I had a grand plan of attempting the Palouse-to-Cascade trail, but plans fell through with some bike issues. Bit of a bummer, but we made the best of it! Our plan for the weekend was to leave on Friday night and grab a moorning ball at Blake island for the night, then spend the day playing around on Blake island before heading to Port orchard marina on Saturday night and head home on Sunday. It was our first 2 night trip in the new boat and the first night on a mooring ball (on the new boat). The trip was a great success - lots of fun and lots of learnings.
We left Seattle around 5:50-6p and it took us around an hour to sail to Blake island in some 7-10 kt winds out of the North - putting us at a nice broad reach all the way to the island. All of the moorings on the north-east side of the island were empty so we were somewhat reassures that we had a place to stay tonight. We also had high hopes that the west side moorings were also open (which is a the beautiful/protected side) - but as we came around the island we were sorely dissapointed. We did a full loop of the island and ended up grabbing a mooring on the soulth-east side (just south of harbor). We picked up the mooring ball on the first try but the mooring chain was a bit heavy for Angela so I had to run up to the front to help out. All in all, it was a great end to the first day. It was a little choppier here, but we had great views of the city as the sun set. I pulled down the dingy from the deck (a fairly complicated affair) while Angela made dinner. Taking the dingy to the beach was challenging for Oakley’s business and I ended up getting quite wet - note to add the extra-tuffs to the boat loadout. After taking Oakley ashore, we closed ourselves in for a cozy evening. The Diesel heater is still acting up, so another item to add to the list (pretty sure it’s the glow plug).
The next morning we went ashore to go for a hike and to take-in the island. Right off the bat, we saw some sea otters playing on the park ranger’s doc - They are hard to see, but if you look about 10 feed from the end of the long dock you can spot them.
The campsite near the harbor was packed with an organized camping group (we think it was the boy scouts) and some assorted other campers that looked as if they came in on the ferry. They seemed like they were having a great time and they were relatively quiet during the night (our moorning was ~200 feet offshore from the camp).
This was our 3rd time on the island and we hadn’t yet done the full circumnavigation (only the northern half). The southern half was much of the same, but it did have some interesting historical signs/structures from Blake island’s past.
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Blake island is entirely a state park and most of the activities are native american history related - Tillicum village salmon bake, dances, ceremonies, etc. The history, however, involved several private owners with very different priorities/motives. Not a lot of scandal, but for most of the 20th century the island was a private garden… interesting!
The hike was quite beautiful - heavily forested but regular views of the water and the beautiful boats in and around the island. We ran into a handful of other boaters and got some good intel on places to go/planning in the puget sound. Mostly though, we did gathered acorns, leaves, sang songs, etc.
Sara even made up a song! This is the grasshopper song - sorry the audio is hard to hear, I didn’t realize how much of my footsteps the mic was going to pickup.
Sara and Angela made a few leaf bouques and the promply forgot them or lost them - forcing them to make another. They were quite lovely and Sara was eager to bring all of them home - which we did not do…
After a 4 mi circumnavigation, our dingy was still there… :)
We traveled back out to the boat and got things prepped for heading to Port Orchard - with the biggest task being getting the Dingy back up onto the fore-deck. Dingy davits would definitely make things easier (on the list) but the fore-deck solution works well for now. We got some good early afternoon wind to take us through Rich passage, but things really died off as we made it into Sinclair inlet. Still, we were patient and we sailed all the way there (with the exception of the last bit into the marina). We did a quick pump-out and got into some pretty shallow water (note to self to watch the depth guage closer when maneuvering right outside of the dock). No mishaps though and we were into our slip in no-time. We even had a couple of other boaters stop over to catch our lines which was nice - but Angela was off and tying things up before they could offer too much assistance.
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We headed into town to grab some dinner at a place called “Docks Bar and Eatery” which is situated in a cool little indoor plaza with a bunch of other shops. There was a guest book (which Sara signed) and we had a lovely dinner and drinks.
We headed back to our boat after dinner and tried our hands at ticket to ride (adult version) which was fun, but a bit too complicated for Sara - which was probably not that surprising. Board games are super fun on the boat - note that we should bring the kids version of ticket to ride and some other board games onto the boat next time.
The next morning we headed ashore to work of some energy at the playground - which was a beautiful spot right on the water.
After lots of running, Sara and I did a quick walk through town and found a restraunt that we went to during our ASA 104 class. Brought back some memories…
I’m a sucker for quotes and I’ve heard this one before, but it’s a goody.
We left for home around 10a and unfortunately, we had to motor most of the way. We got a little motor sailing in as we got out from behind the Bainbridge wind shadow, but it was not quite enough to turn the motor off.
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Overall, a great sail! We were all excited about the next one - although I think getting the diesel heater working will be a pre-req for the next time we go - it’s getting to be that time of year.
Some learnings from the trip that are worth writting down. Firstly, the automatic battery isolator (Voltage sensitive relay) worked perfectly and the house battery was down to ~75% by the time we made it into Pt Orchard (which was about 24 hours from leaving Elliot bay) and the starter battery was still at 100%. Our current house battery is 200aH - so that works out to about 50 aH per day (although, the battery is pretty old so it might be a lot less than 50aH). We did quite a bit of dingying around and the dingy battery was about 50% after those 24 hours. That works out to another 50aH. We will eventually upgrade the house batteries to ~330 aH so we would have ~3 days of power without any solar. It will be interesting to see how much we get out of solar - on paper, we should get ~100aH at 50% efficiency daily, but it’s hard to know what that number will be until we get them installed… Anyway, here’s the pretty DC-DC charger (which will eventually plug into the Solar panels) and battery isolator installed and working. :)
