Beam Reach

October 17th, 2006

10/17/06
Another beautiful day in the San Juan’s. Although there are no whales today, it is sunny and cool, a perfect October day. We anchored last night in Fisherman’s Bay on Lopez Island. It is a nice anchorage and appears to be a bit more of a small island community than places like Friday Harbor. I awoke to the sound of the anchor chain being hauled up at 7:15 am, we had to get an early start so we could make it through Cattle Pass with the current instead of fighting against it. Upon arriving in the galley/saloon this morning I was greeted by the smell of Jason’s famous (at least to us) sourdough pancakes. They were fabulous and the morning was calm and colorful. While going through cattle pass we saw at least 7 sea lions swimming around. They looked so big especially after spending the summer working with baby harbor seals at my internship. At the Southern end of Haro Strait, near False Bay we paused to do a CT (conductivity and temperature) cast for Emily’s project. We let the instrument down 100m by hand pausing every 10m to record results. Emily and I had a nice arm workout hauling it back up. The rest of the day we’ve been hanging out in Haro making our way north hoping to run into the whales, it’s 3 and we haven’t yet. We will be anchoring somewhere at the Northern end of San Juan Island. The wind has finally picked up enough so we are sailing for the time being.

—–

its been awhile…

It has been far too long since I’ve “blogged” and much has happened. First and foremost, I’ve seen breaching Orcas and bow riding Dall’s Porpoise and its been great. There are only 3 weeks left of the course, unbelievably. In the 7 weeks we’ve been here we’ve been to Lime Kiln State Park, a short kayaking trip, a short sail on a Cal 20 with the Commodore of the local yacht club, developed research proposals including methodology, meet many interesting people including some well known killer whale researchers, and we’ve spent 3 weeks on a catamaran around the San Juan Islands. Our first two weeks were an adventure. The first week we mostly spent getting used the boat and learning about sailing as the whales weren’t around. The second week we had two encounters with the whales and perhaps as interestingly the propulsion system on the boat stopped working. Our relief captain stepped up to the challenge and although we had no propulsion and little wind we managed to spend another couple of days on the water until safely returning to the Friday Harbor Labs. To return to the labs we rigged the dinghy up at the stern between the two hulls and ran that 18hp engine which was able to push us back to the labs and allowed for decent steering ability using the catamaran’s rudder. Somehow that week every time we were docking with little/no engine capabilities and only light winds I always ended up at the helm. I don’t mean to brag but I did pretty damn well and am proud of myself, plus I really learned a lot over that interesting week. Our third week out on the boat, the propulsion was mostly fixed and we were back with the owner/captain. We had one great day with the whales and collected quite a bit of good data but then the disappeared for the rest of the week. We kept ourselves busy with data analyzing and reading while we drifted around in Haro Strait hoping to intercept the whales as the returned. Despite having no Orcas we had a couple of wonderful encounters with some Dall’s Porpoise. There was one day we were sailing at 5kts or so and a group of 6-10 came up and bow rode for at least 20 min. I was sitting up on the starboard bow seat and when the came up to breathe they were 3 feet away and it felt like I could reach out and touch them. With their distinct black and white shading we could see them as they swam around underwater near the surface. A couple of days later we were just drifting with the current in Haro and a group of Dall’s came up and played around the boat for maybe 30 min. It was great!

—–

week 2

The first part of this one is taken from my "oldschool" paper and pencil journal.

It’s 8:12am on a Saturday morning and I’m sitting at the bus stop waiting for Joe to pick me up.  He’ll bring me to Snug Harbor where I will meet the Soundwatch crew.  Colleen went out with them yesterday and had a great time.  There were lots of whales yesterday.  The first page of the day came just before I left the cabin this morning and it was 900 or no whales but its still early, they might show up. 

Yesterday was a great day! It started with us meeting Val on the dock to do some hydrophone work.  We put a speaker that played an Orca call every 30 seconds in at one end of the dock and then we spread out along the dock with hydrophones and our computers to try and record the call.  After some initial technical difficulties we were all able to record the call.  There was a lot of background noise, mostly boats so that added to the challenge.  Then we went back to S1 (our classroom) to try and figure out some of the analysis.  I’m starting to get the hang of it.  This practical exercise really helped make sense of some of the stuff that had only been theoretical to that point.  Then we took a quick break for lunch before heading out to play on the water.

At that point I was interrupted by Joe arriving.  Joe is really Jo or Joanna, so I’ll just fill in now the rest of that day. 

We went over to this beach that is covered in drift wood and not just tiny pieces but whole tree trunks.  Around the other side of the point there was a nice dock and small rocky beach.  We went down on the dock and met the Commodore and his Cal20 sailboat built I believe in 1961.  The deck was painted two shades of bright green, it was a neat little boat, I liked it.  We divided into two groups; Rena, Peggy and Juliette went out with the Commodore first and Emily, Jason, Donna and I went kayaking.  We helped them get off the dock, it was a rather interesting departure because the wind was pushing the boat down on the dock so we had to push them off.  It felt good to get in a kayak again.  We paddled around for about 45 min before heading back in to switch groups.  The redocking was rather impressive since it was done entirely under sail.  It’s hard to describe in words but it was basically pulling a Uey by the dock and tossing our lines to people on the dock and them pulling the boat to a stop.  It was fun and we had a perfect warm sunny day!

—–

a little update

So I’m new at this blogging thing so bear with me. We’ve been here now for a week and I still like it! We’ve had gorgeous weather, only one cloudy day and no rain. This weekend was our first real chance to have some time to ourselves.

I spent a few hours Saturday wandering around downtown Friday Harbor. It’s a nice little town, similar to Bar Harbor in the types of shops just on a smaller scale. I was good and didn’t spend too much money. I did find a store that could prove dangerous, King’s Marine and Outdoors store, it has everything from crab traps to nautical charts, to nice patagonia long underwear. They had some nice kayaks for sale and all kinds of cool kayak gear. Not to mention all of the neat books about boats and navigating and local wildlife. I limited myself and bought only a crazy creek camp chair which I’ve been wanting for awhile and it was on sale so I figured what the heck it might be nice to have on the boat.

After returning from town I worked a bit on my proposal and then Colleen, Emily and I went out for dinner. We walked into town and ate at Dos Diablos, it wasn’t the best mexican food but it was fun. Sunday was spent working and procrastinating (which I am very good at). I finished a bit after 8pm just in time to join my classmates for a movie over at G cottage. We borrowed the class LCD projector and hooked that up to a computer and projected it onto a sheet on the wall. It worked great and was much better than all trying to crowd around a single computer screen.

Even in just this first week we have had some great speakers. We had Kari Koski who works with a group called Soundwatch. They go out on the water anytime the whales are around and monitor how well boats follow the “Be Whale Wise” guidelines. If they see a boat that is not they will go over and explain the guidelines to them and give them a brochure that outlines them, it is a really neat program and she offered a different perspective on some of the issues.

On Thursday night (I think) we went and heard John Stern speak about his work. He is the minke whale go to guy and since baleen whales are near and dear to my heart I enjoyed his talk. He’s a funny guy and he knows his stuff. The talk was at the house being rented by the Center for Whale Research for their earthwatch volunteers. It is pretty much at the top and maybe even part way down the other side of Dallas Mtn. It had an amazing view and the sunset was spectacular. The house looks out over Haro Straight and Vancouver Island. It was a fun, casual forum and I learned quite a bit about the rather skittish Minke.

We all handed in our rough drafts of our proposals this morning so that feels good. For me that is the hardest part, getting that initial stuff on paper. Well class starts again in about 5 min. so I suppose I better get ready. This afternoon we are having a guest speaker, Bob Francis who is going to talk about marine sustainability and then he will guide our journal club discussion tomorrow.

—–