Memorial Day Weekend Trip on Santosha

May 26th, 2009 · by David · No Comments

I suppose that, if you wanted, you could hail us on channel 16. I tend to listen to the weird chatter on on channel 16 as we traverse the waters of Puget Sound and beyond. I listen to channel 16 because of my multiple mistakes. I remember the time I stupidly crossed our 22 foot sailboat across the bow of a tug boat pulling a very large barge in Rosario Strait. I arrogantly thought that our sailboat had right-of-way over a power boat, even if it was a navigationally constrained large tug with very large barge in tow. At the time, I didn’t think about the relatively narrow navigational channels, nor how a heavy barge could overrun a tugboat if it slowed. I am ashamed of my arrogance in that instance. Thus, now I listen, somewhat attentively to channel 16 as progress ahead, as to avoid similar stupidity. It is both a courtesy and a legal requirement.

I’ve just started “twittering“. I’m wondering if our excursions might be best expressed as “tweets”. If I find something unusual to express, I’ll try to do it here. It’s an experiment, if microposting the mundane is boring, it’ll stop soon. I’m unsure if Twitter will be a passing fad or not.

The weather was fantastic – warm and sunny – a bit surprising for Memorial Day weekend in Seattle. It’s typically damp and cool.

We went to Bremerton first to buy a CNG tank from a man. There was a festival going on, so we partook of it. Docking there was a challenge. There is a mean current in the marina. We were sideways to the current – pushed into the dock. That made getting into the dock easy. Getting off was a challenge. We recruited two volunteers and I gunned the engine to get enough way on to escape the current.

The festival appears to be an attempt to jumpstart the marina, which is apparently two thirds empty, according to this article.

We then took off for the night. We tried to anchor at Brownsville, but we weren’t comfortable with how close we were to the marina’s channel and a busy road. We pulled up the hook and motored over to Manzanita Bay on the east side of Bainbridge Island.

The next morning, we took a short journey to Liberty Bay and Poulsbo, where we had lunch and spent the afternoon and evening. We ran into Molly’s former co-worker Dave and his family.

On Monday, we headed out of Liberty Bay to make a run through Agate Pass before it started flooding. We did nearly 9 knots over the ground with a nice ebbing tide. The current can run 6 knots through there.

Cool Cat!

riding in the dinghy

Dan with a daisy chain

Camille in the dinghy

climbing on a branch

climbing the rock in Poulsbo

Daniel on the top

Molly on the top

Camille climbs

Camille, the venerable climber, was quick to the top. Not satisfied with that, she proceeded to climb all four corners of the rock. She then attempted, but was only able to climb two faces. It was very admirable as all sides and corners of the rock were very hard to climb. Molly said that she read in the cruising guide that the rock was removed as a navigational hazard from Liberty Bay.