When my sailboat got hoisted out of the water in early August, her propeller strut bent and algae clinging to her hull, I knew it would be a long battle with the insurance company, followed by many hours of work before we would sail off into the sunset again.

 

The silver lining was a chance to finally buy a sea kayak and start exploring the islands from a different perspective.  My brief experience with this last October, was amazing and I wanted more. I looked high and low but Goldilocks grabbed a paddle: the less expensive sea-kayaks made me think I would immediately want an upgrade and the more expensive ones were, well, too expensive for my budget.

Then, I came across the ‘Saroca’ – a fifteen foot boat that purported to straddle three worlds of water travel quite well. You could ‘SAil, ROw, and CAnoe’ the boat.  About 500 were made in the 80’s and there seemed to be a bit of a cult following alongside a dusty website. Of course, like all boats, it needed some work and had some missing parts. I struck a deal with the seller Tim which included an overly ambitious plan of splitting up the work and getting the boat on the water.

It was a good three weeks before a test sail which revealed a leaky drain plug and another week before we finally slid the Saroca into salt water at Squalicum Harbor in Bellingham WA.  I had spent the night before tossing and turning, butterflies telling me that what I was doing had a lot of unknowns.

My plan was to try rowing and sailing south toward my home base Anacortes, about 15 miles as a crow flies, and camp on different islands in the area that I knew pretty well from prior adventures, albeit usually in a much bigger boat. Hugging the coast seemed smart – but also slow, and as the first few hours rolled by and I gained confidence, I started bee-lining it across open water.  I was wearing a wetsuit, had a horn and a VHF radio. What could go wrong?

The wind disappeared almost immediately and I did my best to find a rowing cadence, covering at best 2 miles per hour.  I had about 14 miles to go to Saddlebag Island near Anacortes and it wasn’t long before I started missing the engine in my big sailboat.  My palms reminded me how privileged my life has been, hot spots forming even under my gloves.  My back started hurting, my ass started aching, and I started wondering why in the hell someone would want to travel through nature backwards?

The wind finally picked up and I was able to relax, sitting crosswise in the boat and hanging my feet off one side – letting mother nature move me toward my campsite and reveling at the distance passing by effortlessly.

I set up camp on Saddlebag, stubbing my toe hard on a tree root but otherwise having an uneventful night.  Day two was a 9 mile journey over to Cyprus Head,  the wind picked up significantly at one point, causing the boat to lean over dangerously. To de-power  the sail I tried to ‘let it out’ by releasing the line holding it in — not realizing another line from the boom had wrapped itself around my neck. And I couldn’t reach the rudder.   It was about as bad a catch-22 on a sailboat that you could find – the only way to slow down and prevent a capsize was to choke myself. Fortunately I got the line unwrapped from my neck in time and everything sorted out, but it was a good reminder of fast something can go wrong on a small boat.

The last mile heading south to the beach on Cyprus head was against the wind and the current. I almost kissed the beach when finally staggered off the boat.

I ended up spending two nights on Cyprus Island resting up and trying to figure out next steps.  My stubbed toe from Saddlebag Island was getting steadily more angry at me. There was a group of sea-kayakers camped nearby. They had effortlessly glided up  and I couldn’t help but I had chosen the wrong boat. Plus, at 150lbs, the Saroca was too heavy to pull up on the beach above the high tide line and I had to figure out a complicated ‘clothesline anchoring system’ to keep it close, but not too close.  I chose a mediocre campsite because it had a view of the Saroca which I was afraid would drift away in the middle of the night.

I spent that long day on Cyprus looking at the weather and the currents.  Winds were shifting in a couple days and starting to come from the north. Getting back to Bellingham would be really challenging. Plus my toe hurt and the fun was wearing thin.

The next morning I decided to pull the plug and I caught the flood tide toward Bellingham. It was a long day of rowing and cursing at the wake from passing whale watching boats, plus wakes from the occasional man-with-big-boat-and-small-penis (these are the same guys that drive Ford F-350s on land), but I eventually made it back to my starting dock. I went straight from there to urgent care where the harried doctor took one look at my toe, pulled out a needle and a scalpel while telling me ‘I’m not going to lie, this is going to hurt a lot’.  But that’s a tale for another day. Plus, I blogged twelve years ago about the same toe in my artfully titled “The True Story of my Everest Toe Nail” (Warning, graphical content) and I think one blog post per toe is enough. Sorry, I don’t mean to be cheesy, but I just don’t want to tip-toe around the subject either.

Lessons learned: 1) All boats are trouble.  2) The Saroca is an interesting boat but probably best suited for fresh-water lakes. I wasn’t out on the open ocean, but it felt too small for the areas I sailed through, especially with wakes from passing boats occasionally coming over the side of the boat and into the cockpit. 3) I wasn’t keen on the idea of having a little outboard on the Saroco even though there is a mount for one. I was too hung up on the idea of human powered adventure. But if I were to do it again, I might add a motor for safety. 4)  I don’t like power boats. Or whale watching boats. Fuck them.  5) Don’t wear flip flops in the dark around big exposed tree roots.   5) Know when to quit.  6) Good doctors let you soak your feet in ice before doing nerve block injections, bad doctors want to rush things and want to tell you how much things hurt before they stick you. Choose your healthcare provider wisely. 7) I don’t like traveling through nature backwards, 8) I had fun despite all of the above. It was an adventure and that’s exactly what I was looking for…