Rescued vessel count this week: 1
It was only a dinghy, but I hauled this one off by myself, so I believe I should get full credit. No pictures, on account of I was rowing with both hands to get the beast off the beach in the teeth of the southerly wind and swell pounding in from across the bay.
It has been a southerly kind of week, both literally and figuratively. The winds out of the south here in Port Townsend are unkind in a variety of respects–with them comes clouds, rain, cold and unseasonable weather. The long fetch of Port Townsend Bay lets the waves build up for five miles before they land, heaving and breaking, on my bow and sweep past onto the beach. It’s a rough ride in the anchorage during such breezes, even when the wind speed rarely exceeds ten knots.
The rest of life seems to be taking a cue from the weather, and indeed may be related, as my time in the anchorage up here becomes generally intolerable, and yet apparently interminable.
The Fourth of July was a cold, windy one here. I went up to the local celebration and fireworks show at Fort Worden but froze half to death and made no new friends and found no old ones in the sparse crowd. It was a lonely, miserable 4th, the worse since I was supposed to be down in Oregon visiting family for the holiday instead. But the rigging work still has me pinned down here, as stuck in purgatory as I have ever been, watching the summer slide away and other, more favored folks sail on to better and further adventures.
The winds have made the anchorage even less tolerable. It’s rolly and wet. Getting into the dinghy and getting ashore is a chore, yet being on shore is preferable to being stuck out at anchor. All the same, it won’t do to get too far from the boat; the reduced windage and swift currents has her swinging strangely and unpredictably, to the surprise of other nearby boats. I spent the greater part of one day down in Seattle, and came back to find the rode wrapped around the keel, trapping Zia beam-on the the waves and swell. Once again, late evening engine maneuvering was required to get her unhung.
I’ve since hung a sort of modified kellet off the rode, designed to keep the bights out of the upper portion so it can’t get hung up on the keel; we’ll see how that works.
In the meantime, there are the other denizens to worry about. One gentleman, for some inexplicable reason, hauled up his anchor from a reasonably distant position and dropped himself right into my swinging radius for some reason. We had words around 10pm, which, in my view, was better than 2am, and he picked up and moved again, thankfully. And then, the next day, came back again (though at a reasonable distance). With so much open space out here, I find such decisions utterly inexplicable. Yet it happens repeatedly.
The dinghy I pulled off apparently fell victim to the same winds and swell. The towing ring was ripped out and no mooring line was on it, so I imagine it broke loose from somewhere. Where I found it, it could equally have come from the dinghy dock (though I saw no loose lines when I towed it back there), a boat in the anchorage, or a cruiser passing by. I asked around and someone thought it was from a big ferrocement cruiser, Jasman, in the anchorage, but no one was aboard when I went and banged on the hull… and how could they have gotten ashore, with no dinghy? The mystery remains, and the dinghy sits there, unclaimed, taking a pounding from the swell.
Mine sits nearby, also being beaten up. There’s no position on the dock not vulnerable to the southerlies, and a beach landing is even dicier in these conditions.
Beaten up is a good description all around. Zia is getting rolled and worn, I’m getting rolled and worn, and progress frequently appears glacial on projects both personal and professional.
Yesterday, at last, the fabricator finished up my new chainplates. The cost was less than expected and the construction beefier than originally specced. I’ll get them installed on Monday and then, hopefully, be on to the next steps in getting my mast back soon.
Despite the occasional misery, there have been flashes of sunshine. I popped into the cockpit to a flurry of yelling and flutter of sails the other day to find myself in the middle of a race.
And I got a text from my friend Lauren with a long-awaited bit of news: she’s nearly finished up with a far, far more ambitious and consuming project than my own, a near-total rebuild on her Buchan 37, Skybird, after a disastrous sinking in a storm last fall. One of the final touches of this project required (well, didn’t required, but was expedited by) turning the whole boat nearly on its side to glass over a massive hole that had been torn into the port side by the Boat Haven breakwater.
Ever since she told me this part was coming, I’ve been anxiously waiting to see the boat on its side (absurdly; I’ve seen boats on their side plenty of times, just not quite so intentionally or quite so far out of the water) and pestering her to text me the moment she tipped it. I got the text late last night and hustled over in the morning so as not to miss it. And indeed, the sight didn’t disappoint.
She’s scheduled to splash next week, finally. A sign, perhaps, that even the worst weather blows over eventually.