When it comes to the weather, there are a few things any PNW dweller can count on: Expect rain anytime from October to June, and expect it to be bone dry for much of July through September.
Of course, there are no guarantees in life, especially when it comes to weather forecasting. Even so, when I saw those little blue raindrops coming up in my favorite weather app, I was a little dubious: It’s summer, in the PNW. Just two weeks ago, we were roasting on the boat! It never rains here in July!!
Nevertheless, we woke up to the sound of raindrops on the deck above today, Monday, July 29. In our defense, we have every reason to be a little surprised. Historically, today is the most dependably dry day of the year in Seattle. We are in the San Juan Islands right now, of course, but usually we can count on it being dry this time of year, too.
It’s supposed to rain off-and-on most of the day. I may have to pull out some of my foul weather gear if I want to get a kayak or hike today.
That’s OK. The West needs moisture badly. While on the boat, we are far away from the many wildfires burning in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, we’ve been reading the headlines and have had some pretty hazy skies from time to time out here.
So we are taking advantage of the cooler, wetter weather to warm up the galley with some cooking and baking. The weather report promises this moisture will leave our area by Wednesday morning.
I sure hope it does, if only because I took all of my cool-weather sailing gear off the boat for the summer!
A view of Mt. Rainier from Penrose Point State Park, located in south Puget Sound.
We kicked off our Summer 2024 cruise with a July Fourth jaunt with the kids to Jarrell Cove. Now C and I are moseying our way up the entire length of Puget Sound.
That’s right, we are sailing from our home marina in Olympia, bound for Port Townsend. We’ll get there in a week or two … or three.
Then we’ll hop across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to tour the San Juans with the kids and some visiting family before pointing the bow south for Olympia again.
I’m looking forward to being in boat mode for the next six or so weeks. We often spend the fall and spring going between the boat and house, and while I’m glad we have the flexibility to be on the boat so much during the school year, the constant adjusting to two very different ways of living can be challenging for me.
So now that we are here, I can settle into the rhythms of boat life:
Waking up with the sunrise and going to bed with the sunset.
Planning my day based on the weather, the tides and the currents, instead of around appointments, school schedules and commutes.
Having less living space, which makes getting outside and moving around even more attractive than it already is.
Handwashing our dishes.
Getting my workouts on shore, on the kayak or on the foredeck, instead of the gym.
Having fewer clothes and no ready access to laundry facilities.
Being a lot more mindful about how much water we use and whether we need to use the Wi-Fi after we get done working, because it’s a bit of an energy hog.
There are about 2 miles of hiking trails at Penrose Point State Park.
Last summer, we did a five-week cruise into British Columbia, a goal of ours since before the pandemic. We ventured as far north as Desolation Sound, and spent a few days in the magical Princess Louisa Inlet. It was an unforgettable journey. We want to head that way again, and go further north. But doing that journey on a 39-foot sailboat with a tight time window was a bit grueling for me, especially because the wind never was going the right way for us. That meant many long days of motoring. That’s the way it goes, though, when you are still working, have kids and have other obligations that don’t allow us to just wait and go when the wind is right.
This summer we won’t go as far, and I’m excited to take a slower pace that might allow us to sail more. (That’s a maybe, the constant high pressure system that usually parks itself over the Pacific Northwest during the summer doesn’t create a lot of wind.)
And I’m excited to explore the Sound, from tip to tip (twice!) in a single summer.
S/V Polaris on a mooring ball in south Puget Sound
I’ve been sailing the American portion of the Salish Sea for 8 years now, and I’m not sure I will ever get sick of it. No matter where we go, there’s a good anchorage nearby with access to nearly everything a cruiser could want: You want seclusion, gorgeous landscapes, great hikes and tranquil waters? You got it. You need groceries, a good meal and a fun place to grab a drink? You got that, too.
Plus the chance to see orcas, whales, seals, sea lions, and a variety of birds along the way.
There are tradeoffs for all this, of course. The water is rarely, if never, warm enough to swim in (at least for me). And like I mentioned earlier, there often isn’t a lot of wind.
But last week, we enjoyed a gorgeous downwind sail to McMicken Island. And a recent record-breaking heat wave prompted C to don his snorkel and fins to jump in the water and view the critters along the beach at Penrose Point State Park.
So maybe, we really can have it all here in Puget Sound.
Some people like to celebrate a milestone birthday by relaxing on the beach or wining and dining around Europe.
My husband is not like those people. We’ll be celebrating his big (not gonna say-0) by sailing Scotland.
No, we aren’t taking Polaris there. Instead, we have signed up for a 10-day sailing expedition of the Scottish Isles with Mahina Offshore Services, lead by the very experienced and well-regarded sailing instructor John Neal.
The timing is serendipitous. Our kiddos will be with their bio dad, and C’s birthday is in April. We have been looking for opportunities to get more experience with off-shore (bluewater) and heavy weather sailing, especially because we are interested in cruising the higher latitudes someday. When we saw that Mahina had a few berths open for the first leg of their Scotland tour, we jumped.
According to our itinerary, we will stop by Barra and Iona in the Inner Hebrides, then head to St. Kilda, an isolated archipelago that is part of the Outer Hebrides. Chances are good we will be sailing in cool temps, high wind, rainy weather and some swell and waves.
A chart for part of the area we will be sailing.
So, no, it won’t be the most relaxing vacation we’ve ever taken, but it may be one of the most memorable.
Many of these islands are home to some of the largest bird colonies in the world, including puffins. The sea around the Hebrides gets whales, dolphins and basking sharks. Our plans are to hike to a few castles, explore some tiny villages and learn more about this unique ecosystem. I have a sneaking suspicion that we will fall in love with this area and want to come back and cruise it on our own boat.
Since we booked the trip, we’ve been gathering up gear to keep us warm and dry. We already have a lot of cold, rainy weather gear that we use all the time while sailing the Salish Sea, but my cold tolerance is not getting any better as I get older. So I also purchased a few new things—including a new set of heated socks and some heated mittens. I expect to have some updates to my article about sailing in the cold.
I will try to post pictures from our trip on Instagram if I can.
Learning to sail in mid-life has changed me for the better.
I’ve tinkered with the idea of writing an article titled “All I’ve ever wanted to know, I learned from sailing.”
Tongue-in-cheek, partly, but also for reals. Learning to sail has changed my life, and not just in the obvious ways. The lessons I have learned since I started to sail have taught me how to live better in all aspects of my life.
When I started this blog, I simply wanted a place to capture all I was learning about sailing. I’ve learned how to sail, yes, but I’ve also learned a lot about:
What I didn’t expect, though, was that my experiences on S/V Polaris would inform all parts of my life.
The first time I step foot on a sailboat was when I was 38 years old, newly divorced with two kids, and fairly certain about what I was good at and what I wasn’t. Learning to sail in mid-life definitely took me out of my comfort zone and I am so glad for it.
Sailing continues to teach me how to screw up and get back up again. How to be patient. How to be a better teacher and parent to my kids. How to cope when my plans go to shit. How important nature is to me and all living beings (and how, I firmly believe, we would all be better if we spent more time outside). How to dig deep and get a really tears-inducing frustrating job done. How to keep going when I’m tired. How to really, truly rest.
In short, sailing has taught me how to learn and to be OK with always learning, with not knowing the answer and being totally OK with that, too.
All those other things belong on this blog, too.
It’s been awhile since I’ve posted here. That’s OK. Life has been crazy for us for the last two years. We bought a house, put our kids back in school, resumed splitting time between boat and land and have had to endure a lot of ups and downs along the way. But I’m ready to share what I’m learning again, and I hope that maybe, you’ll learn something, too.
I wake early and achy in the back, a common occurrence nowadays. Not sure if my age is to blame. Maybe its the permanent skeletal tweaks two pregnancies have left with my body.
I curl my knees up to my chest and spin around out of my spot between my sleeping husband and the side of our berth, tucking my chin so I don’t hit my head on the low ceiling. With my feet facing out, I climb out of bed.
Once off the boat, the cool Seattle morning air douses me fully awake. The packed marina is quiet, the water still. I begin to walk toward the marina showers up on shore when hear a snort.
There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who will find this blog post interesting, thought-provoking and maybe even useful. The rest of you will find it boring AF.
For those of you in the first group, I would appreciate you reading this and commenting with suggestions and even criticisms. See, aside from the freedom, adventure and beautiful scenery that cruising by sailboat provides, it also provides me with three other things I really enjoy: 1) Planning, 2) problem-solving and 3) organizing.
And provisioning on a sailboat for an extended amount of time requires all three.
Mystery Bay Marine State Park is a little bay outside Marrowstone Island, just east of Port Townsend. The park and the greater Killisut Harbor between Marrowstone and Indian islands are gems. Mariners willing to navigate the tricky, yet well-marked, shallow entrance to the harbor are rewarded with a protected bay teeming with birds and aquatic life easily explored by dingy or kayak.
Our plan to spend the summer cruising the Salish Sea up to Canada may have to be modified now, thanks to the ever-growing threat of coronavirus.
This pandemic is changing all of our lives. As I write this, the Oregon governor has issued an executive order that all Oregonians need to stay at home unless conducting essential activities, more than 100 people have died in Washington state, more than 1,000 in Italy and chances are high that our kids extended spring break from school will turn into the beginning of a very early summer vacation.
Our Nauticat 39. Finding a pilothouse sailboat became a priority for us because we wanted to be able to sail year-round in the Pacific Northwest even though I have Raynaud’s.
C and I decided three years ago to make our dream of sailing the world a real-world goal. At the time, we had the Aequus Aer, a 28-foot Pearson sloop that we used for family trips to other marinas in Puget Sound.
But to sail beyond the Sound, we needed a bluewater-ready boat. And the Aequus Aer just wasn’t set up to do that. So we started our search focusing primarily on boats over 35 feet to fit our family of growing kids, built to endure rough seas and with enough storage, water-carrying capacity and battery bank to allow us to spend at least a week or more away from shore power.
It was during this time that my lifelong struggle with cold feet and hands started to get tremendously worse. I developed Raynaud’s Phenomenon, a condition where the blood vessels constrict in my fingers and toes in response to cold.
In June, we got rid of 85% of our stuff and moved out of our house in Southwest Portland to move full-time onto our boat for the summer. We will spend three months sailing the Salish Sea with our kids. Our tentative plan is to explore:
I left my full-time job in April and am transitioning to freelance writing and editing in the fall. My husband will continue his current job, which he can do remote almost 100% of the time.
A view of the Coal Harbour Marina in downtown Vancouver, B.C.
Downsizing for the future
My kids are from my first marriage, and they spend 50% of their time with their dad (big thanks to him for agreeing to let us take the kids for the summer!) He is based in Portland, so we aren’t leaving Portland completely. But once we return from our trip in the fall, we plan to split our time between Portland and Seattle. We’ll be in Portland when the kids are with us and in the Puget Sound area on our boat when they are with their dad.
I’m going to miss that kitchen. Thankfully, the cook is coming with me!
We’re so excited to dedicate the summer to exploring this beautiful and rich body of water. I thought that cruising was something I wouldn’t be able to do until I was much older, certainly without kids in the house anymore, and probably closer to retirement.
This is the beginning of something new. Something, for now, that is only part-time. But something big, indeed.
