Seattle to Anacortes, almost…

We left Port Ludlow early in the morning, forecast winds were 35kt in the strait, but only 1-2ft waves, and southerly winds means downwind sailing.   We should have paid more attention to this but we didn’t (mistake #1).  We started sailing outside Ludlow with a 15kt breeze, building to 20kts.    Devon attempted to reef the mainsail but made the mistake of bringing the sail up first and boat rounded up, causing everything inside to get thrown.

Morgan was really upset about the mess.

As we approached the southern entrance to Juan de Fuca strait we erred again and did not hug the west coast of Whidbey Island, instead entering the strait in the middle of the channel (mistake #2).

Morgan really freaked out by this point and was standing at the bottom of the companionway crying.  Devon moved her to her bed in the aft cabin and calmed her down, and later I went down and talked to her about how the boat was built super strong and could handle waves twice as big and wind twice as strong.  This seemed to help her.  Later she actually came out into the cockpit and watched the waves, even remarking how they were “interesting.”

The following seas had built up and it became difficult to imagine turning to starboard to get toward Whidbey.  Meanwhile there was a shoal ahead that we wanted to avoid so we ended up turning to port to line up with the waves and avoid the shoal.  This was probably mistake #3.  At this point we had heavy following seas and 30kts of wind from aft.  We hoped that we’d be able to turn along the shipping channel to head toward Anacortes but seas were worse later (which makes sense as the fetch got longer as we headed deeper into the strait).

Half way through when the following seas were overtaking us, we fired up the engine to help keep our speed up.   The sails were deeply reefed.

I had our Garmin Virb XE camera mounted to the dodger and let it record until the battery died.  The Garmin camera have built in sensors and you can use that data to add gauges, etc.  It’s pretty cool.  Unfortunately, the Auto Edit feature in the Garmin Virb Edit software leaves a lot to be desired, as you will see by all the cuts in the below video.   Some day I’ll edit it myself and post a better video.

In the end we made a gamble that if we followed the wind and waves into Haro strait, once we got some distance into that channel the seas would calm down.  I was worried about the opposing current (we entered Haro at essentially full ebb tide, (the tide pushing opposite the wind) but the tide was only 1kt against the 35-40kt wind so we didn’t see any obvious standing waves.  We did, however, find that the waves were larger, partially compressed by the narrow start of the channel we think, but the period between the waves got longer, making it more comfortable and easier to manage.  Around the NW corner of San Juan Island we ducked in toward Mosquito Bay where the waves died to nothing, sheltered by the outer western edge of San Juan Island.  The wind dropped as well, still moving 20+kts though.   We headed into Roche Harbor and secured a slip for the night, figuring we’d move to Anacortes Friday morning.  Wind peak on the display during our crossing was over 42kts.

Unfortunately it was gusting to 20kts right through the guest docks at Roche Harbor so after making several attempts at squeezing into a slip we went back out in to the bay and dropped the Rocna.

At anchor I recovered from the day a bit by just laying down.   Then I decided I needed to replace the table legs.  I opened the boxes, took the old table legs off and started checking things out.   Both the old and new pedestals extend below the floor, however the new version with the gas strut requires a larger diameter hole in the floor.   I really didn’t have the correct tools but I did have the Dremel (the actual Dremel brand in fact).  I tried a cutting bit for a while but eventually I settled on the sanding drums, just running the sanding drum around the inside of the existing hole until the hold was large enough.   It made a lot of sawdust, and it took a while, but it worked and I got the table installed in time for dinner.   The new pedestals are SWEET!   Where the old table would drop easily and be a bear to pull back up, the new table needs someone to sit on it to drop, but slides right back up on its own when you release the clamps.

After the table project and dinner, we slept.  And in the morning we left Roche Harbor for Anacortes.