Flattery was one of the pinnacles of the trip.  Cape Flattery is the last point of land you see after coming out of the Juan De Fuca and heading into the Pacific.  We rounded it on the evening of September 3rd, the same day we left Victoria, and didn't see land again for a long time.   And guess what, no wind.
-Oh the frustrations of no wind.  Our diesel tanks and auxiliary hold a grand total of 260 litres.  We basically used all of it.  We were down to our last 50 litres coming into San Francisco and even then we were having to motor-sail.  We experienced everything from 0 wind with currents pushing you in the wrong direction to gales with the smallest sails we have going at our maximum speed of about 7knots (that's about 13km/h), and everything in the middle.  But more often then not we were having to motor to keep ourselves moving in the right direction.
-The swells.  The swells got to me.  Captain Dan suffers from mild sea sickness.  As long as I'm in the cockpit I'm fine.  But if I spend too much time down in the cabin I get nauseous, nothing serious just enough to shut me up and give me a grumpy face for an hour.  Sylvie on the other hand got over it quickly and was able to take over most of the chores down below.  And thank god for that or we would have eaten out of cans the whole trip, which incidentally we did one night.  We passed cans of beans, artichokes and pacific salmon back and forth; we had a good laugh.
-And finally going beneath the Golden Gate Bridge.  There was jubilation, cheap champagne and a feast on the remainder of our fresh food.

We were so happy to be back to terra firma but we still had to deal with customs.  We knew we'd have to deal with customs in Oakland but we really weren't quite sure what the procedure was other than calling them once you make landfall.  I write this for the benefit of anyone who plans to check-in in California as opposed to Washington, so if you don't plan to do this, skim down.

Before you leave Canada you can obtain a decal (http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/travel/pleasure_boats/user_fee/user_fee_decal.xml) which we did, you then don't need a cruising permit.  The alternative is to obtain a US cruising permit at your first landfall in the US.   Since we had the decal we didn't need a cruising permit but the guy at the customs office was nice enough to issue one to us for free because I asked him for one.  Otherwise all you really need to do is radio the coast guard when you arrive, call customs and then visit customs. Your vessel might be inspected but ours wasn't.  Bada boom bada bing your can now eat all of the burritos you want and join the crumbling empire that is America.

We'd like to give a shoutout to all of the people who've helped us along the way.  I presume that if you're still reading this far down you're probably one of those people.  The rest of your attention spans have probably led you to websites like bigpumpkins.com.

-Alan Kellie, the guy who built our boat in the 70's.   Alan was there, in shorts, the rainy day I had the boat surveyed in North Vancouver and was there the day we pulled off the dock for San Fran.  Alan donated unmentionable hours and resources helping us with many of the critical projects along the way.  He's also pretty quirky and fun to be around.  Alan, thanks for you help with "the cause".

-Charles and Sandra Cohen, our friends from the Bluewater Cruising Association.  Charles made countless visits to the boat to walk me through anything I could think to ask him about.  Charles and Sandra gave us the knowledge we desperately lacked to get us out on the ocean.

Sylvie's parents.  They came and spent 2 weeks with us this past spring and did nothing other than clean, help us move and install many of the electrical components on the boat that were above my head.

My parents.  They came and spent a week with us in August and were either put to work by Slavemaster Dan or were left sitting on the dock waiting "one more hour" to finish whatever were happened to be working on that day.

Everyone else who lent us a hand, and there are a lot of you.

Thank you all!

And now for something completely different.   Photographica.

The dock party turns into a boat party.  Jackson doing the robot? Me thinks so.

Provisioning for the journey.  Thank god we brought a watermelon!

Last time we see Vancouver for a while.

Are we lost already?

It was a damn cold trip.  Temps were between 14-17degrees almost the entire trip.

Inside under way

Golden Gate Bridge.  Nice hair Sylvie.

Hooah!

Is the sun rising or setting?  I'm too tired to tell.

Nav station

Entertainment

Fixing stuff

Shortly after an accidental jybe!

You can kind of see that we're waving.  Don't arrest us!!

GPS Location

Hi all,

You should be able to track our location using this link:

http://www.findmespot.com/mylocation/?id=5f95I

I'm not sure if it'll work but give it a try.

Final Desolation

Well well well.... You've come back for more literary titillation.  Unfortunately this final installation before we depart may let you down a bit.  Our most recent trip wasn't totally unentertaining but it was much more low key than our journey to the Gulf Islands.

This time we went to Desolation Sound a deep water sound about 160km north west of Vancouver.  We had exactly 9 days and it takes exactly 2 days each way to travel leaving us only 5 days to enjoy.  And enjoy we did.  Warm salt water swimming, completely undeveloped lakes, clams, oysters and muscles galore.  Highlights include gently sliding the boat over a rock (we anchored over some rocks) and going for a 3 hr hike in a downpour.

We are now in our final month before departure.  Aside from our few trips I've been working fulltime on the boat, slaving away like an ancient Egyptian Slave from the slave times.  I've recently installed our SSB radio, replaced all of the standing rigging and climbed the mast about 50 times amongst other crappy yet rewarding jobs.

We're still planning to depart on Aug 31.  We'll head to Victoria and kick off from there out into the big blue.  Can't wait.

Roger, Over, Out, Say what? Good Night.

Dan, Sylvie & Ustupu

Prideaux Haven 

Shade Haven

After 2 10 hour days of motoring

Our arrival.  Feeling pretty zen I guess.

I found a clam hole that just kept giving!

Clams ma'am. 

Rocking out on the dinghy 

Still haven't mastered fishing in a manly way

Owassa Oyster Recipe

Les Gulf Islands

Hey y'all,

We recently went on our first shake-down trip to work out some of the kinkis in the boat.  We've been working so hard on prepping the boat and finishing our regular people jobs that we've neglected to learn how to sail Ustupu.

In point form and in pig latin, here's how the trip went:

-Ots-le of un-se

-O-ne ind-we

So we had a fantastic trip making our way through the Gulf Islands but with hardly a puff of wind.  We got to know the diesel guzzler thoroughly.   As a matter of fact, we used the engine so much that on our return crossing of the Straight of Georgia (55 miles between where we were and Vancouver) we managed to run out of diesel, no less while in the main shipping lane to the Port of Vancouver.  Here's my recollection of the incident:

Engine:  "putt putt, clunk ker clunk clunk, death"

Dan: "Uhhhh, Sylvie, I need to go below for a brief moment to have a word with our brand new engine"

Sylvie:  "Should we call the Coast Guard?"

Dan: "Negative"

Engine: "Last rites.... give 'em here"

Dan tries to start engine with horrible dying sounds.  

Dan contemplates a quick scuttle to solve the problem.  

Dan then understands that he has been motoring for 50 hrs without refuelling and is an idiot.

Ustupu: "You stupid you"

Dan says to a passing sailboat: "Hello gents, we seem to have run out of fuel, can I trouble you for a drop of diesel?"

Gentlemen in passing boat give us 5 gallons and save the day. 

Wind then picks up and we sail most of the way home.  

Otherwise, the trip was lovely and the weather fantastic.  We took some baby steps with Ustupu and she rewarded us in spades. Life is good on the boat.

Here are some pics for your ogling eyes. 

Old sailor Dan

Young fisher Dan

My casting form is less than masculine

The vegetarian takes a crack at it.  No bites.

Still nothing

Dan's Rock Cod

Portland Island

Winter Cove

Dog Fish.  Yuck.  I ate it anyway.

Home

Ummmm so this is a blog

Dear friends, family and old weird guys who follow random blogs,

This is the first time I've blogged.  I've sent out mass emails, mass texts, been on conference calls and talked to multiple people in person at once but I've never written down my inner most thoughts and posted them on the internet for everyone to see.  It's a bit nerve wracking and liberating at the same time.  I don't want to say the wrong things and let my blogees down (that's right, you're all blogees).

Anyway, enough with this senseless jibber jabber.  Down to the crux of the thing.  Sylvie and I are going on a bit of a trip in our brand new 1976 sailboat.  We plan to sail from Vancouver to Vancouver, round trip, possibly, with a few stops along the way.  Where exactly we'll stop and for how long is still up in the air, along with the duration for the trip.  Shit, we're not even really sure when we'll leave.  But one thing is for sure, we're heading south along the Pacific coast of the Americas until we get to about,  lets say the equator and then we'll hang a right until we hit some islands.

Nautically speaking, you might be thinking to yourself, "Cheesus H Cheddar!?!, Dan doesn't seem to know anything about sailing or navigating or even boating based on the above drivel."  Well your unpleasant thoughts wouldn't be totally inaccurate.  Let's just leave it at that.

As of about yesterday, we've decided that we'll be departing on Wednesday August 31, 2011.   Last week we were thinking Sept 11 (we were actually thinking of leaving on Ludacris' birthday, ludacris indeed), and before that it was in 2012.  So let's hope this one sticks.  We're also planning to have a dock party in August so stay tuned my little blogees.

Here are some digital stills for your viewing pleasure.

Over and out,

Dan, Sylvie and Ustupu

The day we moved onto the boat.

Beard model

The creepy monk who christened our boat 

First dinner on the boat

Splash day

Our first pirate attack (they were after my booty!)

Ocean pollution is a real problem

How not to boat