Cruising the Pacific Northwest

We headed up to Port Townsend to celebrate Deb Brown’s birthday. The water was calm, but the Pea Soup fog moved in making crossing the Straits of Juan de Fuca an interesting challenge. Winsome tucked in behind us and followed us all the way from Lopez Island to Port Townsend. The big radar array in Sea Eagle’s mast helped a lot in the fog and the AIS receiver also helps identify the speed of the commercial traffic in the shipping lanes.

We spotted the Victoria Clipper flying along at 25 knots as well as several aircraft out of NAS Whidbey Island. It’s a bit of a shock to see a radar target screaming across your bow doing well over 100 knots….

The VHF was alive with big ships having to stop dead in the water to avoid hitting a few clueless boaters (mostly sailboats under power with no radar). I saw several radar targets merge as boats ahead of us attempted to cross the shipping lanes right in front of a tug towing a barge. We caught up with a couple of them and I saw no radar, heard no fog signal and they had not a clue that we or anyone else was nearby. Ignorance is bliss I guess?

Port Townsend Boat Haven Marina was full of a lot of very cool old wood boats, which made walking the docks fun. I also stopped in for a visit at Don Pedersen’s new dive shop, which is right on the Marina property. VERY convenient!

For dinner, we walked down to the Silverwater Cafe to celebrate Deb’s birthday. We had one of the best meals that I have ever eaten. If you’re in Port Townsend, the SilverWater Cafe comes HIGHLY recommended!

On the way home, we headed South through the Port Townsend Canal, which is shallow and narrow. It was my first time to navigate through the canal, but it proved to be no trouble at all.