August 25 - 26th Astoria to home

Carl’s brother Jim joined Carl on the boat and departed around 11:00 to catch the tide for the ride from Astoria to Rainier.  Pam drove Jim’s pickup which was quite odd after two months of sea legs and sea speed.  She felt she was going way too fast in town only to realize she was only going 20 miles per hour!  She had plenty of time to explore so she decided to climb the Astoria Column which she had not done since high school.  Then a slow paced exploration of small shops and eateries from Astoria to Rainier where she waited for Jim and Carl.

Jacob with two of our grand kids, Emily and Sam climbed on the boat as Jim was leaving and spent the night with us before we did our final day on the river.  

Emily and Sam were troopers and enjoyed wandering around the boat and watching other boats pass us.  They spent some time below, drawing pictures on the backside of our paper charts.  It was Awesome having them on board!

We docked at the house around 3:30.  Approximately 2100 nautical miles, nearly to Alaska and back over ten weeks!  Quite the trip for us.

Jacob and his kids enjoying the river

Nana and Emily bow watching

August 22 – 24 Port Angeles to Astoria

An early start to our day had us leaving Port Angeles during a beautiful sunrise.  We made good time down the Strait while the tide was with us and slowed to a 3 knot slog when the tide changed toward the end of our 9 hour day.  

We did our ‘shift change’ at the mouth of the Psysht River (finally found a way to work that river name into our blog!).  We anchored at Neah and had a lazy 0800 start down the Strait the next day with the goal of crossing the Columbia River Bar 28 hours later at the end of a strong ebb tide.

Our southerly trip down the Washington coast was basically uneventful, some sailing, some motoring when the swell got too obnoxious.  We did standby after we hailed the skipper of a north bound sailboat that was dead in the water.  He told us he had a rope in his prop and that he was going to dive the boat.  We checked back in with him and found he had cleared the prop and was ready to continue north so we continued south.  He had the most interesting rotating boom!

We crossed the bar area around 10:00 a.m. with the tail end of the strong ebb tide making it a full 3 ½ hours to the transient dock in Astoria.