Cruising the Pacific Northwest

With a big Thanksgiving Dinner tucked away in our bellies, we packed up the left-overs and headed out in Yes Please to enjoy the rest of a four-day weekend holiday. The weather reports were dire, with several inches of rain and Gale Warnings in the forecast, but we were determined to unplug, rest and reset.

Arriving at Island Home, we discovered we had the place to ourselves and the dog was dancing happily down the docks, full of life and enjoying every minute of his freedom. Black Friday was spent doing a bit of Christmas Shopping online, listening to music, eating turkey and all of the trimmings, warm and safe aboard the boat. We even had a few glorious sun breaks and spent an hour playing ping pong up in the clubhouse. Having the island to ourselves for such a long weekend felt like winning the lottery.

Saturday was much the same, with meals made from the left-over Prime Rib, reading Chip Gain’s excellent book and catching up with family and friends. Sunday’s weather forecast continued to feature Gale Warnings, so I went to bed anticipating a choppy ride home.

I awoke too early on Sunday to the sound of the pennant snapping in the brisk wind and large waves slapping against the hull. At first light, I was up and the blinding rain was blowing sideways when I took the dog up to to do his business. The windows of the boat were all fogged over with condensation, so I fired up the diesel heater and began to squeegee them off between sips of morning coffee. I was checking the weather (not good), when the front passed right over us and suddenly, everything calmed down.

It was eerily quiet, except for the purr of the big diesels when I fired them up and cast off to head back to Olympia. We took of advantage of the suddenly calm conditions, lack of any boat traffic and clean hull/props to spool the engines up to 1600 RPM and ran back to Olympia in record time (18 knots – 75 minutes), arriving just before the big storm. Yes Please was tucked safely away in her boat house and we were safe at home in our Log Cabin when the trees started snapping and power outages started blanketing the region.

Happy Thanksgiving.