June 24, 2005: Elliott Bay to Gig Harbor via Blake Island
Temp: 76 degrees
Wind: West 7mph
Conditions: Fair
_____________________________________________________________________

Dave was in town for the weekend, after a meeting in Seattle, so we had a 5th member of the crew (if you count Coop and Ali). Cae backed the boat out of EBM, however had a little difficulty getting fluidly out of the slip. This was only her second try, and she did really well, though she needed a little help getting the nose around the finger pier.

As we headed out across Elliott Bay, the wind was really kicking from the West. We were sailing with the 150% and with Dave at the helm broke the boat speed record under sail at 8.0 knots per the GPS. We were really flying and even under sail, still made it to Blake in no time flat. We went around the West side of the island, and wanted to drop the hook in our normal location. Unfortunately, with the nice summer weather, everyone in Seattle seemed to have made the same decision. There was no room on the Southwestern side of the island, so we headed East and made the decision to drop on the Southeastern side of the island. The tide was running East to West, and the wind was blowing West to East, and we tried in 60 feet of water three times to get the anchor to set and finally did on our 3^rd try. At the conclusion of dinner, I checked the GPS and noticed we were making good time to the West, then went on deck and noticed we were in 105 feet of water, and the anchor was not dragging, heck it was not even touching. So we hauled the anchor up, started the engine and decided this was not the night to try again. With running lights on, we made our way to the Eastern side of the island, the side exposed to the general shipping and ferry traffic of Puget Sound and found an open mooring ball. The one “challenge” is we did not have a spot light with us, however our GPS and the mooring ball locations were spot on, so we spent the night on a mooring ball. As the night progressed, we bounced and bounced and then bounced some more, now Dave and Cae were both completely unaware of this, however I did not sleep a wink, it was brutal.

We awoke to fog and light misting (the weather report called for sun) and NO wind. Moonlight motored South with no excitement until we were about one and a half miles out, when a nasty outgoing tide stalled us at 1.8 – 2.0 knots. Our knot meter was running at 4.5 – 5.0 with our actual speed not even close to this speed. We finally made it into Gig Harbor and Cae did an excellent job landing the boat.

The remainder of the weekend did not offer much excitement.