A Wild First Ride

It stands to reason that after more than two weeks of gorgeous Pacific Northwest summer weather, the first weekend we decide to take off sailing on our new boat would be heralded by a nearly unprecedented stretch of thunderstorms.

We weren’t fixated on the weather in the first place because it was mostly a working trip; we still have a bunch of stuff stored in Port Hadlock, and our move-in was not going to be complete until we collected it and found places to cram it aboard Rosie. We had already had to delay for a week, so we were pretty committed to going, rain or shine.

But the forecast had mostly shine in it, and we certainly weren’t going to be averse to enjoying a leisurely trip north under blue skies and sunshine. There was little wind in the forecast but, other than hitting the Cut sometime before 1800 to catch slack or a nice ebb, we didn’t have a particularly stringent timetable.

As the week progressed, the outlook got progressively worse. But when I checked just before we pulled out on Friday, the outlook for Puget Sound still had clouds and southerlies giving way to eighties and north winds ten to fifteen knots in the afternoon… not the best of all possible days, but nothing for two people who had been without a boat for four months to sneeze at.

We pulled out of Shilshole under gray skies and ten knots from the Southwest. My greatest trials and tribulations with Insegrevious had come from having to back out of our slip into southerlies; the harder it blew, the more power was required to back out, the stronger the prop walk tried to pull our stern in exactly the wrong direction. So I faced a certain moment of truth right at the very beginning of the trip: would this larger boat with even more windage prove as troublesome?

Happily, the answer was no. I put all 27 horses briefly to work to get some momentum up, swung the wheel to starboard and silently beseeched Neptune for the wherewithal to avoid looking like an ass the first time I pulled out of the slip, and was rewarded with a smooth, controlled pivot in the fairway with room to spare.

We had the Sound pretty much to ourselves as we passed the breakwater, which was fortunate because getting the sail up on our own for the first time took a little fiddling and guesswork. We’ve never had lazy jacks or stack packs before and sorting through the profusion of lines took some time. But in the end it really just boiled down to unzipping the pack and then cranking… and cranking… and cranking. A cat sloop with a 55′ stick has a lot of mainsail to hoist. After that, popping up the fractional blade jib is a light dessert.

Once the engine was off and we were enveloped in quiet, Mandy went back to bed. I bore directly for Point No Point and settled in for the ride. Sun breaks appeared suddenly and fleeting in the clouds overhead. A couple of motor yachts emerged from the Ship Canal and overtook us on a similar line. Our knotmeter crawled up to 5 and sat there.

Running with the wind is always quieter than reaching or beating, but it struck me immediately just how quiet the Freedom is… with no rigging to groan and squeak, few lines to slap or vibrate, and no big metal tube to echo, it gives a very peaceful ride. Wave action was light and we seemed to just levitate across the water.

At first, I thought the booming I heard was freight cars mating up along Burlington Northern’s waterfront tracks. But the rumbling didn’t stop and it kept coming back and I slowly realized that Saturday’s thunderstorms had come to the party a little bit early. Two brilliant and crackling neon lightning strikes into the water just south of Whidbey Island drove the point home.

The skies were clear behind us and I considered turning back, but reasoned that the south winds would push the storm cells ahead of us long before we reached them, so we continued on. But as we got closer, the thunder grew and the lightning came more frequently, showing no signs of pushing off. We shortened sail and ducked in near the bluffs just north of Apple Cove Point, thinking the height of the land might provide some shelter and that surely the lightning couldn’t last much longer… this is the Pacific Northwest, after all. I’d never seen a thunderstorm that didn’t blow itself out after a couple hours.

Across the Sound, we could see other recreational boats and working craft also slowing up or stopping. A tug towing a floating crane looked to be a particularly inviting target and we wondered if it would be smart to hug in tight to something so much taller than us, or dumb to hang around in the vicinity of such a likely strike zone.

Pretty soon everyone started heading north again, despite continued rumblings from that direction. I understood why when I saw flashes behind us… a cell had snuck in near Edmonds and we were boxed in. We let the sail out again and started running north, hugging the bluff all the way to Point No Point and around into Oak Bay.

There, we slowed again. There were strikes hitting near the north end of Marrowstone Island, and we wanted to give them plenty of time to move on. And, as high tide arrived, we began to contemplate the uncertainty that comes with a new boat over the exact height of the mast and its subsequent adornments. The bridge to Indian Island rises 58′ over Mean High Tide… the listed height of a Freedom 36 is a smidge over 55′. The tide was at its Mean High as we arrived… how big was the wind instrument on our mast top? The VHF antenna? Were we floating higher than most Freedoms? We couldn’t sneak through nearly as slowly as we would have liked on that first big test with the ebb sweeping us along, but we cleared with what looked from on deck like inches to spare.

As we reached the north end of the Cut, a lance of lightning forked down over Indian Island and shook the boat with thunder, a not-so-subtle reminder that we weren’t out of the woods yet. A special forecast alert came up on our cell phones, containing this precious snippet of advice:

THUNDERSTORMS WILL CONTAIN DANGEROUS CLOUD TO GROUND LIGHTNING. IF YOU HEAR THUNDER…HEAD INDOORS.

Did they mean just down into the cabin, next to all the electronics and that big conductive stick jutting almost sixty feet up? Or were we supposed to find a shed to stuff the entire boat in?

We made our mooring with surprising ease; again, the boat handled more easily than I would have expected given the extra length and beam. We sold our old dinghy with our old boat but this boat did not come with another one and we haven’t found a new one yet, so my parents left theirs tied to the buoy and we hopped in and headed ashore before the lightning could get another shot at us.

The thunderstorms were still hanging around the next morning, but we shuttled back and forth to the boat during the occasional clearings.

As I had been warned, she tended to sail back and forth on the mooring. Unfortunately, this had the effect of drawing the pendant across the blade of the bow-mounted Bruce anchor like a saw blade. I applied some poor man’s chafing gear (duct tape) and resolved to rig a bridle that would hopefully swing clear of the anchor.

Unfortunately, pawing through the paltry box of spare deck gear aboard, I could find no shackle of a suitable size to join our hefty 1″ mooring line to the bridle lines. I borrowed a truck and headed up to Hadlock Building Supply, the go-to gear store in thriving downtown Port Hadlock.

As I came up the hill to the four-way intersection that marks the center of the Greater Port Hadlock Business District, I noticed that it seemed a little more thriving than usual. White tents were pitched in parking lots in front of the local strip mall, bands were playing, and a sheriff’s cruiser blocked the intersection. Every man jack of the reported 3,476 inhabitants listed in the Port Hadlock-Irondale census-designated area appeared to be lining the streets. I had stumbled directly into the midst of Hadlock Days.

The parade route ran right past Hadlock Building Supply and it was blocked off, so I parked at the Post Office and hoofed it over. Sirens blared and children laughed as the local fire departments tossed candy out along the parade route. But when I got to the Building Supply, all I found were a handful of other bemused looking men and a sign that said “Closed Until 2pm for the Parade.”

I turned around to look at the parade again. Passing by just then, in all its glory, was the Hadlock Building Supply float, accompanied by the entire staff of the store.

Eventually, the store opened, I got a beefy 3/4″ bow shackle, and headed back to the boat. Through the rest of the afternoon we ferried our junk out to the boat and turned my mother loose aboard to find places to put all of it. I left her and Mandy out there in a salon piled with stuff and went ashore to collect some other friends who were coming out to check out the boat. When I got back out again, it was as if we had brought nothing new aboard… the salon was empty.

We had a pleasant afternoon after the storms faded, and spent the night aboard to be ready to catch the 0800 slack through the Cut heading south.

The day dawned foggy but breezy… south winds this time, scattered light rain showers, and a generally dismal Northwestern fall day. I let Mandy sleep in while I cast loose and motored through the Cut without incident. On the other side, I fell into the same trap I always fall into in Oak Bay: feeling the nice breeze coming down through the slot next to Scow Bay, I raised sail and killed the engine, only to be quickly blown into the doldrums off Mats-Mats with light, shifting zephyrs gently blowing us in circles while the real wind ruffled the sea temptingly only a half-mile or so further along. After a half-hour swearing I would sail my way out of it, as I always swear, I fired up the engine and motored for fifteen minutes, as I always do.

The rest of the day gave us a nice preview of working to windward in moderate wind and chop. The Freedom rode more smoothly, and didn’t appear to have particularly more problems pointing, than our old Hunter had. After clearing the usual confusing rips north of Point No Point, we had a series of long, easy tacks down to a point just south of Edmonds, where the wind finally failed and we motored the last forty-five minutes home.

Although the weather wasn’t terrific for it, I felt like it was a good trip to have under our belts. The boat posed no unpleasant surprises (other than a blown fitting in the freshwater system after we got back to the dock; probably pounded loose in the chop) and we felt like we got a good sense of how she will handle in various conditions on most points of sail. Apart from the lightning, it was an good learning experience.