Here's our ship's log and trip diary so far... We have some digital pictures to add and many more prints that we will select from and digitize when we get closer to civilization.

September 30, 2002

Cross-country to Anacortes

We arrived in Anacortes safely by car on Friday afternoon, September 27. After 3,033 miles of waving grain, fruited plain and purple mountains' majesty (and 6 days of the worst plastic food the American automobile culture has to offer) we were thrilled to see the shining sea and get out of the car -- especially Tania the cat, who was thoroughly sick of daily automotive imprisonment by that time.

Our last day of travel was 6 hours flat-out, with one 20-minute rest stop, through the breathtaking landscape of the Cascade mountain range. The distances are vast but the roads are very good. We crossed the beautiful Columbia River Friday afternoon at Vantage, WA.

We checked into the Islands Inn (e-mail: islinn@ncia.com) and even before unpacking we drove to the South Yard at Cap Sante Marine. There was Tamara B! Her logo was already on the stern, just missing one of the three waves. (We met Jamie, the signpainter, of Jamie's Signs the next day when he came to put the last wave in place and photographed the process.)

Tamara B looked HUGE in the painting tent. With Tania in her cat carrier, we only did a quick tour of most of the boat, but it was still far from ready, so we didn't stay too long. We returned on Saturday, with cameras, and found all our packages in the hanger next door waiting for Tamara B to be ready. Bob Jones tells us he thinks the boat will be ready by Thursday or Friday. We know this is optimistic.

On Sunday, the deck was being painted, and the plan was to have her put in the water on Tuesday, for final work to be finished at the South Yard. Mike McGlenn has already inspected the hull work, and will return next week for sea trials. Sunday was also the annual Oyster Run in Anacortes, which is the yearly arrival of several thousand Harley riders who come in for some kind of charitable event. Nothing happens on this day in Anacortes (except for deck painting), so we returned the rental car to Hertz in Bellingham, which took the entire afternoon because of the schedule for airport jitneys that we needed to take back to Anacortes.

Tuesday, October 1, 2002
48 degrees, 48.899 N
122 degrees, 36.075 W

Tamara B is launched! After installation of the washer-dryer and the pressure-washed teak swim platform, Cap Sante's huge 75-ton travel lift moved the boat slowly and carefully into the water at the South Yard for testing of her systems. She weighed in at 42,500 pounds, carrying about 75% of her fuel capacity, but with no water or possessions aboard yet.

Thursday, October 3, 2002
48 degrees, 30.761 N
122 degrees, 36.500 W

Today we drove Tamara B during sea trials and moved her to Dock C at Cap Sante's Marina and North Yard. Final work will be done here, including a second coat of Awlgrip on her deck. While we wait for the weather to improve enough for Cap Sante to paint, we clean the boat, get acquainted with her systems, and buy provisions.

Also today, our marine surveyor Mike McGlenn came down for final inspection and we are waiting for his report.

We've hired a Coast Guard licensed captain, Michael Maurice, to help us cross the treacherous Columbia Bar. He is watching the weather and plans to be here some time late next week. Because of the delays in finishing Tamara B's upgrades, we have definitely lost the chance of taking the Erie Canal, which closes down on November 3, and in all likelihood, the northern route. That leaves the southern ICW, quicker than the St. Lawrence, from Sturgeon Bay.

The boat is beautiful, incredibly comfortable, wonderfully upgraded -- such a solid vessel! The helm and instrument gauges are wonderfully old-fashioned and look like something from the 1940s. The beautiful wheel, all teak and brass, announces that it was produced by Brown Bros. & Co., Ltd., Roseland Ironworks, Edinburgh.

Everyone who passes by wants to know about her, so it's easy to get engaged in conversation while working onboard. Anacortes is a small friendly town with two taxi companies, two optometrists, two veterinary clinics and a growing tourist industry facing a slow winter. There are many marinas, a fishing industry and a huge refinery that is the major employer in the area. There are a also many flower and produce farms -- many currently harvesting and selling pumpkins. Some farms allow families to visit and pick out their own Halloween pumpkins from their fields.

From what we read in the "Seattle Post-Intelligencer," supplied daily by the Islands Inn, the people of Washington State are mostly opposed to Bush's Attack Iraq madness, and solidly in support of Congresman George Nethercutt, a Republican who has championed the cause of Washington farmers who want to sell their produce to Cuba. Overall, however, international politics seem very far away here, where the major concerns are economic --- the dockworkers' lockout and the state's 7.2 percent unemployment rate (the second-highest in the nation after Alaska).

Thursday, October 10, 2002

Moving Aboard!

Today we pulled up stakes at the Islands Inn and moved aboard! Yesterday we finished the final house clean-up, unpacked the last box and folded all our charts in the pilothouse chart table. Tania is about to start her nautical life, and so are we!

Our neighbor on Dock C is a professional fisherman who goes out daily and pulls in pots full of magnificent Dungeness crabs, highly prized in the Orient -- almost all are sold in Asia. He generously gave us two enormous specimens as a present, but they were at least twice the size of our largest cooking pot and their bodies barely fit into our biggest bucket. So despite our love of crab, we waited until the fisherman pulled out and quietly released them both over the side, where they swam happily away to freedom.

Wednesday, October 16, 2002

We're enjoying fine warm weather and lots of sunshine at Cap Sante, taking walks and provisioning the boat for our run down the Pacific Coast. Every morning at dawn we are greeted by the marina's resident sea lion, who glides up to the surface, long whiskers glistening, and stares at us with his big eyes.

We received Mike McGlenn's final report on Saturday, but because of the Columbus Day holiday weekend we needed to wait until yesterday to fax it to our insurance agent. Once Tamara B's increased coverage is complete we'll be free to get underway.

Yesterday we discovered a little fubar that Mike McGlenn missed when we tried the shower in the main head and flooded the bilge with about an inch of water. When Cap Sante rebuilt the starboard gunwales, they forgot to install a thru-hull for the master shower, and the drain hose wasn't attached to anything! OOPS! Cap Sante's Ray Robinson made quick work of this job and we had a new thru-hull installed and tested by Wednesday at noon, leaving only a lot of water to suck out with our drill pump.

Thursday, October 17, 2002

Underway!

Michael Maurice bowed out as our captain due to delays here, since he's hot to get to the Panama Canal with another boat -- so he's referred another Coast Guard-licensed captain, Harvey Zoon, who came aboard last night and who'll help us over the Columbia Bar. (Contact Coast Guard-licensed Captain Harvey Zoon for boat deliveries, fishing and pleasure trips at: 541-259-6306; Cell: 541-409-0117. E-mail: Capt.Zoon@centurytel.net. Rates: $2.50/mile plus expenses).

We left Anacortes at 8:00 a.m., the weather fine and fair, and moved out into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. At 2:00 pm, a school of dolphins rode along our bow, dozens of them, frolicking along and keeping pace with us for about 20 minutes before peeling off to go play elsewhere.

Adrift off Cape Flattery!

Thursday night we had the first indication of engine trouble: A high level of diluted engine oil, and oil in the bilge! We were on the ocean just past Cape Flattery, with fog rolling in, and had to cut the engine and drift while the problem was diagnosed. Rather then attempt a complete oil change while rocking and rolling in the ocean, we requested a tow from the Coast Guard, who took only 40 minutes or so to come alongside and tow us into the little Indian village of Neah Bay. An ignominious end to Tamara B's first day on open water, but a prudent one. The Coast Guard tow is free -- finally, a real service for our tax dollars!

Friday, October 18, 2002

The Makah Village of Neah Bay

Neah Bay is a depressing and run-down, dirt-poor little hamlet inhabited by the Makah Indian Tribe, whose main claim to fame is their annual insistence on killing a whale, claiming the slaughter as part of their religion. Last year they managed to find and pursue a whale, but were incapable of completing the "hunt" with their traditional weapons and ended up killing the creature with firearms! This year, they are still in court fighting against environmentalists who don't want to see a repeat of the fiasco.

Neah Bay's marina has only a few delapidated fishing boats at its filthy docks. There are no mechanics or supplies of any sort, although someone in the General Store tries to scare up a mechanic on the telephone and asks around for some recommendations ("Diesel engines? Didn't Joe go to school for that once?" someone offers). He doesn't have any suggestions except to go back the way we came to Port Angeles to look for a mechanic he knows there. But a Makah Indian with a weathered face says, "That guy? I wouldn't have him touch any engine of mine unless I planned to throw it in the ocean."

He tells us mournfully, "There's absolutely nothing here. If I were you, while the weather's good, I'd get out of here before you get stuck for half the winter." We decide to take his advice, and after a complete oil change, we push off with a possibly defective fuel injector and unknown other engine problems causing our main engine to produce diluted oil.

Friday morning the ocean is not very rough, and we hope to reach Gray's Harbor, but as the day wears on, NOAA is predicting swells of 15 feet or more from a storm far to our west, and by late afternoon we decide to seek the nearest sheltered harbor before dark instead of attempting to continue, and possibly lose the engine again on the open ocean.

The only possibility is the tiny harbor of La Push. The entrance to La Push is small, very rocky and difficult, and Harvey's heard bad things about La Push, so he's nervous, but the Coast Guard says the charts are accurate and we should have enough depth for our 5'6" draft. Captain Zoon makes it look easy, and we are safely docked in the little marina just before dark on Friday night.

Stranded in La Push

La Push is a tiny Quileute Indian village, with a local population of about 400 (there are only about 750 Quileutes in the tribe). Unlike Neah Bay, La Push is an attractive, vibrant and progressive place, with an active Tribal Council, a resort on the Pacific Ocean with stunning, newly designed cottages, and a world-class restaurant called The River's Edge, which opened in April of 2002. The marina office and Tribal Council office were closed until Monday, but we had the first of many delicious meals at the River's Edge restaurant Friday night, and began our search for a new set of Perkins diesel injectors via their pay phone. On Monday, the Tribal Council re-opened and we were able to use their office phone to make contact with the world, since La Push (like most of the Pacific Northwest) is in a totally dead area for cell-phone communications.

We spent the next few days, while Perkins injectors were sought and shipped to us, diagnosing our engine problems and learning about the Quileutes and their interesting community. These hospitable folks showed us around their village; Wally Jackson, Executive Director of the Tribal Council, and Russell Woodruff, the Council's Chairman, drove us around to tour the new school campus, the beautiful new cabins at the La Push Ocean Park Resort, and even their old cemetery. We learned about Quileute educational and social programs for combating drug and alcohol addiction, their work to recover their tribal language and develop a written alphabet, their relations with the other tribes in the area and their history. They even invited us, in case we did not have any food, to have dinner at the Senior Center, where food is served nightly and "everyone is welcome," we were told.

Unlike many other of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians of the United States, the Quileutes do not run a casino. They have a Grant and Development Office that makes skillful use of Government grant programs and receive some donations from the casino-owning tribes, but their income is mostly from fishing, and the salmon were running. Every day we watched their tiny boats leave the sheltered harbor and go out into the ocean to come back laden with thousands and thousands of salmon. As we had learned in Anacortes, this salmon season is one of the best in recent memory. One day, for example, the local tribal-run seafood company reported that by 2:00 p.m., they'd collected over 40,000 pounds from the local fisherman since that morning. But the income the fishing produces is astonishingly low -- the fishermen realize only 25 cents a pound. Hardly worth it, they said, although they went out every day. Once again, we learned that most of this incredible salmon bounty goes to Asian markets, explaining why salmon (and crab) is almost unobtainable at any price on the East Coast.

We left La Push before we could learn the outcome of a local conflict between the Quileutes and a group of professional guides in nearby Forks (a metropolis of 5,000 people and the largest town in the area). The guides, who take out tourist boats on sport fishing trips, were miffed that the Quileutes, who now live on a tiny micro-fraction of the 800,000 acres they inhabited before their treaty with the US Government, are able to fish salmon by treaty, without any of the restrictions that apply to the European settler population. First the guides passed around a petition demanding that the Quileutes be held to the same limitations as the whites; when that seemed doomed to failure, they resorted to more violent methods. Quileute game and wildlife officials told us they had photographs of the guides dumping 55-gallon drums filled with cement and rebar into the Quileute fishing areas in an attempt to damage the Indians' boats. Mark Williams of the La Push Natural Resources office said the tribe was in contact with the US Government and will file a formal complaint.

La Push (apparently the name is a corruption of the French "la bouche" or "the mouth") is a worthwhile stop on any tour of the Olympic Peninsula. The area offers several beaches, wonderful breakers that lure surfers (one group of tourists the Quileutes were not too enthusiastic about), a surprisingly well-stocked General Store, the stunning cabins at the La Push Ocean Park Resort, and the fabulous and sophisticated menu at The River's Edge Restaurant (41 Main Street, La Push, WA 98350, right next to the Marina; Telephone: 360-374-5777). The River's Edge is managed by its chef, Gregg Morrow, who has clearly been trained at some grand culinary institute.

The restaurant is open from 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. for "abundant breakfasts, hearty lunches, and the freshest seafood dinners available anywhere in Washington," and it's all true. In late October, they were closed on Mondays and Tuesdays -- call to be sure they are open if you visit. The service is friendly; the menu includes fluffy omelettes, delectable local fish, crisp fresh vegetables and scrumptious desserts in an impressive old boat launch building once run by the Coast Guard. With its huge old wooden beams and fresh flowers on every table, the restaurant's decor, like everything in La Push, is a tasteful and attractive blend of modern and traditional Quileute design.

The La Push Marina is a working fishing marina and not plush, but water, 30 amp power, gas and diesel fuel (diesel was $1.10 a gallon when we were there) are available. Incredibly, we were not charged anything by the tribe for our 5 days at the marina.

Wednesday, October 23, 2002

Finally, at 4:00 p.m. today, we received delivery of six rebuilt Perkins injectors, and the rush was on to install a replacement for the defective 3rd and possibly defective 6th injectors and get underway before dark so that we could reach the Columbia Bar at dawn on the incoming tide. With two new injectors (3 and 6) installed, the engine's 6th cylinder was still not firing, but we left that problem for another day and somewhat reluctantly we pulled out of La Push at dusk after 5 days stranded in this fascinating and impressive village.

Thursday, October 24, 2002

Crossing the Bar

After running all night in a fairly calm sea, (and yet another oil change at 4:00 a.m.) we reached the Columbia Bar at dawn this morning and and around 8:00 a.m. we crossed it on the incoming tide, with lumpy seas but no difficulties aside from the sun in our eyes. With Harvey's guidance, Bob drove the boat acrossed the Bar himself.

Around noon, we anchored at a beautiful spot on the Columbia River, at 46 degrees, 15.762 N and 123 degrees, 38.341 W. Yet another oil change commenced, and there we diagnosed the problem of the non-firing 6th cylinder: The Yard, in its rush to complete the work mandated by our surveyor (replace a leaking rocker cover gasket), apparently forced the cover on, knocking off a rocker arm and causing it to pump diesel oil into the lubrication oil. With THAT problem fixed, we also discovered a loose wire (engine-stop solanoid switch) and reconnected it. Finally, no more diesel in the engine oil! We went through 54 quarts of lubrication oil during the incessent oil changes. We now have a VERY clean, smooth-running and almost-smoke-free engine, and after 6 thorough scrubbings, the bilge is once again clean and totally dry. Guess that's why they call it a shake-down cruise.

At 6:00 p.m. we anchored out in a little cove just past Longview, in the shadow of an abandoned and decommissioned nuclear power plant. It's amazing that the people of this area, which provides hydro-electric power from the mighty Columbia River to the entire region as far south as California, were ever persuaded by the Atomic Energy Commission and the nuclear weapons industry that a nuke plant was necessary to provide them with electricity.

This evening we replaced all the remaining injectors, save one that was too stubborn and refused to be pulled out. We'll do that one when we reach a marina with professional tools. The engine purrs now; it runs more quietly,`and the exhaust is cleaner. Harvey Zoon's knowledge of diesel engines, his patience and his willingness to get his hands dirty and help out was invaluable. We were incredibly lucky to have him on board. We named Tamara B's now-behaving main engine "Harvey" in his honor.

We're easily adapting to a completely new kind of life, up at 6:00 a.m. and asleep by 10:00 p.m. -- totally alien to us city nightowls. But we're enjoying it immensely. Tania is taking to it all with aplomb, with one exception: she doesn't like having a guest aboard, and resents having to give up the V-berth, which she claimed as her own as soon as she moved aboard. She blames Captain Harvey for this inconvenience and is acting rather anti-social, despite all his good-natured attempts to be friends.

Along with a complete set of paper charts, and Harvey's electronic navigation aids, our main guide to this part of the trip is "Cruising the Columbia and Snake Rivers," by Sharlene P. and Ted W. Nelson and Joan LeMieux. The book is out of print, and out of date (the second edition was published in 1986 by Pacific Search Press. ISBN 0-931397-04-9) but it's the only cruising guide available for the beautiful and wild Columbia River Gorge and the Snake. Surprisingly, most of the information is still accurate.

Friday, October 25, 2002

We got underway at 9:00 a.m. and traveled this beautiful river with its pristine evergreen forests, small towns and fishing boats, and many large barges pushed by tall powerful river tugs. We passed through Portland in the early afternoon and continued along, with Mount Hood in the distance, past waterfalls and increasingly wild landscape until 7:00 p.m. when we arrived at the Bonneville Dam, and our first lock. The locks give preference to commercial traffic, and we learned that private vessels can lock through at 8:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., and 3:00 p.m. daily. We tied up for the night just outside the Bonneville Lock, the first (and oldest) of the 8 locks we will have to navigate on our way up the Columbia and Snake Rivers.

Saturday, October 26, 2002

We were up at dawn, excited about our first locking through. After a commercial barge and a tour boat were given clearance, our turn came at 8:00 a.m., and we tied up on our port side to one of the floating bollards while the enormous doors closed behind us and water began filling the 64-foot lock. The process of locking up-river was a bit nerve-wracking, since the boat must be kept close to, but clear of, the cement lock walls, but with our fenders and boat hooks we managed, and cleared the lock with no problems.

In the afternoon, we reached the small towns of the Dalles and stopped at The Dalles marina for water. At 3:00 p.m., we were in place before our second dam, and locked through the Dalles Dam and Lock (built in 1957, 88 feet) without incident.

At 6:00 pm, we anchored out near a town called Rufus, just downstream of the John Day Dam. The evening was clear and even with the lights of nearby Rufus and its car and train traffic, the sky was filled with thousands of stars, and we sat in the dark identifying constellations.

Sunday, October 27, 2002

We're underway at 7:00 a.m. to the John Day Dam and Lock (built in 1968; 113 feet), where we locked through rafted to the tug "Clearwater," hauling four huge barges full of wheat and barley. Their first mate offered us a tour of their enormous engine room, and Harvey got to climb to the bridge and talk to the captain of the mighty 1956 tugboat. We had a great chat with the Clearwater crew and invited their first mate to tour Tamara B. We traveled on together for most of the day, and passed the tug in the late afternoon beyond the town of Arlington when she stopped at a grain elevator to deliver her cargo.

The river here forms the boundary between Washington and Oregon; it's a constantly changing scene -- wild evergreen mountain forests filled with wildlife, the river full of jumping salmon, gradually give way to the "high desert" country where dry brown mountains loom above us. Then suddenly grape, cherry and apple orchards appear high on the hillsides. We pass an occasional tourboat, and once a stern-wheeler riverboat, barges pushed by the tall river tugs of FOSS or Tidewater companies, and a few small fishing boats cluster around the towns, but there isn't much river traffic and we run for many miles without seeing another boat.

Sunday night we stopped at the tiny Umatilla Marina, and bought 406 gallons of diesel ($1.25/gallon here). We discovered to our dismay that Cap Sante has somehow restricted the air vents to our fuel tanks, probably with spray paint. We removed the vent hoses during the fueling operation, or it would have taken us hours to top off our tanks. The marina does not have docks large enough for our 43-foot trawler, and we stayed tied up to the fuel dock at no charge.

After a long walk through the windy streets of Umatilla for a very mediocre coffee-shop style meal at a place called BoJacks, we retired for the night. Kelly was out on deck for a last cigarette when a loon appeared on the shore. A few minutes later, a large cat crept out of the darkness toward the loon, who took off effortlessly and silently. A large salmon jumped so high out of the water he soaked the deck with his splash down, and a river otter glided past the boat. Here, just blocks from the town's road traffic and the busy railroad tracks, the wildlife is abundant and the air and water are sparkling clean.

Monday, October 28, 2002

At 7:30 am we were outside the McNary Dam and Lock, which raised us 75 feet. By 11:30 we reached Tri Cities and Pasco, the end of the Columbia and the confluence with the Snake. At Pasco, we radioed the bridgemaster to request raising of the railroad bridge to allow us through, and we were on the Snake River.

At 12:15 in summery warmth, we arrived at the Ice Harbor Dam and Lock (1962; 100 feet). In response to our radio call, an officious lockmaster informed us we would have to wait until 3:00 p.m., the official locking time for "pleasure boats." We enjoyed the break and had a snack on deck while anchored in the warm sunshine. At 3:00 p.m., we locked through and discovered that the lockmaster was a jackass. He flooded the lock so fast the bollards raced ahead of our boat, and it was extremely hard to keep the boat away from the walls of the lock. Even worse, the jerk decided to chat with us as we ascended to the top of the lock, and his carelessness created a riptide current inside the lock that pinned us against the cement wall as Harvey accelerated, desperately trying to get us out of the current. We escaped, but with minor damage -- some scraped paint on our newly painted rubrails. We have partial stainless steel guards on the rubrails, but clearly it would be a good idea to have the entire length of the rubrails protected from nitwits like the Ice Harbor lockmaster.

Our next Lock is the Lower Monumental Dam and Lock (1969, 100 feet), and at dusk we anchored out in a remote spot on the Snake River for the night and had dinner. A cruise ship returning from up river passed us in the evening, but aside from that one vessel, and a pre-dawn tugboat, we saw only freight trains during the clear, cold (10 degrees F.) night.

Tuesday, October 29, 2002

We were awakened at 4:00 a.m. by the sound of howling wind; there were whitecaps on the river, and it was beginning to rain. We reached the Lower Monumental Dam by 7:00 a.m. After the previous day's experience, and given the bad weather, we were relieved to hear a tug captain on the radio saying he was on his way to the lock also and would be happy to raft through with us -- we knew after our locking through with the "Clearwater" that this is the safest way for a small vessel to negotiate the locks, and the Lower Monumental is a tall 100 foot lock like Ice Harbor. Alas, the lockmaster at Lower Monumental said that the barge and tug had to go first because they were too large to lock through with us (not so).

So, we waited with increasing anxiety as the tug was locked through, watching the wind and deciding how we could most safely tie up and get through the Lower Monumental. The wind and current were intense, and Harvey got us out of the lock just in time with no damage as the boat began to oscillate at the stern just as we reached the top. From later radio traffic between the lockmaster and a tug approaching from up-river we learned that the winds were 50 mph with gusts up to 70 mph, and the weather was "filthy, not fit for man nor beast." We felt rather proud of ourselves and our growing skills for getting through the lock without serious problems.

We cruised the twisting and often-narrow Snake River through mostly nasty weather, lots of rain and wind, to the Little Goose Dam and Lock (1970, 98 feet), where we arrived at 12:15 expecting to be told to wait until 3:00 p.m. Once again, our hopes were raised when we were told to wait for an approaching tug with whom we could lock through. At 2:00 p.m. a very pleasant voice on the radio apologized for the delay, and said the tug had engine trouble, so we should lock through alone. We rigged to tie up on the port side, against the wind, and tied up to the last bollard hoping this would help reduce the turbulence. A woman was in the lockmaster position at this Dam, and she filled the lock smoothly, slowly, and competently. We got through this one nice and slow and easy, the best lock so far!

There was nowhere good to anchor, so we pushed on to the Boyer Marina, listed in the Crusing Guide but without a phone number or VHF frequency. We arrived after dark, and had a scarey entrance, blinded by lights from the highway traffic, inaccurate chart information on the buoys, and a number of unlighted boats doing night-fishing in shallow water. We made it, barely, into the dark little marina with its tiny docks, and sustained some minor damage to our swim platform when it banged into a dock as Harvey turned the boat around in the dark. The night was frigid, with alarming headlines in the local paper about a Canadian arctic front. The Boyer Marina (1753 Granite Road, Colfax, WA 99111 Tel: 509-397-3206; www.boyerpark.com) has showers, gasoline and electricity but no water or diesel. Overnight moorage was $15 and at the tiny snack-bar type store we bought milk and bread and some eggs for breakfast. In hindsight, it would have been better to anchor out.

Wednesday, October 30, 2002

We pulled out of Boyer Marina at first light in what felt like 18-degree cold, and arrived at Lower Granite Dam and Locks (1975, 100 feet) around 7:00 a.m. After a very short wait, we locked through, again tied up to the last bollard and rigged on the port side. This was also a very smooth, slow, easy lock-through with no damage and no problems. We were through the last lock!

We cruised the last section of the Snake River enjoying the river and the sight of many small houses on the hillsides above us. We saw much more boat traffic than on previous sections, here where no locks presented obstacles to the small fishing-boat traffic. In beautiful sunshine, we anchored out on the river for a late brunch of cheese omelettes and toast around 11:00 a.m.

At 2:00 p.m. we reached the Lewis & Clark Valley, where the twin towns of Lewiston, Idaho and Clarkston, Washington face each other across the river, the end of this leg of our journey. Beyond Lewiston/Clarkston, the Snake joins the Clearwater River, and becomes too shallow for our draft. At the Port of Clarkston was our destination: the huge crane run by Rick Davis, Port Manager, who will lift Tamara B out of the water and place her on the truck for the overland portion of her trip back east.

Luckily, our cell phones started to work at the bend in the river just before Lewiston/Clarkston. Following the Crusing Guide, we hoped to reach the Hellsgate Marina, beyond the Bridge Street Bridge, which would have to be raised for us. However, the Bridge Street Bridge was being painted, and could not be raised. The Washington Dept. of Transportation man who called us back told us the crane, and another marina, were on the west side of the unraisable bridge. By cell phone, we got through to the Hells Canyon Resort and Marina (only 5 years old and not on the charts) with a nice restaurant called Roosters. We were met warmly by a veritable reception committee, and learned that for $10 a night, we could have a spot on their biggest dock, right at the entrance, along with water and 30 amp power (Hells Canyon Resort & Marina, 1550 Port Drive, Clarkston, Wa 99403; Tel: 509-758-6963; no diesel sold here.)

We arranged for Harvey to fly from Lewiston Airport home to Portland the next day, and had a celebratory dinner at Roosters, happy to be safely here and to have enjoyed Harvey's company, teaching, experience and help for the past two weeks. We learned a lot from one another, and we were sorry to see him leave. Only Tania, who is rejoicing in having her boat and her humans all to herself again, won't miss him. We are happy to see Tania's sweet, sunny disposition return.

Here at the Hells Canyon Marina are moored two interesting old wooden boats, a 1928 tug called "Lost in Time," and a 32-foot fresh-water river yacht built in 1933 by Ed Monk, which once belonged to Patty Duke. Richard, the owner of "Lost in Time" also owns "Anna," Patty Duke's boat, which is up for sale and has seen better days, since she has mostly not been in use at all for the past 15 years or so. Anna's systems have been upgraded, she has beautiful antique brass fittings and we hope she finds a good home.

Halloween, Thursday, October 31, 2002

Hell's Canyon Resort Marina, Clarkston, WA
46 degrees, 25.391 N
117 degrees, 04.318 W

We were up at 6:00 a.m. to find frost on the docks and on Tamara B's rails. We bid farewell to Captain Harvey Zoon, and later walked about a mile to the Port of Clarkston office and met with Rick Davis. He'll be away from November 9-17, so our only window for haul-out will be Friday, Nov 9, if our trucker can arrive by then. Otherwise, we'll need to wait until November 19. Meanwhile, we are exploring the very spread-out Lewiston-Clarkston communities and by taxi visit a mammoth Home Depot where we picked up all the supplies needed to clean and spruce up the boat after our 600+ mile first cruise.

Thursday, November 7, 2002

Next Stop: Galveston

The trucker is concerned about transporting Tamara B to Sturgeon Bay because of winter weather on the roads of Wyoming and Montana. So we've agreed to wait while he works out a new route, south to Galveston, Texas. This will cut a large chunk of cruising -- and some locks! -- off our ICW route south and around the Gulf to the East Coast, and will get us back east faster, although it means we'll need to wait here in Clarkston for about 10 days. On November 18th, Rick Davis will return to his crane and will lift Tamara B out of the water and onto the long and winding road to Galveston.

The truck will travel about 300 miles a day and is restricted to moving in daylight only, so we anticipate a 7- to 10-day haul. We've decided to travel with the truck, following the boat, instead of flying.

But First a Vacation in the Valley

Meanwhile, we're living comfortably aboard Tamara B and catching up on our trip log and e-mail correspondence! After 4 days of frosty mornings, the unseasonably cold snap has ended and we're enjoying sunny days in the high 50s and cool nights in the 40s, with dramatic skies above the mountains of Idaho and only occasional showers. The Marina is busy on weekends with small fishing boats, and during the week the flock of a dozen noisy mallard ducks (5 brilliantly colored males; 7 dun-colored females) visit our boat every morning for a handout of whole wheat bread. There are also many other birds -- cormorants, smaller ducks, honking geese and even a swan who floats by occasionally.