Tag Archives: Seattle

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.

On Unreasonable Requests

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I get a call for a flight I won’t do — no matter how much is offered.

Last night, at almost 9:30 PM, my phone rang. Caller ID displayed a Bellevue (Seattle area) phone number. I answered as I usually do:

Me: Flying M, Maria speaking.

Him: Oh, hi. Is your helicopter out?

That was a weird question. I started to wonder whether this was going to be some kind of noise complaint call. If so, they had the wrong operator.

Me: No.

Him: Good. I need you to fly me from Manson to Lake Stevens.

Manson is a small town on Lake Chelan, about 30 miles from where I live. I wasn’t sure exactly sure where Lake Stevens was, but I knew it was on the other side of the Cascade Mountains, at least an hour flight time away.

Route
For this blog post, I looked up the location information and roughly planned a route. Two legs of this flight cross the Cascade Mountains; the vast majority of the flight is over rugged mountain terrain.

Me: When?

Him: Now.

I actually wasn’t surprised. His tone had that kind of urgency about it.

Me: I can’t do that.

Him: Well, I got your number from Dale.

Dale is another helicopter pilot with a business almost identical to mine. He’s based up in Chelan and actually lives in Manson. This guy had obviously called him first and Dale, being no idiot, wasn’t going to do the flight either. I could imagine this guy pressing him for an alternative and Dale giving him my number just so he could hang up. But getting my number from Dale doesn’t mean I’d be willing to do the flight either.

Me: You want me to fly you from Manson to Seattle in a helicopter at 9:30 on a Sunday night?

Him: Lake Stevens.

Me: Sorry, no.

Him: I’ll pay you $2500.

Me: No. I wouldn’t do it for any price. Sorry.

It kind of pisses me off when people think they can buy me. I’m not desperate for money. The truth of the matter is, the flight would have cost him about $1500 anyway, which probably would have surprised him. But I didn’t care. There was no way I was going to fly across the Cascades at night. My helicopter is VFR only and I had no idea what the cloud cover was to the west. (It’s socked in more often than not.) It also wasn’t legal for me to take the flight because (1) I wasn’t current for night flying with passengers and (2) I’d had two glasses of wine that evening.

Cascades Ridge
My helicopter’s nose cam captured this image on one of my few flights across the Cascades on a nice day. It wouldn’t be so pleasant at night, especially if it was cloudy.

There was some more talk back and forth. He was clearly outraged — and I don’t use that word as an exaggeration — that I wouldn’t drop everything on a Sunday night to fly him to the Seattle area. It was difficult to get off the phone with him without being rude. I kept wondering why he seemed to think that calling for a helicopter was just like calling for a cab ride. Finally, I was able to get off the phone with him.

Some people, I thought to myself. And then I put it out of my head.

Until about 20 minutes later.

I’d just gotten into bed and turned off the light when my phone rang. It was the same number. I didn’t answer it. Could he really expect a business to answer the phone at 10 PM?

Two minutes later, I got a text:

$2100 to fly me to lake Stevens right now

Apparently, the price had dropped. Maybe he didn’t recall offering me $400 more during his call.

I ignored the text.

If you don’t understand what makes this kind of request “unreasonable,” it’s this:

A Part 135 charter operator is required by the FAA to perform several preflight actions. These include preflighting the aircraft to make sure it’s airworthy, adding fuel if necessary, obtaining accurate information about the current weather conditions, obtaining information about the intended destination and alternatives, creating a flight plan, calculating a weight and balance for the passenger/cargo load, and preparing a flight manifest. This takes time — often more than an hour. I typically like at least 24 hours notice for charter flights but have done them with as few as two or three. But immediate? Never.

Besides, it was 9:30 on a Sunday night, long after anyone’s normal business hours. How can anyone possibly expect immediate charter aircraft service at that time?

I seriously doubt this guy got anyone to fly him to Lake Stevens last night. There’s no airport there so he’d have to go by helicopter or seaplane. And although there is a seaplane operator at Lake Chelan, I’m sure that company was all tucked in for the night, too.

Now I’m wondering whether I’ll hear from him again this morning. I’m just hoping that he calls Dale first and Dale takes him.

Comments on the Seattle Helicopter Crash

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Just a few words about how heartless and stupid people can be.

KOMO Helicopter
One of KOMO’s helicopters departs the Seattle hellpad on a spring day two years ago.

I was sitting at my desk, writing a blog post about Sunday’s day trip, when a brief news blurb on NPR mentioned a helicopter had crashed at the base of the Space Needle in Seattle. My friend Greg flies KOMO’s helicopter from a rooftop helipad there. My blood ran cold as I got on Facebook to message him and his wife, hoping he wasn’t the pilot involved.

Pam came back quickly. It wasn’t Greg. I felt relief. But did it really matter? Was the accident any less tragic because my friend hadn’t been hurt? Of course not. Someone else’s loved ones had been killed. It was a tragedy no matter who was involved.

Of course, someone posted the breaking news story link from KOMO’s website to the Helicopter Pilot’s forum on Facebook. And people were commenting. Stupid, thoughtless people.

The accident had happened only minutes before — hell, the fire was probably still burning — and guys who are supposedly helicopter pilots were already speculating about the cause and spreading misinformation.

“Settling with power,” one genius proclaimed.

“According to witnesses, he was attempting to land on a roof and rolled off,” another amateur reporter added.

It was pretty obvious to me that neither of these “experts” had read the 150 words in the original version of the story they were commenting on — heck, why bother read before commenting? — which clearly said the helicopter was taking off when the accident occurred. Settling with power isn’t something that is likely on takeoff from a rooftop helipad. And it was an established helipad, not merely “a roof.”

Later, the first genius added another piece of fictitious insight: “Yea originally they said he was landing. Just heard there was a crane put up, and be hit a wire.”

“Just heard”? From where? None of the news stories — even hours later when the stories are more fully developed — say anything about a crane.

Other comments and speculations that were clearly not tactful or fully informed followed. I think some of them may have been deleted, but the responses to them remain. Most of us are agreed that this is no time for speculations — especially when there’s a shortage of facts to support them.

The situation was worse, of course, on KOMO’s website where the article appeared. Some cold-hearted conservatives rejoiced over the death of two liberals — as if they knew the political leanings of the pilot and his passenger and as if that actually mattered. One moron even commented that it was too bad Obama wasn’t on board.

Seriously? Do people actually think like that?

I spent ten minutes flagging obnoxious and offensive comments before finally giving up and getting on with my day.

But come on people, let’s look at the reality of the situation: There was an accident in Seattle that took the lives of two men. Men with lives and families. Men likely doing the work they loved. Men who lived and breathed and loved and dreamed, just like all of us.

Surely they deserve better than some of the uninformed speculation and heartless comments the reports of their death are attracting.

Rest in peace, guys.