![[Photo: It's either Piaw bailing or Pearl Bailey]](reidbail.jpg)
In which an uneventful anchoring occurs... How sun showers work... An island only reachable by private craft... Toys vs. Gear...
Reid Harbor Stuart Island 1998 Aug 03 Monday
We sailed gamely for a good two hours before finally running completely out of wind and turning on the power. Travelling into Reid harbor, we were amazed by the quietness and how sheltered the place was. It looked calm--and also incredibly crowded. All the mooring buoys were taken, forcing us to use our anchor. I picked a place that looked good, free and clear of other boats with enough room to swing around on a three to one scope. As tightly packed as the place was, there was no way we were going to be able to do the regulatory seven to one scope. Some of the other boats had chain going straight down from the boat, and if the waters weren't as calm as they were, would have made me quite nervous.
We putt-putted through the harbor, looking for an unoccupied mooring buoy. All of the sudden, there was a rough patch of water off to the side, with no wind to explain it. I was up at the front of the boat with the boathook, hoping for buoys. I nearly panicked, wanted to scream back to Piaw to reverse the engine, when someone else pointed out the reason for the disturbance--fish! It was with a sense of relief that I decided to think of these as the Danger Fish.
There weren't any free mooring buoys left. We were going to have to anchor. I asked Piaw, "So who else besides you knows how to anchor?" Piaw looked startled, asked me, "Don't you?" Uh-oh. he sent me up front with Scarlet to watch over me. All we would have to do was untie the anchor, drop it into the water, and then slowly let out chain and line while Piaw backed up the boat. And that's really all there was to it. I needn't have worried.
Anchoring was uneventful, compared to the other events of the day. We secured the anchor, watched awhile to make sure we weren't drifting in an alarming fashion, and Scarlet proceeded to barbecue up some hotdogs for us. Having skipped lunch and just munched on snacks all day, we were all quite hungry and eager. Dinner was over just as dusk set, and we sat out on deck chatting, watching the stars for meteor showers (Scarlet saw a few, I saw one) and generally passed the time. I had brought a few novels along with me on my Palm Pilot, but who was going to read when one had friends to talk to, and a beautiful quiet harbor to look at? Well, ok, and the fact that one is nervous about the anchor and possible collisions with other boats in the night.
Scarlet put out the crab-pot with a slice of salami in it. She was going to get her money's worth out of that crab license. A while later, and she pulled up the crab-pot--with no crab, just a wet piece of salami. Grrr. She lowered the pot again. Later, she would raise the pot again--this time, no crab, no salami. Obviously, these were smart crabs.
The moon full and bright. Lea was able to make shadow animals appear on my white t-shirt. I tried to write down some notes for this travelog, but there wasn't quite enough light for such lucubrations. We learned that Lea had shaved her legs only when her boyfriend, Rick, had got a haircut. We talked about one of Scarlet's ex-boyfriends, who was getting married. Scarlet had found out about this from Piaw, who had offered to bring her to the wedding. It occurred to me that Piaw was a brave man.
Piaw is in fact, not a brave man. Piaw is simply very stupid. And quite capable of saying something just to see what kind of reaction he would get.
Piaw and Scarlet talked about personal differences, seemingly calmly, somewhat vaguely. Then, it wasn't so vague; Scarlet said, "It would help, when we're on land, you didn't phrase suggestions as orders." A small cloud of tension drifted over the boat. Piaw gulped, frowned, and then nodded. The wispy cloud dissipated. Piaw and Scarlet laughed over some trip to Santa Barbara, where they'd started out as great friends--but had hardly been speaking to one another by trip's end. I chuckled nervously, asked how long that trip had been. Four days. I chuckled again. I figured that if this happened again, then the boat's two competent sailors might not be speaking to each other for... for about half of the voyage. Hmm. Beautiful night, though.
The trip [to Santa Barbara] was actually more like 8 or 9 days. About the fourth or fifth day into the trip, I said to Scarlet, "When did you get so damned critical?" And she replied, "When you started being a smart aleck." "How come You didn't notice it last time we went riding." "That's because I had my boyfriend to distract me." I was hence slightly nervous about Scarlet being on this trip without her boyfriend. As it is, I figured that the presence of Lea and Larry would help defuse any tense situations. Why I thought that I don't know, since Radek was around on the last trip and he managed to not defuse any tense situations. Then again, on a small boat there isn't much place to hide from tense situations.
On the boat, there wasn't hot running water for showers. We had brought along Rick's Sun Showers, however. A sun shower is a three-gallon black plastic bag which is attached to a litle hose with a shower-head on the end. You fill the bag with water and leave it out in the sun during the day. The black plastic entices the sun's warmth into the water. Then, when you want a shower, you go into the boat's cramped, low-ceilinged bathroom, hold the Sun Shower up high, the little hose falls out, and water spills all over the floor. I decided to forego a shower that night.
We took the precautions of putting fenders out along the boat. I asked Larry if he was comfortable sleeping on the boat (I had brought a tent so we could row ashore if he wasn't) and he said it seemed so calm he'd like to try it.
1998 Aug 04 Tuesday
I awoke in the aft cabin, to the sound of sloshing water. The water had been pretty calm. Unlike the last time I'd tried sleeping at anchor, this had been quite bearable. In fact, if it hadn't been for the sound of the sloshing water, I might have been able to get caught up on my sleep. It occurred to me that I had no idea of what day it was, a state in which I would remain until I found my wristwatch.
Larry seems to be good at getting up early. At least, I haven't managed to get up earlier than him yet. I wasn't particularly trying, but one can't help notice things like that. This is not a bad dynamic, since Radek and I have a tendency to egg each other into getting up later and later. Once up, I run around the boat checking the lines and checking our relationship to the surrounding boats. Things are incredibly quiet, and though the sun is high, it is not high enough to start peaking out over the mountains. Well, I have a bag full of camera equipment, and a tripod. Let's see if anyone else wants to go ashore. Lea is awake, and I ask her if she wants to go ashore. Larry seems pleased by the idea. Scarlet wakes up and when told of the plan galvanizes into action.
Scarlet, Piaw, and I wanted to go ashore. Scarlet wanted to set foot on island which was only accessible to people with their own boats. Piaw wanted to take pictures. I wanted another chance to row the dinghy. While Scarlet got ready, Piaw got into the dinghy. It had some water in the bottom. I'd figured that all dinghies would have a little water in the bottom. I'd put my shoes and some gear into a garbage bag to keep them out of the water. Piaw, master of the elements, wanted to bail out the dinghy. On its floor, there was a sort of accordion-bellows thing with a couple of holes in it, plus a hose with ends that would fit into the bellows-holes. I suggested that this must be some kind of bailer. Piaw messed with the thing for a while before figuring out that it was, in fact, an inflator--it took in air from above, not water from the bottom of the dinghy. Oops. Piaw set about bailing out the boat with a coffee mug. Then he got back on the Healer to get his camera gear together.
Larry and Scarlet get into the dinghy, and I finally get on it. The camera bag isn't quite waterproof, but the dinghy doesn't appear to get wet enough to penetrate, so I take the risk. Larry starts paddling the boat towards the shore, with Scarlet giving him directions. I sit there feeling redundant. We take a couple of false turns while Larry gets the hang of it, and head towards shore. As we approach, Scarlet gets off the boat and pulls us in. We all get off and Scarlet ties the boat. The tide is rising, but we don't plan to be ashore that long. We have walkie-talkies with us so we can communicate with Lea, who has elected to stay with the boat. Stuart Island has steep slopes where Reid harbor is, and the first minutes are spent struggling to climb up to a suitable vantage point.
We had pulled into a little inlet. Light, spry Scarlet hopped out of the boat and tied up, looking fashionable in her bright yellow pointy-toed wading boots. Somewhat light, somewhat spry Piaw wrestled his camera gear onto shore. With some assistance, I was able to maneuver my behemoth bulk onto shore without falling in the water. Piaw spotted an impressively purple starfish clutching some rocks, and we oohed and aahed. We unpacked walking shoes, stowed our life jackets on a shelf of rock, and set about scrambling up the steep hillside. On our ascent, I put down a hand, pulled myself up--up to where I could see that I had nearly put my hand down on a spikey cactus. A cactus? In Washington state? On an island? Scarlet jabbered away happily about how one of the other San Juan Islands was home to the Pacific Northwest's only native strain of cactus. Obviously one of them had made it to this island. I was a bit more careful with the remainder of my ascent, and was thus able to see a lamb's ear plant, which looked cute and fuzzy.
Once we'd reached flatter ground, Piaw started taking pictures. I sat around and dithered. Piaw suggested that I take this opportunity to take a piss. "If you go on land, it will be that much longer before we have to worry about the holding tank again." I moseyed over to a tree and followed his suggestion, thinking This is the depth I've sunk to. Pissing on a tree. Woe is me. I soon finished, fussily washed my hands on a moist towelette I'd brought along in anticipation of such hardships, and was soon able to ignore the discomforts of nature and to resume concentration on its features. The city's hum of traffic had been replaced by the hum of insects. Cool trees filtered sunlight. Water sparkled in the harbor.
Oops. Sorry. I'm talking about the pleasant, boring stuff again. I'll stop now.
Scarlet talked about the school on the island. About the boat-load of students out on a field trip which had wrecked, killing many (all?) the kids. That's much less pleasant.
The light doesn't look great, nor are the views, but I set up my tripod anyway to take a few pictures. While I was taking pictures, Scarlet and Larry found a trail. We follow along the trail, coming up against a tiny beach...
We were looking down at this little beach from our vantage point atop the rise, and there was a driftwood log and a something, a something unidentifiable on the beach. Until I looked more closely, and saw that the something was a plastic grocery bag. And this seemed absolutely unbearable. I mean, we're out here in the middle of nowhere. You need a boat to get to this island. Sure, there's a few boats out there in the harbor, but not that many. It seemed like we were the only people on the island, at least at that hour. It seemed like the sort of place where there shouldn't be any litter. My vision narrowed. My jaw ground. I shoved my camera into someone's hands and scrambled down the hill, cursing all the way down. I fished the bag out of the water, calmed down a bit. I had a chance to wonder how many delicately-poised lichen I'd ripped free in my furious descent.
I picked my way back up a bit more carefully. "Can't they keep this park clean?" I asked. Someone answered, "I don't know that this is a park. It might be private property." I considered, "Well, then surely they should have a staff to take care of this sort of thing." I wasn't angry anymore. I tied the bag to my shirt-tail, took back my camera.
...a tiny beach (complete with litter, which Larry picked up), and then the trail cuts across the island into the other harbor. Fascinating. Following the trail brings us to private property, the end of the marine park.
![[Photo: Provost Harbor, Stuart Island]](provost.jpg)
![[Photo: Red sign on a red tree]](trespass.jpg)
Periodically, we tried to raise Lea on the walkie-talkie, but we got no reply. When we eventually got back to the boat, Lea would 'fess up that when we'd been gone for a while, she'd noticed that her walkie-talkie's channel had ended up on channel 15--but we'd wanted to use channel 14. It occurred to me that we should have taken along my Nerf sucker-dart gun/walkie-talkie, since it didn't have a channel selector. That's what I get for hanging out with people with access to real gear instead of toys. Heck, if Piaw used a toy camera instead of camera gear, we wouldn't have had such a hard time lifting his equipment bag back up into the boat. But then, of course, you, dear reader, would have been deprived of many of the fine photos appearing on these pages.
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