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Travelogue
- 05/20/04
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Same Old RV
Early in this travelogue I
promised to show updated photos of my RV to illustrate the many upgrades
and improvements I expected to make after buying it. Alas, much of what I had
planned to do remains undone so far. I
still haven't had the dinette cushions re-upholstered to cover up that
awful blue-green fabric. Nor have I taken time to build in permanent
storage lockers in the forward overhead compartment. (I'm still using the cardboard
boxes I fitted to compartmentalize the area when I hurriedly
moved in back in February.) Sometimes I berate myself for this lack of
progress. More often I think, "So what? What I have is functional and I'm
traveling." In the end I have to keep my priorities straight, don't I?
Would I rather spend half the season tricking out my camper just so, or
spend that time visiting new places? Gee, that's a tough one.
While my camper is functional, it is not maintenance-free.
Far from it. After all, it's 9 years and 50+ thousand miles old, and by boat
standards cheaply constructed to boot. Just before I left Mount Shasta,
my mechanic buddy, Yari, and I did a front brake job - well, I assisted by
handing him tools and stuff like that. While we were in there, we replaced the calipers. Now I actually know what
those are! In the past week alone I have personally rebuilt the collapsible TV antenna gear assembly (not that I ever use it),
fixed a sudden leak in the water pump that saturated the cabin sole aft,
wired in a new wall thermostat for the furnace, fiddled with the
generator, which doesn't start when it's warmed up, and have done at least a
half-dozen other odd jobs that popped up in addition to regular
maintenance chores. And I had to order in parts for some of these things from
vendors as far away as Alabama. RV's are less work than
cruising sailboats, but they're not self-tending.
On the plus side, precisely because I have never possessed a
natural inclination towards things mechanical, I feel great gratification whenever I
do manage to fix something. Therefore,
this has been a most gratifying week.
Getting Here
The western Cascade Mountains in north-central Washington are striking
for their steepness. Monolithic rock blocks soar almost vertically from
the lush temperate rain forests that blanket the region. I spent a few days
among those mountains, biking the damp forest roads and trails despite the sporadic drizzle so
characteristic of the Pacific Northwest.
The last time I was in Washington,
seven years ago, I met some guys on the Olympic Peninsula about to bike down a
mountain in the rain. When I commented to them
that it seemed like a dismal day for the outing one of them replied,
"Dude, if you don't go biking in the rain around here, you don't
go biking." I kept that in mind in the Cascades and did just
fine.
What did you wake up to Monday morning?
I spent Sunday night parked in a
Wal-Mart parking lot, something I occasionally find convenient when I'm
near a large town or just making highway time. In this case, I was
positioned to catch a ferry in Anacortes, Washington, the next morning. Around 6
a.m. I was sitting up in bed practicing meditation, something I do every
day, when I
was interrupted by a loud banging on my door. It turned out to be another
RV-er who suggested I might want to move my camper. When I asked him why,
he directed my groggy attention to a pickup truck close along the other
side of my camper. It was
fully ablaze! I moved, quickly, and in a matter of minutes the local fire department arrived.
With that Monday morning excitement behind me, I headed for the
ferry terminal in Anacortes, Washington and a 10-day visit to the San Juan
Islands.
The San Juan Islands
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Taking the car ferry from the mainland to the San Juan
Islands is not cheap. They charged just over $100 to carry me and my 24' RV to
Orcas Island where I was going to visit an old sailing buddy of
mine. To their credit the Washington state ferries tend to be punctual, clean,
smooth-riding and well-run. But a hundred bucks? Ouch! |
The ride offered a cruising view of the hilly green
islands that make up this picturesque group. The San Juan's lie just
barely within sight of the
mainland coast - well, on clear day they do - yet they exist, like most
islands, in a world of their own. I was about to discover a milder way of
life on Orcas Island.
I went there to look up a friend I hadn't seen in
more than 20 years. Tom Averna and I go back to the mid-1970's, when we both lived aboard sailboats in the free anchorage off Coconut Grove,
Florida. Like pretty much everyone else there in those days, we were long-haired
ocean vagabonds doing our best to keep our old wood boats afloat on
a near-zero budget. When I first met him, Tom had just sailed his pretty gaff cutter, Silver Seal, up from
the Virgin Islands. Eventually he crewed with me on my very first
paid yacht delivery in 1978, helping me take a 37' sloop from Florida to
the BVI. Maybe I'll tell you some of our wild stories some other time.
Suffice it to say we had lots to reminisce about, and even more to catch
up on.
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Today Tom owns Deer Harbor Charters, a fleet of three
US Coast Guard certified boats that take summer tourists out to see the Orcas (killer whales)
and other wildlife that populate the waters hereabouts. Each
excursion is accompanied by a trained naturalist who educates and entertains the
passengers, leaving the skipper free to concentrate on running the
boat. It's a good arrangement and a great experience, in no small
part because the captain and crew are so into what they're doing. I went out twice
while I was on Orcas Island and really enjoyed it.  
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Tom offered me a job skippering one of his whale
watching boats for the season, but
I've got other fish to fry this summer. Alaskan salmon, for example. He also
offered me the use of his sloop, but there was little wind for
sailing while I was there. Besides, there seemed to be an awful lot
to do in the time I had on lovely Orcas Island. |
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Orcas in the San Juan Islands
 
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Here's a photo of Tom and his naturalist, James, aboard Pelagic,
the newest addition to the Deer Harbor Charters fleet. Pelagic
arrived by truck from Maine while I was visiting and the three of us
went over to the boatyard in Anacortes to fetch her and drive her
back to her new home on Orcas Island.
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New Friends
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Tom skippers many trips himself. In fact, he was out chasing
Orcas with a tour group when I arrived in Deer Harbor that first
afternoon after ferrying across from the mainland.
Waiting for him to get back, I strolled the
docks checking out the local boats and chanced upon some sailors
gathered for a good old-fashioned cockpit gam session aboard a funky
converted life boat, now someone's home. |
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They invited me to join them and one thing led to
another. By the time Tom found me we were all about three sheets to the
wind, as sailors call it. It was a fine introduction to Deer Harbor. People came and went, stories were told and embellished and laughter
erupted often. The skipper, Ian, read a new poem he had written and it was
damned good! I'm not a big poetry fan, but his stuff was bawdy, ballsy and
articulate and moved us all to cheer when it was finished. Then an imagined challenge
prompted one fellow called Long John, who must be pushing 60, to
prove he could still shinny up a mast. This naturally required
another sailor to show that he could scramble aloft by way of the shrouds rather
than the spar.
The rest of us passed the bottle and shouted encouragement from the deck
while the ship's dog barked excitedly. Later, when I
announced that I had to get going to meet Tom, Ian jumped up and
cried, "Ah, but not before you've been scanned by the ship's
anti-terrorist detector." Moments later he emerged from the cabin
wearing a bright green jokers cap and waving some kind of clacker around
me, to the great amusement of everyone on deck. This was definitely one crazy bunch of sailors.
It all reminded me of my
Caribbean days and made me feel right at
home.
Hiking and Trail Biking on Orcas Island
I drove across the island to the densely wooded eastern side. Finding
no clever places to park discretely for free overnight, I camped in a
nearly empty State Park campground for a few days and made forays, by
foot, bike and RV, through the forest and up the mountain.
Movin' On
After a fun week-and-a-half on Orcas Island I said farewell to Tom
and my new friends there and ferried back to the mainland. Spring was
slowly advancing towards summer and the Canadian west beckoned.
Next Entry: 05/31/04
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