Adventures of Time To Play

We are on are way, we left early to hit the weather window that was supposed to have been good for our ocean travel.

Day 1: We left St Helens around 7AM and decided to go straight to Ilwaco not stopping at Cathlamet Wa.. Some day we need to stop at Cathlamet, this is probably the 3^rd time I intended to stop but didn’t. The day was uneventful except for seeing elk playing on a beach near Hammond and the astonishing amount of sea lions in the river. If a springer makes it way to Portland it will be a miracle based on the numbers we saw. We ended the day with a couple drinks at the marina.

Day 2: We started the day going over the Columbia bar without any issues. The water was bumpy and way different than the river. We did see whales spouting with backs and tails coming out of the water. There was little moving around the boat, holding on all the time was a must. It really wasn’t comfortable. The bar at Westport wasn’t an issue. After reading the side effects for the sea sick patches we decided to not put them on. I got queasy and Carolyn was fine. I put one on and had no problems, damn good thing.

Day 3: The predicted water was a little worse than the day before but not unmanageable. The forecast was WRONG. Instead of 4-6’ swells at 12 seconds we had 6-12’ if not more. The day was miserable for 13 hours. I lost all my get out of jail cards with Carolyn. We did have porpoises swim with the boat a couple of times during the day. As the day went on the Coast Guard started announcing small craft advisories (wind 22-33 mph) where we were. We anchored up in Neah Bay for the evening.

If the rough water throwing us around wasn’t enough, we also had to dodge crab pots. There were areas that they carpet bombed with pots and then there was the single rouge pot. Oh by the way, the routes I put together were within the tow lanes established to allow commercial traffic to transit the coast without having to deal with crab pots. It isn’t working.

Day 4: Previous days we were moving at 6 AM we planned to leave no earlier than 10 AM. Carolyn was able to see 9 eagles with 4 in one tree together. Neah Bay to Port Angeles was calm water in the straight made for a comfortable day. We washed some of the salt off the boat after we got in. Later we had a charter boat pull in that we had seen in Westport. I talked to them to see how it went. They did the 180nm in 11 hours, it took us 19.5 hours in 2 days for the same 180nm.

Day 5: Had to make our first donation to the fuel gods 222 gallons. We found out that Roche Harbor is still on winter rates otherwise we couldn’t afford to stay here so booked two nights at Roche Harbor to do some exploring tomorrow. The water going across the straight was flat and calm with little commercial traffic.