2025 BOAT TRIP, WE ARE OFF AGAIN!
Sunday, June 15, 2025
And off we go this Father’s Day morning, the
Covid ship has left the dock! Yes, both John and I came down with Covid last
week, quashing our fun for our last few days in town. We had planned dinner out
for John’s birthday on the 12th, a party to attend on the 13th,
and a wedding to attend on the 14th. Instead we stayed home and
binge watched Joe Pickett while whistfully looking out the window at the
beautiful sunny evenings. Luckily both of us had already done our respective
provisioning responsibilities the week before (I am in charge of food and
beverage, John in charge of all things mechanical) so we were pretty much good
to go. I was on Day 6 of Covid by the 14th and as such was permitted
(per my doctor) to leave the house with a mask to do a couple last minute
errands. Earlier in the week we had the boat carpets cleaned so all of the
furniture was stacked in the galley or on the couch, and by Saturday the 14th
the carpets were still damp so we were forced to stack everything on the
couches and such, not wanting to go down below on the even wetter carpet. By
8PM on the 14th, we had deposited the last of our bags on the boat,
stacked three deep in the salon, and all over the galley counters. What a mess
to face the next day but we knew we’d have all the time in the world once we
hit the water. We pulled away from the dock at 7:30 and slowly motored over to
the locks where we were the third boat in line, driving right in (no wait!) and
by 9:45 we were out the other side, officially northbound with our nemesis,
Point Wilson, just three hours away. Now Point Wilson is where the open ocean flows into Admiralty
Inlet which funnels down into the Salish Sea. It is a mixmaster of unstable
water, with crazy tide rips and currents that don’t always make sense. We’ve
had more than one unpleasant experience transiting the entrance. Well, she
didn’t disappoint yet again, we found ourselves in a perplexing and what
appeared to be isolated washing machine of ocean swells, all seemingly
converging from different directions. The table tipped over, the basil plant
went flying off the counter, and my cupboard contents were crashing into the
doors, and the compactor was flying open and shut!! John quickly got us out of
there and over to the shoreline where the water was settled and we were able to
continue our journey out into the straits of Juan de Fuca, which were actually
quite pleasant. Nothing broken or damaged. We decided to get as far as we could
so John spooled it up and we barreled across the strait at 1800RPM which means
we were burning 40 gallons per hour, or as John says, throwing dinosaurs off
the back, or throwing dollars overboard, lots of metaphors work here. I took
two naps on the couch with the warm sun streaming in the windows, the water
glassy smooth. We ended up in Reid Harbor on Stuart Island in the San Juans and
anchored for the night around 4:30pm. It was a beautiful warm evening and after
a fresh summer dinner of BBQ salmon, steamed corn, and asparagus, we played a
couple hands of cribbage and fell into bed, both of us still fatigued.
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