(Updated Aug 6, 2013)

In 2011, the year that we sailed from Tofino to San Francisco, I gathered a list of boats that were heading South from BC or WA and who were blogging about their passages. I published that list with a direct link to the departure posts from each of their blogs here.

A reader recently asked if I had a list of 2013 Southbound boats which I do not – does anyone here? That request plus seeing our departure anniversary on our calendar made me wonder what other boats were doing 2 years after leaving BC/WA.

2 years seems like a reasonable first follow-up because after 2 years one could imagine that a fair number of people would have finished their cruise. In some cases people stopped blogging so I’ve listed the last available public info. You may know private info about the boat but if so, please email me privately. I prefer not to list anything non-blogged about here. Here is what I could find publicly online:

• Adesso - In Mexico?
• Artemis - unknown.
• Bella Star - cruising through the South Pacific (jumped 2013).
• Deep Playa – finished cruise, sold boat, living in Hawaii.
• Eagle - cruising in Mexico.
• Estrellita - cruising in French Polynesia (jumped 2012).
• Iridium - cruising in Mexico.
• Last Mango – finished cruise, sold boat.
• Luckness - returned to Pacific Northwest.
• Madrone - returned to Pacific Northwest.
• Miramar  - cruising in Mexico.
• Nautimoments - returned to Pacific Northwest.
• Navigo - returned to Pacific Northwest. 
• Nyon - cruising through the South Pacific (jumped 2013).
• Pearl - returned to Pacific Northwest?
• Shannon – sold boat, planning to upsize and return to Mexico 2013/14.
• Silhouette - on passage from NZ back to the South Pacific.
• Sockdolager - sailed to NZ 2012 and shipped boat back to N America.
• Wondertime - living in New Zealand.

Time for a NUMBERS post.

Blog Traffic. Last year I went over our blog stats and so this year instead of listing the stats I'll compare with last year. In 2012, as compared to 2011:

• Our visits increased by 36%
• Our unique visits increased by 44%.
• Our page views increased by 36%.
• The average number of pages viewed per visit remained steady at around 2.
• The average amount of time people were on the site went down slightly.
• Our percentage of new visits went up slightly.

Blog Content. Just like last year, the most viewed pages were the home page or background pages like who we are and where we are. If you remove background pages, the most viewed pages were:

1. The Cost of Cruising
2. Using our tags to find all posts about Frequently Asked Questions.
3. The list of the 2011 Southbound Cohort.
4. Our post about installing our Lavac toilet. Ha!
5. The video diary of our passage from Mexico to the Marquesas.

1. Passage Diary: Mexico to the Marquesas 
2. Inside a boat in a gale 
3. Busy Kiteboarding Beach in Bahrain 
4. Hauling a Sailboat With A Crane 
5. A "Norther" in La Paz 
6. Stingrays in Moorea 
7. Trappers Cabin at Chatterbox Falls 
8. Passage: Tofino to SF Day Three
9.  Passage: Tofino to SF Day One
10.  Sunset on Strait of Juan de Fuca

1. threesheetsnw.com
2. sv-totem.blogspot.com
3. cruisersforum.com
4. svbellastar.com 
5. zerotocruising.com
6. 48north.com 
7. windborneinpugetsound.blogspot.com
8. sailnet.com 
9. svsyrah.com
10. svdreamkeeper.com

1. "beaufort sea" (presumably finding this post)
2. And we still have people coming who searched for "current table british columbia" (presumably finding this post)

Time for a NUMBERS post.

Google Analytics reports that we had 35,363 visits to this blog from 11,133 unique visitors with 77,740 pageviews. People averaged 2.2 pages per visit and spent an average of 2 minutes reading per visit. We have 357 people who view this blog via a feedreader and 165 people who have the posts emailed to them.

So, what are you all reading?

“Best” is probably arguable, but the top 10 most viewed pages on this blog in 2011 were:

1. Who are we? 
2. Why Estrellita 5.10b
3. Cost of cruising
4. The Plan
5. From the beginning
6. Recent photos
7. All posts labeled FAQ, using label cloud on sidebar
8. Where we are
9. 5 cruising toys

As you can see, these are mostly navigational or background from the nuts and bolts section of the sidebar. If we remove posts linked from the sidebar, we get a top 10 that looks like this:

1. 5 cruising toys
2. Southbound from BC-WA Cohort
3. Best and worst of the WC of Vancouver Island
4. How long will it take?
5. Passage to Haida Gwaii
6. Day 1: Southbound from Tofino
7. Full enclosure
8. Snapshot at 12 months
9. Day 6: Sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge
10. Feeding the dream

The top 10 sites that people came from if they were referred to our blog from another website were:

1. threesheetsnw.com
2. sv-totem.blogspot.com
3. cruisersforum.com
4. zerotocruising.com
5. svbellastar.com
6. windborneinpugetsound.blogspot.com
7. svsyrah.com
8. newlysalted.blogspot.com
9. interviewwithacruiser.blogspot.com
10. sailnet.com

The top 10 search terms that drove people to our blog from google or other search engines were almost entirely variations of our names and our boat name with the exceptions of people searching for these three items:

1. current table british columbia (presumably finding this post)
2. sv iridium victoria bc
3. mahina rocna

We’ve been given a lot of unasked for advice since we began preparing to cruise. In fact, so much that we made a pact when we got to San Francisco that we would not give advice, unless it was related to immediate danger (e.g., there is an uncharted rock there) or to a close friend that we knew their preferences/likes well (e.g., you will love the brewery – it’s worth trying to make it there if you can), unless that advice was specifically requested of us. The blog is exempt from the rule because it is by definition our opinion and experience and people can skip over it if they find it annoying.

I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder when I hear the word “should” as in “you should buy this gadget” or “you shouldn’t go into Mexico before November 1”. I hate being told what to do. I, like most people, respond much better to either statements of personal experience like “I loved this gadget” or statements about consequences as in “the hurricane risk is much higher on the Baja in October than November”. In both cases the person is providing information rather than instructions.

A good friend of ours brought up the point that for her, finding out what to do is part of the adventure and being told all of the details ad nauseum before she arrived in a new place killed the newness and excitement of the landfall. Since then I have kept in mind that not everyone wants demystification and if I am tempted to do so I ask “Do you want to know how we found X?” or something similar.

The following is a list of things that did not happen. I’m not saying these things don’t happen commonly, or that they aren’t usually true, just that they did not happen to us (yet). YMMV. Some of these points were told to use by single people but most were told to use by multiple individuals.

None of the bodies of water or points of land that we have been warned of were problematic. We were told horror stories of Cape Scott (“the Cape Horn of the PNW” is a ridiculous title for Cape Scott by the way because it is in Canada and Vancouver Island isn’t in the NW of Canada – I like the idea of going with the worldwide convention of calling areas by their location of the ocean, making WA/BC the “NE Pacific”), of Hecate Strait, of Cape Mendocino,  and Point Conception (“the Cape Horn of the Pacific” – another weird title because Cape Horn divides the Pacific and the Atlantic so Cape Horn is the Cape Horn of the Pacific) . We were told that if we didn’t see any other boats around Point Conception that we were going at the wrong time because people waited North of it in groups and scooted around (we didn’t see much small boat traffic). In a sense, we heeded the advice about these bodies very carefully. So carefully, that we learned when not to go and didn’t go then. So in each case, we found that if we chose our weather, that these bodies of water were non-events.

You should only go under the Golden Gate bridge on a flood. Well, again, if you understand why people say this, you can break the rule. Wind over tide around there usually means strong Westerly wind over swiftly ebbing tides which means bad news. However, strong flooding tide is also a bummer way to try to get out of the Bay. So, we went on a medium ebb with light wind. No problem.

No one put dye in our holding tank in California including at Avalon. This one is a bit unfair because they were going to put dye in our tank at Avalon but they caught us already in our kayak and told us they would come back but they never did. Other than Avalon, the issue never came up.

The Dutchman system has not sawed our sails into pieces. One of the discs came off in strong weather and the monofilament did not saw a hole in the sail. Our sail is in relatively good condition so perhaps a weaker cloth would have split, but ours didn’t.

Electrical bonding. Our boat, like many European boats, is not electrically bonded. We, like most of the thousands of European boats built like this, have not imploded or otherwise caught on fire.

You have to line your boat with copper to get good SSB signal. We use copper to a single thru hull. Good voice, good email, all good so far.

Leaving BC/WA in August is “too early”. I still don’t understand this one completely but we left in late July and had a nice passage. When to make the passage depends so much on the weather systems in a given year or even a given month that I don’t see how you can make generic statements about what month is early.  We left ourselves a month long window in which to watch the weather. The weather was right at the very beginning of our window so we went but we would have waited for a month and enjoyed the W Coast of Vancouver Island until it was right.

25 gallons is too little built-in tankage for a cruising boat. I guess this has yet to be seriously tested—as in, with the Pacific crossing. Still, we fueled in late July (we carry 40 with our jerry cans included) in British Columbia and did not refill until two months later, after passage, after 7 weeks in San Francisco and several ports after, in mid-September near LA and that was with regular diesel furnace usage.

Canadians need to register their dinghy for the US or they will get hassled. Our dinghy did not need to be registered in Canada. We did not register it before coming to the US. No one mentioned it.

((To be continued: Carol and I thought of so many of these that I’m saving some for later. Also, we thought of a few pieces of advice people gave us that we didn’t heed that DID happen and I’ll mention those later too.))

Carol and I were always gear hounds and our love of toys and gadgets did not die when we started cruising.

I’m starting a series of posts on my current favorite cruising toys*. In this post I focus on the eating/drinking/cleaning side of things.

1. 2 liter Nalgene bottles – We have 3 that fit in our fridge under the tiny freezer unit. One is water only (so it doesn’t retain any taste) and the other two are often filled with ice tea and gatorade.
2. Super soaker buckets – What don’t we use these for? Soaking things in fresh water, dishes, collecting water from a waterfall, cleaning scuba gear, killing fish (yes, we put them in the bucket and then bonk their wee skulls) and then when we are done they clean up completely and stow away neatly.
3. Plates with tall sides (Sea to Summit X-Plates) – We have two plates with collapsible sides that we use while underway or while eating outside. They have enough of a side to keep things likes chips or trailmix or crackers from sliding off. The plate can be used as a cutting board as well so we can cut the lunch in the plates and avoid another thing to wash.
4. Camelbak bottles with neoprene sleeves –  I have the pirate themed “Hydrate or Die” version (thanks Mom & Dad!). The downside is that you have to clean the mouthpieces so they don’t get too grungy. The upside is you don’t spill on yourself while drinking underway AND with the sleeves you can hook the bottles on your lifelines or bimini and the neoprene helps keep things cold.
5. Spatula with built in stand – I don’t know why I love this so much but I do. It’s sanitary. It stops us from having to clean saucy messes off the counter. I love it.
6. Bonus item: Inspired by Zero to Cruising I will admit that we have a Magic Bullet aboard that we love as well. We grind our coffee beans each morning with it, make smoothies, use cold pineapple and blend in rum and coconut cream, blend olives with chilis to make fish sauce, you name it.

*I call them toys because they are fun, cool pieces of kit that we enjoy, but none of them are necessary and many could be fabricated yourself for a lot less money. I use the word cruising because most of the toys are related to life aboard or travel rather than sailing.

For my own reflection, I’ve started collecting reports of this year’s trip from BC/WA down the coast to California. It’s fascinating to me to read how different the experiences were for different vessels, different crew, different weather windows, etc. The highs and the lows of that stretch of water.

I’ve put a link to either the start of their trip (if they blogged throughout) or an overview post. You’ll have to dig through their blog for the entire story if you are interested. I’ve also put the departure city (not the hailing port) and approximate date of departure.

This is only a fraction of the boats that headed down and of course, boats are still heading out. If you know of a (blogged) trip that I’ve missed, please leave a comment with a link to their first post or wrap-up.

• Adesso (Neah Bay, WA – Aug 13)
• Artemis (Seattle, WA? – Aug 18)
• Bella Star (Neah Bay, WA – Aug 30)
• Deep Playa (Neah Bay, WA – Aug 30)
• Eagle (Neah Bay, WA – Aug 17)
• Estrellita (Tofino, BC – July 19)
• Iridium (Victoria, BC - Aug 28)
• Last Mango (Neah Bay, WA – Aug 26) 
• Luckness (Neah Bay, WA - Oct 5)
• Madrone (Ucluelet, BC - Sept 7?)
• Miramar (Neah Bay - June 21)
• Nautimoments (Neah Bay, WA – Aug 23)
• Navigo (Port Angeles, WA - Aug 30)
• Nyon (Neah Bay, WA - mid-Sept)
• Pearl (Port Angeles, WA - Aug 29)
• Shannon (Neah Bay, WA - August) 
• Silhouette (Neah Bay, WA - October)
• Sockdolager (Neah Bay, WA – July 17)
• Wondertime (Ucluelet, BC – Sept 3)

I've been looking around trying to find online reports of the cost of cruising, not budgets for dreamers or those in prep, but reports from people who are or have been actively cruising.

Here is what I have so far - know any others?