The other day I headed to Seattle to pick up a boat on the lake. These deliveries that require transiting the locks can be hard to get a good time estimate on because the lock traffic and road traffic from bridge openings all slow things down. The Signature Yachts’ broker met me to offer a brief orientation and the boat’s dinghy was brought over. Which was nice. I always have a fear that I’ll deliver a boat to some far-flung place and have forgotten the dinghy. After the dinghy was tied to the boat we were heading back to my home port of Friday Harbor. My crew was a formidable landsman and highly dedicated student of the water. Captain Jon Palmer is a, soon to be retired, fire chief as well as alumni of the GBA Advanced Coastal program. Jon was on board and we had Friday morning till he had to be back at the station to get this boat the 70 miles north where we would rendezvous with a Canadian Delivery Captain to take the boat on to Vancouver BC. Jon was equipped and ready to go through the night to get to FH but I was having second thoughts about the cold night and the about of logs drifting around. No one was sure how much fuel was on board and I never trust the gauges so the first stop was the fuel dock on the lake. We were trying to get out of the lake as fast as possible.
As we tied up to what I’m sure is one of the oldest fuel docks around we realized we couldn’t get the fill cap off. The boat is French and from the 90s and meant to go fast. Everything is made of cast aluminum (exaggeration) and the key made to fit into said fuel fitting brakes off in the cap. We can’t get fuel in the boat to go. End of delivery right?
Wrong
Just like that time, I was delivering this J 145 from Jamaica to Antiqua and the Yanmar key broke off in the switch before we cast off. It’s a good thing I can hotwire a boat. In this case, the outside of box thinking only meant we had to unscrew the fixture from the deck, remove the hose clamp, fill the boat up, and put it back together. Not much time later and with our snacks and cup o noodles the store provided we were off and were waving at Teddy Doo and Arne Hammer as we buzzed by the CSR docks. Arne and Teddy Doo weren’t over the horizon before I had a call from him asking if we planned to tow the dinghy all the way. I thanked him for his unsolicited advice and implicit faith in my abilities. I told him that we were keeping our foredeck clear for my first mate’s first lock experience and the second we are through the locks we were hoisting it on the deck and putting the hammer down on this speed queen and … going through the night to PT
Well, there was about 8 to 10 knots blowing from the north once out of the locks with the dinghy on deck and well lashed by my crew. WOT we were doing 6.5 and I was thinking plugging into shore power in PT was sounding nice… Even though patronizing the virtues of Sirens bar or getting shy around the hansom wenches at The Pour House would not be in the cards. We reassessed our eta at the bottlenecks and like I feared we were looking at arriving at cattle pass for max ebb at 3 knots. We conferred that a night in PT was in order and took the PT channel. I admit we did double check our conversion of the 15-meter possible air draft in the bilingual boat’s manual before going under the bridge.
After a nice sleep and some awesome Mexican food, we were off to Cattle Pass and Friday Harbor beyond. The fog was pretty thick when we left and we were going slow when the sun came up. It was a spectacular sight, seeing the sun come through the fog There was a little wind but not enough to stay on schedule and sail.
You can have sailing or time constraints but you can’t have both. This is why I love racing. When the wind dies you go slow and with the exception of a race with a constricting time limit you get there when you get there. Going as fast as you can-slowly-is great. The only other time you have a great excuse to not turn on the engine is if you are doing a blue water passage where you only have enough fuel to motor for maybe 1\4 of the trip. People say to me sometimes “Captain Rhys you are a racer and I am a cruiser. You are concerned with speed and I am not”. This is often the excuse for not wanting to learn the finer points of sail trim. To that, I say no I am a racer and a cruiser. I’ll sail a race boat hard when it’s windy and I’m racing and when it’s calm and I’m cruising I’m glad to go only 3 knots all day if it means not turning on the engine and just see where I end up. So many people that cruise the San Juans do so with their main up and the engine on. There are a few reasons for this like the wind is light in the summer and even lighter inside the archipelago but mostly I think the reason is people bring their scheduling mindset to cruising instead of adapting to the conditions. Maybe it’s how tired I get from having to deliver boats on the schedule that makes me want to slow down when not working.
Back to the delivery.
It’s noon and we are at cattle Pass and though it is ebbing a bit we get through without much fuss. Back in FH Jon catches his ferry home and the boat is picked up the next day by a Canadian delivery captain to take it the rest of the way to Vancouver. Done and done. Cool boat.
