Overall trip notes:

Fantastic weather – we had rain one night, but never during the day.  We only had one day where it was overcast.  Every other day we had mostly sunny, with a few scattered clouds.  Great wind most days – even the direction cooperated with the direction we wanted to go most days, so that we were doing a lot of broad reaching and downwind sailing both northbound and southbound.  Temps this time of year are a bit cool – 60’s mostly while underway.  But at anchor with the sun out and the breeze on the nose, it’s pretty much shorts & tank top weather in the protected cockpit.  Until the sun goes down – as soon as the sun dips behind the trees it gets chilly right now.  Cabin heat is a must.  Ours was a little unreliable this trip – we think the hose might be pinched or disconnected somewhere under the cockpit because it wasn’t working nearly as great as before.  But turning on the oven or cooking on the stove heats the cabin up great.

We saw tons of seals in the gulf islands, and porpoises in the more open San Juans and the various Straits.

We attempted crabbing in the Gulf Islands, but no luck.  Two very small crabs that we threw back.  We’re either not very lucky with this, or maybe (probably) a little too lazy to really do it right.

Took way too much food, but it’s nice to have variety and not be stuck to a hard meal plan.  Cooler full of dry ice worked great, kept everything solidly frozen for 9 days.  Next time we’ll use just the blocks, as the pellets didn’t last very long, and were completely evaporated after just a couple days.  Had our traditional cocktails upon anchoring each night, and usually some appetizers before dinner – cheese, pate, smoked salmon, etc.  This was the opposite of ocean racing – we were gone for 17 days and probably gained weight.

Only had a few minor issues:

• Engine throttle response was weird one day.  No increase in RPMs when accelerating from idle until you really pushed it.  Not a big deal, and only occurred when departing from the customs and fuel docks at Friday Harbor.  Worked fine afterward.  Maybe just a Friday Harbor thing, but I’ll check out the linkage next time I burrow under the cockpit.
• Not as much output from the diesel heater as we’re used to.  Strongly suspect this is due to the primary section of heater hose getting pinched against one of the cockpit drain seacocks under the cockpit.  I had to crawl over this several times when running the XM antenna cable from the transom into the cabin, and I expect to find it partly crushed.
• Speedometer conked out twice for very brief periods while underway.  We’re assuming it was just due to running over small floating debris and momentarily jamming the paddlewheel.  Never lasted more than a minute.
• The apparent wind indicator went psycho for 5 minutes or so while sailing in a steady breeze on day 16.  Worked fine afterward.  By the time I set the autopilot and went to where I could get a good look up at the masthead unit, everything was working fine again.  I wonder now if we had a hitchhiking seagull.  Or maybe there’s a very tiny Bermuda Triangle thing at the south end of Whidbey Island.
• We’re overdue for a bigger dinghy.  Lisa says I looked like some giant guy playing in a kiddie wading pool when I was rowing in to run the shore-tie line in Royal Cove.  Worked OK for the two of us rowing to shore in calm water, but definitely only usable when calm.

Good stuff:

• XM radio (plus the new speakers in the main salon) – this was huge.  XM always been cool in the car, but having hundreds of very clear music channels just made each evening that much more enjoyable.  And having the cable news TV channel feeds to listen to over coffee each morning was great too, although it was pretty grim following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita clobbering the Gulf coast.
• Autopilot – still hanging in there.  After cleaning up and re-soldering the wiring to the cockpit bulkhead connector last month, the ancient / obsolete / unsupported Autohelm 4000 (“Otto”, of course) worked like a champ whenever needed.  Saved the autopilot replacement budget for another year.
• Anchoring – still haven’t had even a hint of dragging while at anchor, nor have we had to clean off any mud & seaweed hairballs when pulling the anchor in.  If Lewmar needs owner testimonials for Delta anchors, we’re there.
• Water tank capacity.  Replaced the leaking output valve in the port water tank earlier in the month, so both water tanks were available for use for the first time since we bought the boat.  As mentioned above, we only ran one of the two tanks dry once, so we always had at least 25 gallons of fresh water in reserve for dishes and showers.  We took about 12 gallon bottles and maybe 30 liter bottles of drinking water too, which turned out to be plenty.  The storage areas behind the salon settees were perfect for storing water, juice and sodas; we had storage capacity to spare.

That’s twice to the Gulf Islands now.  On to Princess Louisa Inlet next year.  J