We Are Back Home

August 25, 2010

We made it back to the home dock today and after spending 2 hours unloading the boat we are in the house. No movement, no view and the dogs, Max and Maddie, are happy. After leaving Ganges last Sunday we headed to Roche Harbor to clear customs into the USA again with our friends, Larry and Marci following us in their boat. The customs officer came aboard to check us out and ended up taking the tomatoes that Karyl bought the previous day in Ganges because they where not grown in the US or Canada. Oh well, that’s better than what happen a few years ago during the mad cow scare when customs took a couple of very nice New York steaks when we entered the US.

After getting cleared we headed to Garrison Bay on the opposite side of San Juan Island. This is one of our favorite anchorages and has a small dock to land the dinghy so it is easy to get off the boat. Larry tied his boat to ours and we went ashore to explore the park where they have restored some of the buildings from when the British had a garrison here before the present US/Canadian border was established.

The next day we headed to Hunter Bay on Lopez Island and anchored for the night. This placed us fairly close to Deception Pass where we have to time our passage for slack current. We had a peaceful night along with about 30 other boats but the bay is huge so we never felt crowded.

We made it though Deception Pass on the 24th and continued on to Oak Harbor. Larry and Marci said goodbye here and they continued on to Everett where they keep their boat. When we tied up in the Oak Harbor Marina we called brother John and he came down to visit. We went over to his house and had a great fish and chips dinner with his wife and daughter Rena. We made the decision to continue on home the next day instead of staying around another day as originally planned because we felt we needed more time to unload the boat and clean it up before Uncle Perry and Bobbi come to visit us after their cruise ship trip to Alaska. They are arriving in Seattle on the 29th and will be staying with us for a few days. Anyway, we made the trip from Oak Harbor to Port Orchard today in about 7 hours and 54 miles. It was a beautiful day with calm seas and no wind and for most of the trip we had a wonderful current that gave us a knot of boast. After arriving in Port Orchard the work began. We had to unload clothes, food, laundry and other misc. stuff. As I write this, we got most of the stuff off which filled the back of my pickup to the top - that was all we could take today. So things are somewhat back to normal but there is still a lot of work to do getting the boat empty and cleaned up after our trip of 3 months and 2060 miles.

Thanks everybody for keeping track of us and having an interest in our trip to Alaska.