Day 1

       

The first voyage on our trip to Alaska was a short shakedown sail from Seattle to Port Townsend through Northwest Puget Sound. We left the dock at 6:30 am, after a very late night and early morning of final preparations, so the entire morning is a bit of a blur, but we got through the locks and out into the bay without too much delay, and were sailing under full main and 170% Genoa by 08:00. For the first two hours we tried to sail, and were making an average boat speed of around two and a half knots, which was pretty good considering there was only around 6-10 knots of wind! And on top of that, I was made especially proud when my little overloaded boat left a thirty-something footer flying a spinnaker in our wake!

            However, as with all good things, the wind didn’t last forever, and at 1014 we had to drop the genoa and continue under power with a little bit of help from the main, which was eventually dropped an hour and a half later when the wind completely died.

            Despite the lack of wind the passage was a complete success as a shakedown, and I successfully tested the gimbaled stove that I built, rigged up the solar panels to the batteries, and had those two hours of a beautiful downwind run in light airs. The only incident in the whole passage was when we crossed the four-foot wake of a ship headed down channel to Seattle, and the solid water that came over the bow flooded the open lazarette and needed to be pumped out. Thankfully, that was the only mishap, and everything stayed put below, which was a bonus. In fact the only casualty of the trip was a carelessly placed can of salsa that went flying across the cockpit just outside Port Townsend.

            After six hours and 24 nautical miles, the shakedown cruise of Darwind was completed as she pulled neatly into the city dock in Port Townsend, and later after dinner as we anchored up for the first time off the beach just west of the Port Townsend ferry Dock.