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!!