July 27 & 28, 2018

Five oceans there are, and it felt like all of them stretched between Gedney and Goat Islands to make our passage from Everett to Shelter Bay l-o-n-g.  Long, not just by the never ending body of water, but Dave’s cell call from the engine room to me, driving from the flybridge—throttles up, nose down, dodging hundreds of crab trap flags and bouncing over wakes of passing vessels. I meant to knock down the Saratoga Passage part of 38-miles in a hurry. You know, so much for Dave’s preference of dawdling along as if we are never in a hurry.

I answered Dave’s call, heard the engine room roar in his phone, and Dave shouting.

“Shut down the starboard engine and run the port at 1100rpm. We’ve got a mess down here!”

But, that was so yesterday.

The heat of the engine room held Dave for a couple of hours, the heat of the day kept me company up-top while we barely bobbed at 6k on one engine against a strong flooding current. The problem (he can explain it to you over dinner sometime) was efficiently solved.

THIS is now SATURDAY — we are snuggly docked in beautiful Shelter Bay on Swinomish Channel until sometime today when we move on to LaConner. Swinomish is very, very familiar to us, having crused this channel for many years. But, have I ever bothered to learn about the Swinomish Tribal Reservation on the western shore of this cut and established by Treaty in 1855? No. And I still know very little but . . .              

We’re all fairly familiar with Presidential Executive Orders by now. Well, here’s a good one: In 1873, President Ulysses S. Grant issued an E.O. attempting to unilaterally change the western boundary of the Swinomish Reservation; you know, an act that the Constitution grants only to Congress. Grant wanted a bit more of Fidalgo Island . . . Those First Nation people, here for thousands of years, could do with a bit less and, by gum, he, the most powerful man in the most powerful nation, would make it happen.  Not.

Healthy reminder: There are limits to the power of engines and even the power of man.