Duwamish Cruise

Cruised by downtown, into Duwamish waterway to Delta Marine and back. Spent night on board.

Freeland!

Date: Wednesday, July 3 - Saturday, July 6
Time: 10:30am - 5:30pm
Origin: Elliott Bay Marina 
Destination: Freeland, Holmes Harbor, Whidbey Island 
Distance: 43 miles one way (86 mi r/t)
Specs: 9kts @ 1800rpm out (against tide), 9kts @ 1400rpm back (with tide)

Final boat loading and prep on Tuesday afternoon and spent the night on the boat to be able to finalize preparations Wednesday morning before departure.

Wednesday

Left the marina right about 10:30am on Wednesday and followed Main Attraction up to Holmes Harbor. Total trip time was about 4h 15m, and all systems worked perfectly. MA anchored off the shore of our friends beach house, and I rafted up. The porta-bote on the dinghy davit worked great, and is very convenient. Had it launched in under 5 minutes after shutting off the engines. Spent the afternoon and evening visiting with friends and enjoying the Freeland fireworks, a great show!

Thursday

Up and out by 7am with a full complement of people and crab pots and dropped them all off of Beverly Beach using the big boat. Returned and rafted up again to MA. Pulled pots around 1pm and got a very good haul. Returned in the evening for a final pull and got about a dozen keepers. Used the dinghy, but with the 3.5hp outboard, it was a very slow go. Not ideal. Ran the generator for two hours in the evening to top off the house batteries.

Friday

Out by 9:30am to pull pots using the big boat, towing the dinghy. So so haul. Anchored upon return, as MA was departing in early afternoon.

Saturday

We had our crab limits, so we decided to pull and store the pots without keeping any crabs. One scare upon leaving the harbor, the port engine wouldn't start. I did a few obvious checks and finally determined that the port gear was ever so slightly out of neutral, so the engine safety was activated. After a quick jiggle, both engines fired right up and we cruised back to EBM, much easier with the tide, about 4h 20m return. Again, all systems ran perfectly. Backed into slip without incident and did a quick washdown.

Ferry to EBM

After many days of scrubbing and cleaning and fixing little things here and there, today was the day to leave Seattle Yacht Club at Portage Bay and ferry the boat to Elliott Bay Marina. It was also my first time at the helm of this boat, or any twin screw, or any boat at all bigger than Toenail Clipper (23 feet). So we enlisted the captaining consultancy services of Torben to guide us on this journey from Lake Union out the locks to the marina.

Those beautiful DD's fired right up and purred, not so much like a kitten, but a huge lion I'd say. ;-) Departed the slip with no issues and putted out towards the Ship Canal. I didn't like how little fuel was registering on the gauges, so I opted to fill up at Morrison's North Star Marine Fuel Dock. We filled up both tanks with 250 gallons (out of 400 gallons capacity), so we had plenty of reserves after all. Pumped out the holding tank too while we were there.

Next stop was the locks. Made it with two boats to spare at the big lock, rafted up to a 46 footer, and settled in for the ride. Here's the view north from our flybridge while we were tied up.

Out the locks, powered up to about 1700 rpms, and cruised at about 11 knots to EBM. Found our slip and proceeded to stern in to starboard. This one was a bit tougher, since I was at the lower helm which is to port, and I had no spacial reference to where the stern corner was. But on the third attempt I got close enough for Eryn to hop off and get us tied up. The slip next door was unoccupied, so we've chosen that one as our permanent slip which will be better with the southerly prevailing breeze during the summer (it'll nudge us onto the dock instead of away from it).

All in all, a gorgeous day and a great run with no mishaps. Huge thanks to Torben for his support!!