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.