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| I up and looking around |
We awake quietly – lazily. J and L enjoy drinking coffee in the cockpit and the kids slowly wake-up. Both of us parents are quite glad we have the French Press along! We finish the water in one tank (44 gallons, plus what we added at Sucia). E and J sound the diesel tank after adding the last 5 gallon jerry jug: just under 10 gallons. (By the way: we started with approximately 7 gallons of diesel from Semiahmoo.)
The kids awake and we enjoying taking in Port Ludlow in the day light.
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| Girls helping Dad wash off the anchor chain. |
Kids write in the Log:
- 1214
– Engine on, in neutral. Dad weighing anchor. Kids (not our kids) in other dinghies like ours [Optimists]
sailing around. Cat in/under our dinghies.
- 1224
– Dad is going to rinse off the anchor chain … It was muuudddy!
- 1227
– I. is scrubbing the anchor chain off with the black brush w/white bristles,
although, now I should call describe it the black brush with the black
bristles.
As the anchor comes up, M takes the helm and pilots us out
the entrance and off toward the Puget Sound. J and L have fun seeing the kids
taking on the shipboard jobs.
Here are some views of the Port Ludlow resort and golf course and marina. The schooner gives some perspective (yeah, and J wanted L to take the pictures ...).
Here we see M at the helm. She has learned already to steer with her feet. What can we say? ...
Meanwhile, I knits.
Nothing doing for M who watches the sails.
This gives Dad a chance to just sit and take in the scenery.
And I continues to knit - making progress!
Here is some of our neighborhood traffic. This is the most we have seen on the trip so far (other than yesterday's coming into Admiralty Inlet). All of these big guys are going down to Seattle or Tacoma.
We decided that the best course of action is staying out of the way of these big ships. J has a friend who used to be a Captian of a tanker (among other things) who has shared with J the realities of these ships: 1 nautical mile to stop, sometimes 4 to change direction, etc. But apparently this sailboat likes to play it a little closer. "No Thanks!" as far as we are concerned.
As the wind fills in, J raises the sails and M decides it is time to read. There is a novel to finish after all.
By the time we reach Point No Point, we can see the Seattle skyline beyond the Edmonds hill/ridge. The wind if finally filling in from the North and so off comes the engine and under pure sail power we go for the rest of the day.
- 1607
– Dad turned the engine off. Yay! We are going 4.8 kts under sail power!
L. adds:
- Dolphins
off the stern. With the engine off, the cat suddenly beings grooming herself.
Goofy feline. No vomiting today! :D
- J
sees HAWAIIAN CHIEFTIAN [turned out to be LADY WASHINGTON] far ahead.
L taking things easy, while keeping watch.
[Getting a little technical here – for those not interested, you might want to skip to the next paragraph.]
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| Hey, J. You forgot to put the winch handle away ... |
We haven’t had lots of experience running wing and wing – or running down wind, to be frank. For some reason, all the winds seem to be on our nose. There are some things we need to set-up (they are on the project list, trust us) but for now, we were interested in what would happen if we ran the genoa out to leeward, the stay-sail out to windward, and the main out to leeward. Would the main funnel air/wind into the stay’l, which, in turn, would funnel air/wind into the genoa? It did work – quite well, when we could get the stay’l to stay out. This arrangement is worth exploring some more. To improve things, J. would want to add a “preventer” to both the main and the stay’l booms. This might help to keep (force?) the booms out. It would also be helpful if there were a block attached at the end of the main boom in which the genoa/jib sheet could be attached. This would give a better sheeting angle – like having the genoa on a pole. All in all, worth exploring! This set-up, when working, increased our speed about a knot or so. If we had a large drifter and/or spinnaker it would be interesting to see which would give more speed under which conditions.
As the girls went forward, I brought her camera and captured some great shots and a short video. She is really developing an eye for the artistic shot. Fun to see her creativity at work.
In case you were wondering, this is where the cat hides - under the dinghies and atop the forehatch.
Although still off of Seattle, we realized the sun was close to setting in the next hour or so. It was about 7:45 pm (or 1545), so we started to decide where we wanted to go. Dare we make it to Blake Island? Would it be better to head into Eagle Harbor or Blakely Harbor, both on Bainbridge Island? We decided that the marina on Blake Island didn’t look good, especially to enter in the dark.
“What are the possibilities of anchoring along Blake
Island?”
“Not good. Along the North shore there is a shelf of 7
fathoms, coming up from 38 fathoms. Then another shelf of 1.5 fathoms close in.
The rest of the shore line looks like is shelves rapidly.”
“So, we could anchor on the North side, but we’d not be
protected by the North wind, nor the ferry boats, tugs, etc. going into Port
Orchard and Bremerton.”
“There are some mooring buoys. Would there be any left?
Maybe we’d best going into Blakely Harbor on Bainbridge and come over in the
morning. Blakely is supposed to be quieter than Eagle Harbor.”
“I think we’re too late for Eagle Harbor, anyway. Well, not
really, but it would be a bash back up to windward.”
“Ok, how about Blakely then?”
“Ok. Where’s the lighted marker so we avoid Blakely Rock right off the entrance?”
“Ok. Where’s the lighted marker so we avoid Blakely Rock right off the entrance?”
“I think it should be right there [pointing in that direction], right?”
We start looking for the lights, and try to make things out.
Earlier, we watched what we now believed to be LADY WASHINGTON enter, what we
thought, was Eagle Harbor. But now that we were closer, we realized, no the
LADY had gone around Bainbridge Island. In fact, that light over there, just to
the North of the other red flashing light, is Blakely Rock Light, what we
thought was Blakely Rock Light is in fact, the light off of Decatur Reef (the
South East corner of Bainbridge Island). Confused? We were, too, until we saw
the Yellow Turn Light, separating the North from South bound shipping. This
light had been hidden behind a ferry. There is a downside to navigating in the
dusk.
Hmm… beat up to Blakely Harbor, or see if there is a mooring
buoy at Blake Island? We decide for the latter, but decided that now would be a
good time to get the genoa down, and start the engine, just in case. Of course,
dusk is going to quickly turn to dark. 
Looking at the chart, it appears that there is a mooring
line that we could tie up to (rather than a “ball” the line forms kind of a
“dock”). Scanning the area with binoculars (which increase the visible light)
it does look that way. We head in that direction while stowing the genoa. Nope!
That is a shelf of land. Out and around we go. Ah, here are the mooring balls –
no rope.
“Let’s do a drive by and see what’s here. Never know who has
their anchor lights on and who doesn’t.”
“Sounds good to me.”
The first buoy has a sailboat, the second has a powerboat,
it looks like there is an empty one in front of it, but there is a speedboat
closer to shore, huh?
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| The Yellow is our day's run. |
“Let’s motor pass, swing out and around, and then let’s try
to stop with the buoy just to our starboard side. Then we can just lean over
with the boat hook and tie on. We’ll fall back and can adjust as we do so.”
And that’s just what we did. We were a bit surprised that it
worked so well, just like we’ve done this all our lives. That doesn’t happen
very often.
J. tidies up on deck, while L. tidies up below. Just then J.
notices the moon setting in a huge
crescent. It looks just like a harvest moon, but setting rather than rising.
What a day!
Tuesday:
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| See, the cat doesn't always hide under the dinghies. We do let her down below. |
We we tied up to the mooring, we used a longer line. In the morning, we launched Pippi (and M) to help attach a shorter line. We like to just loop the line through, so if we need to depart in a hurry, we can just slip the line.
Here's the mooring, with the park service sticker and old white painted tire.
M helped from Pippi, while I took photos and helped from on deck.
Up north, especially in Drayton Harbor, we get big purple jellyfish. We noticed that down here they were a white or yellow in color. We don't know if these are the same species (different color depending on what they are eating) or the color designates that they are a different species.
Around noon we start to prepare to head to shore – lunch first. We leave around 1300, with check in hand for the Park Service to pay for two nights on the mooring (we plan on spending tonight there as well).
But first, J has to do a row-by to take a look see.
Off our stern ...
MERGANSER and the two boats off her bow...
and MERGANSER, herself.
Posing by the sign before we start our hike. Here we have M, L, E and I.
Here's an on-island map, that gives an idea of the trails. We are moored off the left side of the island, near the triangle (where the yellow trail interests with the red one). We walk down the yellow trail to Tillicum Village along the top, then follow the yellow trail around the island.
Blake Island has a “historic village” (Tillicum) that we wanted to see. In addition, Grandpa and Auntie KT had told us about lots of dear and other things that were worth checking out. We walk down to the village, comparing Blake Island with Sucia. There is a lot in common with each other, and yet each is different, too.
We have tons of pictures from this visit, but will only post a few of them (a 1/2 ton or so).
There were signs (like this one below) at various points. We thought this was a great idea. Here M and E are looking at a piece of glacial erratic while I looks at another sign (on the left).
A pause to take pictures.
A sampling of the signs.
And pausing to play in stumps!
And what about the trees?
We should pause to climb them, too.
And sometimes you just need a helping hand ...
And others to celebrate accomplishments.
But the road still led on ...
As M wrote in the Log when we returned:
On the island. Well, first we went in to the beach and played for about ten minutes. Then we went up the trail and used the bathrooms. They flushed!!!! We all went back to the trail and started walking to the village. “It was amazingly cool,” said E when we interviewed him. “The trees were really tall and spread out.” There was apparently flying squirrels, too! Also there were deer, raccoons, and birds and bugs. We didn’t see any of them except for the birds and bugs. There were lots of pictures stops on the way but we got to the village finally. Switching off to …
After seeing how narrow the entrance is (and how full the marina was) we were glad we didn't attempt to enter the previous evening.
Tillicum Village was interesting. It is rumored that Chief Seattle was born near here, however, the old village was constructed for the Seattle Worlds Fair and is based upon the native (meaning local) villages up north (i.e. Northern BC, SE Alaska) rather than local Puget Sound villages. Tillicum Village is now owned by a company who rents the land from the Park Service, and you can pay to have a ferry ride over from Seattle, a traditional dinner, hear native stories, etc. and ride the ferry back. There is also a marina (small) that we were glad we didn’t enter, as we just mentioned.
A sampling of some of the greater Pacific Northwest Art found inside ...
The history of Blake Island is interesting, as it has been called many names over the years, and has been privately owned, before being given to the Park Service. There was a nice sign with some of the history laid out. Maybe if you click on the photo you can read it?
In the process of walking around the island, we discovered … Huckleberries! But where we found them will remain a mystery. All we’ll tell you is we found them “over there.”
But we also have to stop and look at fungus!
First, comparing them to I's hand.
Then we compare them to E's hand.
Fungus, fungus, you're everywhere ...
But mostly, we just keep hiking (when we aren't nibbling the huckleberries or looking at animal tracks).
Sunset ...
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