Us Crossing into International Waters.




Our Last Canadian Sunset for awhile



We are officially at our first port of call in International waters as I write this blog. I will back up a few weeks however.
We arrived back in Vancouver and had the engine checked as the stuffing box was running instead of dripping. That has been fixed and the engines are purring.
Craig and his 2 kids along with his parents came aboard for a few days and much necessary electronics were completed. We now have our Single Side Band Radio getting the weather faxes for us. Our sailmail works so we can keep in touch with the kids regardless where we are and if we have email service. Our AIS is up and working and is a marvelous edition. It allows us to know where all ships are, who they are, what they are , if they are on a collision course, quite cool. Our GPS (5) are all connected to the emergency distress signal should something happen to us, and our radar overlay should be done today. This has been a straight uphill learning curve.
We spent our final night in Canada at Sidney Spit. We witness a beautiful sunset and a terrific sunrise.
At 1045 hrs on Aug 04 2008 we entered International waters for our long voyage. Our first Port of Call is Anacortes in the San Juan Islands, Washington. Customs was a breeze. They spent about 10 minutes on the boat and about 20 minutes with Ken looking over documentation. We have everything neatly compiled in a book to speed the process up. The custom officers were impressed. We had been told we could not bring in beef or chicken so we made sure we had none only to be told it was ok to bring them in now. However we couldn't bring in goat. No problem there, I have no goat.
We are here for 1 week so we can have the life raft re-certified, reprovison, see relatives. Steve and Jane Savidant former boating students of ours from Calgary so graciously loaned us their life raft for the duration of our trip however long it takes us. We took the life raft into the company yesterday and they gave us a demonstration on inflating it. We were given a first glance view of what we would be living in should we need to use it. The raft is a 8 man raft so is a decent size it has many rations of food and all necessary survival equipment built in. I hope to never see it inflated again but it was nice to see what it should look like if we need it. Our EPIRB is working and will be put along side the life raft. We have prepared for the worse and expect the best.
Well this is a very quick overview of 2 weeks but now you are up to speed.
The next blog should be from the West Coast of Washington until then………