Brock Foreman

Bellingham, Washington.

The Salish Sea boasts 250+ species of fish. You can sea many of them at the aquarium in Vancouver, British Columbia, including this nice white sturgeon.

For my Big Birthday, the Admiral and I boarded the train up to Vancouver for a dose of city life. We ran a marathon, ate, drank, and hiked around town for a few days. What a beautiful city. Here’s a typical scene.

To flush or not to flush, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The clogs and blockages of outrageous plumbing,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To fold: to wipe;
No more; and by a wipe to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To fold, to wipe;
To wipe: perchance to clog: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that cast of paper what clogs may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.

There’s the respect
That makes calamity of maritime life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The captain’s rage, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare basket? Who would these burdens bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something in the pipes,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.—Soft you now!
The fair receptacle! Vessel, in thy orisons
Be all my papers remember’d.

Hark! The ocean’s briny depths do call!
Remember, gentle friends, this solemn truth:
Our vessel’s bowels, unlike those on land,
Cannot digest these fibrous offerings.
The paper that on terra firma serves
Will choke the narrow passages at sea.
So place thy used sheets in baskets meant
For such disposal, not in Neptune’s realm.
‘Tis but a small request, yet bears the weight
Of all our journey’s comfort. Mark it well!

Saw the T90 pod today for the first time this year. Warm, smooth sea. A taste of summer.

We saw a humpback earlier in the trip off Galiano Island. Then my crew spotted the T36As and T99B off Patos Island Light on our way back to Anacortes. We were one of the fewvboats to find orcas today in the Salish Sea. And that view of Mt. Baker never gets old.

I bike to work and drive boats for a living. I rarely drive my car, but when I do it looks like this.