First Time Away from the Dock

The Eagle needed a lot of TLC in the engine room we spend a month and a couple of grand having things check/maintained /replaced. including changing the fuel filters.* I mean how hard is it pull the new one out and pop in a new one. *Right?* Anyway, we decided to take the boat to get some fuel just down the lake,* No biggy?* Right?* Well, the engines fired up, pulled out of the marina and started heading down the lake, when he engine dies. *Not to worry.* Right?

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Cranked the engine but it would not start,* What the heck? *My friend that knew a little bi more than I did about engines asked if I had bleed the air out of the fuel system?* Bleed?* Air?** As we are rushing down to the engine room I am trying to remember what the mechanic told me about bleeding the engine?* Something about turning this and undoing that?* Maybe I should have paid more attention and took some notes.* Naw!*

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While we were trying to figure things out, my wife yells at the top of her lungs, Honey, we have more important concerns right now than the engine. Like going a ground!* Ahhh!* I mean how far can a 40+ ton full displacement drift?* Not far Right?* We should be slowing down soon.* Right?

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Luckily or unluckily we were drifting right for the Lake Union Police boat station? **Seeing drifting a approaching their dock that came out to greet us.* How nice of them. This is a restricted area and dock.* Stop or you will be broad. *I yelled back, Please board us by all means, and do you know anything about engines? *

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They did no board us but did tossed us a line and brought the Eagle gentle up against the police dock.* At which time they did board us, did their official check/review while their mechanic disappeared in the engine room and in short time had the engine started. *Anyway, that was the first inter action with the Seattle police of many.* (-;*

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If by "you guys" you mean Phil/Fill, I don't know. If by "you guys" you mean boaters in the this area (PNW) we don't pull our boats for the winter as they don't get severe enough to warrant that. Many PNW boaters, us included, use their boats 12 months a year.

Really! Some of you guys in the PNW boat year round. Man that is really great! Is it just the commercial guys or do recreational boaters as well use their boats in the winter?


Boy, that would be great. No distractions, like lawn mowing and all the other summertime stuff to do around the homestead. A guy could really do some serious tinkering. Stoke up the Espar, warm up the toddy and settle in for a little chart plotting/planning or cleaning off some battery terminals or some such. Kewl.

Regards,

We're headed out the day after Christmas for the rest of the week. The weatherman promises rain but isn't predicting any high winds. So, we'll keep the oil stove dripping and head out to see what's to be seen. Some of the best cruising is in the snow. Although that isn't found very often.

Hot toddies for all......

Ken Buck
Puyallup WA

We are a live a board year around, so the Eagle is in the water 24/7 365 days/year.* However, we very seldom leave the dock between October to May. OK, we very seldom leave the dock period.* )-; *However, many leave the dock all year around.* The water temp is about 50 degrees, the air does drop in the 30s and have snow a couple of days per year.* But, don't tell anybody.* If people ask it rains/snows/blows and temps drop of 0 degrees and we don't see the sun for*2 no make that 3 months.* (-;*

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We installed a diesel boiler heater which keeps the boat at 70 degrees 24/7 during the cold months.* The first day of boating is the first day in May so April is the month we take down the canvas, tarps, plex a glass and*get the boat ready for the summer.

Bill--- A lot of recreational boaters boat year round here ("here" being Puget Sound all the way up the BC coast). Some of the better sport fishing seasons (blackmouth specifically) are in the winter so a lot of guys with trailer fishboats go out then, too.

The only thing that prevents us from going out in the winter is wind. Winter tends to bring an endless row of storms marching in from the Pacific. Each storm generally lasts about two to four days, with a two or three day window between them. While everyone I know who boats in the winter doesn't care about rain or the occasional snow, wind can make boating here not a lot of fun because the wind waves we get on the inside waters are very close together and very steep. Typical winter winds are 15 to 35 mph, which generate close, steep waves from 2 to 5 feet. The storms can bring winds up to 50 or 60 mph. We had a storm come through a few weeks ago and the anemometer on top of the cold storage plant in our marina registered a gust of 84 mph.

But if my work schedule and the storm schedule line up so that I have a weekend and the winds are in the 10-20 range, we'll go out into the islands even in January and February. The company I work for shuts down between the day before Christmas through New Year's day. Winds permitting, we are planning to go out to the islands for a few days next week.

Very rarely we will get several days of weather that's cold enough to put a skim of ice in the marina and even occasionally on parts of Bellingham Bay itself. When the winds come from the north, they bring REALLY cold air from the Canadian interior down through the Fraser River valley to Vancouver, BC, and the surrounding communities as far south as Bellingham. The ironic thing is that while we often get beautiful cloudless days during this period with no wind, we won't take the boat out because the skim of ice on the water is hell on gelcoat. However, this cold weather rarely extends down to Seattle, which is about 85 miles south of Bellingham. And if these conditions happen at all during a winter, it is generally only once.* I can only recall a couple of times in the last nine years when the ice prevented us from going out on what was otherwise a beautiful (albeit very cold) day.



-- Edited by Marin at 18:57, 2007-12-23

I've seen ice on top of the salt water twice in 27 years where I keep my boat in Port Orchard. Both times were during the bitter north wind storms. I was not tempted either time to venture out.

Ken Buck

The Everett marina does freeze over*most years for a couple of days.* Usually just enough so boats do not move.* The Everett marina is brackish with the first 1 to 2 ft is fresh water.* Also the diesel heater throw off so much heat the ice is about 1 to 2 inches off the hull.**Our engine room and the floor of the staterooms is right at the water line level which is at*65 to 70*degrees.

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Hey guys, come on down. We're having a New Year's celebration on the hook this weekend, 3 boats so far. 83 today...was sweating too...

MT

Thanks but..... I lived in Hawaii from 1955 to 1979. I have more than paid my dues in hot, humid, sweaty weather. Never again. The colder, rainier, and snowier it gets up here the happier I am. The only thing I don't like is wind--- bad for float flying, bad for boating.

Our boat has been programmed to auto-shut-down if we take it south of Anacortes, Washington. It has a 24 hour manual over-ride so we can go a few miles farther south to La Conner if we want to, but if we're not back to at least Anacortes within that time period we have to have the boat towed back in order to restart it.

It's a great system.

Marin,
My wife and I and another couple are visiting your area next year, chartering a boat to cruise the SJ Islands. Our available time is July-September. When would the best weather window be? And don't tell me not to come 'cause we're committed .


-- Edited by Hal at 11:33, 2007-12-31

Hal, anytime July-September is the best weather window. A little more fog in late August, and a lot fewer boats after Labor Day in September. Enjoy!

Marin wrote: "Our boat has been programmed to auto-shut-down if we take it south of Anacortes, Washington. It has a 24 hour manual over-ride so we can go a few miles farther south to La Conner if we want to, but if we're not back to at least Anacortes within that time period we have to have the boat towed back in order to restart it."

So you have been down to see the flume where they put all the logs, branches and other debris in the water to catch unsuspecting boaters? I was thinking that perhaps you hadn't seen the "putting in" place. It is a known fact that from LaConnor the water always flows north towards Bellingham Bay. Maybe next time I'm up to LaConnor I'll drop a message in a bottle for you. Do you have a zip +4 for your marina slip?

Oh, and could you expand on tow starting those Lehmans? I checked my owners manual and it didn't say how fast to be travelling before dropping it in gear.

Yours truly, tongue in cheek

Ken Buck

Hal---

Since you have apparently already squandered your money on a commitment to boat in this area, I won't bother to list all the reasons why you shouldn't have done this and spent the money on a European vacation instead.

The primary boating season here is late June through Labor Day. The CHANCE for the least amount of rain during this period is after July 4. However..... the islands can be REALLY crowded during the summer season. If you are interested mainly in visiting the harbors-- Friday Harbor, Roche Harbor, Deer Harbor, Rosario, West Sound, Fisherman's Bay, etc., you can almost always get a slip, particularly if you call ahead. Just keep in mind that the most popular destinations will be jumping.

If you are more interested in visiting the numerous marine parks in the islands, they are on a first-come-first served basis for the docks (if there is one) and the park buoys. You can also anchor in most of the marine park bays. I don't mean it's illegal in some of them, just that it's very difficult or not possible in some of them).

One possibly helpful hint--- people often get underway to go to their next destination around 10:00am. If you can time your arrival at a marine park to be between 10:00 am and 1:00 pm, the chances are the highest you'll get dock space or a buoy. You don't want to be arriving after about 3:00 pm as a vacancy can be very difficult to find, particularly at the most popular parks like Sucia Island.

For this reason, a number of us feel that the early fall is the absolute best boating time up here. From after Labor Day to as late as mid-October. You can still get some wonderful weather (for the PNW) during that period, but the crowds are gone as kids have to go back to school and so forth. For example we are planning to do three weeks in Canada next year. We are not even going to try to attempt it until September.

There are also the Canadian Gulf Islands, which are sort of the same island chain as the San Juans. (NOTE-- Do NOT call them the "Canadian San Juans" if you visit them. It's very insulting to the folks who live there.) These islands don't get the same volume of boaters even in the busy summer season. They have some wonderful marine parks in the Gulf Islands as well as some very nice anchorages.

If you have not already done so, I would highly recommend that you get at least one, and maybe two guidebooks to the area. Probably the most popular is the Waggoner Guide. It's updated every year, and in addition to navigation and anchoring information has a lot of good information about "what to do, what to see" for the area. The one book covers the entire PNW from Olympia in the south to SE Alaska. Well worth getting in advance of your trip. They also have a good website with a lot of cruising information and updates there as well.

The other guidebook series we like are the "Exploring" series of guides published by Fine Edge. These are by Don Douglass and Réanne Hemingway-Douglass. Their guides tend to focus more on the navigation and anchoring aspect of cruising the islands. There is much more information on where to anchor, what the holding conditions are, etc. than the Waggoner Guide, but not as much area information as the Waggoner Guide, which is why we use both of them when planning a trip. The Douglass guides are not cheap-- about $50--- but they are well worth it in our opinion. The one you want is called "Exploring the San Juan and Gulf Islands."

If you are only going to take just the one trip and only want to spend bucks for one book, I'd say get the Waggoner Guide.

Finally, if you have any additional questions feel free to PM me or Carey on this forum. Carey is currently on a FEMA deployment but he may be monitoring the forum. He is more familiar with the islands than I am and I'm sure he would be willing (for a price in a currency commonly referred to as "Talisker Single Malt Scotch") to provide information.

Ken---

I did not make myself clear. We do not tow-start the Lehmans. The BW Velvet Drive transmissions do not allow this, unfortunately. If the GPS shutdown sensor detects we have gone south of Anacortes, it will auto-shut down the engines unless we activate the 24-hour over-ride (we have one minute to do this when the shut-down alarm goes off). But once the engines have been shut down by the GPS auto-system, they cannot be restarted until the system detects the boat is back north to at least the lat/long of Anacortes. At that point the auto-shut down de-activates and we can restart the engines normally.

Well that clears it up. I suppose then if there was no particular speed required, just getting north of that partucular lattitude, you could tie onto some flotsam/jetsam and let it pull you north since it's headed there anyway? We don't allow that stuff in the Sound you know.........

interesting, why would you want to do an auto shut down, are you saying you don't like to go south? why would that be? i am confussed?

Outlaw

This is STRICTLY our opinion---- don't forget that---- but my wife and I find the south part of Puget Sound--- that part of it south of Anacortes--- extremely boring. Whereas the inside waters from Anacortes up the next 600 plus miles into SE Alaska is anything but boring. When we fly floatplanes we have to overfly the south Sound because of where the plane is kept, but at 110 mph we're not over it very long.

But a trawler is a different story at a speed of 8 knots. So we were very fortunate in that the trawler we bought-- which we keep up near the Canadian border-- refuses to go south of Anacortes and, should we have a lapse of awareness and accidentally stray south of Anacortes, it will warn us to turn around and if we don't it will shut down to prevent us from venturing any farther south. While our boat was built in 1973 we've been told this is still a factory option on a new Grand Banks.



-- Edited by Marin at 01:31, 2009-01-05

We don't do much winter boating up here but this winter I decided to keep the Willy " on line ". It was a mistake .. not a big one. When it was down to > 10 degrees and we were froze in 4" of solid ice my domestic water froze but I got it thawed out and no leaks resulted .. lucky. The harbor master plays ice breaker whith a skiff, cuts the ice into one acre chunks and the tide takes it out into Clarence Strait. We had a high of 35 yesterday and with most of the ice gone we took a run down the bay. The cove we wanted to see ( we are sniffing around for property down there ) was as several people said iced solid. We inched into the ice about 1/2 a boat length and backed out hearing some crunching noise. We've learned that if our following wake makes the ice move it's slush .. otherwise it's solid. The reason I*say keeping the boat operational has been a mistake is that it has already cost $350. to heat. The pictures are of some sea water ice at Klawock and Thorne Bay last winter when it was ice free.

Eric Henning
Thorne Bay*
Alaska


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Eric-- Thanks for posting the shots. I'm sure you are well aware of this but be real careful taking your boat through ice.* I assume the hull is fiberglass, and even very thin ice-- the kind of thing that just breaks apart at the slightest touch--- can cut gouges in the gelcoat of the hull even at very slow speeds.

wow, that is truly funny. boring,hmmm, well guess i am a very boring person. i find the south sound to be alot of fun. even down to olympia. guess i don't know better. i grew up on the south sound so i know where all the good spots are. i also like the trail all the way to alaska. guess i like this whole area. oh well to each our own. at least you like most of it, which is kool.

Outlaw

Strictly in my opinion again, the land around the south sound is flat and featureless (compared to up north) and is covered with houses. We got into boating for the same reason we got into floatplane flying--- to get as far away, if not actually at least visually, from people as possible. Besides having unexciting terrain, the south sound is just too populated. It's like being on Lake Washington. The water's nice but the view isn't.