Lucia Libre

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.