(Note: I wrote this post on the day the events occurred, but posted this after the trip, so the dates may be a bit messed up. This post is from the third day of the trip, Saturday.)

Click here to get an idea of where we were and an approximate view of our course.

I thought yesterday was the best day ever on a boat. Today might have been even better. We slept in a bit today and woke up this morning in Blubber Bay to a beautifully sunny day with a nice breeze from the southeast. I checked our crab traps and found a nice little Dungeness crab in there. We had another great breakfast (with bacon cooked on the grill, oven style -- wonderful on a boat too.)

After we cleaned up, we left our anchorage under sail and started flying as soon as we left the bay. In 20kts of wind, we were booking along at six and seven knots. It felt great to sail finally after motoring for the past two days. Once we turned north, we set our spinnaker and flew under the kite for three hours - easily my longest spinnaker  run ever. The highlight was cutting through the Thulin Passage in Copeland Island Provincial Marine Park under spinnaker. It's a very narrow passage, maybe a few hundred yards wide; the wind was exactly on our stern so we were able to run it under spinnaker -- very exciting and somewhat rare. We continued our run outside the passage until we turned the corner at Sarah Point into Desolation Sound, where the wind died down.

As we motored up Desolation Sound, I sat in the bow pulpit (my favorite place) and just soaked in the amazing scenery. The sun was still super warm and was lighting up the big mountains and islands perfectly. It's really fjord-like back here. We pulled into the very lovely Prideaux Haven, a small set of protected coves described as the "quintessential Desolation Sound anchorage" in the guidebook. There were already a few boats in the two main coves, so we picked Melanie Cove, the one with four sailboats (it's funny that even here, the sailboats and stinkpots keep apart). The water was glassy and full (I mean full of zillions) of jellyfish (so no swimming here). We anchored easily and went for a dinghy ride to the island. Once we pulled up on the island, we hiked around for an hour and then pulled up a few oysters. Michael had his first raw oyster, standing in the water where it was harvest and bashed open by Cap't Dan. He loved it.

We came back to Papa and prepared yet another feast - salad, ribeye steaks grilled three ways (soy sauce marinade, jerk marinade, and plain with a rosemary/garlic herb butter), corn on the cob, and red potatoes tossed with the same rosemary/garlic butter. We washed it down with a nice Ravenswood cab.

It's quiet here like no quiet you could ever get in town and the visibility is stunning. We sat in the dark looking at the stars, even seeing satellites shoot past. Unfortunately, the clouds were rolling in, so we did see as much as last night.

Tomorrow, we're supposed to get a real blow, so who knows what it will be like. I'm sleeping on deck tonight to get a real sense of the outdoors. Hopefully it won't rain on me.

(Note: I wrote this post on the day the events occurred, but posted this after the trip, so the dates are a bit messed up. This post is from the second day of the trip, Friday.)

Click here to get an approximate view of where we were today and our course.

Today may have been the best day I've ever had in a boat -- and we didn't really even sail! After a late start due to grocery shopping, chart shopping, waiting for the liquor store to open, and getting more fuel, we took off from Nanaimo this morning around 10:00am. The weather was overcast with a 10kt wind right on our nose from the northeast. We had to take a slightly longer route to skirt Whiskey Golf, a Canadian weapons testing range (36ft fiberglass sailboats lose 100% of the time against torpedoes moving at 50kts). The Canadians had a big amphibious assault carrier out on the range turning circles; not sure why.

As we motor sailed north (again, more motoring than sailing) and enjoyed the great breakfast Michael cooked, the weather opened up and the seas became flatter. It really became a very pleasant day. I learned how to input the GPS waypoints and have the autopilot drive from point to point which made my job even easier. I just hung out on deck watching the islands go by, taking a few photos, and reading my book. The photo here shows me sitting in the hammock with the autopilot remote. The data on the display shows that the cross-track error is zero: we're on course. Hard work...

Later in the afternoon, we finally killed the two crabs that Cap't Dan caught a few days ago. I steamed them over beer, garlic, and basil and made some garlic/basil butter for dipping along with some garlic bread. We ate our lunch on deck and washed it all down with some cold beer. The crabs were amazingly great and tasted even better in the sunshine and breeze.

As we reached the north end of Texada Island, we heard a wooshing sound and saw a grey whale on the surface. We killed our engine and sailed along the path of the whale, watching it blow and dive for a while. Then the whale approached the boat a few times. At one point, it crossed less then twenty yards in front of the boat, and then rolled under Papa with one tail fluke coming out of the water. We could see a spiral line of bubbles disappear into the deep. The whale continued to play with us, going under the boat a few times (we could see our depth sounder go from 400+ f eet deep to 20 feet instantly and then drop back to 400+.

After a while, we resumed our course when, ahead in the distance, we could see a lot of splashing. Michael and I then realized it was a line of Dall's porpoises coming at us, jumping along the surface of the water. These amazingly fast animals jetted by us (under the boat). We turned and followed them and then came back and swam under the boat and jumped along side us for a while (click here for video, 543K .wmv). It was truly amazing. Finally, they took off in search of a more fun and food. The three of us each had our cameras out (I had two) and were shooting, yelling, and laughing the whole time, maybe 45 minutes.

Because of our time with the whale and porpoises, we realized we weren't going to make our destination by dark, so we decided to stay in Blubber Bay, which was close by. This is a little bay on the north end of Texada Island. It would be cute except for the limestone quarry right at the water's edge and the ferry that runs between the bay and the mainland, presumably to take the workers to and from the factory. Fortunately, it quieted down after sundown.

We circled the bay a few times to check out our anchoring conditions. Neither Michael nor I had ever set an anchor for real, so this was great chance. We put out a bow and stern anchor (with Michael having to row the stern anchor out) and then set about making dinner - a nice meal of grilled halibut, corn on the cob, buttered red potatoes, and hot chocolate chip cookies. While we enjoyed our dessert, we relived the day through all of the photos and videos we shot. There were definitely some great shots.

Even with the ferry dock and factory here, it's amazingly quiet and dark. We can see the Milky Way and zillions of stars (including a shooting star). It's really lovely and peaceful.

Time to go to bed. Tomorrow: Desolation Sound.

I'm on Papa with Captain Dan and my shipmate Michael here in Bellingham. Michael and I planned to take the train up here, but there was something wrong with the train so we wound up taking a bus - less cool than watching the sunset from the coastline train.

Anyway, so far these guys seem cool. Michael is a user experience designer at Adobe, so we're all geeked out already.

We're settled in for the night and are planning to ride the early morning current out to Nainaimo.

Should be fun!

I've decided to go on a sailing trip, leaving tomorrow. I'll be sailing on a boat named Papa, a Bavaria 36, from Bellingham, WA, up toward Desolation Sound (between Vancouver Island and the Canadian mainland) and back to Vancouver, BC. We'll be gone a week, plus Michelle and the kids will meet me in Vancouver for a few days afterwards.

It was definitely a spur-of-the-moment thing. I had been thinking about taking some time off since I haven't really taken a vacation all summer. I was noodling around the Windworks Sailing Club site and came across the link to Papa. Captain Dan runs the boat as a charter sometimes and was planning on a trip from Seattle to points north. I liked the vibe of the site and wanted to get some more boat time this summer (I had precious little), so I gave him a call. I liked him on the phone, so I decided to do it.

There will be one other guy on the boat with us; hopefully, everyone is cool, otherwise thirty-six feet will not be very big. I'm not normally one to do things like this at the drop of a hat, so I'm kind of proud of myself for taking this chance. We'll see how it goes.

Dan talked about supplementing our diet with crabs, salmon, oysters, clams, and shrimp, so the foodie in me is excited. I'll also be taking some sailing classes on-board to get my next level of certification, which will be nice too.

Special thanks goes to my loving and understanding wife, Michelle, who is taking the boys solo again so I can play.

I'll try to update the blog as I go. We'll see if I can get connected.

Ugh, I've been going through the worst jet-lag recovery since coming home. Flying east is always harder anyway, but several other events at home have conspired to make this recovery worse than normal.

I did a good job managing the flight home, switching to Seattle time as soon as I got on the flight in Jakarta and sleeping at mostly the right times. The first night home I had no problems sleeping. The second night I camped with the boys in the backyard. The combination of the uncomfortable sleeping arrangements (we were one sleeping bag short, so I was sleeping on blankets on the ground) and Michael (6) waking up a few times left me unable to get a reasonable night's rest. I tossed and turned again last night, being too overconfident that things would be OK to take melatonin (my jet-lag medication of choice). Unfortunately, I took a nap today, so I'm up this evening/morning.

It's 3:00am now, and I'm wide awake. I just read all of Heir to the Empire (Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy, Vol. 1) (the first book in the trilogy after the original six Star Wars books - it was actually a pretty fun read. Thanks, Irene, for the suggestion).

Anyway, it's too late this evening for melatonin. I should just try to power through and get some sleep. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

On this trip to Jakarta, I flew on Eva Air for the first time. They are an air carrier from Taiwan) and do a very competent job. The service was very attentive and the food (if you like Chinese food) was quite good.

However, their older planes like the 747-400s I flew on don't have the amenities that I've come to expect from international business class (esp. trans-Pacific). In particular there is no power in the seats, there's no on-demand entertainment system, and the seats are old-school. The contrast to my flight on Air New Zealand was startling. I understand their new 777s are much nicer. Too bad they don't use them on the Seattle-Taipei leg yet.

The only other big complaint I have with Eva is that the they aren't part of any big airline miles systems, so I couldn't log the miles on any of my normal carriers; the closest I could get to a carrier I might fly again soon is Continental. Oh well.

On the older 747-400s like we were on, First and Business class are upstairs (get a window seat so you have the storage bins right next to you). Don, a nice guy I met on the flights who flies Eva regularly, says the Evergreen Deluxe class has the same seats but are downstairs in front and cost $1000 less. Good tip.

Anyway, I wouldn't hesistate to fly Eva again, especially since they were more convenient and less expensive to Jakarta than Northwest.

Ah, home. While Indonesia had its charms, I'm glad to be home where I can drink the tap water, drive between the stripes on the road, and see through the air. Oh, it's good to see Michelle and the kids too... :)

Aside from the two jackasses across the aisle who thought that everything they said was important enough for the whole plane to hear (it wasn't), the flight from Taipei was uneventful. I stayed awake most of the flight in order to be sleepier when I got home at 7:30pm.

I was the first one off the plane and through passport control (I think that may have been the first time for me for both of those.) Even though I got flagged into an agricultural inspection (I guess they get ansy when you come from Indonesia and say you're carrying food products, even if it is just chilli sauce and roasted coffee beans), I was in my car less than an hour after wheels down. God bless America.

Finally got connected here in the airport in Taipei. I'm at the end of the three hour layover and will finally be on my way home. I'm trying to shift back to Seattle time, which unfortunately means I need to power through the flight and stay awake.

Anyway, it'll be good to be home.

Perhaps the biggest highlight of my trip to Jakarta was that I finally tasted a real mangosteen. The mangosteen is a tropical fruit that I only ever tasted in the form of mangosteen flavored chewing gum (easily the best gum I've ever had). According to the Wikipedia article, mangosteen is illegal to import into the US for fear of fruit flies, so I've never been able to taste the real fruit in the US before.

Anyway, I was in the grocery store in the basement of the Sogo department store in the upscale Plaza Senayen shopping mall. (I like visiting grocery stores in different countries. Interesting to see what they have to offer.) After passing the stinky durian, I noticed a fruit with a sign that said mangis. I wondered if this could be the fabled fruit (I didn't really know what they looked like.) I figured I had nothing to lose by buying two, so I picked them up along with some coffee beans (how can you not buy coffee when you're on the island of Java?) and candy for the boys and went back to the hotel.

I eagerly cut open the first one, revealing the yummy white fruit. Success! It was a mangosteen. The fruit inside the thick red peel is like a white tangerine - a few small sections and one big one containing the pit. The texture of the flesh is kind of like lychee (if that helps) but thicker. The flavor was ethereal - delicately intense like a great pear. Anyway, I quickly wished I'd bought more. I'm not sure when I'll be able to find my next mangosteen, but I'm looking forward to it. In the meantime, I'll have to see if I can find some canned fruit.

Here are some bad photos of my mangosteen.

I'm done at last.

My agenda originally had me finishing up mid afternoon on Friday at the local Microsoft office, but things ran long and I wound up having dinner with our MVPs (Microsoft's Most Valuable Professionals - enthusiast volunteers who help support our users) at Izzi Pizza, a local pizza chain that serves pizza with a spicier Indonesian twist - not bad). As usual, the MVPs are awesome. This group in particular all knew each other well and really seemed to enjoy each others' company, so it was fun.

Risman from the local office asked me to come in today (Saturday) to open a developer event he was having, so I dutifully showed up to talk to the 100+ mostly ASP.net developers who came. I guess there was some misunderstanding about my role. I thought I was just going to do some quick ceremonial bit, but Risman was hoping for an IE7 talk and demo. I hadn't prepared anything or even brought my computer, so I freestyled a fifteen minute talk with Q&A. I jetted out afterwards with six bottles and jars of local chilli sauce that Risman brought me after seeing how much I liked the sauces the day before. Pretty much everyone I've met in the various Microsoft offices has been great; they do so much for us and have so much energy and initiative. We're lucky to have them be our face to the customer.

So, now I'm back in the hotel room packing. I've got about an hour before I need to leave.

See you on the other side.