Transit to Cornet Bay
Thursday, July 13th
Today, we transitted to Cornet Bay from Port Angeles. We're on our way to La Conner. La Conner is located on the Swinomish Channel, which is too shallow for us to pass at low tide, and is crossed by the Rainbow Bridge, which is too low for us to fit under ever. Fortunately, the boatwrights who made this incarnation of the Lady Washington were thinking about such things, and our masts fit together in three pieces. When we need to, we can down rig, which means to take off a portion of our rigging, in this case, t'gallant mast and yard--the upper twenty feet of the Lady Washington. Even then, we won't fit under the Rainbow Bridge at high tide, which means that once we get there, we are effectively trapped in La Conner, except when the tide is just perfect. And we can't sail, because there is no place to go. We'll be doing maintenance and all day dockside tours. I am disappointed to not be sailing, but maybe I'll learn some bosunry, so I'm excited at that.
So, Esther and Friar downrigged the main and fore t'gallant yards before we left Port Angeles. This means we had no dockside tours today, as we had a bloody great chunk of wood hanging in the air, held up a significant portion of the time by the muscles of the crew.
JB let me handle the tiller for a while. The Lady Washington's tiller is about six feet long. I controlled it by sitting on it and making slight adjustments with my legs. The GPS kept track of what direction Cornet Bay was, and JB kept in communication with Traffic Control to make sure they knew when we were planning to cross the shipping lanes. There was one point where JB pointed out to me where all the currents came together and you could see the water swirling. "That's going to want to push you around."
"OK," I said. Then we hit that spot, and suddenly, instead of going northeast, we were going northwest, and I could not get the tiller to go back the other way. JB grabbed the tackle and pulled while I pushed, and together we got the boat going the right way again. Wow! It wasn't until then that I had any appreciation for how big a boat I was trying to muscle around, or for how strong the currents could be.
Later, I climbed the main mast with Esther and Friar and helped take down the main t'gallant mast. This was the highest I had ever climbed, and the highest point on the boat to which you can climb on the shrouds. It's about 66 feet off the water. The view was incredible. The seas were so calm that there was almost no sway, but it was cold up there!
The last stage of our journey was to motor through Deception Pass. JB was aiming to do this at slack tide, so there would be no current, but we were either too early or too late, because we had a following current. Miah was on the tiller. We went under the bridge, with about 50 people on the shoreline watching, and then suddenly, we're sliding through sideways. Then we're straight again, and then sideways, and then straight again. We motored into Cornet Bay with cannon fire salutes. As we moored up, Miah commented, "Well that's all the adrenaline rush I need for the day!"
Today, we transitted to Cornet Bay from Port Angeles. We're on our way to La Conner. La Conner is located on the Swinomish Channel, which is too shallow for us to pass at low tide, and is crossed by the Rainbow Bridge, which is too low for us to fit under ever. Fortunately, the boatwrights who made this incarnation of the Lady Washington were thinking about such things, and our masts fit together in three pieces. When we need to, we can down rig, which means to take off a portion of our rigging, in this case, t'gallant mast and yard--the upper twenty feet of the Lady Washington. Even then, we won't fit under the Rainbow Bridge at high tide, which means that once we get there, we are effectively trapped in La Conner, except when the tide is just perfect. And we can't sail, because there is no place to go. We'll be doing maintenance and all day dockside tours. I am disappointed to not be sailing, but maybe I'll learn some bosunry, so I'm excited at that.
So, Esther and Friar downrigged the main and fore t'gallant yards before we left Port Angeles. This means we had no dockside tours today, as we had a bloody great chunk of wood hanging in the air, held up a significant portion of the time by the muscles of the crew.
JB let me handle the tiller for a while. The Lady Washington's tiller is about six feet long. I controlled it by sitting on it and making slight adjustments with my legs. The GPS kept track of what direction Cornet Bay was, and JB kept in communication with Traffic Control to make sure they knew when we were planning to cross the shipping lanes. There was one point where JB pointed out to me where all the currents came together and you could see the water swirling. "That's going to want to push you around."
"OK," I said. Then we hit that spot, and suddenly, instead of going northeast, we were going northwest, and I could not get the tiller to go back the other way. JB grabbed the tackle and pulled while I pushed, and together we got the boat going the right way again. Wow! It wasn't until then that I had any appreciation for how big a boat I was trying to muscle around, or for how strong the currents could be.
Later, I climbed the main mast with Esther and Friar and helped take down the main t'gallant mast. This was the highest I had ever climbed, and the highest point on the boat to which you can climb on the shrouds. It's about 66 feet off the water. The view was incredible. The seas were so calm that there was almost no sway, but it was cold up there!
The last stage of our journey was to motor through Deception Pass. JB was aiming to do this at slack tide, so there would be no current, but we were either too early or too late, because we had a following current. Miah was on the tiller. We went under the bridge, with about 50 people on the shoreline watching, and then suddenly, we're sliding through sideways. Then we're straight again, and then sideways, and then straight again. We motored into Cornet Bay with cannon fire salutes. As we moored up, Miah commented, "Well that's all the adrenaline rush I need for the day!"