Blog

Last summer's cruise was kind of an epic cruise, at least by our standards.  Five different crews, about a month total duration, and Kenmore Air crew swaps at Princess Louisa Inlet.  The year after a cruise like that, we go more low-key.  For example when we went to Desolation Sound, the next year we went to Alderbrook on Hood Canal.  This is one of those years:  the family cruise destination is...Olympia.  It is kind of cool to think the boat will have covered the Washington Marine Parks from their far north to their far south within a few weeks' span.

When I purchased Aeolus it had four separate jacks, fittings, and mounts on the port side inner cockpit coaming.  I used all of them at one time or another, but always found their placement problematic at best and their utility marginal. The Pretorien cockpit is already pretty tight, and it doesn't help to have one side burdened by all of these pokey bits jabbing you in your back right in the prime seating positions.

The family summer cruise this year is to Olympia, doing up the south sound.  That didn't seem like quite enough to me so I put the word out I was looking to do a 5 - 9 day cruise to the San Juan Islands.  I was fortunate and received a favorable response from a friend who put together the rest of the crew for the trip.  Several of them participated in last year's cruise to Princess Louisa Inlet, but they had never cruised in the San Juan Islands.  We set off on August 4 for a nine day trip with the following itinerary intended to make the most of a relatively short trip and several schedule constraints: