People

Chaffles and Eagle Island

Eagle Island, Puget Sound, WA 6-SEP-2026 6:45 AM – ‘‘Get me the dog blanket, please,’’ says Jennifer as she settles into the cockpit to drink coffee, read the NYT and look at the seals.

This our fourth day at Eagle Island (after three nights). It is an island one can walk around in ten minutes at low tide and there are no eagles. Across the sound from us is part of greater Tacoma, north is a prison island, and south Anderson Island connected to Seattle by ferry. There are three mooring balls, one on this (east) side and two on the west. This time of year there are generally mooring balls available. The bottom here has very good holding so one can just drop an anchor if there isn’t a mooring ball available and then there is no limit on how long you can stay.

Pondering

McMicken State Park, 30-AUG-2026 – I’ve been thinking about all the additions and changes I’ve made to Caro Babbo, and all the changes in my life that have happened during our ownership.

There are still things I learn about my boat. Not many and not startling. I’ve learned about solar panels and batteries this year. I’ve learned about Jabsco toilets – learned more about them really. Enough that I am rethinking the composting toilet I had planned for this year. And I am thinking about all the people that have come into my life and those that have left life during these thirteen years. Twenty-three years if I count when I moved aboard the T-bird that first summer.

Sound Sailing

McMicken Island State Park, 29-AUG-2026 – It’s Saturday, the last Saturday in August. We’re at anchor, on a mooring ball in Puget Sound. The people we run into don’t take there boats out of the country generally and the Sound is their boating world. Most are still working, so it is quite understandable.

We’ve been back from our Canada trip about a week and half and been on the boat since then. We’ve been out of Port Townsend for nine days. Three of those were in Swantown in Olympia.

Despite our travels, family and family responsibilities (and business) have crept into our travels. We were in Olympia to help Jennifer’s daughter change apartments. The new space is marvelous for her daughter and cat. It opens onto a public patio where there are people and those people bring their animals. I worked on the move one day, Jennifer worked on it part of two more, then her daughter had had enough of mom’s help and we left the next morning (yesterday).

‘‘Pretty Certain’’

Port Townsend, WA 23-FEB-2026 – We’re not moving the boat to Olympia for the summer.

‘‘It’s pretty certain that you’ll have a slip in Boat Haven,’’* is what Michele at the Point Hudson marina told me.

‘‘They called me and told me to tell you. I don’t know why they couldn’t just call you directly.’’

Neither do I.

‘‘So, you should stay.’’

I said, ‘‘Pretty certain?’’

Saturday with the seals and Selkie

Eagle Island, 20-SEP-2025 – We’re continuing our travels around South Puget Sound. We traveled nine miles yesterday, four the day before, and twenty-something the day before that.

Not much traveling and no extra fuel tanks, something I can’t remember if I thought I would then get while we were in PT or not. I didn’t, so that is that.

Parks Bay, WA, 4-Aug-2025 – I haven’t been writing. The compunction hasn’t been upon me for a variety of reasons. The first time we went to Alaska, I wrote fifty posts in 150 days. This is my third post this year, we’re 100 days into the trip.

The reasons are manifold: It has become like work, something I never wanted to happen.* The places we’ve been to have been very much like every other place we’ve been to. Jennifer’s fears have infected me so much I have to fight against my fears to sail, which has taken a lot of life out of me.

Things have been good, however, beyond not writing.

People

Van Anda, Texada Island, BC, 31-MAY-2025 – On our first trip north, I remember getting to Texada Island. We had traveled so far, to the brink of the world it seemed. Today, we have just been piddling around for the past month and had stopped here to wait out some not so terrible weather.

Blogging Dam?

Newcastle Island, Nanaimo, BC, 16-MAY-2025 – I haven’t been in the mood to write recently. I’m sorry. I’m also afraid to write how well things are going.

We moved out of Point Hudson on May first to Mystery Bay on Marrowstone Island, where we discovered how much we left behind, which was just as well since we hadn’t finished cleaning the house for VRBO rental.

Calvin

This isn’t about boats, mostly.

21-JAN-2025, Port Townsend, WA – About 35 years ago, I read a piece by Calvin Trillin. He was writing with some bemusement about people he’d meet or who would write to him to ask about his daughters. He’d written about getting bagels for them on weekend mornings and the life of an urban family with two young daughters.

Time Discontinuity

Port Townsend, WA 4-JAN-2025 – I was thinking about a conversation I had with someone about her graduate school career. It was a story she’d told me many times, but this time she told the group the rest of the story.* It is a story I always looked on fondly because I was a tangential part of the story.