On a winter’s day in deep and dark December, Jupiter’s Crew dines at an Asian-themed restaurant three thousand nautical miles from where Jupiter now swings silently on her anchor at Kendrick Island, British Columbia.
With the dinner check come fortune cookies in tough cellophane wrappers, each bearing rapper madrigals and magical aphorisms. But no one expects the prophetic nautical incantation that hatched out:
“Your private constellation, charted in margins, guides maritime fortunes.”
…the meaning of which may be debated until the end of time.
Stores and Shores
We find Jupiter at Van Isle Marina in Sidney, rested and ready for her ten mile sprint across the watery Canada/US border at Boundary Pass to Roche Harbor in the San Juan Islands where we take on 6 boxes of ships stores and 660 gallons of diesel fuel.
Sunny weather, light winds, and an impossibly optimistic forecast invite local friends to join the crew for alfresco dining ashore and a sequent foray aboard Jupiter’s small tender, Callisto.
Fine weather soon meets the frothy reality of tidal rips and boils along the Speiden Channel, and shortly everyone except the helmsman regrets their selected seating arrangement. The skiff, after a show of speed, slows to a wallow in a jouncing saltwater ambush, and the overengineered 30-horsepower outboard ceases its obscene whining, and talk aboard quietly turns to past and future back surgeries.
Craig and Penny brace for an open water crossing in tiny Callisto.
Callisto, possibly the wrong vessel for a maelstrom, proves to be well-chosen for a beach landing at Yellow Island. The boat glides to the broad sloping shore through seaweeds seeking entanglements and rocks looking for props to shatter. A combination of good fortune and a bowman willing to jump into cold shallows bring the boat grinding onto the pebbly beach. The end of a 75-foot line attached to the tender is run above the high tide mark and tied to a driftwood log.
Floral Eden
Elysian flower prairie on Yellow Island
Early May is the optimum time to visit Yellow Island, protected by the Nature Conservancy, for its variety and abundance of wildflower meadows. Indigenous tribes routinely burned this wildflower prairie, preventing forest encroachment, nurturing conditions in which the blue camas thrives. The camas bulbs, once the second most traded commodity after salmon, are traditionally slow roasted in pits until they dissolve into a nutritious sweet carbohydrate. Later, eremitic homesteaders arrive to build a rustic life on this 11-acre eden.
Madrona trees overarch meadows of Indian Paintbrush, Blue Camas and Chocolate Lilies
Callisto’s Crew passes along the narrow trails investigating the profusion of plants, delaying the spine-wrenching return voyage until the offshore currents subside.
Many possibilities are baked into the start of a long voyage, like paper prophecies within a fortune cookie.
Boatyard intentions, littoral friendships, route-planning spanning all the time and temperament a ship’s crew has to waste—these are mere speculations on fortunes yet to be unfurled. So Jupiter departs again in her tough and patient way.
Looking forward to another season of Jupiter’s Way! I see your vocabulary has not dwindled. I’ll have to brush off my dictionary.
Bon Voyage and enjoy your maritime fortunes (hopefully charted in your high tech chart plotters).
There’s a strange yin yang between chart plotters and fortune spotters. The best laid plans only get you so far… thank you for the greetings. Wish you were aboard!
Hello dear friends,
I see on the map that you’re in Johnstone Strait–close to Hanson Island. There sits the rustic OrcaLab where Paul Spong and Helena Symond conduct their orca research in a most non-intrusive way–with hydrophones. I’d love you to meet them one day.
Our Yellow Island adventure was wondrous and your photography expertise brings the whole place to brilliant life! Now it’s time to start making my “dandelion clocks.” Thanks to you, Fiona.
Love you both!
Tick Tock make a clock. Make it dandy, make it rock. It was a fabulous, if splashy excursion. We’ve survived worse with you!
You look like happy crew! Enjoy summer!
I love the happy photo of you and Randy! The wildflowers are exquisite. We love following you from one adventure to another. Safe travels. xox H
They really were outstanding! YOU would have loved it there.