Sucia 2012 Day 1

Posted by Unknown at 6:00 AM

After what seemed like an interminably wet Spring, the weather finally broke just in time for this years Sucia Small Boat Rendezvous. My Son and I met up with Marty Loken at Sandy Point marina early Friday morning, arriving almost simultaneously. After rigging, launching, and puttering a rather long way through Sandy Point, we finally reached the Strait of Georgia, or the "Salish Sea" which some people now call it, but most of us dont, only to discover ... No Wind. Drats!

Marty rowed his beautiful Whilly Boat for a while. We motored for a bit.

Then we towed Marty for another bit until finally, we started to feel a breeze.

The breeze steadily increased until whitecaps began forming, so we stopped to put in a reef.

Shortly after we tied in the reef, naturally the breeze started to die off again, so we shook out the reefs. Argh!

Then, up ahead, we saw three Pelicans! I dont think Ive ever seen pelicans around here before, so this was a real treat for us. I even managed to capture them on video as they flew away.

The wind was now almost completely calm, so we started up the outboard again. Then we saw dolphins! I believe these are Harbor Porpoises. We spotted them frequently over the course of the weekend.

When we arrived at Fossil Bay we faced this little problem. I had to wait for the tide to come in so I could move Ellie close enough to the beach to set up my clothesline anchor. Note the seaweed. This is the nasty stuff that nearly killed my outboard motor last year. The motor sucked some of it into the cooling intake, plugging it, which caused the motor to overheat. The engine block got so hot it melted the insulation on the wire to the kill switch, grounding it and shutting off the motor. If that hadnt happened, the motor would have surely seized up.

While waiting for the tide to come in, some of the other boats began to arrive. This gorgeous boat is a Connecticut River Shad boat. After talking to the owners for a while, I finally realized that they werent a part of our Rendezvous. They lived on Orcas Island and were just there for the day. I told them about our yearly Rendezvous and they said maybe they would join us next year.

Others continued to arrive. Directly behind Ellie you can see Doryman Mike standing in his Valgerda and fellow Shopsmith owner and master woodworker Paul Miller in his Friendship.