It’s the last weekend in April and it’s not pouring down rain. This is amazing. We left Foss Harbor this afternoon to sail up to Blakely Harbor, expecting the usual slow motorboat to China routine with the wind directly on the nose. Boy were we wrong! We had an incredible sail and, in fact, I wondered if we might have our first ‘close encounter’ with the water as we rounded Point Robinson. Good thing we don’t really take the wind report seriously around here, at least not completely. The radio told us that we were experiencing winds out of the southwest at 3 knots. They got it half right. The winds were out of the southwest all right. But with Moonrise going against the tide at a pleasing 6.8 knots with her rail mostly in the water, I am almost completely certain that the whole ‘3 knots’ thing was bogus.
To be succinct, the sailing was excellent: just gusty enough to make for some exciting wheel work and to have Mike ‘man’ the mainsheet in case we needed to spill wind fast. Sure, we were working with more weather helm than was probably efficient, but screw that because we were having so much fun. Plus, my arms got a great workout. That’s got to be good for me, right? Moonrise handled the gusts with her usual grace, only laying her main close to the water a few times. It was like cowboy sailing!
Just when we though things couldn’t get better, I spotted whales off the starboard side up by Three Tree Point. Actually, I spotted ‘whale’. I’m fairly certain there was only one, and it was not an orca. Probably a grey whale. It surfaced 4 times, then disappeared. We waited and Mike called it to come back, singing his excellent whale song.
Mike making like a whale.
Alas, the whale was not impressed. It showed up next pretty far behind us.
We pulled into Port Blakely just as the sun was going down, dropped the hook, and Mike had a beer. We’ll be up bright and early for the Puget Sound Cruising Club’s ‘circumlocution’ of Bainbridge Island tomorrow. It’s our first cruising club event. They don’t know it yet, but they are our new friends. Hope they don’t talk circles around us.
Our view of Seattle from our anchorage. Our view is much less grainy than this photo.
Did you offer the whale a beer? Perhaps it was insulted.
Damn! Why didn’t we think of that? Next time… next time.
LOVE that you guys are sailing, thanks for taking me along with you. Look at SEATTLE! That’s so cool.
Tate’s sister and BIL were just in Seattle 2 weekends ago for business and got to see the whole city. They showed me pictures of the Puget Sound, and I was like hey, that’s where Melissa and Mike are…small world.
Mike needs to work on whale skills, i’m sure it would have been more effective if tried in the water…Just saying.
Dani
Seattle is a great city! As cities go, it’s definitely my favorite. I think we’ll have to do an underwater sound system for Mike’s whale song. We were just glad to see even evidence of whales this far south in the sound.
“this far south”….LOL made me laugh.
Oop! My bad! I should explain, for readers who don’t live in the Puget Sound area, that the ‘south’ sound is what I was referring to. I’ll bet you did have a hearty laugh at that one considering you are way down in Louisiana!
Beautiful look at the city at night from the water. There is nothing better! I’m sure Mike’s whale song is terrific. You prolly just happened upon the only deaf whale in Puget Sound. Rotten luck, but I’m sure the next whale will have fully functioning ears and will be more appreciative.
That sounds like a blast!!! Oh if I only lived closer I might feign interest as a buyer just to get a day out like that one!
And now my name actually links to my blog. Not sure why the other address was wrong. My bad.
Lately Mike as been the whale attractor, so I cannot complain. Sandra, do let us know if you are down this way and we’ll give you a sail out on the bay. Those of you with blogs will notice that when you comment we can now post a link to your most recent blog post. We are using an application called Comment Luv that does that. We’ve had it for awhile, but it just now started working. Who knows about the magic of the interweb and how it works? I’m just glad when it does.
That is the coolest thing! I love it.
Oh and thank you for the offer of a sail. I will definitely take you up on that so be prepared!! 🙂
We all want more readers, right? This way people can find the latest post with ease. And we’re always prepared to go sailing!
That sounds like so much fun! And it looks gorgeous up there. What a great place to live as a sailor.
Well, it IS pretty cool, actually. But it’s just so cold. I’m kind of tired of being cold all the time. On the sail this weekend, I had on wool leggings, then a windproof sailing one-piece thingy, then my foul weather gear over that. Three layers and I was finally warm. That gets old. But we really do have beautiful cruising grounds in this area.