July 24 – August 2, 2016 Urban Suburban Sojourn

Before I begin this entry let me first say thank you to everyone at home who is doing their part to hold down our many forts while we are gone.  You know who you are and we thank you sincerely as we would not be able to do what we are doing without all of your support.  Thanks!

With family all headed home we begin our southward migration into the Puget Sound.  Our last two years have been very much on the wild side on the quiet, remote and beautiful west side of Vancouver Island, British Columbia.  This year we are more urban suburban and will be staying in a variety of small marinas and far away anchorages.  Our homeport at Rose City Yacht Club, like many yacht clubs, has reciprocal moorage which means we get free moorage at some very nice spots.  So RCYC friends and neighbors come along with us as we tour the central and south Sound in a variety of reciprocals that Tom and Kathy have lined up for all of us to enjoy.

   

Port Townsend marina reciprocals are full so we spend two nights anchored out in Port Townsend and do the usual pump out/take in groceries while there.  As we pull our anchor in Port Townsend we get a surprise, a large rusty ship’s ladder made out of rebar is attached to our anchor.  The boat hook gets it off and then it is off to the Port Ludlow Yacht Club, our first reciprocal.

Years ago we drove to Port Ludlow for a rendezvous with owners of the same kind of boat we have, Islander Freeport.  It is nice to have our own boat here now and see the marina from the water side.  It is a wonderful spot, beautiful clean modern marina.  We stay two nights for free.  If we were golfers we could take the free shuttle to the golf course.  Instead we opt to splurge at the local resort restaurant, the Fireside, for dinner.

     

Port Ludlow consists primarily of a planned community with a variety of higher end homes dotting the waterways, a nice inn/resort and some condos.  There are numerous hiking trails.  We hike to the far end of the port and Ludlow Falls.  It is a nicely signed trail with some local history sign boards.  We find the pizza place along the way and have a very good pizza and great service.  Upon returning we chat with a young couple whom we met in Port Townsend.  They are new to sailing and had a few qualms about their abilities but as we watch them motor in and dock at this (unknown to them as well) marina they do just fine.  We talk with them at length one evening and share stories of learning (literally) the ropes by trial and error. 

As with most days, not all sailing is well, sailing and exploring.  We spend one of our Port Ludlow days working on the head.  We tend to carry lots of spare parts on ExTerra which pays off today.  We replace a worn out “joker” valve on the toilet pump.  This valve is aptly named because if you don’t take care of it the joke’s on you when the head does not work properly. 

Head fixed we take off into Admiralty Inlet in heavy fog, radar on and fog horn sounding  to our next reciprocal the quaint Port Madison Yacht Club.  After a couple of hours the fog lifts and we continue on into Port Madison.  This Yacht Club is small, quiet and has a great view from the deck.  It reminds us of small town living.  Sitting in our cockpit we have numerous people of all ages coming and diving off the dock nearby.  One group of teenagers seems to be swimming from dock to dock around this side of the bay.  Another group of teens paddle out to the day marker in the bay, climb the tower and sun themselves then dive off.  Yet another group of younger kids are enjoying the only public dock that extends from the very small Hidden Cove Park.  We hike to the park and find some nice, ripe blackberries along the way.  

Then it is back to the dock to bbq at the clubhouse.  Their clubhouse has a wood stove for chilly fall nights and six large doors that open to the deck for those wonderful sunny days.  There are no locks on any of the doors another moment of small town reminiscence.

We depart Port Madison and decide that we should probably find the next best diesel dock since once we go past The Narrows our destinations will not take us to such.  We put in at Des Moines and take on fuel.  The very helpful fuel attendant says we can slide into any of the nearby slips for a few hours.  Hiking around we realize that we have two possible reciprocals here.   We chat with the fuel dock and he says yes, we can stay right where we are for the night.  We’ll take it!  We walk out the public fishing pier and determine that no one is catching fish but it was a nice walk none-the-less.  After another nice dinner and Happy Hour at Anthony’s restaurant we waddle back to the boat.

We depart early so we can go through The Narrows on the slack of the flood and ride the flood waters through The Narrows and under the double span of The Narrows suspension bridge, one of the longest in the world.  The first bridge “Galloping Gertie” collapsed and fell into the Narrows waters in 1940.  The current bridge “Sturdy Gertie” has been in place since 1950, with the second span added in 2007 to accommodate the ever growing population.

Safely through The Narrows we end our reciprocal moorages for a couple of nights of anchoring at McMicken Island in search of oysters and clams.  We are skunked on oysters but we harvest nearly a limit of small clams and enjoy paddling the dinghy around the bay.  We also hike the entire circumference of the island at fairly low tide and just enjoy the solitude and beach combing.  We chat with the park employees who have come in by boat to do some park maintenance.  We watch daily the comings and goings of a carpenter who paddles his dinghy ashore, hikes into the dense forest and, from the sounds of it, and proceeds to dismantle some unseen building.  At the end of his day he paddles back to his beautiful boat out in the anchorage.  We see a different type of boat a Belhaven 19.  They sail into the shallow shore, pull up the removable rudder and keel, and throw out a tiny anchor.  This is a kit built “cat ketch” with one mast very far forward (the cat) and a rear mast (ketch). 

Pulling anchor we head for our next destination, Filucy Bay.  We notice that our depth sounder does not want to work and wonder if one of the many star fish….uh sorry, politically correct new name “sea stars” has attached itself to our weird protruding depth sounder transducer.  We are able to switch to the other depth sounder to safely travel these unknown waters.  We find a nice anchor spot in Filucy Bay and dinghy ashore to go to the Longbranch Mercantile to buy a few groceries.  Along the way we see an Alaskan fishing boat with a very odd/unique dinghy.  Alas, the mercantile has closed many years ago.  Perhaps we should rely more on the up to date Waggoner’s Cruising Guide and not as much on our very dated cruising guides of the area.  A nice lady at the Longbranch Marina gives us one of her great looking ears of corn which I add to our crab, clams and potato boil for our evening dinner.  We are celebrating Carl’s fourth year anniversary of being a stroke survivor.

 

Anchors away towards Quartermaster Harbor the next morning, this time we are riding the ebb current through The Narrows and under the twin towers of the bridge with a little help from our main sail. 

                       

Safely through The Narrows we take the sail down to weather the thunder storm and heavy rain.  We call ahead to the Quartermaster Harbor Yacht Club and their caretaker Glenn guides us into their lovely little marina and grabs the bow line to tie us up.  We will stay one night since we need to be out of the slip before the minus tide at noon tomorrow unless we want ExTerra to sink slowly into two feet of soft mud at low tide.   We hike up the hill and into the small berg of Burton and forage for food.  We find a small yet well stocked grocery, an honor system farm wagon with fresh fruit and veges and wonderful wild blackberries on our way back to the boat.   We spend the evening living up to the “sailing is just doing projects in beautiful locations” part of sailing as we change the oil and clean one of the water line filters.  This leads to somehow loosing an “o” ring which we are now in search of.  We will keep the through hull closed until we find one.