I spent the night on a mooring ball in Prevost Harbor, Stuart Island, and arrived early enough to visit the island for a few hours. So I took the dinghy to shore and spent time hiking the island and seeing a couple of the highlights.
Stuart Island only has a handful of residents, and a one-room schoolhouse is the only public building on the island. One of the highlights of the day’s hike was coming across the “treasure chest.” It’s a few boxes full of shirts, hats, and postcards which visitors can buy. Nobody works at the store, it’s all based on the honor system. You take what you’d like, and each item has a note included with the price and instructions on how to mail payment back when you return home. It is run by a family on the island that has an embroidery business. The island gets mail delivered by plane 3 times a week, and because of this, they are able to ship their products out and make a living this way. So cool to see this operated as an honor system and that it has been this way for years.
I ended my first day on Susia wandering the island a bit and chatting with others folks who were there for the night. I was invited to several campfires and got some great advice about my route from others who had been there before. I’ve been so impressed with how friendly and willing to share other boaters are!
Day two turned out to be more exciting than I had expected in several ways. The plan was for 14 miles of sailing to Stuart Island along the Canadian border (a portion of which has several big currents that meet). I did my final weather check (which looked OK) and headed out.
I wasn’t 10 minutes out of the harbor when I heard a mayday call from another boat about two miles away. They had hit a drifting log and the boat was taking on water with 5 people and a dog on board. I had my first experience talking with the Coast Guard on the radio getting their coordinates so I could go to them (check that off the to-do list!). I was about 15 minutes away, but fortunately, someone else was closer and arrived before I did. Based on what I heard on the radio, the boat sank completely in under 5 minutes but everyone (including the dog) on the boat was OK. Over the course of the day, I heard 4 other mayday calls for boats that were either sinking or needed help in some way (hint: this is foreshadowing, turns out that the weather report WAS NOT very accurate this day…).
My next hour was beautiful, and the highlight was when a pod of dolphins showed up and swam along with me for about half an hour. Such a cool experience!
It was about the time that the dolphins swam away that I entered the area where currents were merging and the wind also increased significantly (and pretty suddenly, and much more than the forecast showed). I’ll just say that the combination of wind and waves that came on so quickly created some “challenging” conditions for me. I had far too much sail up, and trying to reduce sails in waves and wind had me spending the next 30 minutes wondering if I’d bitten off more than I should have. When I’m up on deck I wear a harness that attaches me to the boat in case a wave comes over the bow and tries to knock me overboard, but it turns out that was very little comfort. 🙂 Based on what I heard on the radio I was not the only person that did not expect these winds, and in the end it all worked out and the whole thing was another learning experience.
The wind cleared out as quickly as it arrived, and after things settled down the rest of the day was “smooth sailing” and beautiful. And Stuart Island was a great stop! I’ll post something else about it later, but it’s a can’t miss if you are ever in the area!
For years I’ve been interested in the idea of sailing, so last year about this time I decided it was time to get this out of my system one way or another. I’d never been on a sailboat, and only ever been on little recreational boats a couple of times in my life. So I took a couple sailing classes down on the river to figure out how to put a sail up and what all the different ropes do, and then bought a sailboat with the idea that I would try it out and if it wasn’t for me, put it right back on Facebook Marketplace and sell it.
Well, as it turns out, I loved it! And I’ve spent the last year learning everything I can about sailing, navigation, weather, and all the other things it takes to do this safely. Most of my sailing so far has been on the Columbia River. But this week I’m trying my hand at ocean sailing for the first time and headed up to the San Juan Islands for a week of single-handed sailing near the Canadian border. The plan is about 100 miles over 5 days.
Day one did not disappoint!!! I put in the water at Bellingham and sailed to Sucia Island. It’s a Washington State Marine Park, and only accessible by boat. Along the way I passed freighters, sea lions, and saw an incredible sunset!
No major mishaps, 20 miles of sailing, and I arrived in one piece. Success for day one!
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