Niel and I cruised "Three Wishes" together for the last 5 years, spending 3 months aboard each summer. Next summer would prove to be a bit different.

By: Nancy Davidson

The Problem and the Plan

Shocking barely described it when my husband Niel announced in late May that he wanted to sell “Three Wishes”, our Selene 53, at the end of the summer season. We had spent three months every summer for the past 5 years cruising the beautiful Pacific Northwest together. Niel is a “been there, done that” kind of guy and he was tiring of the cruising life.

Our beloved Selene 53 "Three Wishes"

I adore “Three Wishes” and can’t imagine giving her up. My summers on the boat keep me going for the rest of the year. One day in July, I was explaining my plight to a good friend and she said “Can’t you run the boat by yourself?” “Oh no, it’s too big” I immediately replied. But later I thought about it. I had accomplished all the purchasing of the boat by myself at a time when Niel was swamped with work. Would it really be impossible for me to operate “Three Wishes” without Niel? So I decided to give it a go. While I’m on the boat with Niel this summer, I’m trying to learn as much as I can of what he does. Although he’s very skeptical, he’s good about teaching me. I’m not worried about his skepticism – I’m enjoying the challenge.

I was already comfortable with maneuvering "Three Wishes." Even when Niel was with me, I generally was at the helm with a headset, and Niel was outside feeding me information and instructions over the headset.

So far I’ve made friends with the Nobeltec GPS navigation system, the shore power cord and the radar. As I learn these things I take over those duties. Tomorrow I’ll be in charge of towing the dinghy. I’m already the one who monitors the voltage and amp hours for the house batteries and I decide when to charge them and for how long. I’m also the one who figures out the currents and tides and when the best departure times are to take advantage of them. So some stuff I do already.

A big item I already understand is the feel of the boat in close quarters maneuvering. After our first Selene Rendezvous at Roche Harbor in 2008, Captain Patti of SeaSense worked with Niel and me for two days. After that training, whenever docking or anchoring, we both wore headsets. I was at the helm in the pilothouse and Niel was outside on deck feeding me information and instructions over the headsets. If I hadn’t had this 5 years experience at the helm of the boat in tricky situations, I doubt I would have undertaken this project of learning how to operate “Three Wishes” by myself.

Crabby Times

The last few days have been strenuous. I want to learn how to crab and prawn. Two days ago we got the dinghy off the flybridge and the crab traps and paraphernalia out of the lazerette. I put the traps together and bait in the bait bags. This involved putting my bare hands in a bucket filled with the remains of 2 salmon after they had been filleted (a gift from a very nice boater who loves to fish). But yuck! Yesterday morning I had read about the best types of places to set the traps and the best times to set them. So off we went in the dinghy with our two traps towards the entrance of Blunden Harbour (where “Three Wishes” is anchored towards the back) and set the traps an hour before high tide.

I'm learning how to crab and prawn, but I still don't like killing my catch!

When we picked them up two hours later, they were loaded with crabs – about 15 in each trap. Unfortunately there were only two males in the bunch and they were undersized. So I spent about an hour and a half very carefully wrestling all these crabs out of the traps, trying hard not to injure them or me and then throwing them back into the water. But the little buggers cling to the traps! It was easier getting them out of the all-metal trap but they were really tangled in the mesh trap that folds. We did drop the metal trap in another location close to “Three Wishes”. When we picked it up several hours later, it also had about 15 crabs in it and amongst all the females there was one big male. If it weren’t for the fact that I needed to learn to kill and clean crabs we would have thrown that one back in the water too because the process of cooking them involves buckets and pots of clean sea water and makes quite a mess to clean up.

I have yet to learn a perfect way to kill crabs. Horror comes over me at the thought of inflicting pain or injury to any living creature. Many years ago I noticed that crustaceans still move when dropped into a pot of boiling water so boiling them alive was out. Niel kills them by putting them upside down on a cutting board on our swim platform and then cutting them cleanly through the middle with a sharp knife and heavy pressure. I wasn’t sure my pressure would be heavy enough so I decided to use Niel’s method but modify his approach by using a rubber mallet to apply the pressure to the knife.

Everything was ready for my first kill. I gingerly placed the crab upside down on the cutting board and centered the knife on it’s middle. Then I raised the rubber mallet and with all the force I could muster I whammed the knife. I was horrified! Although the crab was cut through cleanly, he had had moved slightly just before the mallet hit the knife. Now I was looking at one side of the crab that was perfectly still and the other flailing away. I had wanted so much for this to be a humane kill and instead it was disaster. The problem was that the knife had not gone through his brain and it was still intact. I quickly severed that part and the flailing stopped but it took me awhile to recover from the experience. There are three lessons that I learned here. The first was yet another way NOT to kill crabs. Secondly, I’d much rather sit in the fly bridge and read than go to all the trouble of crabbing UNLESS I had a strong guest who was so motivated to crab that he/she would do all the grunt work. I wouldn’t mind cooking them if that’s all I had to do. The third lesson is not to crab in a harbor frequented by commercial crabbers and especially late in the season. Blunden Harbour is right off Queen Charlotte Strait and easy for commercial fishermen to reach. That’s why for all our effort we were awarded with females and undersized males, all of which are illegal to keep. Blunden Harbour is crabbed out for this season.

Midden Musings

In between all the crabbing yesterday we dinghied into shore at low tide where there used to be a First Nations village (Canada’s term for Indians). The village had been deserted but the buildings were intact less than 100 years ago – now there was nothing I could see but the shell midden along the beach. Shell middens are almost always hundreds of years old as the tribes lived in the same spots for many many generations. This is a midden where it is known that one can beach-comb and find glass trade beads if they are lucky and it’s the reason I wanted to come to Blunden Harbour.

There’s no dock at the beach so we nosed the dinghy up as far onto shore as we could but it was clear it was impossible to get from the dinghy directly onto dry land. Niel decided to stay in the dinghy, undoubtedly hoping that I would too, but I took off my shoes and socks, rolled up my pants, grabbed my shoes and a towel and brrrr was that water cold. I gingerly and very slowly made my way the few feet to dry land, taking great care to step only on broken shells and small rocks, avoiding broken glass and barnacles. There was no place to sit to dry my feet and put my shoes back on unless I wanted to walk another painful 10 feet and sit on a pointy barnacle covered rock. So I did the best I could drying my feet and putting my shoes back on while standing up. It was low tide. I pulled the dinghy with Niel in it as far up onto the beach as my strength would allow and wound the end of the line around two rocks, leaving the line taut.

I walked the shore of the midden with bent head searching for trade beads. After a half hour or so I was beginning to think I needed to take beachcombing lessons – all the shells, rocks and barnacles were running together. But further along the midden I saw two women seated on the beach. They had kneepads on and were digging among the broken shells with gardening implements that one might use either for planting or weeding. It turned out they were looking for trade beads too. One woman was quite into it and in her digging she had found half a dozen or so that afternoon. She showed them to me so at least now I knew what I was looking for. It turns out that the majority of trade beads in this midden are faceted deep blue ones made in Bavaria. The Russians would trade strings of them to the First Nation Peoples in exchange for pelts. The natives prized them much as we prize diamonds. The woman told me these beads are hundreds of years old.

Much to my amazement, I actually found a trade bead. I've since learned that digging in first nations middens is either illiegal or at least highly inappropriate.

So I continued along the shoreline with bent head, searching and searching, hoping to find a glint of blue, not sure I would even see it if it was there. While I was making my way back along the shoreline of the midden, I noticed something squarish and blue and, voila, it was indeed a blue faceted trade bead. Hallelujah! I was amazed I had actually found one! And it wasn’t hard to see at all – plain as day really. How did I miss it the first time around? I was so excited! I made my way back to Niel who was going out of his mind with boredom. Apparently I had been gone for 1-½ hours. I noticed the bow line, which I had left taut, was slack and mostly in the water and the dinghy had gotten much closer to the rocks I had wound the end of the line around. Aha! So when I had walked back along the shoreline, the water was quite a bit further up the beach because the tide was coming in. (The tides in this area are normally 10 to 12 feet.) I hadn’t missed the bead the first time around at all. When I found the bead, I was looking in a different area. Mystery solved. As I reached Niel I pulled the dinghy further onto shore and found that this time I could get on it without getting into the water. As I was accomplishing this maneuver, another dinghy zipped into shore and a woman hopped off to bring her dog in to pee. She was wearing high rubber boots and the end of her bow line had a small anchor on it, which she dug into the midden. Another aha moment for me – so that’s how it’s done. NOTE TO NANCY: Buy a pair of wellies and a small anchor and while you’re at it, get some kneepads and a good gardening tool. Niel isn’t the only one teaching me things on this trip.

POSTSCRIPT: I have since found out that digging in First Nation middens is either illegal or highly inappropriate so the kneepads and gardening tool are off my shopping list.

Next Month: Part 2: Nancy's Ambitious Plan

You can find a complete album of Nancy's cruising photos in the Selene photo gallery on this site (you must login to view the Selene photo gallery).