August 18, 2013

 

August 16th enroute Sequim Bay WA:  Most boats in Friday Harbour this morning are waiting for the fog to lift.  This gives us time to go to breakfast and do our (last) load of laundry.  Then it is motor on and out of the harbour around noon headed towards the south end of San Juan Island.  Once there we will do another weather check and decide whether or not to cross the upper end of the Strait of Juan de Fuca to head towards mainland Washington.  This is another large body of water that mariners need to respect for its ability to turn very nasty at times.  After listening to the weather we decide to head out across the Strait.  We have a bit of fog which is a test of will and determination and can be intimidating.  However we have not had to deal with it yet and we are ready to give it a go.  It is a good test of our radar and PA system.  The PA hooks up to the VHF radio and blasts a nice loud 5 second signal every two minutes.  Given that we are crossing three major “big ship” travel lanes over the next 22 miles we are glad that it is working well.  We do not see any big targets on our radar and safely make it through the traffic lanes and turn off the PA.  The fog lifts as do our spirits and our sails .  We then sail for the next eight miles clipping along at about 6 Nautical Miles per hour.  Our destination is Sequim Bay State Park to anchor out and wait for Carl’s brother Jim to join us tomorrow.  To explain the one weird dark photo – we are anchored between two white anchor balls.  Some folks just tie up to the anchor ball to the front of their boat.  We had plenty of room until another boat came in beside us so we decided to take advantage of the anchor ball and tied the BACK of our boat to it.  Folks must have thought “boy those guys don’t have a clue about what they are doing” but it kept us from swinging into the boat that came in close at nearly dark (too late for us to want to try to re-anchor).

 

 

 

 

August 17th – 18th sailing with brother Jim:  Jim made good time from central Oregon and we bring him aboard around noon.  He and Carl head to town with his “wheels” to get a few more fresh food items and oil (2nd oil change this trip).  We settle in for the evening as Jim gets his sea legs.  The next morning we head out of Sequim Bay.  This takes an hour because the way in is quite tricky with long sand spits, narrows and shallows.  During this time we are entertained by a group of about 30 small sailboats.  They are doing exercises.  They go one way with their main sail and the head sail up.  Then they all turn and go the other way with small, colorful spinnaker sails which are head sails that do well in light winds.  It is like watching a choreographed dance of sailboats, quite fun and colorful.  We then head out and sail for 4 ½ hours towards our destination of Dungeness Spit.  This is the tiny spit that we anchored near after our 3 and ½ day sailing/motoring trip up the Washington coast, our “land ho” spot.   We had a very long parade of gigantic cruise and cargo ships just on the other side of the spit in one of the major traffic lanes for Seattle traffic.  The next morning we take our ET dinghy across to the spit and hike out to the Dungeness Spit Lighthouse.  This lighthouse was first lit in 1857, one of the first 16 lights on the Pacific coast.  We had a delightful tour and made it back to the boat in time to do a nice S…..L….O….W sail to Discovery Bay.   We have anchored for the evening at the upper end of this very long bay, the only boat anchored anywhere.  We are close to the condo that we have sometimes stayed at on our trips up and back to Vancouver Island.  We dined on fresh crab and rock fish and have the crab pot out again this evening.