Winter has long ago settled into the Puget Sound area, and Cloud Nine has been moored at her dock in the Sequim Marina.  Jerry works on her daily, getting her diesel furnace working again, building a fuel filtering system, and running new propane lines down to the kitchen stove.  He has spent most of the past 3 months working in her bilge, cleaning and finding the "treasures" that have been left behind by previous owners.  We're making plans for a trip in May and June into Canada's waterways.  We'll post updates later this spring.

A Labor Day Trip to Edmonds

Working full-time as the only person in an accounting office, my days off are limited to the weekends.  So with a Friday off and a Monday holiday, trip planning got underway for our first "official" voyage.  Where to go?  We wanted one day of travel, one day of enjoying where we went, and one day of travel returning, with one extra day in the mix in case of bad weather.  Should we take Cloud Nine to the San Juans and join the flotilla of all the other boats doing the same?  Or should we head to Edmonds to show her off to Jerry's son.  Showing off won handidly, and we made plans to make our way to either Kingston or Edmonds for the long weekend.  We had hoped to leave Friday, but changing the engine oil and other "servicing" took up our day and we headed out early Saturday.  A beautiful, clear day for cruising, albeit a little hazy due to the warm weather we finally were enjoying in NW Washington.  

  

East of Sequim is Protection Island, a National Wildlife Refuge.  This juvenile eagle was proof positive of the "wildlife" in abundance around the island.  We giggled that even with our binoculars, it was tough to read the "stay 200 yds away" sign until we were well within the 200 yards.   So we took some pictures and got back out of the way.  

 

Seals were very vocal about our infringing on their sunbathing.  They, too, were enjoying summer finally arriving in the Puget Sound. 



We we made our way east down the Strait of Juan de Fuca, boats were aplenty, all out enjoying the amazing weather.  Days like this are the exception in the Puget Sound, so many were taking advantage, including this wooden sail boat out of Port Townsend, with a large group out on a tour.  Mt. Baker in all his glory standing out.  I wish it had not been so hazy that day.  This would have been a great picture.

We made our way down the Admiralty Inlet and across the shipping lanes just in time to watch two cruise ships making their way north out of Seattle.

As Kingston was fully booked, we called into Edmonds marina and found we could moor in the space of one of their tenants who had vacated for the weekend.  At $60+ per night, we knew this would not become a "regular" in our list of marinas to visit, but instead a special treat.  "Active" is the understatement for this marina.  The guest moorage was filled with small pleasure craft, rafted together, and out early in the morning to gather their haul of fish.  Watching the boats maneuvering through the marina and out the breakwater was sometimes like cars merging on a busy freeway.  Add to this the ferry traveling back and forth between Edmonds and Kingston, we enjoyed all of the activity. 


The marina facilities are quite nice with each dock locked and their bathrooms and showers clean.  Having an Anthony's Restaurant at the marina was a plus for us, as we always enjoy partaking in a platter of their famous fish and chips!

On our return trip back to Sequim, we found out the hard way about the Point Wilson rips.  While we had ventured through this area three times before without incidence, this day we learned to respect all the warnings posted in many a cruising book about the dangers of this area. In the early pages of the Waggoner Cruising Guide they warn of the Point Wilson rips with a passage that reads:

One of the more frustrating pieces of water we face in

the Northwest is the infamous Point Wilson tide rip just

off Port Townsend.  The rip usually (but not always)

forms on an ebb tide.  The patch of rough water

can extend several miles north and west of Point Wilson....

They watched a white power boat enter the far side of the rip.  

The boat was about 40 feet long.  Once in it was trapped.  

It rolled and plunged taking water up to the flybridge.  

The longer it was in the rip the bigger the rip became.  

Rolling and crashing, the boat had no choice but to carry on.  

The bow lifted out of the crest and disappeared in the troughs, 

burying in the waves ahead.  Eventually, the boat got through.   

It was as if this passage was written while watching Cloud Nine roll and plunge that day through these waters, for reading this section after we returned, it described exactly how it felt going through these waters that day.  We had ignored the Coast Guard warnings of gale force winds in the east Strait because we could neither feel nor observe the evidence of winds.  We even stopped in Port Townsend to check at the marina for reports of bad weather around the corner in the strait.   There were none.  We also ignored the fact that we were going to be more than two hours past slack tide when we reached the area, and the tide would be on an ebb.  Nevertheless, we were in bad water that we hadn't seen and no way out but to continue through it.  While our nerves suffered greatly that day, it became clear that Cloud Nine had not suffered at all.  Returning to the Sequim Bay, and calmer waters, we idled in the Bay for a minute to survey the damage, which we found to be non-existent.  She had come through far better than us, and our confidence grew in her ability to take us safely on our passages to come.

THE WORK BEGINS

Agreeing on a price to buy CLOUD NINE was just the start.  She had to be surveyed before the sale would go through.  We needed to drive her from Sequim to Port Townsend for the survey.  

Rounding Point Wilson

My worries kicked in a little at the prospect of driving a boat we knew almost nothing about the 4 hours to Port Townsend.  Jerry's experience was what I had to depend upon and I trusted his knowledge to get us, and CLOUD NINE, safely there.  Weather was overcast, but seas fairly calm and we made the passage in less than 4 hours thanks to an incoming tide.  (NOTE:  Respect all the warnings in all of the books about the rips and tides at Point Wilson.  While this passage was uneventful, we found ourselves  in dangerous waters a couple of months later.)

Once in Port Townsend, she was hauled out and put on the hard.  NOTE:  The crew at the Port Townsend Boat Yard know their stuff, were professional, and always willing to answer the silly questions we asked.  





We met the surveyor who started his inspection on the bottom of the boat.  He met with us after finishing the bottom and had some discouraging news.  She had some rotten planks that would need to be replaced, along with some other issues he was concerned about and felt should be looked at.  Let's say we were glad with who we had chosen to survey the boat.  Not only was he familiar with the boat, as he had surveyed it for the previous owner, but he was also familiar with Steven, one of the owners of Haven Boat Works, who had done work on the boat previously.  We contacted Steven, who was gracious and came over to the boat to talk with our surveyor and us about what had been done in the past on the bottom and what work was needed to be completed at this time.  The initial work on her bottom we COULD afford, if her price came down.  Our surveyor suggested in excess of $60,000 would be needed to do all of the other cosmetic repairs on her, but that was based on a boat yard doing the work.  Being handy, Jerry was convinced we could do the work ourselves, keeping our costs to maybe one-third of the estimated cost.  If Cloud Nine had had more severe problems, outside our scope of experience to fix, the overall cost would have pushed her price into an area where buying a newer boat would have been a smarter move.  However, we contacted the seller, renegotiating the price downward, and a few days later, agreed on a price for the boat we felt was more reasonable now that we knew what needed to be accomplished.
 
CLOUD NINE was now officially ours, and we were hoping the surveyor had found the worse.  He finished surveying the remainder of the boat, and then the boat was transferred over to the crew at Haven Boat Works. We were impressed with their knowledge of wooden boats.  They got right to work pulling and replacing planks on her bottom and replacing some thru holes.

New planks on the hull with what they delicately called bear scat between the planks, a mixture of tar and cement.

 Haven Boat Works employee, Brad, did most of the work on the hull, along with camera-shy Miguel.



While CLOUD NINE was in Haven Boat Works yard, Jerry was allowed to work  on the boat scraping the loose paint off her hull, working on the opposite side from the crew. 

                                                                     Every weekend I joined him

                                                                     in Port Townsend where we 

                                                                     spent our days scraping 

                                                                     and sanding the hull. 

The crew took 3 weeks to get everything done and then the race was on to get her bottom painted and as far up her sides as we could before she had to go back into the water.

We got two coats of bottom paint on her and then started working up her hull, changing her color from white to sandstone.


We got one coat of the sandstone on her, up to her cap rails, before our date with the Port Townsend boat yard crew to put her back in the water.

A rep from the Boat Haven yard was with us as CLOUD NINE was placed back in the water.  The boat yard crew slowly lowered her back into the water, keeping her in the slings, ready to pull her back up should she sprout a leak.  A little water seeped in through her bottom, but nothing alarming.  She was back in the water and we would have to continue the renovation work once she was back in Sequim.  On our return trip to Sequim, we hit a fog bank just outside Port Townsend, and had to quickly get the radar and the GPS up and running.  With no more than 15-20 yards visibility, we slowed the boat's speed down to a crawl and I was on radar watch, pointing out all dots on the radar screen and the outlines of small boats in the fog.  I was surprised how many people were out fishing in a fog bank so thick.  We crawled along, depending on our radar and GPS to get us back to Sequim.  We stayed close to land and could see the top of the cliff and a little blue sky occasionally to our south (over land) but out in the water, our route back home was well socked in.  

Coming into the entrance of Sequim Bay is tricky and there is no forgiveness if you are not in the channel.  I was outside the pilothouse looking down into the water commenting on how close the bottom was, while also looking for the buoy that marks the channel.  It was not showing up on our radar and our GPS chose to stop working shortly before then.  As the bottom continued creeping closer, we spotted the buoy off our starboard side and we quickly made a 90 degree turn to get to the other side.  We were out of the channel and lucky we turned when we did.  The fog lifted a little further along and we saw the sand bar standing proudly in the center of the entrance--where we would have hit if we had not turned when we did.  At this point, my nerves were a little raw and I wondered how much luck has to do with traveling by boat.  After getting back to our permanent moorage (at least for the foreseeable future), I was determined to make sure all of our navigational equipment was in good working order before our next voyage; for the sake of my nerves, if nothing else.  Jerry just smiles at me and tells me "I'm cute" when I get this way.  He can be so annoying at times!  ;-)