Well,
Diane and I took Friday off from work last week. We spent Thursday night aboard Destiny with the intent of an early departure for Anacortes. We were to meet with 7 other boats and a few drive ins for a weekend of get together! The weather you ask? Down right nasty.
We left the dock at 7 am anticipating our 7 hour trip to be a bit rough. Fortunately it was only blowing 20 steady with bigger gusts. Our intent was to just get there ASAP to avoid the predicted winds Friday night.
We flew half the jib and motor sailed at 8.5 kts or right at hull speed! Pretty nice sleigh ride with some mild wallowing. About 3 hours into the trip I noticed we were being flanked on the port side by a Coast Guard Cutter but he was miles away. No worries. Rocking with my Zune, Diane below, and all is well, I looked to my right on a normal scan and just about peed my pants! There on our starboard was one of those big Zodiak type boats with 4 coasties, plenty of weapons and ten feet from us and coming up fast! Yikes! I immediatly shut down the engine and we sailed forward at 6 or so kts while the Coasties came along side with intent to board . . . . . No, we don't have weapons, yes we are documented, etc etc. We had no violations or warnings so off they went and we have a clean ticket!
The weekend was great at anacortes including dinners, lots of chat in many boats and guessing the last gust and sipping wine! We walked the town, visited many shops, chatted with old friends and made some new ones! In total I believe 22 folks showed up! Nice!
The trip home was to be interesting. You see a very low , low is coming. Small craft adviseries, upped to gail warnings, upped to storm warning, etc. We assisted each boat out of their respective slips as they left one by one. One boat was still asleep and the last boat was going to stay and ride the storm out in Anacortes. The last boat assisted us and we followed out a 27 Catalina going our way! About two hours in following the Catalina we determined by the weather report we'd best hustle as were taking the weather head on and it will take more than 7 hours to get home! We hailed out friends in the Catalina and told them we no longer could afford to follow them and had pick up a lot of speed to beat the storm!
Life was calm at the moment however that was to change . . .
By the time we'd passed Camano Head we had contrary currents to the wind, small craft advisory was changed to gail warning, and Puget Sound Coast Guard was giving very regular weather warnings. The water now was throwing us bricks! Waves that were very short period, and very steep! Destiny was pounding head on some waves and launching off others and dropping heavily into the water. Every other wave was send more than just spray over our entire boat. In the completely enclosed cokpit water still got in! We throttled back to half throttle just to avoid getting beaten to death. Only 2 hours to go . . . . Finally motoring in behind Hat Island gaves us some relief from the waves but now the wind was besting 30 kts with much higher gusts. Only one hour to go . . . We passed Hat Island only to find the seas were no longer hitting us head on but now directly abeam of us. Some goofy fellow in a small power boat dropped in behind us and tailed us home. We were rolling back and forth wildly even with a patch of main. The waves now had small rollers under them and our dog was now literally shaking. I turned Destiny to windward to lesson the motion and take the seas quartering of the bow . . . . Eventually we managed to get our beloved boat into the river channel where the waves still hit us but at least the rollers were gone.
As we motored closer to our marina and then slip, Poseidon looked kindly on us and dropped the winds to a mere 20kts and turned perfectly so my bride and I could back Destiny into her cozy slip without issue.
Mina, our Corgi was pleased to leave Destiny just to stand on the dock! LOL!
We battened down the hatches and headed home only to discover winds really aren't so bad sitting at home in front of the fireplace!
I had some wonderfull videos on my iPhone from this trip! ( catch the had )
Sunday night I plugged the thing into my computer where it promptly forced me to upgrade. Long story short my iPhone turned into a brick and I just now got it to boot up and all is lost. I'm currently restoring from older backups but no videos or photos exist. Dang.
Hope you enjoyed!
Scott
