Day 3 (Blue).
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We woke up Thursday morning, delighted (and somewhat surprised) to find the boat still right where we had anchored it. The previous night's worries of waking up to the sound of a container ship's horn as we drifted through the shipping lanes seemed a little silly now. After some breakfast, we prepared for the next "first time" task: weighing anchor. As I very slowly motored forward, Deb directed me from the bow with hand signals towards the anchor, and she pulled in the slack in the anchor line. When we were more or less directly above the anchor, I stopped the boat, and Deb pulled the anchor up. At least, that's how it was supposed to work in theory. In practice, we got the boat positioned more or less above the anchor, but the anchor was still firmly stuck in the bottom. I went forward to help. I pulled as hard as I could on the anchor line a couple times, but it wouldn't budge. Just as I was thinking we may need to cleat it off and use the engine to break it loose, it released its grip on the bottom and we hauled it in. With the anchor stowed, we motored out into Saratoga Passage and headed north for points unknown! Well, ok, we were headed for Deception Pass State Park.
Once we were out a little ways from shore, we decided there was enough wind to try sailing. This was, after all, a sailing trip, and I was determined to motor as little as possible. The wind was maybe 6 knots or so, coming from the north, so we would be sailing upwind, but no matter, we're here to sail! So, we put up the sails, shut off the motor, and started sailing. I didn't know it at the time, but this would become the beginning of a theme for this trip: sail-motor-sail-motor. But I am getting a little bit ahead of myself... first we hit a log.
We worked our way slowly but steadily to windward, tacking back and forth across the Passage between Whidbey on the west, and Camano on the east. The weather was nice, the breeze was moving us along at about 4.5 knots, things were good! THUMP!!! My first thought was that something had fallen off the counter down in the cabin. Maybe one of Deb's precariously stacked bags of groceries had fallen over and dumped a can onto the floor. Deb and I looked at each other, and then looked behind the boat in time to see the log we had hit float by. It wasn't a huge log, and we weren't moving very fast, but it got our attention. I remembered then someone telling me that the water in these parts has a lot of "deadheads" in it. My first thought at the time was, "That's what you deserve for listening to that stupid band... round those dirty hippies up and throw them in the water!" The person went on to explain, however, that deadheads are logs floating in the water, often with just an end sticking up above the surface. So began another theme for the trip: log watch. Over the next couple of hours we saw all manner of logs in the water, some the size of full trees! I think, in fact, that some of them were full trees which had come detached from the huge log rafts that are towed by tug through the area to transport the logs.
Satisfied that the log had not caused any damage, and we weren't taking on water and sinking, I continued what had already become a theme for the trip: drinking well before noon. Beer... it's not just for breakfast anymore!
As we got further north, towards the end of the second straight segment in the blue line on the map above, our wind died. My first thought was to wait it out. This was, after all, a sailing trip, and we had enough food and beer for 18 months, so we could afford to float here until the wind returned. However, we had committed ourselves to making Deception Pass State Park today, some 32 nautical miles. We'd already spent a day longer than planned at Langley, and our goal of reaching the San Juans was still a ways off. So, grudgingly, we fired up the ol' "cast iron genoa" and continued our journey.
As we motored north, the roar of jets from the nearby Naval airfield on Whidbey became a more or less regular thing. East of Penn Cove, just off Camano Island (around about the end of the 3rd straight segment in the map), we found some more wind, raised the sails, and returned the motor to a state of silence. One complaint I have with this boat is that the engine compartment is not well insulated and motoring is a very noisy experience compared to some other sailboats I've been on. Maybe I will get ambitious this summer and add more sound deadening insulation in there. The quiet, relaxed sailing continued for the next two segments on the map, around the top of Camano Island and into Skagit Bay. I can't remember if we went back to motoring because Whidbey Island was blocking our wind as we turned northwest, or if it was because we were heading into an area where I felt we needed to follow our planned course precisely, but we took down the sails and motored again. Skagit Bay has a lot of shallow areas to the east, and during course planning, it seemed like we would need to follow the channel markers exactly. In retrospect, it wasn't a big deal. We had plenty of navigable water to the west, and could have easily sailed (had there been wind).
Continuing north past Goat Island and the entrance to the Swinomish Channel, we then motored past Hope Island. At this point, Deception Pass was just around the corner, and just before it, on the south side, was Deception Pass State Park in Cornet Bay, our destination for the day. As the land on either side closed in, narrowing the water, I worried a little about currents. Deception Pass can run over 8 knots as a huge volume of tidal water flows in or out of the narrow passage. The current here would be less, but it was still relatively narrow, and we were not at slack current. Would any of the eddies, whirlpools, or tidal rapids for which Deception is infamous extend out where we were? As we motored the last mile or so towards Cornet Bay, we could feel the water, alive around us. Patches of water here and there covered by tiny, steep waves, as if the water was boiling. Areas that were dead flat despite the breeze, where water welled up from below. As we passed the boundaries of each of these areas, the boat would veer a little this way or that as it adjusted to the change in current direction, much like stepping off the end of an escalator and taking a couple awkward steps to adjust your motion relative to the new, non-moving surface.
Deception Pass State Park at Cornet Bay has a large dock for mooring, as well as two floating docks out farther which are not connected to land. As we approached, we could see that the main dock was full of not only boats tied up, but people fishing from the dock. Neither Deb nor I particularly relished the idea of spending the evening with people milling back and forth past the boat, so we opted to tie up to one of the floating docks, which was empty. No sooner had we tied up, than we decided we should motor over to the pumpout station and empty the holding tank. The pumpout dock runs north-south, and we would be docking on the east side of it, approaching from the north. The wind was blowing from the northwest, and the current was flowing from west to east, both of which would try and push us away from the pumpout dock, and towards the mooring dock to the southeast. Our first attempt was to approach parallel to the dock, from the north, such that we would just pull up alongside and tie off. With the boat turned almost 45 degrees into the current and still drifting away from the dock, it was apparent this was going to be trickier than intended. We bailed out of that approach before we were swept into main dock. We made another approach with a more aggressive crab angle into the current, but with no better success. After a quick reevaluation, I opted to come at it from the other direction. I'd have to come straight at the pumpout dock from the east, parallel to the main mooring dock, and then turn north. Normally my boat would not make that turn in the confined area, but the current and wind opposing us effectively gave us more "virtual space" to work with. After one aborted attempt due to me misjudging the strength of the current and turning too soon, we made a successful landing on the pumpout dock. It is, *ahem*, possible that I might have bonked the dock with the bow lightly, but we don't need to dwell on that now, do we? Reflecting back, I was now quite glad that I park my boat in a very difficult, tight marina. Had I not learned to maneuver in that space, I would never have been able to get to that pumpout dock!
With pumpout complete, we returned to our floating dock, tied up, and had a relaxing dinner and wine as we enjoyed the views around us. As we moved farther north in the trip, things were definitely becoming more scenic, with the wide expanses of water, low shorelines, and congensted cities giving way to steeper, taller hillsides rising from narrower passages, dotted with small towns or nothing at all. The last bit of business for the day was to plan the next day's journey. We would go through Deception Pass at slack tide, 2:30pm. Then we would cross Rosario Strait heading northwest for Lopez Pass. Once through Lopez Pass, we would sail north up Lopez Sound to Spencer Spit State Park on the east side of Lopez Island. I spent an hour or so plotting that course, entering waypoints into the GPS, and cross checking the GPS against the course plotted on the charts. With that done, it was time to turn in for the night.
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