Adventures in LiLo

Saturday, May 30, 2009

First Sail of the Season

Sheepishly, she realized that she had written the story in the last post once already. She hopes you will accept this overdue story as a peace offering.

In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of...sailing? And apparently a young-ish woman's thoughts too. The nice weather the last few weeks hasn't hurt, but beyond that, our recent days have been littered with sailing-related gifts. A sale on anchors (at the same time we had the extra money to get one and the time to research which one we wanted. For those of you who care, we bought a Delta), a dodger on Craigslist, dinner with a delightful family who will be leaving this summer on their sailboat. We took a class at a local jeweler and made a pair of simple silver wedding rings so we don't lose a diamond (or a finger) while sailing. The girls and I started taking Spanish lessons from a friend (she's taking piano lessons from me--yay for bartering!) And we took our first sailing trip.

We had reserved Mother's Day weekend for a sailing trip some time ago, just hoping for good weather. And, though it was still cold enough at night to sleep in 4 layers and a hat, the daytime weather was perfection itself. We began with the obligatory trip to the Farmer's Market across the parking lot from the marina and followed it up with the traditional later-than-hoped-for sailing time.

After motoring up Budd inlet, we put up the new mainsail (another of the unexpected acquisitions of the winter) and the drifter, and sailed...very...slowly...past Boston Harbor. After an hour or so of fighting current and headwind, we decided to let the wind plan the destination and turned toward Hope Island. Sailing up to the mooring buoy always feels like an accomplishment. Dropping the boat hook overboard when the handle fell off quickly reminded us not to feel too sure of ourselves. We pulled around again and Bryan leaned over the side to retrieve the hook (still hanging from the mooring buoy ring), and it broke in two. We finally got a stern line through the ring and pulled the boat around by hand to hook up properly, bow first.

That's when Bryan realized...we had no oars! We always leave our oars on the boat, but we'd brought them home after the last trip to fit them on the new dinghy and now we had no way to get to shore. After a brief family conference, we all agreed to motor on over to Jarrell Cove State Park, where we could stay at a dock.

We pulled in to the Cove about 8:30 and found a spot at the inner state park float. We were a little concerned that the -2 tide on Saturday would not leave us with quite enough water under the keel, but the bottom was muddy so even if we did touch for a few minutes at low tide (we didn't) it wouldn't hurt anything.

Saturday, we enjoyed getting to know the neighbors, who laughed with us at our forgetfulness and offered to loan us their paddles so the girls could dinghy around the lagoon. We tied the dinghy to the anchor rode so we could reel them back in if necessary and tied the borrowed paddles to the dinghy. But after a few minutes of awkwardness, and several near misses (we discovered that shifting one girl to the stern seat greatly reduced the chances of paddle handle meeting sister's face), we cut them loose. Each year, they shock me with their independence.

Watching them intuit how to work together to steer and row efficiently settled any concerns I may have had about the ability of kids to learn teamwork without organized sports.
Often, we spend a portion of each vacation day traveling from one place to another. So we weren't too disappointed to see, on our way to Jarrell Cove, that Joemma Beach didn't have their docks out yet. It was so relaxing to spend the whole day at Jarrell Cove, hiking, chatting with the camp hosts, cooking (and eating!), reading, playing games, watching the Purple Martins commandeer our mast, and fiddling with my Mother's Day gift...a new telescope.

Sunday, we moseyed back to Olympia, packed up, snagged some sushi at our favorite local sushi spot and were home by bedtime. Despite the laughable glitches, this weekend satisfied our need for some peaceful relaxation and deeply gratifying time with our family.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Our family motto (apparently) is "A place for everything and everything all over the place." We're having too much fun living life to stop to clean it. It doesn't help that we homeschool, so we're home a lot! I have finally begun to give myself grace for these tendencies, especially after figuring out that my messy housekeeping wasn't going to rub off on my girls any more than my Mom's good housekeeping rubbed off on me.
It all came together in my mind, though, the day I caught myself lecturing my girls about cleaning as they go. "Someday," I said, "you will learn to clean up as you go along and it will be so much easier for you. Someday..." and here we moved slightly to take in the full view of the terribly messy kitchen from which had come many delicious meals without a single clean-up spree--"...someday you may learn this. But if you do, it WON'T BE FROM ME!"

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Day Nine-Jones Island to Roche Harbor

Prepare for a deluge of pictures from our time here, one of our favorite islands of the trip. Bryan took the girls for a hike around the western shoreline and I joined them after some exploration of my own. You can see the island's only permanent residents, these almost tame deer.

Bryan and I love the madrona trees with their whimsical shapes and cinnamon bark.

I also love these three. I feel so blessed to be traveling through life with these wonderful individuals.

By afternoon, it was time to move on. We had a good sail over to Roche Harbor.

Right away, we found the marina pool and relaxed, each in her own way:)

If you were here, I would bore you by trying to point out our boat in this picture.
See, right over there. No a little more to the left.

Roche Harbor has a summer tradition of a color ceremony, complete with music and a cannon. This night, a trio of local pilots added to the fun with an impromptu fly-over at just the right moment.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Day Eight-Friday Harbor to Jones Island

Shopping for "Magic Peas" and salad mix at the Friday Harbor Farmer's Market
(we missed our CSA pickup terribly:)

Pics of all the girls with Harbor watch-totems.

It had been our intention to move on to Roche Harbor this evening, but after two days in a busy marina, we were yearning for some quiet. (Also, the current was against us and after 2 1/2 hours of this exact view...

...we turned on the engine and motored in to Jones Island.

While the girls played on the beach, I sat in the shade and read...and read. Ahhhhhhhhh.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Day Seven-A Day of Rest in Friday Harbor

Listening to Street Music (Can you see the girls? They--silly-- never take off their lifejackets...even on land! It makes them easy to spot, though. And I s'pose they're always ready for...hmmm...flash flooding?)