Summer 2013: Cruise (3) - To Port Ludlow

11 August 2013 - Sunday

J and L awake to the phone alarm going off at 0445! Yikes! “Why is this alarm going off?” “To catch the tide last Sunday. I’ve turned it off and deleted it!” J and L went back to bed.

By 0900 everyone is waking up and drinking coffee, eating sourdough bread, checking the weather for Mackaye Harbor, and just starting to think about making preparations for weighing anchor and getting underway. During the process, however, as M writes in the log:

1040: The coffee pot broke … no one was hurt. Much sadness. The End

Nine minutes later we start engine. And the Cat dashes into the engine room! What!?

Stop the engine. The cat is hiding in there somewhere. E, L, and I are up top. J finally decides to send M into the engine room. M finds the cat, and hauls her out. Now maybe we can really start the engine and weigh anchor. E has been at the helm – so a good lesson for him (and the rest of us!).

J raises the anchor, while I stands depth-sounder duty and E takes out of the channel.

Cattle Point, San Juan Island

By noon, we are out of the channel and J raises the main and stay-sails for us to be motor-sailing. We are a little nervous about catching the tide not only for leaving Fisherman Bay, but also to make the Cattle Pass/Middle Channel between Cattle Point, San Juan Island, and Kings Point, Lopez Island. The tide is supposedly in our favor for the next two hours, so we shouldn’t have a problem making it, but …

Cattle Point Light

By 1330, we’ve cleared the pass and J and L have come to an agreement. We’ve been looking at the sky and trying to read the weather ourselves. There are some clouds building over the Olympics to the WSW of us (as would be typical we figure – what with the wind blowing off of the Pacific) and there are some clouds building over Whidbey Island (to the E). Nothing seems abnormal, although a bit of haze around. NOAA is predicting thunderstorms for the Eastern end of Juan de Fuca Straight tonight, however. Hmmm. J and L decide to give it two hours and see what’s happening then – in essence to go for it. If the weather deteriorates, we have some options: Mackaye Harbor, Anacortes, Port Townsend, Port Angeles, etc. 

Two hours later the weather is holding and we are about 3/4 of the way across the Straight. I continues to knit, M continues reading, and E continues working on a creating a game and game board.

As these photos show, clear skies, flat seas, and not much wind. Motoring, motoring, motoring ... the engine gets a workout so far on this trip.

Cattle Point behind us.

None-the-less, we put of the working jib to see if it will help us along. We're staying on the same tack for long enough to make it worthwhile. Not sure it really helps, but it does stay full, so maybe it does help our speed out a bit.

M walks forward to check on the cat. 

Sometimes the cat does ok, sometimes the cat vomits. When the engine starts, she dry heaves or vomits. Pavlov would have a heyday!

Is all this motoring getting to M as it is the cat?

E still working on his game board. 

I taking a break from knitting and doing some drawing.

M puts her feet up and reads.

Our first sighting of the OSTERDAM (Whidbey Island behind). We are right at the entrance to Admiralty Inlet and the start of Puget Sound. Whidbey Island is to our left (East) and Point Wilson to our right (West).

Point Wilson

By 1700 we are going through the tide-rips off Point Wilson (near Port Townsend). And suddenly our speed really picks up – averaging about 7.5 knots over the ground (not as a trip average, however), and so we decide to proceed past Port Townsend and start looking at seeing if we can reach Port Ludlow. At this speed, why stop now?

Of course that is the temptation with all sailors: if going slow at the moment, the anticipated times stretches off into forever! On the other hand, if going fast (as we were) the time to arrival is ever shorter and the distances that can be covered ever more! In reality … it isn't too much longer and our speed drops to 4.5 knots. Still, it is enough for L to calculate in the Log:

Measuring roughly, Blake Island looks to be 25+ miles from Port Ludlow. Winds forecast to be N – NW tomorrow. Hmmm.

Up to this time, we have traveled through some shipping lanes, but really never saw anything to speak of: an occasional tug with barge or tanker on the horizon. But upon entering Admiralty Inlet, we become quite aware of the shipping coming into and out of Seattle and Tacoma.

After our earlier adventure of the summer [Holland America to Alaska], we are excited to see some cruise ships (crazy to see three! of them: NORWEGIAN PEAR, OSTERDAM, and GLASS PRINCESS). My, they look HUGE from our perspective! Hard to believe we were on the sister ship to the Holland America Line ship OSTERDAM.

Of course, the sun is setting as we near our anchorage. We are always a bit nervous about anchoring in the dark (save Echo Bay, Sucia – which we’ve been in an out of lots). But J and L have come to notice that when we’re navigating and looking for markers, sometimes (if they are lighted) they show up a bit better at dusk. So, it is always a trade off.

As we enter the Port Ludlow anchorage, we see an interesting looking motor-sailor. It truly looks like she is a motor-boat, that has a typical sailboat rig on top. Weird to power by and see the LARGE flat screen TV and know that the crew is watching the Seahawks play football. We can almost see the score and replay of an interception.

 

We anchor at 2104. 

As we eat dinner (a fashionably late one), L and J notice that E’s voice has dropped once again. The way he is eating, eating, eating, L and J are also wondering if the pants he brought for the wedding are going to still fit by the time we get there. L and J text their families and it's off to bed. What a great day!

This day's route is in the green on the chart at the left. 

Total mileage traveled: 43.6 nm (our furthest single day's passage).

As we get underway for Blake Island tomorrow (a planned stop along the way), we’ll continue our story in the next post.