Tag Archives: San Juan Island

The Ranger Tug Rendezvous, 2024 Edition

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The event that got me to drive 4200 miles with covid.

I’m not what you’d consider a very social person. I like spending time alone, doing things I enjoy doing.

But I do like to meet up with people who share common interests, especially if I can learn something from them. That’s what appeals most to me about the annual Ranger Tug/Cutwater Rendezvous hosted by Fluid Motion, LLC, maker of Ranger Tug, Cutwater, and Solara boats. By gathering together hundreds of Ranger Tug and Cutwater boat owners with their boats and providing manufacturer seminars and support opportunities, Fluid Motions has made it impossible to attend without learning something of value — meeting lots of great people along the way.

Best of all, this Rendezvous isn’t an obvious money grab by an organization in the business of cashing in on people’s desire for information. (Great Loop Cruisers might know an organization like that.) The cost is just $90/person and includes a nice bag of swag and lots of games, contests, and social events, with food and even alcoholic beverages. Fluid Motions isn’t making money on this event. It’s giving its customers an opportunity to gather, show off their boats, and learn.

Once I became a Ranger Tug owner, it made sense to attend the Rendezvous whenever possible. In fact, since it was so close to where I lived, it would be kind of dumb to miss it.

The Backstory

In early September 2022, I took delivery of my 2019 Ranger Tug R-29 CB, which I named Do It Now. My very first trip with it was a cruise to the Ranger Tug/Cutwater Rendezvous at Roche Harbor on San Juan Island. It was a long trip from Olympia to Roche Harbor and I did half of it solo. But I had an excellent time at the Rendezvous, where I met some great people and learned a ton.

In 2023, I was home for the summer — I hadn’t retired yet — and my boat was on the hard on Kent Island near Annapolis in Maryland. I still went to the Rendezvous. My work season was over and I’d decided to stay home until the end of September so I could blow out my irrigation lines before heading back to my boat. I took my Honda S2000 to Anacortes, drove it onto the ferry, and drove off at Friday Harbor. I stayed at a friend’s place on the island with my pups and drove to the Rendezvous every day. Most of my friends from the previous year were there and we had a good time. I participated more in social events and even did pretty well in the Scavenger Hunt.

Fast forward to 2024. From the very beginning of the year, when I was cruising in Florida, I knew I wanted to return to the Rendezvous with Do It Now. That desire basically set a deadline for my completion of the Great Loop: I needed to be done by mid-August to have enough time to haul the boat back to Washington State before the event, which is held at the end of Labor Day week. Heck, by that time I’d probably feel done with the Loop anyway. (Spoiler alert: I sure did.)

Roche Harbor Resort & Marina

I should mention here that Roche Harbor is one of those marinas that gets everything right. They have a large, well-trained staff of dockhands to help boaters in. The cost of power and water is including in the dock price — I am so tired of paying extra for power! — and they even set up power extension cords to reach the boats at the end of the dock, like mine. The floating docks are in very good condition. There are garbage and recycling bins in multiple places right on the docks and they are never allowed to fill, let alone overflow. The restrooms are clean, although you do have to feed quarters into the showers. In-slip pumpout, courtesy of the Fecal Freak pumpout boat, is free. There are several restaurants and a very well stocked grocery store that handles everything from milk and fresh veggies to wine and fishing gear. (Amazingly, the prices are fair.) Their evening Colors ceremony, which plays music as each flag is lowered, is a heart-warming end to the day. Of course, the marina isn’t cheap, but I’ve paid a lot more for a lot less during my Great Loop travels.

Although I’d originally had the boat hauled out to Chicago with a boat transport company, I’d bought a boat trailer in late June 2023 and planned to haul it back myself. I was nervous about it — hauling a 14,000 pound wide load 2200 miles? But, if you’ve read my post about the the hoops I jumped through (with covid), you’ll know that it wasn’t quite as big an ordeal as I’d expected it to be. I got the boat back in time for the event.

I arrived at the Rendezvous just before sunset on Wednesday. I might have been the last boat in that day. I got a slip on the guest dock, which was packed three boats deep at most slips. I was immediately greeted by my neighbors, most of whom were having dinner. The event officially started in the morning, but Roche Harbor Resort and Marina was offering a deal where you’d pay for three nights and get the fourth for free. So just about everyone arrived on Wednesday.

Rendezvous by Drone
I sent up my drone on Thursday morning, as soon as the docks were in full sun. Ranger Tugs and Cutwater boats filled the long guest dock in the foreground. The total boat count for the event was 220.

Day 1 of the Rendezvous

I attended the Volvo seminar, which had been so good the previous two years, on Thursday. It was terrible. For some reason, they had a marketing guy do a lot of the speaking and he focused in on the IPS systems that come with the Volvo engines on the R-43. The R-43 is a $1.2 million twin engine masterpiece that only 4 people in the audience owned. How do I know this? He asked us and four people raised hands. Yet 20+ minutes of his presentation talked about the amazing features of the Volvo system for these engines, leaving the rest of us wondering whether they’d ever get to anything of interest to us. The other mistake they made was taking questions about specific issues individuals were having with their engines. More time wasted on information that didn’t apply to most of us. By the time they did get around to general Volvo Penta D4 and D6 information, there wasn’t much time left. I was disappointed.

Learning Center
The Learning Center was set up in tents on Roche Harbor’s big lawn.

I stayed at the Learning Center tent for the next presentation, which was about salmon fishing and crabbing in the San Juan Islands. Now that my boat was back on the west coast, I wanted to rig it for salmon fishing. And I’d also brought along the folding crab trap I’d bought from another rendezvous attendee the previous year and wanted to see what I could catch. The seminar was informative and I learned a lot. I also won two prizes for answering questions correctly: a downrigger clip and a lure.

I had no interest in the rest of the day’s seminars so I went back to my boat, got out my crab trap, and assembled it. A quick trip to the general store got me the weighted line, buoy, bait holder, and crab gauge I needed to set my trap. The only thing I didn’t have was bait, but the folks parked behind me generously offered me two of their cheap chicken leg/thigh pieces. I stuffed the bait holder, closed up the trap, and loaded it onto my dinghy with my pups. We motored out to a spot near the larger of the two harbor inlets where there were already a lot of crab traps. I found a spot that wasn’t too close to any of the others and lowered the trap into the water.

I went to the evening’s even, a “chip and dip.” Folks were hitting floating golf balls to a barge with a green set up on it. There was wine and beer and very light snacks. I didn’t feel like socializing — I think I was still tired from the previous day’s cruise — so I went back to my boat and made dinner. I was asleep by nine.

Crabbing

In the morning, after breakfast, I motored out to pull up my crab trap. It was heavy. I was shocked to see at least eight crabs in or on it. These are Dungeness crabs so even the small ones aren’t really that small. Most of them were either female or too small so I threw them all back. One was a keeper, but barely; I think it was about 1/8 inch larger than it had to be. Unfortunately, a very large female was stuck in the netting of my trap. The only way to get her back into the water was to cut her loose and I didn’t have a knife with me. I headed back and ran into two men pulling their own traps. One of them had a knife and I cut the net to let her loose. Then I went back to the boat with the trap and my sole keeper, feeling pretty proud of myself.

Until my neighbor brought in a bigger one.

He showed me how to kill and clean them and I cooked them in a pot on my stove. (He said his wife wouldn’t let him cook them inside because they are stinky.) I delivered his cooked crab and had mine for a snack. That’s when I realized that the legal size really wasn’t that big. I’d need to catch bigger ones. And I wasn’t happy about how the netting on my trap tangled up the crabs.

Crabbing Selfie
I don’t do selfies often, but this is a pretty funny one. My dinghy is small and I barely fit in it with the new trap. In this shot, I’m motoring back out to set it.

I went to the general store and bought myself a new crab trap. I got another chicken leg/thigh, baited it up, and set it right about where the other one had been.

Day 2 of the Rendezvous

I didn’t attend any sessions that day. There was a Great Loop session done by a couple who had finished the Loop last year. I’d wanted to do a session but they had requested it before me. I thought about going but realized that if they said things I didn’t agree with — like how you had to join AGLCA to be a Looper — I’d either shoot off my mouth or get pissed off. And since so many of the folks on the Loop are sheep who just follow along with what other people tell them, I fully expected to hear that. So I skipped it.

The other sessions I skipped were about the Yamaha engine (which I did not have), ceramic coatings (which I did not want to buy), insurance (which was led by my insurance broker), and women in boating (which was basic boating info for wives).

When it all got down to it, I didn’t really do anything related to the Rendezvous that day. I didn’t even attend the evening margarita cocktail hour.

Instead, I spent most of the day writing two blog posts, one about finishing the Great Loop for my Great Loop blog and one about getting the boat back to Washington for this blog.

Day 3 of the Rendezvous

Saturday was the last day of the rendezvous. Not only would there be a few sessions in the Learning Center tent, but all of the contests that had been going on — salmon fishing, crabbing, cornhole, etc. — would wrap up.

I had a busy day, even though I didn’t attend any of the sessions.

Crabbing, Part 2

Big Crab
Now that’s a big crab.

Following my neighbor’s advice, I didn’t pull up my crab trap until morning. I did it right after breakfast. It was very heavy and, again, had at least eight crabs on board. This time, four of them were keepers: two very large ones and two that were slightly larger than legal size.

The trap still had bait so I lowered it back into the water. Then I motored back to show off my success. My neighbors were impressed. I was impressed with the very big ones. I threw the two smaller ones back into the water, put some clean water into the cooler where I was keeping the crabs, and hurried off to set up my Artisan Fair booth.

The Artisan Fair

I’m a silversmith and I make silver jewelry with gemstone cabochons and beads. I hadn’t sold much that year because I was traveling. I did have my inventory with me on the boat and I made a nice wholesale sale to the Silver Peddler on Bald Head Island. But beyond that, it was just consignment sales to the two galleries selling my work in Washington state.

I’d brought along a mini booth setup the previous year and had sold about $1000 worth of pendants, earrings, and bracelets. I was hoping to do the same that year. So I set up my booth, put on some nicer clothes, and settled down for 2 1/2 hours to show and sell my jewelry.

Artisan Fair
Here’s my table at the Artisan Fair. I put out only a small selection of pendants and earrings.

Sales were slow. I have a feeling that not many people knew about this activity. There had been a better turnout the previous year. The other “artists” were also experiencing slow sales. The woman next to me, who sold very nicely made small tables for the boat, gave out a lot of flyers but didn’t sell a single one. Even the woman across from me, who was selling t-shirts with pithy boating-related slogans on them, was having a slow sale day.

In the end, I wound up selling about $350 worth of jewelry — mostly earrings. Barely worth the effort I’d put into it.

Fish & Crabs

While sitting at my Artisan Fair table, I chatted briefly with a guy who had just come in with fish for the salmon tournament. I think he had about 10 fish ranging from 18 inches up to more than 2 feet. I jokingly asked if I could have one of the small ones. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll fillet it for you.” I also asked for some fish heads for bait in my crab traps. So that’s how I wound up with two huge fillets and three giant fish heads.

I closed up my booth and went back to my boat. I put on comfy clothes and took my two big crabs to be weighed. I didn’t really think of them as contest entries, but when they each weighed in at more than 2 pounds, I was suddenly in the running. One of them had weighed 2 pounds, 9.6 ounces — the biggest so far that day!

Roche Crab Catch
My second crab catch that day. Most of these were small but one weighed in at 2 pounds.

I took them back to the boat, then took the dinghy out to fetch the trap. Even though it had only been out for about 4 hours, it was full of crabs again, including yet another very large one. I let all the other ones go, including at least one legal male. The new crab weighed in at exactly 2 pounds. I brought it back to the boat, borrowed my neighbor’s crab pot — my large pot was too small — killed and cleaned them, and then cooked them. I had to turn on the small outside fridge to store them in. (I would finish them off over the next few days, mostly sharing them with friends.)

Rodeo Themed Night

Cowgirl Maria
How long had it been since I wore that Jacket? I’m thinking 2013. I was surprised it still fit as well as it did.

The theme of the event was rodeo — Why ride a horse when you can drive a Ranger? — and I’d come prepared for the final evening’s event, which would grant awards for the best outfit. Blue jeans with a blank tank top, black leather cowboy boots with silver tips and heel trim, a real Resistol hat, and a deerskin jacket made for me by a friend years ago that included fringe, elkhorn buttons, and hair from my own horses. I was definitely ahead of the game compared to most other folks who just wore cowboy hats and/or boots and/or bandanas to be western. But in the end I was beat out by the man wearing true western chaps and boots, a retired rancher.

The event was held in the learning center area, which had been set up with tables and chairs. Once again, the caterers had pre-portioned our food for us, giving us “western bowls” that had a little of about six different things, none of which were healthy. They were edible, however, and I pretty much cleared my bowl. Andrew Custis, the same man who had given me a tour of the Kent factory and offered me a kickass deal on an end-of-season R-27 years ago, did a little speech thanking the folks who needed thanking. Then they gave out prizes for contest winners. I was thrilled to win another crab trap setup with a pair of $25 Amazon gift cards for the biggest crab caught on Saturday; I went from one junky one to two good ones in the span of two days. (I gave one of the gift cards to my neighbor who had given me bait for my trap and lessons on how to kill the crabs quickly.) They also raffled off a bunch of other stuff.

When that ended, they brought up a team to teach line dancing. Since I hadn’t had enough alcohol to make that something that interested me, I went back to my boat, stopping to fetch my new trap setup along the way.

My neighbors showed up a little later. Someone mentioned that they’d missed the Artisan Fair. Could I show her my jewelry. I did and she bought a bunch. Then I showed another neighbor and she bought some, too. That brought the day’s total to very close to what I’d sold the previous year. I was glad about that;

By then it was dark and I was tired. I wound up calling it a day.

Goodbyes

The event was officially over and boats started leaving as soon as it got light on Sunday morning. I was in no hurry. I was going to spend the night at Spencer Spit on Lopez island, one of the first of many anchorages and mooring fields I stay in before putting the boat to bed for the winter. Before that, I was taking my friend Liz, who lives on San Juan Island, for a day trip to nearby Stuart Island.

Not everyone else was willing to wait. Because they’d put us on the dock three deep and I was on the outside, I had to start up and move out of the way so the people closer in could get out. Soon it was a parade of Ranger Tugs and Cutwater boats heading out, some of them stopping along the way for fuel.

I called for a pumpout. One of the things I love about the PNW is that they’re so interested in keeping waste out of the water that every marina pumpout is free. They drove over with the Fecal Freak pumpout boat and took care of it while I was still in my slip. I tipped the guy, glad he was doing it for me. He even let me rinse it out once, which I appreciated.

By that time, Liz had arrived. I loaded us all up and headed out.

It had been another good event, but I sorely missed my friends, Cyndi, Joan, Tony, and Mark, from the previous two Rendezvous events. I hope I can see them all again next year.

The 2022 Ranger Tugs/Cutwater Rendezvous

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A great opportunity to learn new things and meet new people — and an excuse to take my new boat on a 250-mile round trip journey.

Last week, I wrote a blog post covering my maiden voyage in my new boat. The purpose of that voyage was to attend the 2022 Ranger Tugs/Cutwater Rendezvous, back at Roche Harbor on San Juan Island after a two-year Covid break.

In this blog post, I’ll try to fill you in on how this event was for me.

New Friends

I want to cover new friends first since that was the first thing that happened for me after securing my boat at J Dock. I was doing something inside the main cabin when a woman came up to my open window and invited me over to their boat for drinks. And just like that, I met the folks who sort of adopted me for the long weekend: Cindy, Tony, Joan, and Mark. They were all aboard Cindy and Tony’s 2022 Ranger Tugs R-43, which is the top of the line boat Ranger Tugs makes. With a length overall of close to 50 feet and a beam (width) of 14 feet, this boat has two good sized sleeping cabins and two full heads (bathrooms), making it a perfect boat for four people to be comfortable for an extended stay on the water.

The boat’s name: Infinite Loop. Cindy worked for Apple during the late 1990s and into the 2000s. She jokes — or maybe not? — that her Apple stock paid for the boat. (My Apple stock paid for my divorce so we both got good deals.)

I eventually took them up on their offer — I had to walk my pups, hose the salt off my boat, and do some organization things inside first. I brought vodka for a martini, made it with the wrong kind of vermouth (but I only used a little so it was okay), and joined them on the back deck at a table with plenty of room for all of us. (I joined them for dinner three times, too, and was glad to be able to contribute with my eggplant and goat cheese pizza and a vegetable dish.)

While we were sipping our cocktails that first night, another R-43 backed in across the dock from them and next to me. On board were Janet and Sandy who were all business as they coordinated their parking jobs with headsets on. Although they kept more to themselves, we did see a lot of them at events and on their boat.

We started referring to J Dock as where the cool kids were.


I love this group selfie that Mark took. Front row (l-r): Tony, Cindy, Joan (holding my dog Rosie), Mark. Behind (l-r): me (holding my other pup Lily), Janet, and Sandy (holding their dog Yogi Bear).

The Others

There were an estimated 200 Ranger Tug and Cutwater boats at the event. Ranger Tugs and Cutwater are sister companies owned by Washington based Fluid Motions LLC. The boats are very similar but I think Cutwater boats are built more for speed. All of their boats are built in Washington State, at a number of factory facilities in the Seattle area.


Here’s an aerial view of Roche Harbor shot from my drone. All of the boats on the Guest Dock on the right side of the photo were Rendezvous participants. J dock is on the other side of the marina; it’s the first dock on the right off the dock on the left. My boat is the smallest one there and I had to get the drone camera pretty high to see it behind the larger boats there.


The Home Screen of the Rendezvous app.

The Rendezvous had an app and the app had social networking capabilities. But although it let you share photos and comments, it didn’t alert you when you had a response to a comment or a private message. So although I tried to connect with other R-29 owners to see how they had modified their boats over the years and learn some tips and tricks from long-time users, and I got some responses, I could never quite connect with any of them. It was a bit frustrating.

But part of the problem is that I just kept very busy while I was at the event. Seminars, organized social events, socializing with friends, taking my pups for walks — I was constantly on the go and not consulting that app as often as I should have or making more of an effort to connect. My loss.


Here’s a look at the Guest dock at night. Our boats come equipped with underwater lights and colored lights for the aft deck and everyone seems to have turned theirs on.

The Seminars

What was keeping me busy was mostly the seminars. There were quite a few of them and very few overlapped. I attended a bunch but didn’t stay for all of the ones I attended. Here’s a quick summary:

  • Volvo Engine. This seminar was led by someone from Volvo that definitely knows its engines. It covered important maintenance and inspection details for the D4 (which I have) and D6 Diesel engines. I took four pages of notes. At the end, they gave out a USB drive full of factory publications to help me understand and maintain my engine. I’m determined to do as much regular maintenance as I can on the boat, not only to save money but to be more familiar with the boat’s components, including the engine.
  • Garmin topic TBD. The title of this seminar should have given all of us a warning: they had no idea what they were going to talk about. The Garmin representative rambled on somewhat incoherently about updating chart plotters and using Active Captain and buying maps. He bounced from one topic to another and made the mistake of taking questions so we all had to listen to the highly specific issues other boaters were dealing with on their setups. Cindy and Joan left first, I left after 20 minutes, and I’m pretty sure Tony and Mark left soon afterward. It was more confusing than enlightening.
  • Women in Boating. This was a major disappointment for me. I was hoping that she’d provide some insight into challenges facing women as boaters, but what she really presented was Boating for Dummies, that started with basic terminology like hull and gunwales. Her handout included images of every slide and I paged ahead to see if it would get any better. But no, it was more of the same. I realized that most of the women at the event were there with husbands or other male partners and I also understand that in most of these partnership, the man was doing the boat stuff and the woman was along to taken in fenders, tie up lines, cook dinner, and wash dishes. This seminar was geared toward them, not me. I left after 10 minutes.
  • Anchoring. I was very interested in this seminar because I plan to do some anchoring and had neither training nor experience. It was led by an R-29 owner named Glen Wagner, who also does most of his boating solo. (Actually, it turned out that he and I had a lot in common.) He covered basics and techniques in a presentation that was informative and entertaining. Although I didn’t take a lot of notes, I learned a lot.

There were other seminars, too, and although I thought I might want to attend them, I just felt as if I needed more down time. Being Whale Wise, Puget Sound Fishing and Crabbing 101, and Cruising Alaska were all topics I’d definitely explore later in my boating life, after I’ve gotten the Great Loop out of my brain and have brought the boat back to the west coast. The one about Exterior Boat Maintenance was being led by a guy who sold boat ceramic coating so I figured it was either going to be a sales pitch or concentrate on maintenance with that coating. (And yes, I could be wrong.) The boat insurance seminar was led by the folks I’d bought my insurance from, so I didn’t think they’d tell me anything I didn’t already know.

Sponsor Tables

There were tables at the event for each of the sponsors, including Volvo, Garmin, and the insurance folks.

Although we were encouraged to visit and ask questions, I hit a brick wall every time I visited the Garmin table. I needed to understand why certain features seemed to be missing from my chart plotters and why my remaining fuel indicator kept blinking at 103 gallons. The four guys there kept trying to me off to each other. Or to Volvo. After being passed from Garmin to Volvo and back to Garmin, I finally got a guy willing to walk back to my boat with me for a look. Sure enough, he passed me off to a Ranger Tugs guy who was busy doing something else but promised to stop by.

He stopped by later that day and showed me a feature on the Volvo engine monitor that I didn’t realize would do anything: a Back button. I thought I was already looking at the Home screen so I’d never tried that button. Back brought me to a menu that brought me to a Fuel screen. Duh. I felt pretty dumb.

In my defense, however, I did not receive a single manually that originally came with the boat. Although the broker and the surveyor both claim the manuals were on board, I went through every single compartment on that boat and did not find them. So it looks as if I’ll be downloading and printing the missing manuals so I can learn what I need to know when I need to know it.

Social Activities


Cindy took this photo of me and my girls sitting in front of my boat. The “Do It Now” sign was the only way I could provide the name of my boat for people who might be looking for it; I still did not have its name anywhere on it.

In addition to the seminars, there were social activities every night: a Sip and Chip Happy Hour on Thursday, a Margarita Happy Hour on Friday, and a Tropical Paradise Happy Hour on Saturday. I skipped Margaritas, but attended the other two with my new friends. That last Happy Hour included food, which I don’t think any of us expected, and was good enough to make a meal.

There were also games, including a scavenger hunt with flowers that I didn’t quite understand, a cornhole tournament and championship, a fishing and crabbing derby, a blindfolded dinghy race (which I wish I’d seen), and a tropical theme boat and costume contest.

I didn’t know about the boat decorating contest and was sorely unprepared, but my new friends kept adding flowers and leis to my railings. I even put an inflatable fish Cindy gave me on my VHF antenna. And I dug out a strand of solar powered fairy lights I used to use with my camper and strung them up on the bow. Cindy, Joan, and Janet were really into it and really decked out their boats. But I don’t think the judges came to J Dock; neither of them won.

At sunset, the marina did a colors ceremony that included playing music while they lowered flags. Flags were at half staff when Queen Elizabeth II died and taps was very sad. At the end of the colors ceremony, all the boat owners near their horns sounded them; I was never close enough to sound mine.


Roche Harbor Resort at night.


Here’s a post-sunset look at the ramp down to J Dock. It was gorgeous there, even at night.

One-on-One Training

I mentioned that Glen Wagner had an R-29 and it happened to be parked near mine. I arranged to meet with him in his boat to get part of the Ranger Tugs orientation that I missed out on by buying used instead of new.

The first thing that struck me was the modifications he’d made to his boat. He had removed two of the three rear deck seats — he said that they weighted 27 pounds each and he didn’t need them. He’d also removed his wine cooler and had somehow managed to get a door for the new cabinet space that matched all of the other doors and drawers on the boat. He’d moved the heating controls, too. But in looking around, I got answers to questions I had about my boat, including where to mount the fire extinguishers, which were on board but had never been mounted on my boat.

We went over his pre-departure check list, which was an enormous help for me. I wanted to create a check list and Sandy had given me his as a starting point — even though it was for an R-43 instead of an R-29. I grabbed a photo of Glen’s, which was a better starting point for me. He went over each item and went into detail about some of them. We opened the engine lid and looked at important inspection points inside. He filled my brain with new information, most of which was very important for me to know.

Then he came over to my boat to check my chartplotter set up. I’d been missing the Autoroute feature that everyone else seemed to have. Every time I told someone, “No, that button is not on my chart plotter,” they’d respond, “It has to be. Maybe you’re not looking in the right place.” Well, Glen came over and actually looked. It wasn’t there. (It turns out that the original owner only had the default charts installed; I need to buy G3 map cards to get additional information and that feature.) He also reviewed how to update fuel information in the chartplotter and explained why it was a more accurate reading when under way than the fuel gauge on the Volvo engine monitor.

Departure Day

The event officially ended Saturday evening with the Happy Hour and prize distribution. I went back to the boat and hung out for a while afterwards for some excellent nachos on Infinite Loop. I was exhausted — all the uphill walking I did every day closed all three of my Apple Watch rings daily — and turned in early.

In the morning, most folks headed out, including my new friends. We did a group photo — see above — and everyone packed up to leave.

Except me. I’d decided to stay an extra day to rest up and prepare for more training and a chartplotter update on my way home in Anacortes on Tuesday and Wednesday. So I mostly watched my friends get ready to move out. There were lots of hugs; Joan squeezed me long and hard enough that I thought I might pass out. Then Infinite Loop was on its way out of the marina. I sent my drone after it, but interference from the metal dock and the huge boats all around me prevented me from getting a good shot.


Here’s the best shot I could get of Infinite Loop cruising out of Roche Harbor. (I should have repositioned to a different location with less interference.)

Janet and Sandy left a short while later. I didn’t even bother trying to get a drone shot because I knew the drone would fail me.

I went for a walk with my pups and soon realized that the Guest dock was nearly empty. Most folks were leaving, going back to their marinas or continuing their cruises elsewhere. I took my pups to the dog park, where they just looked at the open, fenced in field as if they didn’t know what they were supposed to do.


I grilled up some halibut for dinner and ate it in the window seat facing out back.

And when I got back to my boat, the huge boats that were normally docked there started returning. I guess they’d just cleared the space for us. I wondered if another huge yacht was waiting elsewhere in the marina for me to leave.


My boat looks minuscule next to the large boats that returned to their slips around me on Sunday afternoon.

The colors ceremony was somber that evening. It was September 11 and we were asked to take a moment to think about the lives lost on 9/11. There were no tooting horns after Taps.


Sunset on September 11. I’d already removed the fairy lights and boat name sign I’d put on the boat in preparation for departure the next day.

I’d start my trip back to Olympia the next day, so I prepped my boat for departure as well as I could. I’ll tell you about that trip in another blog post.

Planning My First Trip in Motor Vessel Do It Now

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I have big plans for my first boat outing.

A lot of stuff has been going on in my life over the past two weeks. One of them came to a conclusion yesterday: I closed on the purchase of my new boat, a 2019 Ranger Tug R-29 CB.

I wrote more about the purchase process in my Great Loop blog. The final chapter can be found here. It was a surprisingly easy transaction with the only glitch being Citibank’s wire transfer processing and unbelievably crappy customer service. At 11:22 AM on September 2, I was the owner of an amazing, near-new cruising trawler.


My still unnamed boat in a photo taken by the surveyor as we motored in to the lift for a bottom inspection.

Do It Now

Amazingly, although the boat was three years old, it had never been named. That was good for me since there are all kinds of superstitions about renaming a boat and I didn’t want to deal with any of the weird ceremonies involved in changing a boat’s name. It meant I could name it whatever I wanted to. I chose Do It Now with a home port of Malaga, WA, and during the closing process I made arrangements to document it with the Coast Guard instead of titling it in Washington State. That means I can take the registration numbers off the hull as soon as I get the name put on.

Why Do It Now? If you’re a long-time reader of this blog, you may know that I feel that I wasted too many years of my life in a dead-end relationship, waiting for a partner to get his head out of his ass and start enjoying life. With him out of the picture, I was finally free to do my own thing — and I have been. I expanded my business, built a home, and started traveling more. But I wanted one more big challenge and had pretty much set my heart on cruising in my own boat. With the years ticking by quickly I realized that, at some point, a lack of physical fitness would prevent me from doing what I wanted to do. So if I wanted to start a new chapter in my life, I had to do it now.

It’s become a philosophy. Heck, I almost had it tattooed on my left hand near my thumb so it would remind me every day. I think buying this boat was a better solution.

Planning the First Voyage

As the purchase started coming together, I realized that there was a good chance that I could complete it before an annual event I really wanted to attend: the Ranger Tugs Rendezvous at Roche Harbor Marina on San Juan Island. Although it had been cancelled for the previous two years due to Covid, it was on for the weekend of September 8 – 11. I bought an attendee ticket and, booked a slip at the marina for September 7 -12. (Yes, I was so confident that the sale would go through that I booked a slip for a boat I didn’t yet own.)

I also plotted the route from Zittel’s Marina in Olympia, WA to Roche Harbor using Aqua Map, my iPad chartplotter of choice. I was shocked when I learned it was over 100 nautical miles. Not the kind of trip you can do in one day when you’re cruising at 10-12 knots. That meant an overnight stay along the way.


My entire route as plotted on Aqua Map. It takes me from Olympia past Tacoma, Seattle, and Edmonds in Puget Sound and then into the San Juan Islands area.

I arranged for an experienced boat captain, Larry, to join me on the first day of this journey to provide some much-needed training and orientation. I’d meet him at Edmonds on Tuesday morning and finish the drive with him to Olympia. That’s where I’d take possession of the boat and its keys. We’d offload my truck into the boat — I have a ton of packing to do — and then, after some orientation at the marina, head out along my route. The goal is to get to Edmonds by just after 4 PM, which I think is pushing it. I’d drop off Larry in Edmonds and motor across the channel to Kingston where I’ve already booked a slip for the night. (There’s no transient parking in Edmonds.) In the morning, I’d head out alone to finish the trip to Roche Harbor.

It is an ambitious plan and, if I didn’t already have quite a bit of experience last summer at the helm of a 2017 Ranger Tug R-27, I wouldn’t even consider it. Yes, my boat is larger — both in length and beam — but it has basically the same helm setup, right down to the autopilot, chart plotter, throttle controls, and side thrusters. I’m more worried about my arrival at Kingston, which might be after hours, than leaving Kingston or arriving at Roche Harbor the next day. I guess time will tell.

Anyway, that’s the current plan. I’ll write more about it when the trip is over. Stay tuned. Some fun, challenging times are ahead and I’m looking forward to sharing them.