Memorial Day

What a fantastic four day weekend! Glorious weather for the first time in years. We left on Thursday and cruised out to Blake Island where we caught an empty Bouy at the south end of the island. Everything else was full by the time we got there, it looks like everyone else had the same idea with a perfect weather forcast. We spent the night, Glen and Liz joined us late in the evening.
On Friday we motored on down to Dock Street in Tacoma where we met the club for the weekend. We squeezed in over 30 boats and had a great time. Good food and good weather helped. We took the Dinghy's up the Puyallup river and almost made it to Sumner before Jim probed the bottom with his prop. Jeff and Fran came by on Sunday with lunch for all. We enjoyued the visit and they showed us their Mt McKInley slides. The had only been back a week from the ill fated trip, getting blown off the mountain at 17,000 feet but everyone came home with all their fingers toes and noses.

Returned home on Monday, dodging hundreds of other boats all headed for home port. Cannot remember when we had a full memorial day without wind or rain.

May 2009

We picked up the boat from Surfside Marine in Bellingham on May 5th. They had finished the hardtop project just in time for us to take it over to trawler fest in Anacortes. The weather window was narrow however as there was a severe weather warning being forcast by NOAA for high winds Monday evening. We wanted to try and get down to Anacortes before those winds so we picked up the boat and headed south even though they wanted to do some cleaning before they gave it to us. We told them to forgo the cleaning, we just grabbed it and left. they did fill our tanks up so we spent 45 minutes at the fuel docks.
We departed about 3 pm and arrived at Cap Sante Marina at about 430 afte a perfectly calm run down Bellingham bay. As I set up to backinto our assigned slip the wind picked up just a bit and blew us off the dock far enough that Chris could not get the line on a cleat so I pulled out to take another shot at it. As I set up for the second attempt the winds kicked up to 30 knots and there were white caps in the marina. there was no way I was getting into the slip without a little help so I called the marina office and asked for some help with lines. We reset the boat for a bow in approach so I could keep the boat headed into the wind and with the help of two attendants on the dock we got the boat in without difficulty. Wind has been a costant factor this year in our boating.
After that the week was pretty nice. We had two days of wind and rain while we were in seminars then it cleared up and we had four beautiful days of sun though it was a bit cold.
Bob and George stopped by to visit one day and Bob and Sheryl came down while i was in class and took Chris to lunch.
The run home was perfect on Sunday May 10. Beautiful weather no wind and favorable currents. We avereaged 12 knots across the straights of Juan De Fuca but ran into contrary currents off Port Townsend. The tide finally changed and gave us a push through Agate Pass.