Fathers Day, Sail Alaska Day, D-Day
This morning is the day it all came together. The girls had gone to bed past midnight last night after the Jeanneau Rendezvous dinner and playing with s/v Laissez Faire’s two boys for a while after dinner. The kids all had a great time together for the second weekend in a row, knowing that they won’t be able to see each other for a while. Needless to say, they were very tired. I also completed the installation of a new autopilot control head in the middle of the night so we’d be able to operate normally on our long runs north for Sail Alaska, which started TODAY. We woke up early (7ish) and mostly waited until the promised coffee and pastries were out on the dock. I went out and had some coffee and brought back coffee and pastries to the boat. After blessing of the fleet, boats started heading out–some for Alaska, most for their respective home ports. We took a bit of time to sort out the dinghy and clear up the cockpit and got out of the slip about 10am, headed north for Canada. It was foggy all day, with a little mist here and there as well. I was on watch pretty much the whole nine and a half hours, watching for logs and boats, and scanning with radar for ghosts hidden in the fog.
This was our first boat trip to Canada since we got our NEXUS cards that we didn’t have non-NEXUS passengers on board so we were excited to use our NEXUS privileges for checking in. After crossing the border and continuing our way to our destination we called in. There was about a 10 minute wait, and my first call dropped about 8 minutes in. Unfortunately, since we haven’t used it before, we didn’t really know the right way to take advantage.
Basically, we should have pre-chosen one of the authorized destinations (along our intended route) and when asked by customs, given that location and an ETA. They then ask you to stop there, wait for 20 minutes, and proceed on if no customs official comes out to check on you. Since we hadn’t studied the list of authorized destinations, we gave them the closest one we knew and had to do a u-turn, losing probably 90 minutes in the process, to get there. No official came out to greet us, and we moved on, arriving in Clam Bay around 7:30pm, 56 nautical miles from Anacortes.
Overall the girls did well during this long motoring day, finding ways to keep themselves entertained and cooperating well most of the time. It will be better once we get to locations where we get off the boat and explore, or see some more sea life. But these first few days are mostly to get some miles between us and the US mainland.
Today I called my step-dad of course, and talked with the rest of the family via speakerphone while they had their Father’s Day dinner. I also thought about my late father who would also have been celebrating his 68th birthday today.
