CATEGORY: SAILING
PHOTO: SORTA LIKE APPLE CRUNCH

After I moved to Port Townsend, Bob and I remained friends. We saw each other whenever he came up to work on his boat.  We still went sailing together.  He lived on his boat when he was in town, and so he met many people in the boat yard.  One person he met was Jim Malcomb.

Jim was a retired doctor from southern California who had chosen Port Townsend as a place to build an ocean going sailboat for an around-the-world cruise.  It was a 48 ft ketch and beamy with lots of free-board–meaning there was ample living space below decks.  When he got it finished, he wanted to give it a try-out cruise.  He decided to take it up to Nanimo on the east coast of Vancouver Island.  He invited Bob and me to go along for its maiden voyage.  A friend, John Hammond, was visiting from Portland at the time, so Jim asked him to come too.

First we sailed up to the San Juan Islands.  It was so different anchoring in the places where Bob and I had easily anchored for years with our small 27 foot Thunderbird.  Jim’s boat was so big that anchoring in the evening was scary.  It needed enough scope to swing 190° when the tide changed.  In case you are wondering why we anchored instead of tying up to the dock, anchoring is free whereas dock fees are by the foot.  We spent some time in the San Juan’s, just sailing around to get the feel of the boat, with Jim making minor adjustments.  We went to Doe Bay, East Sound, West Sound and Deer Harbor, all on Orcas Island.  We passengers went ashore every day and hiked around whatever land we happened to be nuzzling up to.

In the early days of island settlement, the San Juan Islands had been the fruit growing center for the State of Washington.  Then it became less expensive to ship fruit from eastern Washington to the population centers on the east side of the Sound than it was to bring the heavy boxes of fruit by boat from the islands.  The orchards were still there but the fruit was never harvested.  We were there in apple season; everywhere we went on Orcas Island, there were ripe apples.  Over Jim’s protest, Bob kept bringing them back to the boat.  He had a jacket with big inner pockets.  He would stand in the cockpit, hold one side of his jacket clear across the other side, and then flash both sides open, as if he were exposing himself.  What he exposed were pockets full of apples.

I knew how to make APPLE CRUNCH, and the guys loved it, so we had Apple Crunch night after night.  Here is the recipe:  Fill a buttered 8” cake pan with peeled and sliced apples.  In a bowl, mix ¾ cup brown sugar, ¾ cup oatmeal, ½ cup flour, and ½ cup melted butter.  Press this mixture over the top of the apples.  Bake for 35 minutes at 350°.

After a week or so, MALCOMB AND GUESTS left the San Juan’s and headed for Sidney.  Sidney BC, on Vancouver Island, 12 miles north of Victoria, was the small boat port for Victoria.  It was the place where most American boaters going into Canada went through Customs.  Bob and I knew that the Canadian officials always asked if there was any fruit on board.  It was against Canadian law to bring American fruit into Canada for fear of American plant diseases.  We knew they would confiscate our apples, so John and I decided we would make Apple Crunch out of all the apples we had left. We had a large 10” diameter by 5” high kettle on board.  I made enough topping for five pies.  Then John and I sat in the cockpit and peeled apples.  We only cast rare glances at the scenery.  As we approached the Sidney dock, we slapped on the topping and put our huge “pie” in the oven.  Ovens on board sail boats are not very large.  Our apple crunch filled up the whole oven.  We got fresh cream in Sidney and had apple crunch with whipped cream for days.

The irony was, that when we went through customs in Sidney, they didn’t even ask us if we had any fruit.  They were probably so mesmerized by the smell of apple crunch baking on an incoming vessel that they couldn’t even think of protocol. They already knew we had used up all our apples and were only hoping we would offer them some.