THE GOLDFINCHES, LIKE US, are new to this corner of Center Island, a delightful couple, though somewhat flashy dressers.

Likewise this is the first season we’ve seen the brown-headed cowbird at our cabin feeders. They’re pleasant enough, but their tendency to lay their eggs in other birds’ nests puts them several pegs down on the social scale. Come on, guys, if you’re going to have kids it’s time to shoulder the responsibility.

The hummingbirds — well, we’ve never seen so many, and they’ve put a serious dent in our supply of Perky Pet instant nectar mix (which no longer comes with red dye, so I’m not sure we’re paying for anything more than, uh, white sugar).

Watching the birds, and keeping eyes peeled for newcomers, is a happy part of our new daily routine. We have several bird guides, but our favorite quick reference is a fold-out waterproof field guide, Sibley’s Backyard Birds of the Pacific Northwest.

Keeping the feeders supplied at first seemed a challenge on this island with no stores, but we’ve discovered we can order 25-pound bags of bird seed through Amazon, delivered to our island mail shack by the U.S. Postal Service, bless ’em.

Now here’s a poser: In a pure pandering mood, we’ve tried giving the birds straight black-oil sunflower seeds (the high-priced bird food), like those houses that give out full-size Snickers bars at Halloween. But oddly that doesn’t seem to bring the birds as much as the lower-priced “mystery mix” of sunflower, millet, cracked corn and other tiny, white unidentifiable seeds that resemble something that gets stuck on your socks when you walk through an unmowed meadow. The birds still fling the small stuff all over the ground in their hunt for sunflower seeds, but it seems to make them happiest. It’s like a hobby.

In our new hermit-like existence we’re pleased to find we can still tune into KNKX public radio on our 25-year-old clock radio and listen to BirdNote anytime we want to wake up as early as 6:30 (or, ahem, if we laze in the sack until it’s repeated at 9 — not that we do that much). Among other points of interest the program helps tune us into interesting bird songs.

Oh, an exciting first-timer at the kitchen-window feeder yesterday: a female black-headed grosbeak, which is a pretty darned big songbird, almost like a small owl. One of our books describes the bird’s song as “rich and warbling, with some wolf-whistlelike phrases; call is a sharp eek.” That I’ve got to listen for. 

BARBARA AND I SURVIVED the Longest Tuesday, and our 13-year-old Ford Ranger with locking canopy — our Chariot of Backfire — is now parked on Lopez Island awaiting our whim.

It was a good end to a challenging day.

Out of the cabin at 6:35 on a pristine, calm and quiet May morning, the day after Memorial Day. The 2.5-watt solar charger I set up for WeLike’s batteries has performed well so far and the boat’s big outboard started right up — a concern, since we have no dock power to keep batteries topped up at our Center Island moorage.

We tootled across Lopez Sound, past Rim, Ram and Rum islands, to the Hunter Bay public dock, just less than 3 miles away, and I demonstrated that, yes, he CAN be taught, by pulling into a small dock space without ramming anything (we won’t go into the history on that issue just now).

Barbara had offered to stay with the boat — she doesn’t mind a day of reading — while I made the excursion to Skagit County to retrieve the Ranger, which we had left parked a week ago on a back street near Anacortes’ Skyline Marina. My day would also involve dashing about on shopping errands for needed groceries and for supplies for various projects we want to accomplish on the WeLike and around our new home. (My most unusual purchase of the day was an extending fiberglass and aluminum pole threaded to hold a scrub brush, and designed to extend to 23 feet, so I can scrub several years’ worth of dust, tree pollen, and lichen off our cabin’s peaked metal roof.)

Getting there was half the fun. But you had to really like bike riding.

I do, luckily. Through maneuvers I wouldn’t have wanted preserved on video Barbara and I managed to get my bike aboard WeLike, whose cockpit is enclosed by a full canvas canopy that can make simply boarding her an exercise in doing the limbo. At Hunter Bay, we reassembled the bike, and I donned my day-glo cycling jacket, kissed my wife and headed toward the Lopez ferry terminal, about 12 miles away.

Unfortunately, the Hunter Bay dock is at the bottom of a very steep hill, so I ended up pushing my bike uphill for the first half-mile, puffing like a birthday-candle challenged octogenarian. (Lopez is known as the San Juans’ best cycling island, because it so flat. Ha, I say!)

Once up the hill, though, it was a treat. I biked through quiet woods where deer watched me pass. A little boy waiting for a school bus on a lonely road was surprised to see me, and waved. I found a route on some of the quieter byways, with farm pastures lined by hedges of blooming pink Nootka roses that sweetened the air. My route took me past the glittering water of Fisherman Bay, and I detoured briefly into Lopez village to buy a bottle of water at the supermarket. This was a chore, of sorts, and a challenge for sure, but not so bad a way to start the day.

I ended up pushing my bike again, up the final hill before zooming down to the ferry dock, speeding happily past a long line of cars waiting for the 9:30 boat. Which didn’t end up leaving until 10:05. So I had time to buy a $1 used J.A. Jance paperback in the little waiting room (a benefit for the highly regarded Lopez library) and change into a sweat-free T-shirt for my day of errands.

The next ferry back from Anacortes that would give me a few hours of shopping time at the big stores in nearby Burlington departed at 4:30 p.m. I had made a ferry reservation — you can do that now — so I didn’t want to miss that boat. Besides which, Barbara was waiting, and it turned out her cell phone had no service, so all she could do was have faith that I’d show up on time.

It all worked out. I sped around Home Depot and Fred Meyer, slinging things into my cart, and did my best to melt down the Visa card once again. (Can’t wait for those pension payments to start on Friday!)

Back on the island, we loaded many bags of groceries and supplies aboard WeLike, along with my island bike and a 5-gallon jug of non-ethanol gasoline to feed the old boat’s expensive tastes. The newly painted waterline dipped slowly beneath the waves. In a breezy late afternoon with whitecaps all around, we cruised slowly and carefully back to Center Island.

It was 9 p.m. by the time we’d eaten dinner back at the cabin. We fell into bed and slept the sleep of the weary but accomplished islander.

I can’t wait for more explorations of Lopez, or jaunts to one of the local farms for fresh eggs or produce. Inside the canopy of that pickup: another old bicycle. But next time maybe I’ll drive to the top of that hill. 

COMMUNICATING FROM THE MOON IS HOW IT FEELS, a bit, now that The Nuthatch has a land-line phone that works and we are finally guaranteed contact with the outside world. “One giant step…” (We must acknowledge, of course, that we’re technological dinosaurs, yearning for a land line when most In-Touch 21st-Century Modernists are dumping that antiquated service. But cell-phone signals on our “outer island,” as the phone installer liked to call it, are about as reliable as nursing-home bowel movements.)

The big headline, however, is that we have internet now. Our Wi-Fi in the Woods even lets me stream Amazon Prime video so I can watch the latest Harry Bosch episodes on my laptop.

It also means I have no excuse not to blog, so here I am.

Frankly, I’ve been too busy in recent weeks making this whole island escape happen to write much about it. Moving all your stuff to a little island without regular ferry service is like an ongoing game of Tetris: We have the boat here now, but our Ranger pickup (acquired a year ago, as we anticipated this jump off the Cliffs of Insanity) is parked on a back street in Anacortes, with the boat trailer stored in a nearby lot. Next Tuesday, we plan to squeeze my slightly rusty island bike (the old green GT hybrid that has lived here for 14 years) on board our little runabout and ferry it 3 miles to the public dock at Hunter Bay on Lopez Island. Then I’ll cycle 12 miles to catch the Washington State Ferries boat to Anacortes, pick up the pickup, throw the bike in back, run some errands, then bring the truck to Lopez on the state ferry and drive back to Hunter Bay, where we’ll park it (with a special permit from San Juan County) until our next foray to the bright lights. Next magic trick: getting the trailer here.

Our new old (1957) boat is key to our existence. Last weekend, we spent three busy days spiffing her up in Skyline Marine’s DIY boatyard in Anacortes. We applied new paint to bottom and transom, did some minor repairs, waxed and polished, and reapplied the name she was given by her original owners in 1957: WeLike. It’s a corny, whimsical name for a boat, and it fits her fine.

 

We also had lunch at the La Conner Brewing pub with WeLike’s saviors, Scott and Fran McDade, the La Conner couple who found an old boat (built in their town) in need of rescuing and rebuilt the cabin from the sole up in 2009.  They shared tales and photos of her comeback and we found a couple of new friends who have promised to come visit this summer.

 

The boat had sat on its trailer in covered storage all winter and I’d never piloted her on my own before we launched at Skyline last Monday. I felt trepidatious as to whether WeLike’s modern Evinrude — a computerized 90-horse E-TEC outboard — would start right up or leave us stranded at the launch site, but with some last- minute phone tips from Scott, it purred like our lovable 15-year-old tuxedo cat, Bosun. WeLike delivered us without a hitch across 5-mile-wide Rosario Strait to Center Island on a sun-kissed May afternoon.

Two days later we took the boat to meet Ken, the CenturyLink phone installer, at Hunter Bay dock and gave him a ride to our island so he could hook up our new service. He needed to borrow a cordless drill from the island’s caretaker and a few wood screws from my hardware stash, but that’s how things happen in these islands and we got ‘er done.

This is our new Tranquility Base. Coming soon: attempts at staying fit on a small island; growing a garden where there are so many deer and squirrels; the coming summer water shortage; and managing trash disposal where there is none. Never dull. 

A MONTH AGO TODAY, another Monday, was my last day of work (and of my ill-timed ER visit). We’ve been on Center Island a week. Today is cloudless and it’s 72 degrees on the deck of our cabin, which we’ve renamed The Nuthatch, in part to commemorate one of my favorite visitors to our birdfeeders, and also to denote the loony lifestyle on which we’ve embarked on this remote little island that we’re told gets “very quiet in February.”

Today, the birdies are singing their hearts out – Barbara just alerted me to a goldfinch at the feeder – and a big powerboat is laboring its way past us on Lopez Sound. There are chips and a cold Pacific Rain beer on the arm of my Adirondack chair to keep body and soul together while I re-read a favorite old Herb Payson sailing adventure. Life is OK.

There’s a story or two behind why I haven’t written sooner. One of them has to do with my new pen-pal relationship with the CEO of CenturyLink, the phone company that provides land-line phone service and internet on our island (and also claims naming rights to the Seahawks’ stadium).

We don’t have reliable phone or internet yet, and won’t for another 10 days or so, but not for lack of trying. One of the challenges of living on a tiny island nobody’s heard of is that, well, nobody’s heard of you. And when I called CenturyLink to set up service – just like the service my island neighbors already have – I spoke to one service rep after another, and nobody would admit that our island existed. “Sorry, that address doesn’t come up on my computer,” they’d say, and I’d (once again) explain that we get daily mail delivery (to a charming little mail shack up by our grass air strip) but that our ZIP code is the same as for the town of Anacortes, about 5 sea miles away, across Rosario Strait, in a different county (Skagit, not San Juan).

And while we formerly used a plat number as our address (which, just to confuse things, is still used for our box number in the mail shack) we now have a formal street address assigned a couple years ago by the San Juan County engineer (though nobody on the island actually has those street numbers on their cabins, because it just seems silly in a place where the “streets” are one-lane and gravel, there is no fire department and a cop car has never set tire here).

But there’s a utility post out in front of our place that warns me not to dig because of buried phone lines, I tell the CenturyLink service rep. And though we’ve not used it before, I know there’s a coaxial line coming into the crawl space under the cabin.

I get nowhere with them.

I try another idea – talking to an actual live person at a CenturyLink retail store in Seattle. I call first to ask if they think they could help me if I come in. “Sure!” says the friendly fellow on the phone. (But why don’t you tell me about what you need before wasting a trip in.)

So I end up just talking to another person on the phone, though I have the solace of knowing this person is at least in the same hemisphere.

He’s a little flummoxed by my address, too, but promises to consult with “the engineers” to find out what he can about Center Island.

And he does call back a while later, to tell me I can have phone service but no internet. “Oh, why is that? My neighbors have your internet! Is the internet all used up?”

He doesn’t really know, I’d have to call the engineers and find out, so he gives me their number.

I call, and end up just getting another customer-service rep, who says my address doesn’t exist and sorry, they can’t help me.

So Barbara, who has worked most of her life in libraries and knows how to research things, gives me the email addresses for the CEO and two top VPs at CenturyLink, based in Louisiana.

I dash off a note, explaining that communication is important to us on our remote island, my wife has health issues, etc. An hour later I get a phone call from CenturyLink’s regional manager, in Denver, who is determined to help me. Wheeling squeakily can get results.

Even he at one point is stymied at finding our little island in their big system, but a day or two later he discovers the key player: a guy named Jason, or Jared, or some J name, who works in their Gig Harbor retail store, several counties away from us. Somehow, mysteriously, he’s the guy who knows about Center Island.

So we have a May 23 appointment with an installer, who visits “the outer islands” of the San Juans on the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month, and we have high hopes. One catch: We have to give him a boat ride from the public dock on Lopez Island. We’re hoping to have our boat, the WeLike, here by the 22^nd.

Meanwhile, we’re checking our email at the community association clubhouse on the other side of the island, and trying to put up with the interesting little challenges of island life.

It might be time for another beer. 

NEARING THE END of our long residence at Seattle’s Shilshole Bay Marina, we’ve been bidding farewell to longtime boat neighbors: the family with the 4-year-old, who just moved from a sailboat to a big power boat because sometimes you just need more room with an energetic little boy; the sailing woman who shared her plans to crew aboard a small cruise-explorer ship in Alaska this summer; the newlyweds with the French bulldog who gets walked and walked and walked. Monday, we have one-way reservations on the water taxi to Center Island.

This past week on our dear old Sogni d’Oro we tiled the galley counter; replaced Old Drippy, the faucet, with a spiffy new one; repaired the bilge pump (always a favorite place to hang my head on a nice spring day — NOT), painted some bulkheads, put new mahogany stain on others, and generally freshened things up for the new tenant. While we wish we’d done all this stuff for ourselves before leaving, it’s nice to know that our daughter gets the benefit, rather than some stranger, which happens when you sell a boat.

Here’s a photo of a marina neighbor who met us on the dock one morning this week. Barbara says she won’t miss him. (I think it has to do with the big yellow teeth that he bared when we went to climb aboard the boat.) 

HERE’S A NOTE I SENT to my Seattle Times colleagues Tuesday morning:

“Yesterday afternoon when I should have been carefreely cleaning out my desk on my way to a happy-go-lucky retirement, I instead spent several agonizing hours in the Swedish Hospital ER with a highly unpleasant kidney-stone episode. If you thought I disappeared without saying goodbye, you’re right, because I could hardly speak by the time my dear wife arrived to rescue me around 1 p.m. It was my first time for such an episode, but I’d always heard they come on like a speeding dump truck and that it feels like you just got run over by said truck. I can now attest to that!”

So the final day at the Times didn’t quite go as planned, and I got one of those “you’re not a blooming youth anymore” reminders. (It’s one good reason not to wait too long to ditch the office, fellow codgers.) This particular reminder came with really stupid timing.

I was back in the office on Wednesday. Barbara kindly joined me to help clean out my desk since I was still feeling tender.

When the time came I bid goodbye to some of my co-workers, and as we started to carry out a couple of boxes full of my desk detritus – family photos, old postcards, travel sections I wanted to keep, etc. – something happened that I totally didn’t expect (and doubt that I deserved): My newsroom colleagues started applauding. It started in one corner and spread across the room as we walked, until it was almost overwhelming.

I looked around at the many smiling faces. Maybe they were glad to see me go, my wife joked. But I knew the truth: They’re just nice and decent people. That’s the Seattle Times way, and I was honored and touched by the gesture of camaraderie. It reminded me that ditching the office has its tradeoffs, because I no longer have that roomful of good people watching my back — not just professionally, but emotionally as well.

Now it’s Friday, a beautiful, sunny spring morning at Shilshole Marina and it feels like the real first day of our new life.

For the next couple weeks we’ll be clearing out the sailboat for daughter Lillian to move aboard, and getting many other ducks in a row (have you ever tried herding ducks?). Next stop: the San Juans. 

APRIL 16, 2018, IS MY FINAL DAY of going to work every morning, breaking a 40-year-habit. The last stint has been 22 years at The Seattle Times, editing and writing about travel and outdoor adventure. I’m not really thinking of this as retirement, because I’m going to keep writing, and hope to make a little money at it. I’m just thinking of it as a new period of sleeping in later.

Barbara and I have lived on our 32-foot-sailboat, Sogni d’Oro, for the better part of 25 years. Next stop, Center Island, in the San Juan Islands of Northwest Washington state, where we’ve had a small cabin for 15 years. No ferries, no stores, no cars… no trash removal. Plenty of challenges. Even though we know the place, we’ve never lived there full-time. I expect it will be a lot like moving to a strange new land — in the best sense, I hope, rather than the mugged-and-left-in-a-ditch-with-no-passport-or-credit-cards sense!

The cabin is pictured below. Our new old boat is pictured above: a restored classic 20-foot runabout built by Skagit Boat in La Conner, Wash., in 1957 (and here’s a nifty detail photo of the chrome nameplate). It reminds me a lot of the ’57 Chevy station wagon my folks drove when I was a tot. It should stoke some good adventures to get things started. When not doing chores or trying to grow a garden, we plan to thoroughly explore our archipelago, our state, and our corner of the continent, and will still jump on a plane now and then.

You’re welcome to come along for the ride.

— Brian J. Cantwell

“I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything.”  — Bill Bryson