We had a lovely, and fortunately fairly carnage-free cruise to Blake Island this past Snooze and Cruise. Most of the carnage seemed to be focused in a zone surrounding your cruise director at a fairly close distance. To sum up:

Saturday morning dawned mild, sunnyish, and not very windy. After an early morning skipper’s meeting, where mutiny was proposed due to the hour, but was never followed through with, probably also due to the hour and the fatigue of the mutineers, we got off the dock quickly, by about 9:30. 10:30 found us all gliding into the large locks, and the whole fleet managed to get locked in together. The locking was fairly uneventful, except for the Very Large Powerboat (VLP), to whom the words "watch your lines" apparently had little or no meaning. We watched from the Flying Scot as the VLP began moving up on us rather too quickly for comfort, and as the very nice lady on the power boat next to us stood at her stern, wondering what effect she could possibly have against several tons of ugly and smelly mota-boat. Fortunately, they rafted Ariadne to the VLP, and Chris and his intrepid crew were able to help out the befuddled VLPer. The nice neighbor noticed that there was a spider crawling on one of our lines, and told us it was good luck. We weren't sure about that, but we decided to let the little critter have a ride just in case.

The fleet started south in the Sound under a very light breeze, and everyone was having a great time, including Justin, who did a great job with the whaler, and received many treats as his reward. In the only potential carnage not immediately in my vicinity, the French Fish apparently had a close encounter with the Evergreen, at which point he looked up, saw the name, said something very colorful , and veered off. More about close encounters with freighters to come.

We were zipping along (well, as much as you can zip in a couple of knots), when Ross decided that we needed more luff tension. We discovered 2 things. 1: The wire halyards on the new FS mast are very, very, old and weak. 2: Ross does not know his own strength. There was a boom. Then there was a boom on deck (and a sail). After a calm, diplomatic discussion of how we got into this mess, and what to do next, we resigned ourselves to the inevitable, and motored to Eagle Harbor for repairs. I was quite impressed with the industry shown by my skippers, as we dropped the mast, attached a block to the top, and quickly rigged a new halyard. It all took less than 5 minutes, and was relatively painless, except that in catching the mast, I jammed my finger, and Rebecca was incredibly sore from a previous strenuous work out and from motoring across the sound. The spider also suffered, as we decided he couldn't possibly be good luck, and Ross flicked him overboard to go it alone. We got back underway quickly, and were soon hearing about people stuck in dead air around the sound. We didn't know WHAT that meant, as Eagle Harbor had great wind, and we had a lovely time tacking out. We slipped along behind Blakely Rocks, following Evan in the laser and Charlotte.

As we passed Restoration Point, we were commenting on Evan's relaxed pose on the deck of his laser. We weren't sure if he was napping, sunning, or hoping a mermaid would come visit him. Apparently the crew of Charlotte thought he was napping, because they came up and gently nudged him awake, an experience later described by Evan as not entirely pleasant (Note: This is not a direct quote, and, in fact, is heavily edited for content).

After most boats in the fleet gave up on drifting and motored in (except the brave adventurers in the Lightening, who did not take a tow, but showed up at least an hour and a half after everybody else), we had an outstanding dinner under the direction of our awesome food director, Eva, (who, by the way, did a great job). After dinner, several goodies were raffled off. Kaia won the grand (?) prize of a nice little decanter with whisky glasses, but still has to buy her own whisky.

Most of the night was uneventful, with small groups gathering for fun and conversation around assorted fires and cockpits. Apparently some lap dancing went on, but I don't know about that. Perhaps the Temptress proved too tempting?

The second most on-island excitement occurred very late at night (or perhaps in the morning), when those of us nearby and not quite asleep heard a shriek and a splash, and wondered what went on. On a trip to the facilities, I encountered Arthur, who sleepily told me he was going to check on his crew, who had decided to go skinny dipping in Puget Sound at 2:30 in the morning. Apparently this adventure did not last long, as they quickly found out how cold, in fact, the Sound can be.

The most on-island excitement, of course, came from the elder Shipley's announcement of the parental status of the younger Shipley in one word to Rich - "TWINS". Congratulations, Paul and Rebecca!

The trip home was great, a downwind run, despite Chris P's presence. We were flying, aptly enough along in the Scot, when I noticed a large freighter exiting Elliot Bay. We took advantage of the opportunity to show Debbie exactly what a collision course looks like. As in "see that small and harmless sailboat off our port bow? Notice how the land on the horizon behind it seems to be moving relative to it. That means it will easily pass in front of us. Now see that really huge freighter coming out of Elliot Bay? The one that is several times longer than us, and several tons heavier? Notice how the horizon is not moving relative to it." Debbie asked "so that means it will plow into us?" Right. Or we could plow into it, which would not hurt any less. We decided to hold our course, since obviously they would never cut so close to West Point. After several minutes, we learned that freighters do, in fact, cut very close to West Point on their way to the channel. We contemplated several courses of action. 1. We could hold our course (this would hurt a lot, and was therefore rejected). 2. We could jibe, which wouldn't help much, and would lead to a really big wake hitting our starboard hull, and probably getting us really wet and possibly capsized. Screwed either way. So we headed up, and cut behind the thing. Then we turned back, so as to take the wake with our bow. We went up (6 feet we figure) over a wake that was breaking like surf, then down, and the next one broke right over the bow. Debbie was very happy to make use of her new boots. I was wishing I'd been wearing mine. We all declared it the most fun we had the entire trip. Apparently our report to Ross caused a number of heads to whip around and check out the action.

Ross did a great job getting the boats hooked up with tows into the locks, and we had another (nearly - what happened to Windsong, anyway?) whole fleet in together locking (our fearless past commodore provided entertainment for the tourists by dispensing cokes to the crew of the Supercat, tied to the boat ahead of him on Frenesi). We made it back to the WAC quite early. The last carnage of the day occurred when your cruise director very gracefully stepped off the bow of the Scot with her feet tangled in the jib. The bruises were quite impressive.

Anyway, it was all tons of fun, thanks to everybody who worked so very hard, especially Eva, the whaler drivers, and all the skippers, for making this a fun and safe voyage.

See you in August!

Cover page    Spring SNC    Officers/Chiefs    VC's Report    Olympia Reciprocal    UW Sailing Team Report    Sayonara San Juans    Calendar    Zeppelin Bend

Up to WYC homepage