In case I don't see ya...: June 2008

Last Friday, my dad and I launched my boat into the GH bay. After launching, he left, and I motored the boat over to the public dock for the night. After getting things situated, I was visited by my friend Kara K, who had wanted to see the boat for quite some time. After that, I hung out for a little bit by myself before going to bed (for the first time on the boat).
I slept well, but was woken around 5:30, due to the light. A blanket over the head, and I was back out until about 9:30. Shortly after 10:00, my friend Scott C. (whom I went to HS with) arrived. After loading his stuff into the boat, he accepted my suggestion that we take a 5 minute walk up to the grocery store for doughnuts and cold chocolate milk (“waking up on a boat and walking to get fresh doughnuts and cold chocolate milk” is something I really love doing, but don’t do very often – which is probably a good thing). It really hit the spot! - he concurred. Then it was time to get the show on the… water – destination: Cutts Island.
I prepared the sails as he steered while motoring out of the harbor (that seems to be the routine, which I prefer). The wind was a little light at first, but we were able to have a few nice stretches of good progress, and were able to pass in front of Brian and Marcia’s house on Salmon Beach. They were out on the deck with a group of people. While I was on the phone with Brian, I could hear Marcia say “is that Jesse??” – directed at the sailboat she saw in front of their house.
Once Scott and I turned towards the Narrows bridge, the wind starting cooperating more, and we made excellent progress until right before Point Fosdick. I made tuna sandwiches for us (I elected to put swiss cheese on mine, which is something I only started doing in the last year or so, thanks to my mom’s influence) – yummy! We had a short stretch of good wind to finally take us around the point, and then it was fairly slow all the way through Hale Passage (on the North side of Fox Island, where I spent the first 20 years of my life). I was able to point out the house I grew up in, as well as the tightly-packed monstrous buildings (homes) a few “houses” down, which totally adulterated the charm of the waterfront-row of homes that was constant for several decades (this adulteration took place during the first couple of years that we were no longer in the neighborhood – my brother and sister had already moved out, I moved to my house in GH, and my parents moved onto a power boat for a few years).
Approaching Tanglewood Island (which sits right up against Fox Is.), we elected to use the motor for a little bit, until we were on the other side of the Fox Island bridge. Going under the bridge reminded me of some short family trips we took on a 27’ sailboat. It was here that we realized that the current was going against us, even though the tide wasn’t supposed to start going out for a couple more HOURS… There must be some sort of anomaly in that stretch of water that my parents probably know about, but I didn’t. We were able to turn the motor off and have some decent wind until just past the spit at the northernmost point of Fox Island. Then it became a challenge to make headway around a different point, which was on the mainland. We ended up choosing to use the motor to get more out into the open water in Carr Inlet. Due to the anomaly with the direction of water-flow which contradicted basic assumptions based on the low-tide/high-tide schedule, combined with the mostly lighter level of wind in Hale Passage, I decided that the next time I go from GH to Cutts Island (which will happen this summer), the route will be to go on the South side of Fox Island, through Carr Inlet, which is a lot more open, and should have better wind and shouldn’t have an antagonistic current.
After some unimpressive wind, combined with the quickly-approaching change of tide (and checking the fuel level in the gas tank), I decided that we should probably motor the rest of the way, unless we came across some great wind. It was nice when Cutts Island finally came into view, and when we got close I started to prepare the anchor and chain. It turned out that there were a couple of buoys available, so we tied up to one of those instead (I hadn’t been sure of whether there were buoys at the island anymore). Then I made some macaroni and cheese with my Jet Boil apparatus that I got from REI two years ago (for camping, etc., even though I didn’t go camping at all in the past two summers, which is totally lame). We had also been stuffing ourselves with chips all day (which happened on Sunday, too – I ate more chips on this overnight trip than I have in the last few months combined). Shortly after that, we were ready to go to bed. I played my guitar for a little bit and then it was sleepy-time, which went well (with TWO people this time).
We had cold cereal for breakfast, and then untied from the buoy, and moved a lot closer to the spit (Cutts Island has a pretty long stretch of sand that is exposed most of the time, and is impressive at low tide), so that we could go from my boat to the beach without having to swim (but still got wet, of course). We walked to the end of the spit, and then back, and then around the small island. Since the tide was on the way in, I handed Scott a couple of things, and then walked into the water and swam a tiny bit to the swim-ladder. The water was cold, but not so bad, really, and any effect of coldness was quickly gone after I was on the boat. I went to the bow, and pulled up some chain – enough to where the anchor was no longer on the bottom. This was so that the boat would drift closer to the beach so that Scott didn’t need to swim – he only went waist-deep, and then was able to climb up the swim-ladder. We then got the main sail ready, and I lifted the anchor up, and (very fluidly) we started smoothly sailing away from the beach – it worked perfectly. The wind was great, and we spent a couple of hours making the short trip to Horsehead Bay, where my dad was going to meet us later to pull the boat out. Before ending up in the bay, we were able to cover a LOT of water, back and forth through the large expanse of open water - excellent wind conditions.
Also, during this time of great conditions, I pulled out a little CD player I brought with me, and played Bach’s “Brandenburg Concerto No. 4”, which I have long associated with a great memory of sailing on the family boat while that song was playing on a cassette tape. Since getting this sailboat, I have been looking forward to sailing to that music during great wind conditions. I was not disappointed – it was great! Once we were stable in Horsehead Bay, I heated some tomato rice soup (which we ate), and then put the sails away, and packed everything up, in preparation for the end of the adventure. All in all, it was a very enjoyable trip. I look forward to doing it again, with a couple of small adjustments (such as the route change previously mentioned).