Update from the sea 5, Making good time under sail..
We are now at the furthest point north that we will make on this trip, and tomorrow we turn south again.
Last night at Ganges was really windy, some sort of storm blew through. The water in the marina was still calm though.
This morning we woke up, got coffee, prepared for sailing, refueled and headed north out of Ganges Harbor. As we left we put up the sails and tested the wind. Just outside the harbor we found pretty good winds with brief gusts. Shutting down the engine our speed was averaging 7 knots (engine moves us at 5.5) and periodically we hit 8 and 9 knots. The gusts got stronger and we were running fast with another boat who finally stopped for emergency sail reefing (making the sail smaller to accommodate high winds). I decided that was a good idea for us as well so we did the same. Even with the main sail double reefed we averaged 7 knots for 23 miles. We only used the motor for about 2 miles.
Tonight we are at Telegraph Harbor Marina on Thetis Island. This place is really cool. The cafe here sells ice cream, milkshakes, breakfast, and other hot foods as well. There are a bunch of boats here that we saw at Ganges last night including the Hunter 27 that we were racing on the way.
Its very quiet here and peaceful. Dinner was cheeseburgers, corn on the cob, and leftover mac and cheese. The toilet on our boat is off limits tonight because the holding tank won’t drain. We’ll have to deal with that later. Steve and I replaced the boat’s bilge pump last night with a new automatic one but apparently the “automatic” feature doesn’t work. I can turn it on manually though.
Steve also tightened the steering cables under the cockpit to remove the slop in the steering wheel. Hopefully that will make the boat more responsive and stable under sail.
Again I forgot to close the valves on the sink drains and when the boat heeled over today sea water sprayed up through the sink drains into the boat. Not really a safety issue but definitely a nuisance.
Overall things are going well. Tomorrow we are going to make a long run to Roche Harbor on San Juan island. About 35 miles by boat.
Update tomorrow from Roche…