Friday Harbor and Blaine

Good Morning,

We are now in our winter berth in Blaine, WA.  Blaine is as far north as you can get on the West Coast of the continental USA.  We can actually see the border from the marina.  We will be living on the boat through the cold Pacific Northwest winter with the kids.  We will still be doing homeschooling but I am changing from the curriculum I have been using to my own curriculum, which I used to use when we ran our little school in Montana.

The Force 10 heater seems to heat the boat up nicely and I think with the addition of some electric space heaters we should be ok...  When I was 19 I lived in a camper here in Bellingham for the winter, so I am not niave to the bone chilling cold of a winter here.  We see it as yet another adventure for our family living on our boat.  I will keep blogging about our family's experiences this fall and winter.

When we first docked in Friday Harbor it was raining and cold but Rebecca wanted to be the first to touch land so she all but dove off the boat into the arms of the nice fella who was catching our lines.  When she tried to stand she almost fell over.  28 days at sea makes for jello legs let me tell you.  Just walking a couple of blocks made us so sore it felt like we had run a marathon.  Poor Kanyon was actually blue from the cold.  He doesn't have one oz of fat on his tall lean frame and I thought he might actually get hypothermia walking to the restraunt.  

We had cheeseburgers and fries at a little pub and I was VERY disturbed to learn about Washington States rules about cooking meat!  Apparently in this state you are only allowed to eat hockey pucks.  I was even more disturbed to find out that they only serve scrambled eggs here for the same reasons!  We'll be saving some money for sure since I cannot stomach ruined eggs or char broiled jerky burgers, I will have too cook them at home... I wonder how long it will be before the cooking police start checking our home kitchens for compliance with their rules...

It was amazing to walk on land and feel the firmness of Mother Earth.  That night when we went to bed we all lay there with no motion on the boat, no noise of water on the hull, no fans running to keep the boat cool and we were all amazed that our ears were ringing from the silence.  It was quiet enough that we could all talk to each other from our respective berths.

The next day we had to wait until 1:00pm to leave because we had to go with the tide in our favor.  when we left everyone else did as well for the very same reason.  The fog had rolled in and we were motoring along, socked in with fog, dodging boats.  EmilyAnne stood on the bow as my eyes and ears.  When the fog burned off we saw some little dolphins and seals and had a wonderful quiet trip the rest of the way to Blaine.

As we motored into the harbor we could see Becky's sister and Brother in law standing on the dock waving at us and her Mom met her at the dock.  It was pretty sweet to see them all balling and crying with happiness.  We had a great supper that night at a little Mexican place here in town.

The next morning, yesterday, we moved from the visitors dock to our permanent dock, N7.  I had to back WD into the slip and it was a port side tie.  WD is not a normal sailboat with a port walk in reverse.  Because of our V-Drive our prop turns the other way and because we have a Max Prop, which is a folding prop it has a LOT of power in reverse.  This combination makes her walk VERY hard to starboard in reverse.  We also had some current flowing in and pushing us to starboard as well. It was a HUGE challenge and took all of us working together to get her into the slip but we managed.  We spent the rest of the day putting everything away and scrubbing down the decks.

Rebecca's sister came out and picked her up to go in and do laundry.  When she showed up she had TWO Big Macs for me!!!  Yay!!

This morning the boys and I were up early.  We had our pancakes and are working on schoolwork now.

I have started writing a long and comprehensive report about what worked on our trip and what didn't.  It will be filled with some first hand ideas for your next passage.

I still pinch myself when I see WD sitting on the dock here...

Have A Wonderful Day,
Captain Tofer