This morning the weather was every bit as dreary as yesterday, with gray skies and rain, and with clouds low enough to obscure the view across the bay. But, we’d been here long enough and were ready to move on. We’ve developed a small fuel leak in the past few days, and I’ve mopped up some fuel from the bilge a couple times. This morning, in an attempt to find the source, I crawled around in the engine room with the engines running, one at a time, trying to find a drip somewhere. I found no fuel leak, but I did find that the hose clamps securing the port exhaust hose to the mixer elbow were loose, dripping some raw water and probably exhaust into the engine room. Those got tightened up, so it was a worthwhile exploration.
After a short excursion ashore to dump garbage and buy some more absorbent oil pads to replace those I’d used, we pulled away from the dock – about 10:15 or so. It was drizzling and dreary with visibility of a mile or so – we turned on the radar, hopefully just to give it some exercise. One difference between today’s weather and yesterday’s was the wind – there wasn’t much at all and the seas were calm. We like that.
We crossed Satellite Channel on a diagonal line headed for Colburne Pass. This is a group of islands that form Swartz Bay, a major ferry terminal for BC ferries heading to and from Sidney to other ports in the Gulf Islands as well as across the straits to Vancouver. As we approached we saw three ferries, two smaller ones and one of the jumbos, heading out of the pass and figured maybe we’d be spared encountering one as we passed the ferry dock. That wasn’t the case, as yet another jumbo ferry came in towards us as we were passing through. It creates a good sized blip on our radar screen.
We continued on through John Passage, between Goudge and Coal Islands. This is a smaller passageway with a couple of well marked rocks in the middle. It’s more scenic and has less traffic too. If we were headed to Sidney, it’d be a straight shot south from this pass. But, we were on our way back to the states, so we rounded a small group of islands and headed towards Sidney Spit, which we could barely see in the distance. As we neared the spit, a nice provincial park, by the way, the clouds parted, the rain stopped and we could see all the way to America. Well, okay, it was only about 5 miles across Haro Strait, but it was by far the farthest ahead we’d been able to see all day.
Haro Strait was just as calm as the rest of our ride, with the only bumps being the wakes of the occasional boat passing the opposite direction. We cruised on into Roche Harbor and headed for the Customs dock, which usually involves jockeying for position in a floating queue for some time. As we approached, two boats were leaving and we pulled right up to the dock, along with a sailboat that was ahead of us.
I gathered up our documents and headed into the Customs shack, where there were three agents helping other boaters. “Are you arriving from Canada?”, one of them asked. “Yes I am”. “Well, you can take a seat there or wait outside until we call you”, she said, implying there would be no standing while waiting inside, although it was permitted outside. I was called soon enough, and handed over our passports, boat document, cat rabies certificate and Canadian clearance number from our entry into Canada two weeks ago. I also ‘fessed up to not having our Customs decal this year, whereupon I was given a form to fill out with my credit card number while she keyed in our other info. Vessels over 30 feet long have to pay an annual fee for the privilege of returning to the U.S. through Customs.
“Do you have any alcohol, tobacco or firearms?”
I declared 2 liters of whiskey we’d bought in Canada, but before I could finish she interrupted, telling me that she needed to know all the alcohol on the boat – that any alcohol we took with us from the U.S. into Canada lost its U.S. citizenship and would have to be declared.
“Well, we have a couple bottles of wine and a few beers that have been riding back and forth on the boat for 5 years or so…” She rolled her eyes at the 5 years – “and we have half a bottle of rum in the galley that we use for cooking…”
“It’s not Cuban, is it?”
“Oh no, the recipe called for the cheapest rum available”.
“Okay,” she said, “and you purchased two one liter bottles of whiskey?”
“No, actually I purchased three 750 milliliter bottles, but we drank some from one bottle to bring the total down to 2 liters.”
“Well, aren’t those the same as one liter bottles?”
“No, the 750 milliliter bottle is three fourths of a liter, so two of those equal one and a half liters. We drank the third bottle down to 500 milliliters for the total of 2 liters to be within…”
“Okay, I guess I’m going to have to study up on how those add up. Do you have any vegetables?”
She gave me back all the documents except for Erin’s passport, which she would use to compare faces as we headed out to the boat. I think she wanted to get on board, but she was short and we didn’t have our ladder out. She peered through the side door, spotting the plant next to Erin’s chair.
“That looks like a real plant…”
“Yep, we got that at Home Depot…”
“You can’t transport plants or dirt across the border, but I’ll let it go this time.”
“Where’s the galley”, she asked and I pointed it out. She could see the bananas and onions I had declared on the table, and I’d already told Erin to gather up our potatoes. I think volunteering the avocado convinced her we were just honest folk on our way home. So, in the interest of Homeland Security, we surrendered the potatoes, some bell peppers, one tangerine and an overripe avocado. Our bananas and onions were deemed not a threat, and we were given a clearance number and sent on our way. In hindsight, we should have been thinking and boiled our remaining potatoes last night like we usually do – then they would have been keepers.
We decided to continue on to Blind Bay, an anchorage on Shaw Island that we enjoyed on our way north. We had a pleasant cruise through Spieden Channel, with a favorable current pushing us along at up to 11 knots, although that didn’t last long. We continued retracing our route north, passing through Pole Pass on the way to Blind Bay.
We had no potatoes, so for dinner we had rice with some orange chicken that’s been riding around in the freezer the entire trip. We’d better eat the rest of that crab tomorrow.
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