Chapter 7 - Single Handed Cruising
In June 2023 I was scheduled to buddy boat with some former students from the summer of ‘22. I had several people lined up that all canceled on me in weeks prior to the trip. I tried to rally other crew but nobody signed up. At that point I had to decided whether to cancel my participation or cruise solo. I chose the solo option.
Prior to this I had only ever soloed for day trips or at most one night. In October ‘22 my crew in Corfu, Greece arrived a day after the boat was chartered and I ventured out on my own then. The weather was really mild and I had a wonderful evening anchored under the Old Corfu castle listening to a classical music concert. It was only one night and I didn’t really fully appreciate the experience. Plus there was nothing hard about the weather in that situation.
But for this trip our departure from Squalicum Harbor had 18-23 knot winds. The mental chatter my head was really loud. “If you hit another boat leaving the harbor single-handed, San Juan Sailing will never let you hear the end of it,” “You’ll be the laughing stock of the instructor community if you wreck your boat.” Blah, blah, blah.
The initial challenge was putting fenders and mooring lines away once outside the harbor. Set the autopilot, walk carefully along the rail, remove one fender or line, and bring it back to the cockpit. The take the helm, look around for any new obstacles, and proceed to the next fender or line. Doing that 8-10 times was exhausting! With crew none of that walking happens. Then the same process of stowing all the fenders one at a time. Actually I think I tied them up on the back rail so I wouldn’t have to leave the helm.
Then it was time to set the sail. The winds dead on so I set headed into the wind and prepared for an afternoon of beating into it. I did a pretty good job of staging everything, getting the main set, and then setting the auto helm on a wind heading. The jib is always easy to take out with decent wind. Initially I reefed the main the wind wasn’t too bad soI let all the sails out and had a super fun sail into Inati Bay.
Setting anchor was easy and I waited for my buddy boat to raft up. Once rafted they took a stern line ashore and we were set for the night.
The next day the mental chatter of setting sail went down dramatically and I got a little overconfident. it wasn’t so much setting sail that got me, but bearing off onto a broad reach that I wasn’t quite ready for. But no harm done and had a great sail all of the way through Hale’s Passage. I noticed the wind waves picking up heading into Rosario Strait and I reefed early. We had a really excellent, sporty sail all the way down to Clark Island.
Holding isn’t great on Clark Island and grabbing a state park buoy is definitely recommended. I like to grab a buoy at the water line off the stern, particularly in windy situations or where there is current. After taking the sails down, I stopped the boat well out the anchorage, dropped the dingy and climbed inside to take it off the davits so I could tow it. With that accomplished, I dropped the transom and motored slowly into the anchorage. This allowed me to back up onto the buoy, attached a mooring line to by hand (no boat hook), and walk it to the front. It couldn’t have been more smooth.
The Close Crew
The next 2 days were really smooth, easy sailing down Rosario and into east sound. Buoyed in Obstruction State Park we decided to do a match race down to the southern end of Lopez Sound, into Mud Bay, and around Fortress Island. The winds really picked up towards the south end and as I tripled reefed, I got a little close to western shore of Rami Island. No harm down but note self about remembering how much you’ll still travel forward when hove to in good winds.
Anchored off Spencer Spit we had a fun shore outing, was crowned King Weed, boarded by skallywags and made some awesome coffee in the morning.
Skallywags!
The Knights of Nee!
Foam Structure Baby!