July 8th, 2021, the day we officially started our adventure!! With our home & cars sold, our stuff not destined for a life at sea mostly all sold, donated, and/or discarded, we set our sights on the San Juan Islands. After being a bit delayed due to a boat yard scheduling snafu & a broken ankle, we were finally off! The San Juan Islands in Northern Washington proved to be an idyllic setting for us to cut our teeth on the cruising lifestyle before heading out into bigger waters offshore.
We set off in the late afternoon on July 8th, forever now immortalized as our official "untie-the-lines" day. After a quick stop to top off the diesel tanks at our marina, we set off for a nice calm motor to our 1st evenings destination, the tried and true Blake Island. We snagged a mooring ball for the night, got some rest, then pushed on for another flat calm motor boat ride to Oak Bay. We dropped the hook a couple hours before sunset after finding a good piece of real estate among the myriad of crab pot buoys in the bay. It was here that we realized we forgot one very important thing before leaving Tacoma.... Crab licenses!
The next day, we set sail (actually sailing this time) across the Straits of Juan de Fuca northward to our 1st stop in the San Juan's. What a ride that was across the straits. We kinda got caught with our pants down. 20-25kt Winds apposing 2-3kt currents made for some short steep waves. Our dinghy was up on our davit system on the back of our boat, lifted out of the water, but the short steep waves had us pitch poling so hard that our dinghy was dragging sideways through the water on every 3rd or 4th wave. At the speeds we were moving, this could have easily destroyed our dinghy, or possibly even parts of our boat where the davit system connected.
When sailing in rough conditions, you cant simply pull over to fix something, but what you can do is "heave to." For the non-sailors reading this post, simply put, "heaving to" is essentially back-winding your sails and letting your boat safely-ish drift with the motion of the wind/water without input from a helmsman. It's a surprisingly effective way to calm down the motion of the boat, at the expense of progress, of course. With the boat calmed down a bit, I was able to dangle over the back of the boat to release the dinghy from the davits and trail the dinghy well astern of the boat so we could safely continue the rest of the transit through the Straits of Juan de Fuca. This was actually the 1st time either of us has actually hove to for any sort of truly practical reason. We were pretty proud of ourselves.
With the excitement of the straits behind us, we finished our 3rd and final day of transit to our summer destination in the San Juan's. We picked up a mooring ball in Spencer Spit state park on the NE side of Lopez Island where we'll spend a few days relaxing and enjoying the beach, the scenery, and the weather.
We're so thrilled to have finally begun this adventure we've been planning for so long! While we do miss our time spent in Tacoma, it's great to finally be off the dock and "out there!" Now it's time to enjoy the San Juan Islands and begin the planning for our big left turn later next month. Stay tuned!
Below is a video of us leaving our home dock at Foss Harbor for the final time. It may be boring, but it's a nice memory for us. :)
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