Mount Tzouhalem is the 1,500-foot bluff directly west of Genoa Bay. We’ve eyed it every time we’ve anchored in the bay, but this year, we finally climbed it. We’d arrived on a cold, crisp winter day, after a recent snowfall. The weather was cold enough to freeze the surface water around the marina.

Partway up, icicles had formed on an unusually large boulder.

From the top, we could see across Samsun Narrows to Mount Maxwell on Saltspring Island, south into Genoa Bay and towards Saanich Peninsula and westward into the Cowichan River valley. Wow.

On the way back down, we stopped at Skinner Bluff. The views were almost as good as from the top.

Entry, anchoring and other notes:

The rough trail map below is drawn from memory. The solid line is the main route to the top. The trail is rather steep, and has occasional blazes marking the route. We were following footsteps in the snow, so we’re not sure how hard the trail is to follow otherwise.

We learned about the trail from British Columbia's Gulf Islands: Afoot & Afloat  (the Afoot and Afloat books are excellent on-board references). The unmarked trailhead is between a utility box and a private property fence, where Genoa Bay Road bends around to follow the waterline and intersects with Saltspring Road. Follow the fence around the private property, first west and then southwest towards Skinner Point. (We saw blazes in the trees west of the fence corner, but didn’t investigate.)

Where the dashed line starts is a fork in the trail with a sign pointing left to Cowichan Bay and right to the hill top. We took the hilltop route. Another fork led to Skinner Bluff to the right and the hilltop to the left. We again took the hilltop route. On the return, the footsteps we were following took the dotted line shortcut route to  Skinner Bluff. We’re not sure if this was a trail, but the going was relatively easy and open. We returned from Skinner Bluff on solid line that met the regular trail at the second fork. The hike to Skinner Bluff is easier and less steep than going all the way to the top, and the views are still impressive.

A big winter storm swept through the region yesterday. The barometer fell hard as the storm approached: from 1032 at 9pm the night before, to 1009 at 5am yesterday, down to 988 by 3pm yesterday afternoon. We recorded gusts to nearly 50 knots as the storm intensified.

The pressure slope hit 5.8 around 2pm, equal to the worst we’ve seen. (Environment Canada originally reported the pressure slope at a booming 6.2, but later revised it to 5.8. We’re not sure why.)

We had anchored in Port Madison the night before the storm hit and had been planning to cross the Strait of Juan de Fuca the next day for Victoria But with storm force winds predicted, we decided to go up the inside of Whidbey Island instead.  The winds were blowing about 20 knots from the south when we left. Conditions weren’t too bad with the waves with us, but our autopilot struggled a bit to maintain course in that following sea. We’d decided to make an early stop in Oak Harbor around 1pm. Conditions in Saratoga Pass deteriorated, with the storm nearly at its worst, as we neared Oak Harbor. The winds were gusting to nearly 50 knots and the waves were about 8-10 feet and closely packed.

To add to the excitement, the approach was littered with crab traps that were afloat only in the troughs and invisible until we were almost on top of them. As we neared Oak Harbor, we could see waves crashing over Buoy “2” at the mouth and were concerned that conditions in the shallower entry channel might be even worse. Fortunately, the waves diminished considerably once inside the channel. It’s all relative though—waves were crashing against the northwest shore of the harbor and it appeared several drivers had stopped their cars nearby to take in the show.

We tucked away at the head of Oak Harbor on 10:1 scope with plenty of room and slept like babies.

Tod Inlet is a busy anchorage in the summer months. The basin has all-weather protection, but the main attraction is nearby Butchart Gardens. The gardens have a dinghy dock that makes for easy landing and access to the spectacular garden display. And boats crowd the waterway on Saturday nights to watch their firework show.

Entry, anchoring and other notes:

See the Waggoner Cruising Guide for approach and anchoring details. The Butchart Gardens dinghy dock is closed in the winter. This is just as well, because it can be a long cold ride around. To reach the gardens, land instead at Tod Inlet along the north shore. Go north on the trail that runs along the fence behind the washrooms and keep left at any forks. It’s a quarter mile to the Butchart Gardens parking lot exit at Benvenuto Avenue. Walk a short distance up the road to the main gates (see map).

Our boat carries 77 gallons of freshwater and we have no water maker. Over the years, we’ve developed a number of techniques to conserve water that allow us to cruise three or four weeks without replenishing. On our summer cruise this year, we added another to the list: an alcohol-based waterless hand sanitizer.

While we’re not hand-washing fanatics, we don’t want to be too lax either. But when we’re in water-conservation mode, proper washing with soap and water consumes far too much water. It’s not just the water used in washing, but also the water wasted in running the tap until the water is hot. We could capture that water as we do for showers, but that’s a pretty serious hassle just for hand-washing. And sometimes we can’t properly wash with soap and water because the furnace isn’t on and we’ve not run the engines for a while, so we simply don’t have hot water. We could boil water, but that is getting back into the serious hassle category.

Waterless hand sanitizers have been popping up in public areas everywhere these days, particularly in hospitals, the workplace and schools. But are they as effective as washing with soap and water? In certain cases, yes, and they have some advantages too.

Alcohol-based hand sanitizers must be approved by the FDC to be sold in the US. The Center for Disease Control includes them as an acceptable alternate form of hand hygiene. In Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, Gawande describes a hospital that dropped its MSRA infection rate to zero through the use of alcohol-based hand gels, among a variety of other practices. Hand gels are particularly effective in hospitals because people are more likely to use them. Proper hand-washing between every patient takes too long and people just won't do it. Atul Gawande notes that hand gels with an alcohol concentration of  50 to 95 percent are more effective at killing germs than hand-washing.

Washing with soap and water doesn’t actually kill germs—the friction of washing pulls germs and dirt from the skin and they are rinsed away with the water. The hotter the water, the more effective the lather and rinse. With hand sanitizers, the rubbing action works the gel into the nooks and crannies on the hands and the alcohol kills germs directly. The germs fall off the hands, and the sanitizer evaporates. Hand sanitizers work more quickly than washing with soap and water, do not promote antimicrobial resistance, and can improve skin condition. Hands that are cracked and dry from repeated washing with soap and water can harbor more germs than healthy ones. Hand sanitizers kill most common germs that are transmitted by touch, but are not effective for removing visible dirt or food-borne pathogens.

We’ve been using Purell, but have also tried Kroger’s product. Although the Kroger product is less expensive, we prefer Purell because it seems to dry a little faster. Both contain 62% ethyl alcohol and should be equally effective. We started off with a 2-fl oz bottle as a tester, and later bought the larger pump bottles.

Francis Point Marine Park, established in 2000, is a relatively new addition to the BC Parks system. The park takes up about a third of Francis Peninsula, just south of the entrance to Pender Harbour on the Sunshine Coast, and has sweeping views across Malaspina Strait to Texada Island. We visited one winter while at anchor in Gerrans Bay.

Francis Peninsula, an island at high tide and a peninsula at low tide, was named in 1930. The name was changed in 1945 to Beaver Island after the SS Beaver, then changed back to Francis Peninsula in 1972 to “conform to entrenched local usage.” The local usage of Francis Peninsula wasn’t completely entrenched based on some of the old buildings we saw.

We followed a wide and easy trail about a quarter mile to Middle Bay. The bay is reasonably sheltered, and kayaks or other portable craft could be carried there to launch and explore the outer coast.

From there, the trail runs about a half mile along the shoreline to Francis Point, on the southern tip of Francis Peninsula. This trail was more rugged, steep, slippery and muddy than the trail to Middle Bay, but had great views along the way.

The best view was at Francis Point—we could see south beyond the tip of Texada Island and into the Strait of Georgia. A big winter storm had come through the day before, and Francis Point would have been an exciting place to watch it from. But given we recorded 52-knot storm-force gusts in sheltered Garden Bay, the winds on the outer peninsula shore would have been much higher and that open trail would have felt awfully exposed.

Entry, anchoring and other notes:

The entrance to the park is less than a mile’s walk from the public dock at the south end of Gerrans Bay.(We anchored southwest of Dusenbury Island, but you can reach Gerrans Bay by dinghy from anywhere in Pender Harbour.) Walk south from the public dock and follow the road as it curves to the right (this is Francis Peninsula Road). After about a quarter mile, look for Merrill Road on the left and follow it a quarter mile to the park entrance.

Approaching the head of Blakely Harbor this weekend, we saw what looked like a rock near where we planned to anchor. It turned out to a small boat, submerged bow-up. It was covered with barnacles and appeared to have been underwater for a while. We guessed that it must have blown in from farther out in the bay. The boat appeared almost neutrally-buoyant—it spun slowly in the current and submerged only slightly as the tide went up.

The next day, the Bainbridge Island police boat arrived and attached a large orange buoy to it.

Later that day, Blakely Harbor resident Kim Bottles stopped by. (In his power power cat “Ceol Luaithe”, Kim had helped rescue a sailboat aground in Blakely Harbor earlier that spring.) Kim said he’d watched two boats struggle to raise their anchors the previous weekend. Eventually, up popped the boat we can see now. Apparently, it’s weighed down by chains in the stern. Someone might purposely have sunk it, or more likely those chains are attached to slipped anchors that became entangled in the wreck.

When we arrived, we had been planning to anchor just about where the wreck was. We’ve already lost an anchor once due to entanglement—we felt lucky to have avoided going through that again. The wreck is reasonably obvious during the day, but would be difficult to see at night without that buoy. Now that we’re off daylight-savings time and the days are getting shorter, we’ll be navigating at night and arriving at our anchorages like this one after dark for the next few months. It’s a good reminder to keep a careful lookout, even in anchorages we frequent.

Elliott Bay Marina is a wonderful place to keep a boat, but docking can be difficult—the fairways are narrow, as are the slips. And the slips are oriented east-west while the winds are typically from the north or the south, so if any wind is blowing, it’s against the side of the boat as we back it in. North winds are worse, because they blow us towards the boat beside us rather than the finger peer. Yesterday morning when we returned to the marina, the winds were blowing 17 knots from the north with gusts to 19.

We had the boat turned perpendicular to the fairway ready to back into the slip. We have no bow thruster so, when there is a crosswind, we need to lean the bow slightly into the wind as we work backwards into slip. I shifted the port engine into reverse and felt the cable break, leaving us without port transmission control.  I ran down to the lower helm and, mysteriously, it too broke. Now we have a problem.  We’re sideways in the fairway with only a few feet on either end of the boat separating us from collision. 

A two-engine boat with only one operating prop sounds easy. You would guess it’s not worse than a single prop boat. But with the prop biased over on one side of the hull, it’s remarkable how poorly the boat responds to the helm and actually turns and, with a strong wind, the boat simply won’t turn into it. Our first focus was keeping away from other boats and to keep the boat centered in the fairway as we gained speed sideways driven by the brisk wind. That done, we starting backing and filling in an attempt to get the boat turned around with limited fore and aft clearance. The boat slowly came around bit by bit and, after 5 or 6 iterations of backing and filling, it did straighten out. By this time many spectators were along either side of the fairway. Once straight in the fairway, with the wind behind us, the boat actually was fairly easy to manage.

We took the boat around to the outside guest dock where there is much more space and landed there to make repairs. We did have a spare transmission shift cable, but the parts connecting it to both the upper helm and lower helm shifters had broken. A quick trip to Fisheries Supply solved that.

The next challenge was running the new cable. The cable runs on a circuitous route through an incredibly narrow slot between the two windows in the salon. After much effort and WD-40, we finally managed to pull the new cable through, taped to the old cable, and got everything connected up and working again.

Four hours later, after lunch and repairs, we glided back into our slip. The wind was still brisk and from the north but it’s amazing how much less exciting it is to land with everything operational.

Thinking about it later, we couldn’t figure out why the parts connecting both ends of the throttle cable could have broken, and were concerned we might have a transmission problem. And then we realized—the cable must have seized, causing the fly bridge end to break when we shifted. When I tried shifting down below, that broke the other end.

We’ve had cable failures before. They typically rust up and get stiffer and stiffer but continue to operate. To have a cable fail without warning and lock up so tight the cable ends break off is quite unusual.  Yet another argument to keep speed moderate when near other boats in that you could experience an unexpected failure at any time.

At the southern end of Laredo Channel, several bays and waterways indent the shoreline along Princess Royal Island. Some appear on the chart as possible anchorages, but most feel open and exposed. Hague Point Lagoon is a notable exception. The almost land-locked basin has a somewhat tricky entrance, but inside is sheltered anchorage with room for several boats, and a hike with spectacular views.

Read more ….

Like many Puget Sound boaters, we’ve passed Point No Point dozens of times on our way to and from places north of Seattle.  The last time was on a sunny, warm day with calm winds. It was time for lunch, so we decided to stop there. We found good anchoring depths and holding on the south side, and had lunch on deck while watching a variety of vessels pass to our east.

Most of the land south of the point is either part of the Point No Point Lighthouse and Park or is DNR beach. Woods line the shore, so it’s a private-feeling, nice anchorage. After lunch, we took the dinghy ashore. The wonderful soft-sand beach that ringed the park was popular. People were out walking, fishing, building sandcastles, paddling, sunbathing and throwing sticks for some very wet puppies.

The Point No Point Light Station, completed in 1879, is among the oldest in the Puget Sound. The lighthouse itself is no longer in service—in 2006 the Coast Guard installed a modern, low-maintenance light—but most of the original buildings and equipment are still in place, including the original fresnel lens. The Friends of Point No Point Lightouse maintain the site and open it to the public. We weren’t allowed up into the lantern room, but we could see the lens from down below.

While few houses are south of the point, the land to the north is quite built-up. An old 1920’s resort and boat launch, now in disrepair, was partway down the beach. WDFW owns the property and plans to restore the boat launch and possibly the buildings.

This month James finally became a US citizen, after a nearly three-year delay. We’d both applied in late 2005 and were interviewed in early 2006. I was approved in a couple of months and became a citizen in the summer of 2006. James, however, went into application limbo pending an FBI name check, but eventually was approved as part of a class-action lawsuit.

Our overriding interest in citizenship was the ability to vote, but citizenship actually is required for a number of things in the nautical world. Some boat loans and insurance policies require that a vessel be documented, and some countries allow entry by boat only on documented vessels. Non-citizens, however, cannot document a vessel, nor pilot a documented vessel out of the country. Only citizens are eligible for USCG licenses other than the OUPV (or “6-pack”). And twice we’ve missed opportunities to tour a US navy nuclear submarine because we weren’t citizens.