Browsed by
Month: August 2019

Lucia Delivery – Leg 2: Astoria to Anacortes

Lucia Delivery – Leg 2: Astoria to Anacortes

The second leg of Lucia’s journey northbound took us from Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River to Anacortes in the San Juan Islands. We had a different crew this time.

We made this 400 mile journey over three days leaving (very) late Thursday night. We had planned to cross the Columbia river bar during optimum conditions at 3-4AM but when we arrived in Astoria at 11pm it was a dead, glassy calm. Even though the river was ebbing hard we decided tranquility always wins so we flushed out over the bar at close to 8 knots with our speed plus the water and in a few short hours were in the open ocean. This calm more or less lasted our entire journey and the crew was happy to not have any mishaps but a little disappointed all around that there were only a few hours of sailing in a 3 day journey. Due to our speedy departure from Astoria we arrived in Anacortes about 10 hours early which meant we could catch the Saturday afternoon train instead of waiting until Sunday morning. After some heroics with the life raft we boarded the Amtrak and shot home like a rocket.

Lucia Delivery – Leg 1: Portland to Astoria

Lucia Delivery – Leg 1: Portland to Astoria

The first leg of Lucia’s journey northbound was from our comfortable marina in Portland some 90 miles downriver to Astoria. Our good friends Anna and Andy graciously volunteered to crew with us on this leg. Since William was joining us for this leg that really means that they did all the sailing, watching and steering for which we are eternally grateful. This was also the first time the very old but newly installed chart plotter had performed any significant course following.

We made this journey over two days leaving after work on Friday and berthing at Sand Island across the channel from St. Helens, OR (~20 miles). Since we were squeezing this into a weekend it meant arriving in Astoria late at night on Saturday and leaving first thing in the morning Sunday to catch the once daily NW Pointe bus back to Portland. Since our stay was not going to overlap with the daytime fuel dock hours in Astoria we tanked up for the remainder of the journey along the way in Cathlamet, WA. It also meant that we missed the operating hours of the Astoria trolley about which William was quite disappointed, especially after the trolley rolled by with a sign reading “Training only – no passengers”. I promised to make it up to him the next time we were in Astoria, where we were to be again in several weeks when we needed to pick up the truck we would leave for the second leg of the delivery.

Lucia Delivery – Boat Prep

Lucia Delivery – Boat Prep

Preparing to move the boat from Portland to Anacortes required some of the long “in-process” jobs to be completed, for either practicality or safety’s sake. No voyage has ever had ample time available for prep and this was no different. We put in a marathon 2 weeks of finishing up the various jobs that needed to be done.