Kevin, the Paraclete water taxi’s skipper, helps unload my lumber upon arrival at Center Island. The Paraclete is our primary link to Anacortes and the mainland.

CONNECTING WITH THE OUTSIDE WORLD is not as easy for us islanders as for most people. In the midst of a pandemic that’s probably a good thing. But it also poses challenges when it comes time for, say, summer home repairs.

I made such a trip yesterday with a load of lumber and supplies to rebuild the front steps of The Nuthatch cabin. The cabin is more than 20 years old now, and in Center Island’s marine climate that means its time to rebuild outdoor structures such as wooden decks and stairways that are subject to water infiltration, mossy growth and rot.

Living on a remote island makes you an expert list maker, because if you get all the shopping done and something you needed wasn’t on the list, it’s not a quick trip down the street to make up for the lack.

I spent hours at Home Depot and Lowe’s in Burlington and Mount Vernon yesterday, picking out all the lumber, nuts, bolts and screws needed for my project.

Another challenge came in fitting everything in to our car. We have a pickup truck, but we keep it on Lopez Island. For mainland transportation, we rely on our Honda Civic sedan, which we keep parked at Skyline Marina in Anacortes.

You might be surprised how much lumber can be carried in a Civic. The trick: The rear seatback can be folded down, connecting the trunk space with the passenger compartment. I always feel like a Vegas magician when people watch me load 8-foot planks into the trunk of my small car. (Threaded between the front seats, they reach just short of the gearshift. I lash them in place so a quick stop doesn’t pop the gearshift into reverse.)

At Skyline, the Paraclete’s home base, I loaded the supplies into a dock cart.  As usual, the boat’s skipper and crew member volunteered to help wheel the supplies down a ramp to the salty 45-foot, 34-passenger motor vessel that has been serving the San Juans’ “outer islands” such as ours for many years. The 35-minute trip across Rosario Strait and into Lopez Sound costs $38 per person, including cargo in most cases.

Of course, no list maker is perfect. Today, as I tore apart our old front steps, I discovered rot in some timbers that I thought would be reusable. So, tomorrow my neighbor John (The Mad Birder) will kindly give me a ride to Hunter Bay public dock on Lopez Island, where Lopez-based Sunset Building Supply will deliver enough lumber to complete the project.

Connections come in many forms and from many directions when you live on a remote island.  Like Messrs. Lennon and McCartney, we get by with a little help from our friends. The view from the stern, looking eastward across Rosario Strait toward Burrows and Fidalgo islands, at right, with Bird Rocks at left.

 

 

They really do use horses at Lopez Island’s Horse Drawn Farm. We spotted this leggy colt on a recent visit to the farm stand.

IT’S HIGH SEASON at Horse Drawn Farm, our favorite purveyor of fresh produce on Lopez Island.

And when we visited the farm stand recently, there was also a new horse — a handsome, well-muscled young colt, apparently the next generation of the draft horses that farmers Ken Akopiantz and Kathryn Thomas use to plow their fields. (The farm’s name is for real.)

And there were goats, which we hadn’t seen before, including one sitting on a rock.

I got to know this farm in 2014 when I wrote a piece for the Seattle Times Sunday magazine about Akopiantz’s role in banning GMO crops in San Juan County. Happily, little has changed there — except for the new horse. And the rock-sitting goat. Here’s a look.

King of the mountain? Or the rock, anyway.

The very pretty produce cooler at the farm stand in July.

Barbara buys Swiss chard at the serve-yourself checkout counter. Sweet-pea bouquets add a heavenly aroma to the experience.

You might share your shopping experience with a chicken at the Horse Drawn Farm stand.

The farm stand occupies a weathered old barn, reached by a .3-mile long gravel driveway off Port Stanley Road. It’s open daily in summer.

WeLike shows off her new canvas camper top, fresh paint and polish at the Hunter Bay public dock on Lopez Island.

ALL DRESSED UP, with someplace to go.

That’s the case with WeLike, our 1957 Skagit Express Cruiser, the little 20-foot runabout built (and restored) in LaConner, just 16 miles from our island home.

As promised, here are photos of the boat with her new canvas camper top, designed and created by Jim Smith of Harbor Canvas Designs in Coupeville. Jim gets 5 stars for quality work delivered as promised.

As soon as we got the boat back from Whidbey Island, we took her out of the water at Center Island and I spent 10 days painting and polishing, so she looks better than ever.  Considering that WeLike is just a year younger than I am, I know she needs regular TLC.

Now it’s time to play. Barbara and I hope to get up to Sucia Island, one of our favorite places in the San Juan Islands — and on Earth, for that matter — in a week or so for a couple nights of boat camping. The boat has a cozy cuddy cabin complete with memory-foam mattress, his-and-her reading lights, classic built-in wooden lockers, electric fan and a neatly hidden Porta-Potty. The cabin features a fold-out cooking counter, galley storage, a portable butane stove and a stainless-steel sink with pressurized water.

To our boater friends, may the wind be always at your back — and at WeLike’s, too, while I’m thinking about it.

Kent Schaefer, Center Island’s handyman and jack-of-all-trades, supervises as the Nuthatch cabin’s septic tank gets pumped out.

GOT A SEPTIC TANK? Then it’s no news to you that life can stink when things go wrong.

When we bought our place on Center Island in the fall of 2003, it was our first investment in a home with a septic system.

It was a relatively new system for a relatively new cabin. It was in the ground. It had passed inspections. What was there to worry about? We didn’t even have to pay pesky monthly sewer fees.

The fact that we visited our cabin only once a month led us to believe that the septic system was fine. “Out of sight, out of mind” never applied more aptly.

After a few years, we got a card in the mail from San Juan County saying our septic system was due for inspection. But we’d hardly used it, and while we have a nice view of the water through the trees, even if our septic tank suffered a catastrophic failure there’s no way any leakage would reach Lopez Sound to harm salmon fingerlings or other sensitive inhabitants of our local biosphere (I thought).

So the reminder card, and, to be honest, the next few after it, got tucked away in a “someday I’ll get to this” file.

Eventually a letter came informing us that, having ignored the previous polite postcards, we would be subject to a fine if we didn’t have the inspection done pretty darn soon.

So, I hired the island handyman to do the inspection ($250). He measured the tank’s gunk, filed a report with the county, and told us we were due for a pumpout, which he could also arrange ($1,000 more). So much for paying no sewer fees. They always get you in the end (so to speak).

Three years later, another card came in the mail. Inspection time again!

It was, ahem, a shitty job, but I wasn’t going to pay $250 to someone else to do the inspection again. I signed up for a free training session with the county and spent a morning in Friday Harbor learning how to do my own septic inspection. Got educated about the scum layer and the sludge layer and why two-ply toilet paper is better than one-ply (other than the fingers-break-through-thin-toilet-paper-and-nobody-wants-that factor). Hint: One-ply dissolves too quickly and can plug up the tiny tubes in your drainage field. (It still seems counterintuitive to me.)

The county septic-system overseer, a guy you might call the Grand Poobah of Poop, got my attention when he told us that our septic system was “the most expensive home appliance we would ever own.”

It’s true. If the septic system fails, we could face a bill of $20,000 to $40,000 to replace it. Oh, crap.

So I went to Lowe’s and got the prescribed lengths of PVC pipe and glued them together to fashion  a DIY sludge-and-scum measuring device. Did the numbers, sent in the report, and found that we were almost due for another pumpout, four years after the first.

We were on the cusp. But it was close enough that I contacted my friend the handyman, who put us on “his list.” At his arrangement, a while back a big tank truck came on a barge to Center Island and spent the afternoon gingerly navigating our cow-path roads to pump out the muck and mire generated by a half-dozen island homes, including ours. This time our bill was $1,100. (Everyone’s costs are going up, a guy’s gotta make a profit, that barge doesn’t come cheap, etc.)

I guess it’s better than the outhouse days. A few of those can still be seen, unpainted and unloved, tucked in forlorn thickets behind some of the island’s older cabins. I don’t think any are still in active use. And so far, I’ve not seen any of them tipped over on Halloween.

But you know, things do get kind of slow around here in October…

 

 

Our micro-farming has rewarded us with a bushy abundance of kale in a rail-mounted planter, once the squirrels decided it was too healthful for their tastes.

OUR  HORTICULTURAL EFFORTS have met with meager results on our little piece of the rock — until now.

There is a real farm on Center Island, a 10-acre spread not far from our cabin. It is mostly idyllic pasture land dotted with groves of stately madronas and cedars, occupied by happily retired horses and pampered old chickens. Our friend Monique works wonders with her organic garden there and kindly shares occasional treats of cracking-good snap peas or tender crimson strawberries, as well as selling us beautiful brown or greenish-blue eggs, each marked in pencil with the date when laid by one of her “girls.” (It’s a special treat to fry up an egg jotted with “Easter” or “Mother’s Day.”)

Our rocky promontory doesn’t have soil suited to an in-the-ground garden. Efforts at growing vegetables in pots on our deck have mostly met with disappointment, stymied by our property’s limited sunlight (but oh, those gorgeous tall firs!). There were the long-pampered tomatoes that were just finally starting to ripen in September, only to be raided by deer so bold as to clamber on to our cedar deck. All they left behind were tragically denuded stalks — and the gardener’s tears.

But finally, we have success: Kale!

A yard-long planter hung from our deck railing and protected from deer by a strategically placed gate has yielded a nice little crop of vitamin-packed greens, thriving in our cool island climate.

Tonight we enjoyed the first harvest. We dined on Barbara’s delicious homemade pizza trimmed with kale, black olives, pineapple and vegan cheeses.

The only challenge to this horticultural endeavor came early on when a squirrel, hopping along the deck railing on its way to another felonious assault on our birdfeeder, paused to sample a few nibbles of baby kale. Happily, our homegrown greens apparently held no more appeal to the squirrel than they would to a finicky four-year-old of the human variety.

That’s fine with us. We’re ready to move beyond monoculture next year. Anybody know how squirrels feel about spinach?

My dad, Joe Cantwell, was among the legions of young, GI Bill-educated engineers who flocked to Seattle after World War II to work for Boeing. He imparted a love of the outdoors and the Cascade Mountains in his children (from left), Tom, Marcia, Brian and Doug.

TO ALL THE DADS out there, happy Father’s Day.

Barbara and I enjoyed a Skype breakfast with daughter Lillian. We all had waffles. I got a big, sweet dose of love from my wife and daughter, and some sweet gifts as well.

Thinking of my dad recently, I wrote an essay that my alma mater, The Seattle Times, published today (along with photos, including the one above). I’m getting nice comments and emails from old friends as well as people I’ve never met, which is another delightful gift. Here’s a link to the Times piece.

Photographed through the windshield,  WeLike’s cabin roof and vintage navigation light form the foreground in this view of the Deception Pass Bridge on a June morning.

SUMMER ARRIVED A DAY EARLY in the San Juans, it seemed. Barbara and I just spent a lovely Friday afternoon sitting outside on our deck, sipping wine, chatting lazily and soaking up sun. Bumblebees nuzzled the magenta foxglove flowers growing on our mossy cliff and birds sang their little hearts out, triumphing over the happily distant but somehow pleasantly domestic buzz of a neighbor’s weed whacker. Ahhh. (Even better that it’s him and not me.)

Tomorrow is the summer solstice, but in this typical Northwest June, rain is in the forecast.

As we finished our wine, the afternoon’s delicious warmth slipped a cog, as we’ve often experienced in these islands, when a breath of cool marine air suddenly whispered in our ears, “I’m the front of the front.”

The exciting news of our Friday came from Jim Smith, a marine canvasmaker on Whidbey Island, who emailed this morning to say that our boat would be ready by day’s end.

WeLike, the restored 1957 Skagit Express Cruiser you see at the top of this blog, needed new clothes — or, to be precise, a new canvas dodger and camper top, the roof and cockpit enclosure that provides shelter from wind, rain and sun.

The old white canvas seemed in good shape when we acquired the boat, and the material remained sound. But a few months ago, the seams all decided to start letting go, like the ripping trousers of a fat man who finally added five pounds too many. If you don’t pay the price for high-quality UV-proof stitching up front, you pay the price later. (Or, in this case, we are paying the price later.)

So WeLike is getting a new top, in UV-proof Sunbrella fabric and using polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) “lifetime” thread, which is supposed to stand up to just about anything the elements can throw at it. Instead of white, the new top will be aquamarine, matching the boat’s topsides.

It’s a big investment, but this will be our island runabout for years to come, and it will also be our vacation vehicle this summer. With COVID-19 truncating other travel plans, we hope to buzz around these islands and do some fun boat camping with our new weatherproof camper top.

The boat has been at Oak Harbor Marina the past two weeks for this project. We plan to go pick it up early next week. I’ll post pictures.

Meanwhile, atop this post is a photo I took two weeks ago when I took WeLike through Deception Pass on the way to Oak Harbor. It’s always a scenic ride going that way.

Happy solstice, wherever you are. To all my Northern Hemisphere readers — enjoy the summer!

P.S. If you’re getting sick of reading about how perfect life can be on our island, you can take comfort in knowing that yesterday a deer climbed on to our deck, walked 15 feet across it to a low-hanging basket of fuchsias that had finally turned the corner in my efforts to keep them healthy, and ate every blossom.

The upraised beaks of two hummingbird chicks are seen protruding from their tiny nest of lichen in this photo taken by John S. Farnsworth, aka Neighbor John the Mad Birder.

THESE TROUBLED TIMES are lightened for us by the wonders of nature, and the continued delight of getting better acquainted with birds as they migrate here and back again, build nests and raise offspring.

Having a next-door neighbor who is such an authority on birds adds to our enjoyment and education. Neighbor John the Mad Birder, as you may have come to know him in these columns, is John S. Farnsworth PhD, an emeritus professor in environmental studies and sciences from California’s Santa Clara University, and a member of the board of Seattle Audubon. John and his wife, Carol Farnsworth, relocated to Center Island about the same time we did.

From their window, Carol recently spotted a hummingbird nest on a limb, maybe eight feet off the ground, of one of the evergreens between our cabins. John shared this photo he captured of a parent and two hatchlings. He also let us get a close-up look through his spotting scope.

The nest is a marvelous construction of lichen lined with moss and spider-web silk to make it soft and cozy.

These are Anna’s Hummingbirds (Calypte anna), among the most common hummers on the West Coast. Through the scope, I saw one of the chicks experiment with poking its long tongue out, reaching well into the air like one of those birthday-party noisemakers that you blow into. John said he observed a chick preening at the edge of the nest on Monday, which, according to Cornell University (among the nation’s leading sources of research on birds), indicates the chicks hatched about 20 days earlier.

The Mad Birder estimates they should be ready to leave the nest three or four days from now.

It’s wild-rose time in the San Juans. Stick your nose up to one of these hot-pink Nootka roses for a potent dose of quintessential rose scent. These are seen from our favorite picnic bench on Lopez Island. The San Juan Islands remain closed to non-essential travel because of COVID-19, but are expected to reopen to visitors by mid- to late June. Get updates here, or give us a call on Center Island.

A SEATTLE TIMES EDITOR was well-known for her, shall we say, carrying voice and raucous laugh. Even if my colleagues and I never saw her, we all knew when she was in the newsroom, even if she was on the far side of the building.

It’s been like that with the arrival on Center Island this past week of an old friend. So far I’ve heard but not seen this migratory newcomer known for his distinctive song that resembles a farmhand’s pub order after a long day of slopping the hogs: “Quick, three beers!”

Yes, it’s every birder’s old drinking buddy, the Olive-sided Flycatcher.

“A little early in the day for me,” I quipped this morning to neighbor John, the Mad Birder, when I heard the unmistakable “three beers” refrain ring out from a nearby tree. Chuckling, he noted that the American Goldfinch, of which Center Island has many right now — including crowds of fumbling, newly fledged youngsters — have a call thought to sound like “potato chip, potato chip.” So, when he hears the two birds together, he’s ready for happy hour.

I have a new home brew that I bottled just about the same day the Flycatchers showed up, so I’ve named the beer accordingly: Flycatcher Quick 3 Beers! IPA.

I should probably have included one of those “Enjoy Responsibly” disclaimers on the label, eh?

Stay safe, stay healthy, and have a good weekend.