Our Salish Aire: Off to Belize with no Boat in Sight

What's in her name?

What's in her name (Salish Aire)?

Salish from her new home the Salish Sea

Aire as in a melody of song.

Salish + Aire = The melody of the Salish Sea.

Salish Sea:
In the late 1700's Captain George Vancouver wandered around the waters of what are now known as British Columbia, Canada and Washington State, USA. He did the usual 1700's explorer thing and put names he chose on everything he saw. The names stuck and are recognized and used to this day.

New lines were added to Captain Vancouver's charts in 1872 (after a near war with Great Britain over a pig) which made waters on one side of the line Canadian and those on the other side of the line American.

It wasn't until 1988 (officiated in 2009) that someone finally realized that fish and various critters, (to say nothing of the water itself) were never involved in the boundary treaties and really ignored them completely. (This is best illustrated by the problems that Homeland Security has with Canadian Canada Geese and American Canadian Geese - it seems they refuse to carry passports and have been known to poop on the head of any border patrol person who tries to challenge their right to cross the border when and where they choose!) In reality the waters from Olympia to the well up the East side of Vancouver Island are pretty much one ecosystem.

The Coast Salish are the indigenous peoples who live in southwest British Columbia and northwest Washington state along the Salish Sea and share a common linguistic and cultural origin. The Salish Sea is named in honor of the earliest recorded peoples who plied her waters and learned to live in harmony with her.

Monday, June 9, 2014

Off to Belize with no Boat in Sight

Yesterday we saw a glimmer of hope as the freighter carrying Salish Aire moved past the center of the storm and started to gain speed - then this morning it showed a path that went north then west then southwest. Something wasn't right. Sure enough we got an email from the shipping company that the main engine was having fits.

Getting it here by Wednesday (it is now Monday) wasn't just a matter of convenience but all of our plans had assumed that we would pick up the boat and bring it down ourselves (with some help from a very patient volunteer captain and crew). The problem is we have to leave for Belize Wednesday evening. The plan is now out the door and our anxiety sky high.

So why Belize, now? Back in 2004, Clarice and I spent a year volunteering at Hillside Heath Care Clinic in the southern tip of Belize ( http://hillsidebelize.org/ ). While there we wore our RN hats, teacher hats, pharmacist hats, computer programer hats, etc.. We also met a local Maya woman who was obviously very bright, very dedicated, and determined to become a nurse. She had gotten some support to start correspondence school to finish our equivalence of high school but that source ran out of money so we asked a couple of churches to help support her. A decade has passed and she is going to graduate next Saturday with her Bachelors of Nursing degree from the University of Belize and we plan to be there to cheer her on. I'm sure other Mayan women from the villages have gone to the university but I'm also very sure that they are incredibly rare as few young women we encountered in our year of working with them ever even considered higher education (AKA our high school) as a choice they had. We are very very proud of Margery and look forward to seeing her again.

So back to the boat: This afternoon we have been on the phone with our outstanding "even after the sale" boat broker, Don Kohlmann, and Raven Offshore Yacht Shipping and believe we have a plan that will get Salish Aire tied up awaiting our return. Our heart rates have returned to normal for at least a day or so.

1 comment:

UnknownJune 10, 2014 at 7:41 AM
Sounds like the start of a long relationship with "mother" nature. To bad she's not favorable at the moment! Please give our love and regards to any mutual Belizean friends. We hope your trip will be a wonderful time. I can appreciate Margery's accomplishments. You have played such an integral part in her success. You must feel very proud.
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Our Boating History

One day, half asleep on the deck of a friend's boat, after working a night shift, I offered that I would be willing to provide storage and maintenance for a sailboat in exchange for being able to use it whenever we chose to. The boat was an ugly 23 foot sailboat we nicknamed the "Glass Geoduck" (for those who don't know, a Geoduck (pronounced "gooey duck") is a huge, very ugly clam - so the name meant it was a very ugly sea creature made of fiberglass). (AND a Geoduck is the mascot of The Evergreen State College, which my son and I consider to be our true alma matter). The good news was it was built like a tank and none of our learning "challenges" seemed to bother it in the least.

We were about a quarter mile from the dock on our first trip on the Geoduck and Clarice asked if I had ever sailed a boat before, to which I replied honestly; "I sailed 8' prams when I was a camp counselor, and the concepts are the same." After hanging on with white knuckles for the first few trips, Clarice learned to love sailing and we have often joked that the "sails of our boats belong to Clarice and the motors to Norman".

At some point we realized that we were pouring a lot of money into the Geoduck for a boat we didn't really own. We parted ways with her when we could not negotiate an acceptable price with her owner. In the mean time Clarice had been doing her homework and decided we would do well to find a MacGregor Venture sailboat. The one we found was in need of a lot of rehab but the "Azure Moon" (it had an azure blue hull) carried us and our two children to many an adventure.

We started to build a cabin on an island and decided that a power boat could get us to and from the building site much faster. We purchased an 18 ft runabout with an 8 cylinder inboard/outboard and learned how fast fuel can be sucked into an engine. We also learned that owning and maintaining 2 boats is a pain in the tush. At a boat show we found the answer in a new design of a water ballasted 26 ft sailboat from MacGregor that could plane with a 50 Hp outboard. We purchased hull number 69 of this very successful series of boats and named her Cassiopeia. She would eventually take Clarice and I up the Inside Passage from Vancouver BC to Skagway, Alaska. It may have been on that trip when the dream of eventually moving onto a boat was planted.

Inside Passage blog part 1
Inside Passage blog part 2

Our last small boat was a Rosborough RF246 named Sea Meadow. She was made in Nova Scotia for the North Atlantic and proved to be an ideal boat for the Salish Sea. Her trawler style and comfort convinced us that this is the style of boat that will best serve our needs in the foreseeable future. We started "noticing" trawlers when we were wandering on docks and one day we looked at a Nordhavn N40 and thought it just might make a good home (we have since decided it is a bit smaller than we would like). Investigating further we learned that Nordhavns are designed with the purpose in mind of being recreational boats that can comfortably and safely challenge any ocean on Earth. We also learned that the classic of the line is the N46 which fit our personal style best. We then set out to find the "right" N46 and after several false starts ended up purchasing N46 hull #50 known at the time as "Phantom".

People also ask about our comfort with out-of-country travel. Our comfort level increased dramatically when we lived in the country of Belize in Central America for the calendar year of 2004. We volunteered there under the auspices of Catholic Medical Missions Board in Hillside Healthcare Clinic in Toldedo District in the southern part of the country. While there I wrote a blog that was later collected into a memory book by a close friend.

Belize Mission Memory Book
Belize Mission Memory Book Photos