Cruising Chronicle Part Un (one)

We left home on Thursday August 27th, headed south from Everett, where our yacht Morego is kept. Our goal was to make Andrews Bay in Lake Washington by happy hour. You never know how long it will take to get through the Locks and we had a couple of stops to make in the lakes on our way to Andrews Bay. Our timing was bad, as it turned out, and our transit took 2.5 hours from arrival at the Locks to exiting them on the lake side.

Next stop was close by at CSR Marine who were kind enough to let us use their dock so we could walk the 2 blocks to Kruger Propeller to pick up our reconditioned props. The ones Al had recently put on were a big mistake and not so good. So we picked up the props and headed over to Meydenbauer Bay Yacht Club where we borrowed their guest dock to replace the props. Our diver met us there and in 2 hours we were all fixed up.

Finally and right on time we arrived in Andrews bay to back in as the 4th spoke of a Wagon Wheel which we were forming in preparation for the arrival of the rest of our friends on Friday. Happy Hour was well earned that day!

What a fun weekend we had with our friends and fellow members of Navy Yacht Club Everett. There were 9 boats in all. Saturday started out a little rainy but the sky soon brightened and the sun came out. We were challenged to participate in a paper plate sailboat race by Mukilteo Yacht Club, which it turned out were rafted with 4 boats nearby. 3 of our boats responded to the challenge and we all dinghyed over to cheer them on. The crew of Liberty won first prize and the crew of Venture won 3rd prize so we did pretty well.

Saturday morning Al decided he would not have enough projects for our trip so he headed home with the help of the crew of Liberty who dinghyed him to shore and loaned him their daughters car (she had arrived to visit). He brought back an inverter project which he had been intending to install. He arrived back to the boat in time for the sailboat races.

Sunday morning the wheel broke up by 9am and we were all on our way. It turned out to be practically zero visibility in thick fog starting about the locks. The good part is that we sailed straight into the small lock with 2 of our other boats and were through in less than 30 minutes. But from there is was very slow going in terrible fog, sounding our horn every 2 minutes as required by such conditions. Our radar was great and saved us running into another boat more than once. It is shocking how fast some people go in such unsafe conditions, and of course the fishermen are out there no matter what, not watching anything but their poles.

We made it over to Kingston as we planned where we filled up our thirsty gas tanks with 273 gallons of gas. Yikes! We also pumped out and will save water fillup until we reach our next port. Fortunately while we were in Kingston the fog began to lift. Horray! I was beginning to think we would have to stay there overnight.

While Al was filling the gas tanks I walked over to our favorite Creperie, J'Aime les Crepes. Perfect timing for lunch so I brought back one for each of us and a latte for Al. Soon we were on our way to our intended destination, Port Townsend. We were fortunate to snag a reciprocal slip which gives us free moorage for the night. It is great to be safely docked with power, having been on the hook and off the grid for the past 3 days.

There is no Clearwire here but our uber router is picking up bbx which I was able to successfully connect to.