Anticipation

After all these years of going on trips across the Salish Sea, you might think they would lose their edge the way so many other things do. Become known. But they don't. We are leaving tonight for another three day weekend trip up into BC, and my stomach has the same excitement I used to feel thousands of ocean miles ago.

I think this speaks to the wilderness that is the ocean. Part of the allure is the fact that the sea, even inside the Straits with our more benign conditions, is an uncontrollable place. There are so many variables. When heading out on a backpacking trip, the variables are fewer, and more easily controlled. With sailing, if the wind kicks up to 30 knots, no matter how well prepared you are, you are in for a rough ride. If you lose a major system on your boat, especially sails or motors, then you are perhaps adrift on a conveyor belt of water that heads toward every rock. Put another way, the consequence of error when sailing are literally life and death. Or at least great suffering.

So we are packing and preparing like so many times before. With so much experience, we do it now without thinking. And we will soon head off to the unknown that is a voyage on the sea. Forecasts call for SE 15-25 tomorrow, but will that happen? Will we get to sail north? Or will it rub against an ebb too hard and kick up a nasty sea?

No way to know, despite a pile of experience. In this way, going sailing is a journey into the unknown. And that is delightful. 

A Spencer Spit escape

Last weekend the pressure in our adventure tanks had risen too high and was in danger of blowing, so we headed up to Aeolus and out for the weekend. It turned out to be an utterly gorgeous and calm series of days, with only one short chance to sail. Spencer Spit on Lopez island is a wonderful and close hop away from Anacortes. About 2.5 hours, depending on the always contrary currents in Guemes Channel.

With the whole family aboard, we motored our way through water and wove our way among seabirds over through Thatcher Pass and around Frost Island to the northern side of Spencer Spit. We anchored in about 20' of water and were soon ashore for the fun that follows. Both boys love scaling and sliding back down the sandy cliffs just north of the campground.

Elliott in the hammock and blissing out

Generally speaking my wife and I are quick to tell our boys about reducing erosion and staying on trails and all that. Lessons from careers in outdoor education stay with you. But in the case of these sand cliffs, it is all open access. There is a serious problem around the Salish Sea with people using bulkheads and walls to prevent shore erosion and cliff crumbling. Sounds good, for the house owners, but that erosion and sand deposition is essential to maintaining healthy habitats for feeder fish, the small ones that feed everything else. That's why those sandy bluffs are called "Feeder" bluffs. They feed the sand that nourishes the beaches that supports the marine life.