Its not every day I get to sail a craft that is pushing a century old. Its certainly easy to understand why I ask to see recent surveys before agreeing to deliver boats. With the way people care for their boats these days, it doesn’t have to be made of wood to be neglected enough that even a short trip like that from PT to Deer would be unsafe and especially in the winter here in the Northwest.
Port Townsend is a wood boat Mecca so its no surprise that the boat was bought there. Its also no surprise that this beautiful example of a Collin Archer type boat had been in the Wooden Boat Festival. It was, however, impressive to hear that she had been in 11 events.
For those that don’t know about the Wooden Boat Festival, it is a three day event quite unlike a boat show in that few of the boats are for sale that is focused on wooden craft of all kinds and that draws wood boat hippies from near and far every September.
The ways of wood boats, as well as Port Townsend, aren’t unfamiliar to me. I spent a little time in Port Townsend as a young man when my family refit our 60-foot wooden cutter-rigged ketch before leaving on a 5-year cruise. Yes, there is a little “wood boat hippy” in me too although I may not have had as much of the Kool Aid as the greenhorn that hired me and was the proud new owner of this piece of maritime history/relic/financial/maintenance burden. Or maybe I was the wiser. Perhaps when some who have done as much brightwork as myself, see that much varnish we are happier finding ourselves only moderately guilty sailing our boats rather than working on the lists that all boats write for their, would be, footloose stewards. It wasn’t just the varnish that worried me about this new match. It was the the design of the boat and the waters she would be moving to that concerned me as well…there were other things of concern but ill get to those later.
Im just going to cut and paste the Wik cliff notes here for those of you who aren’t ether wood boat hippies or sailor dorks
... Vito Dumas's Lehg II bla bla and Robin Knox-Johnston's Suhaili ..the first boat to sail single-handed and non-stop around the world in 1968 Golden Globe Race.
Bla bla... Bernard Moitessier ….. William Crealock, …. Westsail 32 and has inspired many imitations, so that the "Archer double-ender" style of boat continues to be popular to the present day.[19][20]
Basically these boats where build to go anywhere….and as long as it was blowing over 15 knots and you don’t have to turn for a week you are looking good…not my idea of an island boat. Okay, I’ll stop being mean. Back to the story.
It’s about 30 nautical miles as the sober seagull flies between ports which at a generous 5-knot average is 6 hours underway. I say “generous” because unless we have a small craft advisory to get the old girl moving we are going to have to count on that 2 cylinder Volvo to contend with the tide.
The boat had just been purchased and the owner needed the boat out of the marina where he was now responsible for daily rather than monthly rates. I had three days to find crew so I didn’t have to rely on the green boat owner and didn’t find anyone. Heck, if Robin can sail around the world on one by himself how hard can it be?
The distance of the passage required that I travel down the day before so we could get an early start. I brought a 5-gallon jerry can of my own so we would have to wait for the fuel dock to open in the morning. I don’t often leave San Juan so deliveries are a great way to catch up with my friends in the various ports of the Salish Sea Puget Sound and beyond. I was looking forward to catching up with a shipmate who has joined me on several deliveries and getting a slice of the best pizza you can row a dingy to. I told the owner I would see him that night or in the morning and that we were casting off at 7.
Cast off we did but not at 7. My crew had tried to calm the nerves brought on by the thought of the following day’s windy passage by closing down Siren’s, a famed sailor haunt.
As you can imagine this both ticked off the captain and made for an uncomfortable crossing of the east end of the Straits of Juan De Fuca. So bad was this hangover that he threw up all the way to Cattle Pass.
Not only was my crew useless but random lunges to the rail to puke made him a liability.
I know this sounds callous but the compounding of risk is serious business. We are sailing a boat that hase’t been run in a while, it’s winter, and we are double handing. To add to everything the owner had no experience or training.
We made it to Deer Harbor and fortunately the slip had a straightforward approach because the boat’s full keel and equatorial turning radius was a little stressful. I hope that she gets used.
Alls well that ends well.