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Alden and I sailed to Seattle for spring break and spent a week on the boat, walking into town each day.  We had a beautiful view every night.

The old one was really ratty, big improvement.

I got the new Dickinson Spitfire grill mounted.  It is great.  It's so nice to be able to cook on evening sails.  No more cold-cuts, we're having steak or hot dogs.

Some videos sailing Nameless Beauty last year that I never got around to uploading.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3ViLdkNftU&feature=youtu.be


http://youtu.be/_60hQbpSGN0

Looking forward to spring.

Nameless Beauty and I had our first race this weekend, and I picked a good one, the Gig Harbor LeMans, a sailboat race along the same lines as the famed car race in Le Mans, France. At the prepartory signal one minute before the gun, all boats must be anchored, all crew must be below deck, the mainsail must be down on the boom and tied with at least one sail tie, the headsail must be down on the foredeck or furled, and at the starting signal, the crew races on deck, raise the anchor, set sail, and start the race out of the small harbor through the narrow entrance and up colvos passage to a mark and back.
 
It was super fun, unfortunately we DNF'd.
 

Fun sailing exercise.  Give a five year old the helm and adjust the sails to wherever he goes.

I took these as the weather was picking up. It got pretty nasty, gusting near 30 knots. I closed the hatches and we were down to a reefed main. Everything was soaking wet. The boat was a champ. We limped into Port Ludlow where my crew (sister in law's boyfriend) found a bus home. Alden (my five year old) stayed the night hoping for better weather in the morning. We ended up leaving the boat anchored in Port Ludlow for a few weeks before resuming the trip south.

We anchored of Stewart Island for a few hours, mostly so that we could use a real bathroom, but also to explore the island and play a little hide and seek.
 

A galley would be nice, or at least a functioning grill (on my list).  For now, it's spaghetti on a camping stove.  Delicious.  

This was my favorite anchorage in the San Juan's. It was beautiful. There was a cliff on one side, and a reef on the other, so I got to try putting out a bow and a stern anchor to keep us in place. It worked like a charm.

We didn't see any puffins on this island, but lots of seals. I was really looking forward to seeing puffins. It wasn't until the end of the trip that I realized the hundreds of black birds that had been surrounding us the whole trip were puffins, just not tufted puffins like they have at the zoo.

Here is my first time anchoring.  We didn't even use the motor.  We set up the anchor, sailed right to a beautiful spot, turned into the wind, dropped the anchor, backwinded the sail, let out the chain to a 7:1 scope, felt the anchor dig in, and there we stayed.  Will it be this easy every time?  

It's been a while since I updated this thread. These pictures are from Easter day in Roche Harbor. We attended mass at a Our Lady of Good Voyage Chapel on the hill overlooking the marina. It had a Mary holding baby Jesus in one hand, and a sailboat in the other. Then came the Easter egg hunt. So many eggs!

We do have righteous tides up here, with extreme tides ranging from -3 to 13 feet, with currents running up to 5 knots in the Tacoma Narrows and up to 8 knots in Deception Pass.

Congrats and welcome Rodney. A few people around here were watching that boat but Washington is a long way from Minnesota. I'm glad she found a good home.
Looking at the pilings in the pictures it looks like you got a righteous tide up there!
Mike
C227