ROCHE HARBOR RENDZVOUS

Roche Harbor on San Juan Island, Day 21-26

Hike to the Mausoleum, Roche Harbor

Very Spiritual!

They say the grave yard is haunted?

We left Oak Harbor for Roche Harbor, very nice day and spent quite a bit of time on the Fly bridge.  Saw a few dolphins on the way up to Deception Pass. Got to the pass almost an hour early and decided to go through the pass early. Calm and hardly any current. We made our way to the San Juans and after passing Shaw Island and Orcas Island we just happened upon a pod of 5 Orcas. This is what makes this trip so cool.  The wildlife gets better every day and look forward to more as we travel North.

 

We pulled into Roche Harbor thinking we would be the first to arrive, as we made our way in 3 Selene’s were already in and as we docked they greeted us and invited us over for afternoon cocktails.  John and Darleen Topliss aboard there boat “Ocean Osprey” were hosting and aboard were Larry and Vicky Rhodes from “Horizon” as well as Chris and Susan Carlin from “Gypsy Spirit”.  After a few rounds and lots of laughter, we had dinner at McMillin’s and had the place to ourselves.  I learned that the McMillin family started the colony way in the 1800’s and mined for lime and cement. We turned in after dinner and slept well.

John was up early, we checked into the marina and located our package that had a new door lock assemble. He spent the morning replacing the lock, and I watched as more Selene’s arrived.  In the afternoon, I headed over to the “Spirit”, Miriam and Patrick Gill  the event programmers to help build swag bags. Lots of goodies!

Thursday found John cleaning the boat so I decided to do a walkabout.  First stop was the Sculpture Park, took my time going thru the viewing the art,  reading all the poetry and taking lots of photos. Made my way through the graveyard and finally thru the forest to the famous Mausoleum that the McMillins built back in 1930.  The tall columns were placed in a circle surrounding a cement table and six chairs. Pretty amazing stuff and this land is now in the National registry of historic places.

Entering the Sculpture Garden

On Friday John attended a  Seminar on Networking your boat, while I took advantage of the shore power and a “Hollywood” shower. I was taking the Winery tour. As luck would have it, I ended up bonding with Howard Chen the CEO of Jet Tern who made our Selene. Had a terrific time at the winery and brought back a few bottles.  When I returned back at the boat, John had already began preparing 3 Tri-Tips for the potluck Dinner that was scheduled and we now had almost 30 Selene’s and 70+ people.  Lots of wine flowed and tons of good food.

Saturday John attended a Li-Ion battery update by Dean Kline from his original boat “Saltheart” . Did replaced all his batteries onboard with Lithium Ion and explained the process as well as lessons learned. His new boat was in rework and he did the same thing on it. After lunch I attended a Photography for Cruisers class and learned a lot of usefull stuff.  I returned to the boat and got some Poo Poos ready for the Trawler Crawl. Even though we had already seen most of the boats, John got to drool over the engine rooms from the 36 to 62 footers.  We had a very nice Dinner that the Group put on with fresh Steelhead and again lots of wine!  We look forward to leaving tomorrow and giving our livers a much needed break.

Building swag bags for the rendezvous.

Howard Chen, CEO of Selene Yachts, China

We met so many great people from the Selene Owners, and this being the 15^th annual rendezvous, we hope to meet up with many of them over the next year.