"Egret" N4674 - Scott and Mary Flanders

Ed. note: On February 10, 2011, Scott and Mary Flanders, on board their Nordhavn 46, Egret, arrived in the Canary Islands. In doing so, Egret became the eighth Nordhavn to circumnavigate the globe. It had been four years, five months since the couple departed Gran Canaria, intent on seeing as much of the earth as possible, although not necessarily with an end goal to circle the globe. Voyage of Egret do cuments the Flanders’ entire trip, an endless adventure that has put them in touch with the most fabulous places and interesting people. Much route planning and forecasting was required in order to get to some of their ports of call. But the days of detailed planning are over…for now.“Egret” is now back in Fort Lauderdale, the place the couple called home for so many years, and, ironically, the starting point of their world wide cruising escapade that began with the Nordhavn Atlantic Rally in 2004. They currently travel hither and yon, sometimes by boat, sometimes not. Here, the latest update from the Flanders as they keep us continually apprised.

January 24, 2014
Position: On anchor near Astoria, Oregon. Its not all bad, we can hear the surf.

Hello mis amigos, so remember last posting when we threw a very long-term VofE reader under the bus for not buying down in size from his expensive dream boat? Well, he is still hanging in there and wrote back; it was good to hear from him. There is still a shred of hope and we wish him (LST) good luck but as you know, you make your own luck. Here’s what he wrote.

“Hey S&M

A dagger to my heart I say, a dagger to my heart. Or is there another fool out there dreamin' instead of doin'!

Happy New Year to you both. I can't say I'm overly mad about the land based VofE, but the segment on waiting too long cut to the core. Looking back through the forum, I found my first Q to you. What are those 'scaffold poles'? Phew, I've learned a lot since then.... but I still haven't learned the ultimate lesson, and bought into it. 8 YEARS. oh dear oh dear oh dear.

However.... I have not given up on it yet. 65 in May and thinking what a nice birthday present to myself it would be if..... But I can't agree with, just buy a boat and get out there. The boat IS part of that dream, and to make the dream right, it has to be the dream boat.

I'm still here......

Best wishes, T.”

I hope with all my heart that before Mary and I are sitting on bed pans reminiscing about the good ol’ days, that Long Suffering T (we and he calls himself this) does The Deal and makes it Out There.

LST did say something that is correct in that he isn’t “overly mad about the land based VofE”. I can’t blame him. We aren’t selling camping by any stretch of the imagination. We Are selling living as large as you can with what you have, when you have to. The only reason we are camping and not boating is because Egret is in Iceland and we don’t have a car in Iceland to keep exploring during the winter*. When we originally planned to take Egret to Iceland and then the next season, on to Norway, throwing in a camping and Jeeping mix made sense. Camping and Jeeping in the off season isn’t bad and its another adventure with new sights to see, and learn in the case of 4 wheeling in the Jeep.

*Let me take a short break here and explain what has happened to Mary and I. We used to be normal people (NP) with Stuff and did Usual Things…..well, sorta usual things. OK, so not so usual but that’s not the point. Because of the past 12+ years, we have spoiled ourselves to the point most folks can’t understand because they haven’t had the privilege to have seen what we have seen; the Way We Did It. In turn, it is very difficult for us to sit. This isn’t normal. NP can take a vacation and feel accomplished. We feel like we Must keep going to see what we can see and learn what we can, while we can. It’s pretty simple math: we retired early but still, add 12+ years to that and you get what you get. So, we are going to do as much as we can, while we can and hopefully never give up until we absolutely have to. However, we are a team, and when one goes down, so does the other to take care of the first. So anyhow…………..

When Egret sells, and I imagine she will this spring or summer, we will custom build a very different type of boat, much smaller, and get back at it. It won’t be nearly as nice but its time for a change and in reality it will be much harder and challenging. But that’s another story for another time.

So while we were in downtown Victoria walking along the waterfront near dark, we saw boaters hustling down the dock, punching in the gate code then off to their warm and cozy boats. It felt strange we weren’t part of their community like always. We felt like silly tourists. Can you imagine? If you can’t tell, we’re kinda missing boating. The docks in the photograph are city docks we visited for a night during the first week of August in 1999. We had chartered a Grand Banks for a magic week in the San Juan Islands and spent one night here.

Tonight we are anchored in a state campground on the east side of the Olympic Peninsula (Washington State). As soon as we popped the top (in the Bubba Camper) and hooked up the heater, off we went in Rubi to a large marina we saw before the campground. It was totally deserted and there was no one to talk to. Bummer. So then we drove around a bit and came back to the Bubba Camper and now I’m pounding out this drivel and working on a touch of rhum n’ coke.

The campground is nearly totally deserted. So that’s good. We also have a few critter neighbors because………. the campground is nearly totally deserted. Is this cool or what? Elk city. I suppose I should say, Admiral elk city. I guess the Main Man is hiding in the deep woods to keep from being ventilated by some hunter. On laundry day we took a short run into Olympic National Park just before dark. The park was closed at the ranger station so we turned around andstopped at an overlook when the setting sun began turning the sky pink. You folks that live around mountains will probably think what we think as special is ho hum to you………just like whitesand beaches and palm trees are to us. So anyhowhere’s our efforts. My shot is the tight shot with three fingers of green pointing to the subject. Mary’s is the trees and pink shot. Great fun, eh?

We have a few days of sun forecast so we’ll make the most of it then head south down the Oregon coast and ultimately back to Death Valley in California. Death Valley is way cool. You’ll see.

More to follow.

A number of NAR – Nordhavn Atlantic Rally – participants have been asking about a 10 year reunion for the past year or so. So just yesterday, PAE announced a NAR reunion the first weekend in May. It will be held in conjunction with a N. Owners’Rendezvous held at PAE headquarters in Dana Point, California. So that’s cool. Unfortunately Mary and I won’t be there. We will be in Utah on another adventure which we’ll pass along when its time. If you are a Nordhavn owner and interested in ocean crossing, this would be a great opportunity to meet folks face to face who actually did cross an ocean. Any one of them would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

For those of you who don’t know; May 16th thru July 4th, 2004, 18 powerboats crossed the Atlantic from Ft Lauderdale via Bermuda and the Azores to Gibraltar as part of a PAE sponsored rally. There were two groups; a slow group of 12 for smaller boats and a fast group of 6 larger boats that came together at each venue. All of the boats were N’s except 3. Two were custom builds and one was a larger production boat. A lot was written in different magazines with editor’s opinions but what we felt as a participant was completely different. It is very different to ride on someone else’s boat than prep and captain your own boat. The owners and wives were In To the adventure up to their eyeballs and had been for months prior to departure. It was quite an adventure and many of us are still in contact today. Rally videos are still available by contacting PAE.

OK, so we left the top of the Olympic Peninsula and headed west then turned south along the coast.To describe the trip in a few words it was; beautiful, foggy, twisty and great fun. We only stopped once to snap a couple and Mary got this cool shot in the fog while I worked on navigating. We stopped for lunch at a small town whose entire being is based on lumber. There was a collage of photographs in the restaurant highlighting one log truck driver’s 40 years of hauling logs. Some of the logs were pretty amazing they were so big.

We’re currently anchored in a KOA campground near Astoria, Oregon, just over the Columbia River from Washington (State). This is where Lewis and Clark reached the Pacific. Much of the local attractions and park services are based around this event. We’ll learn more in the next couple days because the area looks interesting and we’ll hang out for a bit. More to follow.

Being east coast folks we don’t have any real experience with entrance bars. However, the Columbia River entrance bar I suppose is the granddaddy of them all. Over 2,000 boats have been lost at the bar and 200 or so of them were large ships. So here’s the deal. The channel changes regularly because of silting. The river is always flowing out because of fresh water draining into the river upstream. And still, it has big tides. Just guessing, it seems the salt water rises and falls under the fresh water floating on top. Its shallow offshore. Its shallow inshore. There is lotsa wind and wind that comes up in minutes that isn’t forecast. The Coast Guard makes 400 rescues A Year. Imagine that?

So anyhow its pretty bad. We drove* as far as we could then walked to the river entrance jetty. It was windy, cold and foggy. A few large ships were heading offshore and we tried to photograph them running thru the entrance but they became lost in the fog. Ships are one thing but pilot boats have to go out in the same water as the ships, offload the pilot in that slop and Then return thru that mess. We saw an old pilotboat on land display and it had 3 engines with 3 rudders. It also had a high bow with a heavy bow flare, deep entry and a long, shallow keel. The aft deck was low and the gunwales were rounded so nothing could trap water. The Columbia River entrance is the training port for Bar Pilots.

*After visiting the river mouth, we were 4 wheeling on the beach looking for a shipwreck that was driven ashore in the early 1900’s. Find it we did but then all the nearby parking stumps were taken. So we drove until we found an empty stump.

One thing that was interesting when we visited the Maritime Museum was the rise and fall of the salmon industry. At its zenith, there were 55 canneries along the waterfront. Here are two examples of what is left when a natural resource is exploited to ruin. The first is all that remains of one cannery, just a rotten pier and a few pilings. The second is a hotel built on old cannery docks near the bridge crossing the Columbia. So that’s pretty cool.

Ships waiting on loads are anchored in the channel after the bridge. Even though there is always water flowing out of the river, the tide is still stronger and we watched them swing two days with the tide. The most we saw was 5 ships anchored. Here’s a snap we named Three. Mary got this great shot hand held in low light while I ran for my tripod. By the time I got back the light was gone and so were 3 ofthe 3.

So we enjoyed our time here in northern Oregon but tomorrow it’s time to move on and see what we can while this great sunny weather holds.

OK, so we have a bonus shot of ships on anchor. What is ironic is the sky and water was so naturally magenta, I had to de-saturate the image to make it appear more realistic. The scene was pretty special. Within aminute the light was gone.

Ciao.

 

January 15, 2014
Position: On anchor in Bubba, Victoria waterfront, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada

Hello, mis amigos, eh. Mary and I spent New Year’s Eve on Salt Spring Island (British Columbia) with Roger and Joan while Paige was off with friends. So we watched movies to stay awake for the New Year. So at midnight we shared a bottle of cheap, but good enough champagne then headed back to the Bubba Camper for crash city. The next day the family met a group of local friends for a hot dog roast on top of a local island mountain. After burning a few dogs we hiked to the top of the mountain for a group picture and look at the views. After a while it cleared a bit and we could see Mt Baker (USA) in the background. Later in the evening we gathered at a local’s house for dinner.

What they have on Salt Spring Island is a sense of community. It isn’t particularly easy living on an island even though you can buy most day-to-day goods here in the small downtown section. These folks live here because they Want to live here. Its sorta like boating. At times it isn’t easy but in the Big Picture it is the Real Deal because in addition to what you see, you are part of a special community where folks care for each other.

I was going thru some photographs this morning and came across this. I zoomed the image and saw something I didn’t see before. As you can see, this is a Mexican fishing panga. Pangas are ubiquitous here and there around the world in similar configurations but they all serve to provide a living for fishermen and their families. In nearly every case, these folks don’t have much and their boats reflect needs instead of wants. In this case, there were three men aboard. So that means this boat had to produce enough fish to pay two crew and the owner’s expenses for the boat, motor and fuel plus a profit for himself. At the retail cost of fish in Mexico, there can’t be much left over. So if you look carefully, this boat is reduced to the absolute minimum it needs to support 3 fishermen and their families. The outboard is covered by an old T shirt to preserve the paint. The running light (green bottle) has a bare bulb inside and the light I circled off the back is a bare bulb to attract fish at night. So this works and anything else would be a luxury they can’t afford.

Of course you know where this is going. Early in the VofE days we had a reader who had his heart set on a XX foot Nordhavn. It is an expensive boat for most folks including him, but this was his goal. So let’s get to the bottom line and make this simple. Instead of buying a smaller new build or a brokerage boat, he didn’t and lost his dream. In our last correspondence it appears that he will be a Dreamer forever and will have to live his cruising life thru others. This is Very Sad. I’ve said this a number of times. It’s The Life that matters. The boat is a tool to enjoy The Life. At first the boat is Everything and don’t think we were, or you will be any different. Sure, we still have tons of pride of ownership, but after doing the years and miles, we can now pass along what the real bottom line is: Do What You Can, When You Can and leave sooner than later because in many cases, later doesn’t come.

Or you will be a Dirt Dweller forever and how bad is that? Oh, I suppose you could sit at home and do Facebook, and Tweet and Surf, and live like ordinary folks with virtual travel coming between commercials. Not only that, you know where everything is at the grocery store, you can read the labels because they are in your native language, people understand what you are saying, and you think your barber listens. So I guess that is comfortable, as well as the electronic numbing but in the big picture, it’s pretty boring and predictable, isn’t it? But it’s easy riding the tide with the rest. Only a few will actually do something about it and for those few is what VofE is all about.

So after that ragging, it is my New Year’s Resolution to go easy on this type of stuff and keep my opinions to myself and make VofE more pleasant. However, you know what the Real Deal is and of course you can never fool yourself.

So today we took the ferry to the Big Island (Vancouver Island) and went to Victoria, the largest city on the island located on the SE tip. It was a late afternoon deal to visit a local museum to see a photography exhibit and pick up Roger’s Jeep someone left at the airport. The exhibit was billed as having the best animal and bird photographs in the world or something like that. Some of the shots were absolutely spectacular. Many of the winners were relatively simple opportunistic shots but the photographer made a great effort to be in a position to take the photo. It appeared, in addition to the technical portions the judges also judged on effort. One photographer dug a cave into the side of a mountain in Russia and hung out for 74 days to photograph an extremely rare big cat. On day 50 he got his shot. He took a single shot before the cat split but it was well done. Can you imagine sitting in a cave freezing in winter Russia to take a picture? Not this kid. One thing nice about an exhibit like this is they include what camera and lens was used along with the technical details. One thing for sure, looking at the wildly varied camera settings, the more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know. So anyhow, it was fun.

Then it was off to a small west coast (of Vancouver Island, British Columbia) of Tofino. One thing Tofino is known for is it’s winter surfing and storm watching. Fortunately we had great sunny weather with little wind but we did visit Long Beach where many surfers congregate. In addition to the usual surfers we saw two things we haven’t seen before. One was paddle-board* surfing and the second, a small surfing kayak. Either could easily be carried aboard. The waves were girl waves but it was still fun to watch the young people enjoying themselves in the surf. Our waiter at the resort said he is a surfer and wears a 5 mil wetsuit, hood, booties and gloves. So I suppose only your face freezes.

*Friends carry a paddle-board aboard their N. As soon as the anchor is down, the Admiral has the board in the water and she explores the anchorage standing up paddling while her other half and daughter explore in a kayak.

One thing we noticed is the logs on shore. Logs washed ashore aren’t removed in a national park and this beach was completely littered with trees. And they weren’t trucked in. So now you know why cruising folks can’t be lazy on watch in the Pacific North West and certainly can’t run at night without risk.

Roger and Joan have a raggedy old girl Jeep so we took both Jeeps out for a bit of gravel road exploring. I can’t really say it was true 4 wheeling but we were in 4WD and did climb a few hills but in the end all we did was bounce a lot and get muddy. We took an old logging road 45k’s or so to a high waterfall. Along the way we passed a few large lakes and one was full of white swans at one end. It was misty and cloudy during some sections of the trip and it was a true rainforest experience. Usually it is the north side of a tree that is covered in green moss, but here there are trees that are completely covered in bright green. However it was a beautiful day and this photograph shows how clear and still it was.

British Columbia has a LOT of trees. There are trees everywhere. Where there are old growth trees there are loggers. We saw quite a few truckloads of beautiful logs being hauled out of the forest. Some areas are cleaned up after logging and replanted and others are a pitiful waste of a natural resource with stumps and tree debris scattered everywhere.

The town of Tofino has a large marina for the size of the town and it is mostly filled with old salmon trollers. Many are for sale and there doesn’t appear to be any buyers. The quotas are small these days and the government did a drastic cut back on boats able to fish. What I always thought to be paravanes on the west coast fishing boats are actually outriggers to run multiple lines with weights to slow troll for salmon. Some boats have elaborate, individual hydraulic pulleys for each line fished. I have no idea how they ultimately land the salmon on an outrigger loaded with 4 lines, particularly if it is one of the outboard lines with the fish.

So Roger, Joan and Paige headed back to Salt Spring Island and Mary and I headed north. We moved quickly to the very top of Vancouver Island to the town of Port Hardy. So we’re in a great campground by ourselves. The Bubba Camper is plugged into shore power and the heat is on. There is rain forecast for the next 4 days but at least it is intermittent, at least so far it has been, and it is relatively warm at 40 degrees F. or around 5 degrees C. We feel lucky to have weather this good after seeing the freeze show in the U.S. and parts of Europe. In fact, Egret is enjoying much better weather in Iceland than many of these areas.

With the Bubba Camper hooked up we’ll begin Jeep exploring the back roads here at the top of the island beginning tomorrow.

OK, so we spent 2 days heading over to the west coast of the island from our campground (anchorage) base. The roads are muddy gravel so Rubi got trashed on each trip. After each trip we cleaned him up and repeated the mud fest the next day. Its sorta like jungly dinghy exploring where the dink fills up with leaves and branches and stuff and small critters and so on from narrow creeks.

The most interesting trip was to a ‘collection harbour’ off the main road along a series of logging roads. The camp site operator said it is his favorite beach. Of course it was raining buckets but off we went anyway, finally got to the end of the road and had to hike a couple k’s to the beach. At least most of the trail was thru a rain forest so we were protected from the blowing rain but not Big Drips. Once at the beach the wind was howling, blowing at least 25 or more. The camp operator said a lot of debris has been washing up along the west coast from Japan’s tsunami. On one remote beach a barge washed up. The local rangers were worried about invasive critters so it was broken up and sunk offshore. Fortunately the beach didn’t have any plastic, but it did have a ton of logs washed up on the windward side of the beach. There is a northbound countercurrent plus wave action that brings the logs ashore and why it is called a collection beach. One thing for sure, we wouldn’t wanted to have been offshore that day. In fact, after taking a few snaps we left because of the blowing rain. We can’t leave northern Vancouver Island without showing a photo of a totem pole. In Port Hardy there is an entrance to a First Nations village with totem poles on both sides. This is a portion of one totem pole.

Today we headed back south, driven not by a silly schedule per se, but by a diminishing pill supply. Yup, pills are a fact of life these days and I’m getting low on one pill so we are generally headed back to the U.S. by a different route. The Anacortes (Washington State) – Friday Harbour – Sydney (Vancouver Island) ferry made its last run today but its no big deal to catch a ferry that runs every 2 hours to Vancouver (city on the mainland) and then drive to the States. Roger and Joan (ex-N55 New Paige) wanted to get together before we left BC so we gave Roger a shout and it turns out that Paige has a Big Island basketball game so we made the push and got to watch the game. Her team won and Paige got 6 points. So that was fun.

Let’s go back to boats for a bit and talk about something that came up recently on the N Dreamers - Yahoo Groups site. This particular subject was about stability or self-righting. I used to be this way. I worried about this n’ that, HP, GPH, RPM, engine hours, and the details that in the big picture don’t really matter. I believe what happens is We Boys* get buried in Stuff, and details and what-if’s and ultimately don’t get to enjoy boating be as much because we are still trying to figure it all out. Now that we have done this for a while, been a few places it all becomes clear. What is really important is just getting out there. The rest comes naturally as the years and miles go by. What is Not Important is all the stuff you can Buy. When a Dreamer’s thread hits something to buy, it goes on forever. Postings of information quoted directly from Passagemaker** or some internet forum. If a thread begins about actual cruising, it dies quickly. Cruising is the goal, at least I think so. Perhaps not.

*Admirals are smarter than We Boys. They either buy into the deal or not. They don’t care about details and just want to get on with it. They tend to leave the little stuff to the Boy unless of course, they are the captain then they can sweat city over the what-if’s until they learn better.

So we’ll add just a bit to this deal and why ultimate stability or self righting isn’t that important for a recreational boater. We recreational boaters have simple weather rules, not the scary rules that commercial shipping or the military has. Those guys go when they have to in order to maintain a schedule. Recreational boaters shouldn’t have a schedule. Weekend boaters for the most part can just look outside for weather. More intrepid cruises can look for coming weather on the internet, thru an Iridium phone to a software program like ocens.com (we use) or a professional forecaster (we use as well).

For serious cruising, the basic bible for Ocean Routes of the World is named just that and is written by Jimmie Cornell. Every long distance cruiser, power or sail, should have a copy on board. It’s simple. Pick where you would like to depart from and where you would like to go, look it up and there is a very good outline of yearly weather timing. In addition, www.noonsite.com has a ton of great information written by cruisers, for cruisers with no venue. Seven Seas Cruising Association is a world-wide cruising organization with 10,000 members just like you or hopefully will be. They print a Commodore’s Bulletin that has informative articles written by just plain folks who Did The Deal and are Doing The Deal and writing about it. None of these folks get paid, they are just returning the favors of those who went before them and passed along their information. Years of Bulletins are available on a mulit-year CD and are searchable by geographic areas among other things. So if you follow the rules and educate yourself by reading what real cruisers are doing and have done, you will be way ahead. So I suppose what I’m saying is, if you follow the rules, self-righting isn’t the slightest concern because you will never allow yourself to get caught in off-season weather. On season weather is very safe. Nor is the latest widget.

**Passagemaker seems to be returning to its glory years of a few years back before the crash. Mary bought a copy yesterday and it has regained some of its heft and there were a couple articles about boats that are ‘out there’ that in years past would have been in the July/August Bluewater Edition. So that’s a good thing.

PMM probably was the largest influence of many that caused us to make the decision we did and go where we chose. What cemented what boat to buy came after 4 years of looking and learning was from a Florida Trawlerfest, which is run these days by PMM’s media group. Our original intent was to sell Proud Mary, our 32’ Grand Banks, buy a larger brokerage Grand Banks and follow the sun north and south (East Coast of the U.S. and Bahamas), plus keep the weekend home in the Florida Keys. At the Trawlerfest I disappeared for a while and Mary found me in the engine room of an early N57. It was out of our price range but on the way home Mary kept going on and on about the N and that’s how it came together.

Having co-owned a boat building company during the 90’s and sold most of the production myself, I learned that it is always something that triggers the sale. In our case, because the boats were so expensive it wasn’t the price. There were no deals because everyone paid exactly the same. The buyers knew they were expensive but they were still looking for something more, something to trigger the sale because they Wanted One. There are as many stories as boat sales but what triggered Mary to want, crave and desire an N at the expense of our previous plans, was the attention to detail. If I could sum it up in a word, she felt SAFE. The interior fluff and puff didn’t even begin to sell the boat. It was the engine room detail and joinery work. The rest is history.

After that rambling, it is our pleasure to announce that Egret will be on the cover of the March issue of Passagemaker Magazine along with a short article, carved from a masterpiece….grrrrr. So it’s a March issue with a Whales and Ice article, not a July edition. So that’s pretty cool. Perhaps it’s time to sign up for PMM if you don’t already subscribe. I suppose I should also let you know there is a girl way to get PMM. For geekers, or just perhaps someone less cave like, there is an E version. Yea, its cheaper, probably the cost of a couple bottles of cheap but good enough wine, but you don’t get to hold it and smell the salt.

So now we’re on anchor in Vancouver Island’s main city and provincial government hub, Victoria. Years ago we chartered a Grand Banks from then Pacific Yachts Northwest and spent a night and day in Victoria. We went to the Inner Harbour marina and docked under the Empress Hotel and we felt like we were in Europe. It was magic. Fast forward a few years and Bubba is anchored across the bay in a marina and RV park. When looking up campgrounds on the GPS we saw marina and RV so with marina thrown into the mix, off we went. The marina is clean and has first class boats, plus there is a section of upscale enginless floating homes in the marina as well. Roger, Joan and Paige came over to spend a couple days with us before we headed back to the States. So we did some tourist stuff, walked along the boardwalk and just talked. Roger and I could talk about boats and long range plans forever, so any time we gettogether it’s a real treat.

Later, Mary and I took an evening stroll along the waterfront walk to town and back, about 45 minutes each way. We arrived just before dark. The waterfront is still lit up with lights from the holidays and its beautiful. This is the Legislature Building. In fact, few if any waterfronts in our travels are as nice. The British Columbia folks have it figured out. The waterfront is nice but not sterile, or resort like. There are a couple ferries, private boats, fishing boats, both large and small along with two pontoons of single and twin otter seaplanes. These guys take off one after another at 0800 in the busy early morning heading who knows where. I think their single engine seaplanes are the coolest planes in the world. If we had won Powerball (I read the chances of winning are like getting struck by lightening at the same time being eaten by a shark) we would have one with a pilot. So we walked around town and enjoyed the sights.

We have a problem here. There is no easy way to get internet. The local provider doesn’t have a plan by the day or week or a small amount of data. The marina restaurant has wifi but you need to be a customer of the local provider. So we have been dragging out this VofE. Hopefully tomorrow we can find a Starbucks or the like to fire this posting into space. In the meantime we’ll keep playing like always.

So we’ll leave you with a wild and crazy picture. A cruising friend who is an Applephyle and also a SSB/Hamophyle sent us a few photos from his “shoe phone”. We don’t have a shoe phone but here’s a Shoe Tree we ran across a couple days ago on a remote gravel road in northern Vancouver Island. Is this wild or what?

Ciao.

Egret is for sale. http://youtu.be/AAR5wK-sWRs

Ed. Note - The glossary of Egretism terms will be posted on the Captain's Log home page for easy reference.

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