Cruisin' with Lin & Maryke!

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Cruise to WBF—Heading Home!

Lonely on the dock

What a difference a day makes! Point Hudson Marina was filled to overflowing Sunday but Monday morning it was almost empty since many vessels headed for home after the great sailby Sunday afternoon. Monday morning when we woke up, it was chilly and we turned on our electric heater to warm us up! The previous days the temperatures had been in the low 80s with beautifully clear blue skies. Looking out, it seemed like the visibility was pretty restricted.

Leaving Point Hudson

A bit later when we started to leave Point Hudson Marina, we realized there was some light fog but the nearby fog horn was not sounding so it couldn’t be too bad. By the time we got past the Port Townsend Ferry landing, it was pea soup heavy fog with close to zero visibility.

More fog

And more...

We knew our course to the Port Townsend Canal from the GPS chartplotter and turning on the radar, we could see the Navy ammunition depot piers on Indian Island but no other boats moving in the Bay. We commenced sounding fog signals on our air horn and standing outside the pilothouse, Maryke could not hear any other fog signals. Nothing on radar or AIS, so we continued very slowly to the Canal, where we could visually see the highway bridge over the Port Townsend Canal over the fog when we were a couple hundred yards off.

Interestingly, there was an adult bald eagle resting on the marker pilings at the far end of the Canal who didn’t mind our presence moving by and he posed to have his photograph taken! No other boats were in the vicinity so we proceeded along now heading for Foulweather Bluff. The fog was breaking up somewhat and before we reached Foulweather Bluff, visibility was getting quite a bit better. Fog is always a little scary and very disorienting so we are always happy that we invested in quality marine electronics to show the way in poor conditions, like fog and heavy rain.

Common Murres

From Foulweather Bluff south to Point No Point, the fog began to dissipate and we began to see large groups of sea birds resting on the calm water. Then of course, we began to see ferries again and many other ships heading south to the Ports of Seattle or Tacoma. A large MSC container ship passed in the traffic lanes—those things are huge! We headed into Kingston for the night and relaxed.

Point No Point -- Fog is lifting

Fog astern

Tuesday morning was foggy again but better than Monday morning. Nearing Seattle, there was a heavy cloud cover over the Seattle skyline, that would take a few more hours to burn off.

Still many low clouds around Seattle

More tugs and barges went by. We overtook a wood sailboat that had been at Port Townsend and waved! We played tag with several other ferries and finally turned to stop for the day at Gig Harbor and got into a large open space at the dock and tied up easily with a friendly neighbor catching our lines. Some nights after dinner, we do a little reading, maybe watch the news on TV or watch a DVD out of the collection we keep aboard. Fortunately Gig Harbor is always very quiet at night leading to a refreshing night’s sleep.

Ferry Cathlamet and its "mate" in the other direction

Large container ship heading for Seattle

That looks close! Sailboat crossing pusher tug and barge

Wood Boat sailor heading home

Wednesday morning was again cold and foggy. According to our tide table, slack at the Tacoma Narrows was about 1330 so we planned to leave Gig Harbor at 1300 so we’d be at the Narrows bridges about 1330 with a good flood tide following that should push us along all the way to Olympia. So we cleaned up the boat inside, packed our clothes etc., had lunch then shoved off at 1300.

Watch your wake!

We were under the bridges at 1330 and moving close to 8.5-9 knots most of the way home. We followed a tug and large sand barge under the bridges until he turned left and we turned right at Anderson Island.

Nice and calm all the way and very little marine traffic on the water all the way in.

Boston Harbor and Dofflemeyer Point

Mount Rainier

Port of Olympia with State Capitol

Ships loading lots of logs destined for China

Big ocean going ships and small tugs

We were back in our cozy boathouse at Olympia Yacht Club at 1700 hours. We’d had a very good cruise and a lot of fun at the Wooden Boat Festival! Could have lived without the fog, but that happens in Puget Sound in late summer and fall from time to time. You just have to be prepared!

Sunday, September 7, 2014

At the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival

Festival T-shirts

The Wooden Boat Festival is a very unique event in the world of boating! Several other nearby places including Seattle and Victoria, B.C. have an event celebrating wood boats but nothing in the U.S. or maybe even the world is as big a wooden boat event as Port Townsend’s Wooden Boat Festival! What makes it unique is the catalytic combination of hundreds of wood boats, sail and power, an amazing schedule of 105 seminars during the 3 Festival days held in every available venue! There’s a large group of wood boat-type vendors displaying exotic woods used in boats to shipwright schools, woodworking tools, beautiful bronze castings by the Port Townsend Foundry, wood kayak and small boat builders, live hands-on demonstrations of boatbuilding techniques to kids’ nautical plays or toy boatbuilding, sea chantey singers, food vendors and the beer pub at Bar Harbor.

Bar Harbor

Several full day presentations were given by internationally known boating speakers like Lin and Larry Pardey, Steve Callahan and Halsey Herreshoff this year. There is live music on the Bar Harbor stage from noon to 10PM most days. The main course for many visitors is the Open House on almost all of the boats including ours! There are 170 boats crammed into a marina built to dock 70 boats and many other wood boats are anchored outside in the harbor!

As a boat owner and exhibitor, we were on the boat most of the time, talking to visitors and showing them through the boat plus visiting with friends and other boat owners we knew from previous years. Three times this year, we had people come aboard who had worked for American Marine (our boat’s builders in Hong Kong, later to be called Grand Banks Yachts) or the brokerage that imported the boats into the U.S. in Newport Beach, CA. They were impressed that there are still Chanteyman yachts around! Five times we locked up the boat and went off to a seminar that was of interest to us. And we walked around a few times visiting other boats or vendors or just enjoying all the exciting activity around us! Our slip was perfect for viewing most of the fleet and seeing the boats head out on Sunday afternoon for the sailby. And it was a great spot for visitors as we had a lot more people come aboard than previous years when we were rafted in a large mass of boats.

Looking towards our dock

Virginia V and two schooners

Bow of the Virginia V

This year for the first time, the 92 year old historic 125’ steamship Virginia V out of Seattle, the last of the famed Mosquito Fleet that provided transportation around Puget Sound, was moored inside the marina at the central dock and offered tours and went out for the sailby! Her engine is a 1904 triple expansion double acting reciprocating steam engine! Other major vessels offering rides were the 133’ Schooner Adventuress now 101 years old, built in East Boothbay, Maine and a real gem; the 88’ Odyssey, a Sparkman and Stephens designed yawl built by the Nevins yard on City Island, New York City now 76 years old and a Sea Scout training ship in Tacoma and the 112’ Brig Lady Washington, a 1989 recreation of a historic American ship in the 1700s that explored the Pacific Coast.

Many sailboats with Wooden Boat Foundation building on right

If you’re a wood boat nut, what more could you ask for??? The Wooden Boat Festival offers everything you can imagine from free seminars, free boat tours of all types and sizes of wood sail and power boats, hand-on woodworking demonstrations, excellent food and drink, free concerts and the closing sailby including many of the exhibitor boats and much more, all for the price of an admission ticket!

Glass Ball booth

Take a look at the photographs for a virtual tour of the 2014 Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival!! If you have any salt water running in your veins, you’re going to want to come to Port Townsend for the 2015 WBF!