edmonds. no wait... kingston

After sufficiently thawing out from the evening prior, we weighed anchor and took off bound for Edmonds. We rounded Foulweather Bluff which did a better job this time living up to it's name. The wind started at about 15 knots out of the south (right where we want to go) and gradually built to 25 knots. Clearly, it was going to be a day to learn how Hello World points into the wind.

Turns out? Not well.

We spent most of the day tacking back and forth between Whidby Island and Hansville gaining very little ground. After farting around most of the day, it dawned on us that the wind was building and we were still not close to port. So we rolled the headsail in, turned on the engine and motored into the teeth of it. At this point, we just wanted to get to Edmonds before dark.

Well, that wasn't going to happen. We couldn't make much speed motoring into the wind and waves so we resigned ourselves to an after dark landing. Rather than attempt a night landing in an unfamiliar marina, we chose to aim for Kingston yet again. We knew the marina and the approach.

We chose a linear dock at the outer edge of the marina and lined up for it. When Christy and I double hand the boat, we typically land the boat like so:

• Paper, rock, scissors for who gets to drive. Loser handles lines.


• Line handler gets the lines set and kicks the fenders over the side. We have enough dock lines to rig both sides.


• Driver lines the boat up and brings her in slow. We prefer a port tie because of we get loads of prop-walk to port and like to take advantage of it. That being said, it seems like we are always landing on starboard ties. Which means judicious use of reverse so we don't end up at a 45° angle inside the slip.


• Under most circumstances, we dock the boat with a spring line running from the midships cleat aft. The line handler will step (never jump) on to the dock and cleat the spring line on the cleat farthest aft.


• Once the spring line is cleated, the driver puts the engine in idle forward and steers away from the dock. This will snug the boat right up against the dock and keep the bow from swinging around. Once you lose control of the bow, you're in damage control mode. We're not big fans of damage control mode.


• Next, the person handling lines than secures either the bow line or the stern line, depending on where the wind is coming from and which end of the boat it would like to shove into the boat next to us. While this is happening, the driver stays at the helm with the engine running.


• Once we have the spring, bow and stern lines fast, the driver can leave the helm and help with the final positioning of the boat. While we do this, we usually leave the engine idling in neutral to let the engine cool down.
  

This process will change for things like hardcore crosswinds but it works well under most situations. Coming in to the dock at Kingston, we were landing at night in a mostly unfamiliar marina with a 25 knot tailwind and the Coast Guard barking on the radio about a small craft advisory. I don't like to brag (yes I do), but we executed a wicked ninja docking maneuver, nailing each step in the process. Granted, we should have been more aware and not gotten ourselves into that situation in the first place. But still, ninja, man. Totally ninja.

After the boat was happily secured to the dock, we went down below and chugged a couple beers.


The only photo we snapped that day was leaving Port Ludlow. It was too friggin' cold the rest of the day to be taking photos.

47°47'38.1"N 122°'29'54.8"W