John's Pictures

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Port Townsend


We boated up to Port Townsend for the weekend. Debbie picked a really nice weekend to be out. Port Townsend is about 40NM north of Seattle. We spent the night in Elliott bay and were planning to get an got of a little later than we intended because of some early morning fog. Once it cleared out, we shoved off without incident. We wanted to leave earlier so we would have a nice current pushing us north - since diesel is about 5 bucks a gallon. The tide had already turned when we crossed over to the west sound (south of Bainbridge Island) and it was fairly choppy running against the current. We entered Port Townsend bay from the south where we navigated a maze of crab pots. It was a nice day to be on the water with the Olympic Mountains to the west, and Cascades to the east.

We stayed at Point Hudson Marina, which is just south of the Strait. It’s right in the heart of the town. It was our best docking yet! And we hit the town hungry! It’s a quaint port town established in the 1700. Debbie thought most of the historic buildings looked like they had been bordellos sometime in the past. We went into a really interesting wood carving shop where they had a spectacular eagle about 5 feet tall; but they requested no pictures. We also checked out the wooden boat foundation store. There is a large wooden boat festival every year that I’d like to attend. On our trip back there was more commercial traffic, at one point we got in the wake of container ship – it gave us a couple of good shakes till I changed course across the waves.

We all did our jobs well. Catherine was espically helpful spotting crab pots and bouys. We used the walkie talkies to talk between the flybridge and the cabin when  Debbie and Caroline were down below.