Beat Up and Spit Out

Day 3 - Friday Harbour to Port Angeles

The day started out fine.

 The rain had stopped and the day looked promising. It was all lies!  Within 1/2 hour of leaving the marina, at about 8:15 AM, the wind came up, directly on the nose. We had to go SE for a while to negotiate around some outlying rocks and then south through the San Juan channel before we could turn more westerly towards Port Angeles. This meant we were headed right into the steadily increasing winds - not even tempting to put up a sail.

As we were entering the San Juan channel, our speed started to increase dramatically. Soon we were zooming along at 9 knots (our normal speed is closer to 6). This was a nice boost but begged the question: Why?  Sue quickly consulted our Tide and Current tables and discovered that the San Juan channel is a current station. It appears we were entering at a time of maximum ebb, normally not a time we would choose to go through. For a while, all appeared to be ok as the only effect seemed to be that we were going much quicker than we planned. But the wind kept getting stronger, still on the nose, until it was steadily over 25 knots. This produced a condition known as "wind over current", never a good thing.

Just as we thought we got away with it (we seemed to be past the narrowest part of the channel), we hit the big waves. I have no idea how high they were as I am a terrible judge of such things, but they were big enough and close enough together to get us going straight up and plunging straight back down, burying our bow completely, and virtually bringing the boat to a halt. Then they started coming from every direction and a broach seemed more and more likely, as it was difficult to keep enough speed up to maintain any steerage through these mountains of water. Somehow, after an exhausting hour or so, we struggled into deeper waters and the worst was over. The winds kept up, the crew was sick, and we were pooped twice (water over the rails, filling the cockpit), but it seemed like nothing after the pounding we had just taken.

By about 10:30, the winds slacked off (we thought about putting up a sail but the crew was not enthusiastic) and we had a pleasant motor into Port Angeles, arriving about 2:15 PM. In spite of the wild ride, we did make good time on the 36 mile crossing. I am sure I was mistaken when I thought I heard the crew ask if it was too late to ship the boat south and join it there.

It is perfectly calm in Port Angeles, although a bit damp. The boat has come through this day mostly intact. The only casualties were the dinghy (which tried to leave the mothership whenever we dipped it in the water, the life ring that had suddenly decided someone was in trouble and launched itself accordingly, the freezer which got toppled onto its side, and the usual items that distribute themselves about the cabin whenever the going gets rough. The dinghy stayed with us in the end, and we will be putting it on deck tomorrow. We managed to retrieve the life ring (it was still tied onto the boat) and the freezer apparently works fine on its side and has been righted.

The only real beef I have right now is with the new alternator that does not seem to be keeping the batteries up as well as I would like. I will have to investigate further. As for tomorrow, the forecast for the next couple of days appears much the same, not conducive to going down the west coast but probably not a bad time to be going up the Juan de Fuca strait. Since if we left for Neah Bay tomorrow, we would most likely have to wait at least a couple of days there for the weather to improve, we have decided to stay in Port Angeles for a day instead. This will give us a chance to work on the boat's shortcomings that we have identified. Besides, we could actually sleep in, which would be nice too.

We walked downtown, found a great hardware store where I got some supplies for securing the freezer, found a chart store with some tide and current tables for the west coast, and had a pizza for supper. Life is good again.

{GMST}48|7.5|N|123|27.1212|W|Port Angeles, Washington, USA|Port Angeles, Washington,USA{GEND}
{GMST}48|27.6035|N|122|57.0533|W|San Juan Channel|San Juan Channel{GEND}