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

port ludlow

After enjoying some awesome crepes for breakfast, we shoved off for Port Ludlow. The wind was fluky and light, mostly from the SW giving us a slow motion down wind run. We rounded Foulweather Bluff and the wind came back around to the north. We'd never been to Port Ludlow so our blistering approach speed (2 knots) gave us some time to look over charts and our Puget Sound cruising guide. There's some rocks north of the entrance that we wanted to stay clear of and some shallows off the point to the east of the entrance that we'd also like to pay attention to.

We got into the harbor and drove around for 10 minutes trying to find a spot we liked. There was all sorts of room - only four other boats anchored - but the spot we wanted also has a cable running through it. We finally found a spot in 40' of water and dropped the hook.

Whenever we take off for a few days, we don't like to run the engine much to charge the batteries. And that means, we don't turn the fridge on. So 24 hours before we leave, we crank the fridge temperature down while we have shore power and get everything really cold. Well, we may have been a bit aggressive about the temperature setting. I settled in to make dinner for us - huevos rancheros from my mom's recipe - and pulled the eggs out. The eggs were frozen little golf balls. So rather than cracking them open, I peeled 'em like an orange and dropped them into the simmering tomato-ey goodness going on the stove. About 10 minutes later, one of them exploded like some sort of embryonic concussion grenade sending steaming hot tomatoes and onion shrapnel everywhere.

Here's yet another tip from the good ship Hello World: don't cook frozen eggs.

As the sun set, the temperatures nose dived down to around 25°. We had frost on deck by 6:00PM. No worries, we have a nice diesel heater that should keep us plenty warm. Except that it picked this evening to not work. I was up until 3AM babysitting the tiny ineffective flame, trying to coax it into something with any sort of heat. The problem is, if the flame goes out, the diesel fuel keeps getting pumped into the chamber and in the morning, you wake up with a heater chock full of diesel. Bad. So at 3AM, I weighed the amount of time it would take me to disassemble the heater, remove it from the bulkhead, and throw it overboard. Turns out, that time was better spent sleeping so I shut it off and went to bed. At some point during the evening the cat crawled onto the bed and vocalized his displeasure with the temperature by yowling his fool head off. We grabbed him and shoved him under the covers with us. It took him a bit to realize this was a better alternative, but once he did, he stayed under that comforter. In fact, he didn't come out until we pulled into a marina slip again the following day.

See, everyone? Sailing is fun! Dammit, I say it's FUN!


Enjoying the view from the bowsprit. It's seriously the best seat in the house.


Some Pacific Northwest suntanning.


Clearly, my retinas are not used to the sun.





Once we dropped anchor, we coaxed the cat out from under the settee with tuna juice. Works every time.


The frozen egg/slushball.


Shithead finally finds peace and warmth underneath our down comforter. He wouldn't come out from under there for 16 hours. No peeing. No eating. Just huddled under the blanket. Poor kid.

47°55'12"N 122°41'33"W

kingston redux

We have a history of sailing upwind. Both ways. On every trip.

For this trip, we had four days and were going to take off and explore the south Puget Sound. However, NOAA called for a small craft advisory with winds out of the south. We decided we'd take the sleigh ride instead of the bash and we headed north.

(You know what's going to happen next, don't ya?)

Right on cue, about halfway to Kingston, the wind clocked around to the NW. And once again, we're sailing upwind. Not as bad as the last time we tried an uphill bash to Kingston, though.

We did have some nice beam reach sailing on our way up, however. My slice of heaven is a beam reach on this boat. She hit 7.5 knots SOG in 12 knots on the beam. Fun. We docked in the marina in Kingston for the night and enjoyed the town. The creperie down by the ferry entrance is the awesome.

47°47.7'N 122°29.8'W

kingston denied

Virtually every experience we have on the water is a learning experience. Two weekends ago was no exception.

My friend, Joan, was in town from Chicago so decided we'd take her sailing for the weekend. We had been planning for awhile to go sail for a weekend with Aaron and Nicole from s/v Bella Star. Since Aaron took apart Bella Star's windlass and is having some difficulty getting it back together, we decided a marina was the better answer. So we picked Kingston as the destination.

Saturday morning, we checked the weather forecast and they all seemed to agree on around 15 knots of wind coming out of the north. And, of course, Kingston is north. No worries, we'll have a brisk sail to weather and then nestle into the marina and enjoy some hot toddies and a good dinner.

Well.

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you'll have accurately predicted by now that our plans have very little to do with what actually happens. Christy was driving as we pulled out of Shilshole marina. I was on the bow cleaning up the docklines when we turned the corner around the south end of the breakwater. Our predicted 15 knots from the north, was actually a solid 25 knots gusting to 30 knots. They did get the direction right though - thanks NOAA. Along with the wind came 4 to 6 foot seas. Which meant me out on the foredeck moving up and down through about 10 feet of space every few seconds with a healthy dose of greenwater shipped over the bow every now and again. Ya know, for fun.

I got off the foredeck sharpish and back to the cockpit. Since we've never had her out in weather like this, we decided we'd go conservative and set a deeply reefed main along with the staysail. It turned out to be too conservative as we couldn't make enough speed against the seas to be able to tack the boat. And since our cat, Shithead, was cowering belowdecks convinced that the very universe was coming to an end, we decided against pulling out some of the jib to make a little more velocity. We turned the motor on and motor sailed at about 35° off the wind and bashed for an hour or so.

The longer we bashed into the wind, the greener we all became. Suddenly, that big breakfast of sour cream pancakes this morning and steins of beer the night prior started to look like a tactical error. We have a past history of mal de mar and it reared it's ugly head once again this day. Mostly, all over the fender covers and cockpit.

One of the things I'm learning about myself: I'm a boot and rally barfer. As soon as I throw up, I'm good to go. Refreshed and raring to get back at it, albeit with really bad breath. One of the things I learned about Joan - she's not. And one of the things I learned about Christy - she has an innate ability to suppress vomit. She looked rough the whole time out but even after hanging over the rail for a good 15 minutes, nary a drop of bile escaped her lips.

So we made the call to turn the boat around. Kingston would have to wait for another day. As soon as we got her turned around and pointed south, the world immediately settled down and we all became a little happier. The wind gave us a nice shove along with some lovely swells from the stern.

So - what did we learn this weekend?

• A time machine is the only accurate weather forecasting tool. Don't rely on the forecast being accurate!


• Get your PFD on before you leave the dock because there's too much business to attend to once the boat is in motion.


• Being on the foredeck in four to six foot seas sans PFD isn't a great idea.


• 25 knots is not enough wind to go under reefed main and staysail on our boat.


• Why didn't we try to heave to in those conditions? [slaps forehead]


• If you're prone to sea sickness, don't play with your iPhone.


• Christy and I have a veto rule. If one of us is ever uncomfortable in a situation, that person has the right to veto our way out of that situation. Period. We both played the veto card during this trip in different situations and it worked great.


• After the boat is safely in port and everything calms down, we like to talk about what happened. This goes for trips that go smashingly well and trips that don't. This also worked great and is always a good learning tool for us.

(Update 2009.01.07: the author of the Insegrevious blog wrote a pretty thought provoking response to what we talked about in this post. Check it out.)


Joan driving us out of Shilshole the second time after we decided to duck back into the marina and rig the staysail rather than rig it in the swell.


Solid ground - woohoo! Sort of.


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47°44'50.65"N 122°24'41.15"W

blakely harbor

For only the second time since we've owned this boat, we went out and anchored, just Christy & I. Since winds were predicted to come out of the SW, we decided Manzanita Bay on the NW end of Bainbridge Island would be cool to check out. After lollygagging around all Saturday morning, we aimlessly pulled out the tide book and discovered that we totally missed the tide window which means battling a hefty current all the way through Agate Pass to get to Manzanita Bay.

So we decided that Manzanita Bay sucks (never been) and Blakely Harbor would be way better. And given the forecasted SW winds all weekend long (remember that, it will be important later), we figured we'd beat down south to Blakely and then get a nice sleigh ride back to Shilshole on Sunday. We had a fun upwind sail to Blakely. And by we, I mean everybody but the cat. The cat does not like close-hauled sailing. He barfed on our stateroom throw rug. Again. This rug spends more time being hosed down on the dock then it does inside our boat.

Blakely Harbor is a nice little harbor south of Eagle Harbor and the ferry traffic. It's primary attribute is that it looks straight east into downtown Seattle. Which makes for a nice view at night. It's secondary attribute is that it gets ferry wakes rolling through once or twice an hour. And you can hear the engine/props on the ferry from a long ways away.

We anchored in ~35' feet of water, rather than the shoaly south shore (where Sally sells seashells). Since I still don't sleep well at anchor, we paid out almost 200' of chain for a 5:1 scope. As winds kicked up that night straight out of the east, I was happy to have the chain out, especially during my many visits to the cockpit during the night just to doublecheck that we hadn't blown up on shore. There was only one other boat in the harbor so we had plenty of room and the chain doesn't help much sitting in the anchor locker.

Sunday we packed in more lollygagging before taking off around lunch time. We popped out into the Puget Sound only to find our SW winds were actually coming from the NW. So we had another upwind sail home. Lucky for the cat, the winds died and we motorsailed most of the way home.







The best weather you can ask for in December in the Puget Sound. Still better than the weather we had in August.


Shithead the cat, apres barf. "I hate you guys."


Lenticular cloud above Mt. Rainier.


Cool gaff-rigged ketch.


Our fair city.


We hauled up the anchor chain with a little extra weight.


Our fair city looking a bit less fair.


We got a little gust that "re-organized" our bookshelves for us.

Rest of the pics here.

47°35.755'N 122°30.690'W

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port madison and christy's folks

Christy's folks are in town to celebrate Turkey day with my family in what will no doubt be a familial supernova of fun to take place somewhere in the woods south of Yakima, WA. Since this is their first gander at Hello World, we took them sailing on Sunday.

Nothing too exciting - just a nice beam reach from Shilshole over to Port Madison. Joining us on the sail was our neighbors on J-dock, Bill and Jo. Bill, Christy's dad, Carl, and I worked on our mainsail furling issue a bit at the dock prior to taking off and while hauling out the main for the sail. The weather was beautiful for a Seattle November weekend and the wind was cooperative for about half the sail anyways.


Our anchorage at the back of Port Madison.


Sitting at anchor enjoying lunch.


Christy hanging in the cockpit with her folks.


Bill and Jo from s/v Bountiful. Jo makes some wicked cookies, holy cow.


Shithead, the cat, cowering in the back of the quarterberth telepathically communicating with me how much he dislikes it when his house heels, pitches, or has any motion whatsoever. And turn off that damned engine, willya??





We did not definitively solve the sticky mainsail furler but we did improve the situation some. We pulled off the access panels and looked inside to find years of lubricating gunk, mix with grit inside. We cleaned that out best we could with solvent and then sprayed a liberal amount of T9 to lubricate the bearings. It's still pretty tight coming out and the furler sleeve has too much lateral movement for us to be comfortable with it. So we have more work to do on the main before we're happy.

UPDATE: This was the first test of our anchor rode marking and it worked great. It was very easy to decipher the rode length marks as they exited the chain locker, especially since the marks were on seperate chain links.

UPDATE part 2:Christy and I use radio headsets when we anchor so we don't have to yell at each other while I'm up on the bow (previous owner called 'em marital aids). I found it was useful to call out the lengths of chain as it exited so I didn't lose count and in case I did lose count, Christy could remind me.

47°41'34.44"N 122°32'40.66"W

downtown Seattle

Christy is life long friends with just about everyone she's ever met. It's an incredibly endearing trait of hers but it leads to alot of conversations like the following:

her: We're having dinner with [name I've never heard] tonight. Yay!

me: We know someone named [name I've never heard]?

Another conversation we oft repeat went a little like so:

her: Amy's coming up to spend the weekend with us!

me: Right on!

pause

me:Which Amy?

her: New Zealand Amy.

me: Ah. Right on!

And so it was that Amy, Christy's friend from her time spent in New Zealand, came up to visit us. She's temporarily in Portland but mostly living in Connecticut finishing up school. So she hopped a train up north and spent the weekend with us. As she is considering finishing her school/training in Seattle, we decided we'd give her a good taste of Seattle. So we took Hello World down to Bell Harbor Marina right on the waterfront of downtown Seattle for the weekend.

On Saturday morning before taking off, we hosted my longtime friend Kymber, her husband Jay, and their adorable daughter Beija for flapjacks on the boat.


Here's Beija and I going over proper radio protocol after breakfast.


Here's the cat, dealing not so well with all the people inside his boat.

After saying goodbye to Kymber, Jay and Beija, we buttoned up the boat and set off for downtown Seattle in the pouring rain. The wind was dead, which is OK because our mainsail furler is behaving badly and we didn't want to roll it out. So we motored for a couple hours into Elliot Bay and on into Bell Harbor Marina. Ben and Fisher left a little behind us on Ben's Westsail 28 and met us down there.


Christy doing some driving.


Me watching out for crap pots.


Bell Harbor Marina with downtown Seattle in the background.


Christy and I doing the couple pose.

We along the waterfront and on up to Pike Place Market. While we were there, we grabbed some mac and cheese made fresh at Beecher's Handmade Cheese shop. I could swim in a vat of this stuff. Seriously. After that, we grabbed some italian sausage from Uli's Famous Sausages and a bunch of fresh produce and took our haul back to the boat. Ben is a chef and does wonder with food so we gave him some pasta, marinara sauce and our Pike Place goods and he turned it into some fantastic grub.

While having drinks prior to dinner, Fisher was perhaps "over served" and after several rounds of "I love you man!", he pulled yet another disappearing act. So we dined in his absence and fretted over how he got home to Shilshole.


Fisher enjoying the Bell Harbor scenery aboard Ben's Westsail 28.


Fisher hugging the security guard that yelled at him for peeing off the dock. (long story)


Christy, Amy and I lounging.

The next morning, we woke up to a Small Craft Advisory with wind coming out of the south at 20 to 25 knots. Sweet! Downwind run to Shilshole! We helped Ben get off the dock, including Christy and I throwing his docklines in the water and me hammering my shin on our stern anchor as I fended him off Hello World. No wonder everyone in the marina showed up to help us get Hello World out of the slip. But we did so without incident, much to the surprise of those around us. After getting out into Elliot Bay, we unrolled the genoa and enjoyed a great downhill run to Shilshole.


Ben's Westsail 28.


Amy doing some driving.


I can't be bothered to stand up. Steering a sailboat is hard!


Amy enjoying a spot on the bow.


We happened up on a race right out of Shilshole as we were coming in. We just cleared the upwind mark when this dragon painted catamaran roared by us like we were in reverse.


They stationed a crew member on their starboard side just to lift our headsail out of the way. Racers don't get too worked up over wide berths.


A squall line behind the skeleton dude on the Shilshole breakwater. Made docking fun. And really wet.

All the pictures here. As usual, we didn't take any of these pictures. Amy and Ben did all the photographic heavy lifting. Thanks guys! Amy, thanks for coming up! Ben, thanks for dinner and photos! Fisher - I love you, man.

47°36'36.69"N 122°20'50.92"W

westsail 28 under sail

We were out sailing this weekend in beautiful weather, 10 to 15 knots out of the north and buckets of sunshine. We sailed on White Cloud and caught up with Ben a couple times on his Westsail 28. At one point, we grabbed this footage as we caught up to him just east of Port Madison:



Beautiful boat, yes? The rest of the pics are up here.


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update: now with google map goodness

47°43'11.63"N 122°30'34.19"W

poulsbo

This was our first trip out by ourselves on our shiny new boat. This was our first trip anchoring overnight in our shiny new boat. And. Christy's birthday. It was all and all, a festive weekend!

After an unknown problem with the main furler (turns out later it needed lubrication) and light winds, we motored over to Poulsbo to hang out for the night. We watched a beautiful sunset over Liberty Bay.

This trip we discovered how cool it is to go places for a weekend and take your house with you.

Cool.


Christy steering out of Shilshole.


Reading before the sun went down.


And there it goes.

47°43.1'N 122°37.7'W