Weekend trips

I was sitting here thinking that I should do a better job of updating this site, and as I was trying to recall what we had done since the last time I updated, and drawing more than a couple of blanks.

I thought to myself, “hmmm, maybe I’ll look at the pictures on my camera”.

And then it hit me. Each weekend was sitting right there, in chronological order. Mostly out of focus or poorly framed, but there none the less. So instead of racking my brain trying to remember details from 2 or 3 weeks ago, I’ll fire up the camera and take a trip down memory lane.

The weekend after the last update, Me and Tawn sailed down to Quartermaster Harbor, which is on the south end of a Vashon Island. There was almost no wind so we ended up getting there a little later than we thought we would. We had brought our mountain bikes with us this time, so we went for a  bike ride after we had tied up at the docks. The sun was setting just as we got back.

We woke up the next morning to a little more wind and a nice sunny day. We sailed out of the harbor and headed a short distance away to a little town called Gig Harbor. It had been 5 years or so since we had last visited Gig Harbor. And that was on Thanksgiving on our little boat “Strange Crew”.

The wind was actually blowing pretty good, but as we got out of Quartermaster Harbor, we had to go against the tide. And while the wind was not blowing very hard, it was enough to push us along at 2 knots, however, the tide was running against us at 3 knots. The net result was us moving backwards at 1 knot. That was not very productive.

Gig Harbor is probably the most protected harbor in the entire Puget Sound. The entire anchorage is surrounded with the exception of a small opening on the southern side that requires a tight “S” curve to get in. It’s even tighter at low tide, which is when we just happened to come in at.

As usual, pictures just do not do it justice, but I’ll post them anyway to give you an idea of what it looks like. This is the entrance into Gig Harbor. The picture was taken about 100 yards from shore. As you can see, or not, it looks like there is no way in. The plan is to head straight ahead towards that little grey house in the center of the picture, then turn right towards that lighthouse on the right of the picture:

Once you get to about 20 feet from shore, you’ll see the entrance open up and it looks a little more inviting. The grey house is just out of the picture to the left and the lighthouse is just out of the picture to the right:

Since the tide was out, the depth in the entrance was very low, the depth meter showed we had about 4 feet of water under the keel. Tawn was on the bow keeping an eye out for rocks, just in case I got out of the channel. Once inside the depth increase to a respectable 15-20 feet. While Tawn was on the bow, she shot a quick little video of the entrance as we came through:

We headed home on Tuesday, unfortunatly there was not a puff of wind, so we had to motor the whole way home.

The next weekend is the cheesiest boating related weekend in Seattle. It’s called “Opening Day”, and it’s basically when the retards with the blue blazers and scramble egg “Captian” hats parade their boats up and down a piece of water called the Montlake Cut, to much pomp and crapenstance. It really is very stupid. I’ll not speak of it again.