Mosaic Family Voyage: Sailing South: Offshore Washington and Oregon
Critical preparations complete and eyes on a weather window for our first hop down the west coast, in mid-August, my mom drove five hours from Vancouver up to Port Angeles. She brought our crew members, Rachel Konsella and Brian Lockwood, up with her from Vancouver in the final coordination piece of our complicated passage puzzle.
She then collected our two children, Evan and Kali, to take them back to stay with her for the couple weeks that it would take to get the journey well and truly started.
We’re lucky and thankful to have so much support from family. Both my parents’ and my husband’s parents’ willingness to watch the kids opened the space on the boat for Rachel and Brian to join us as crew. Having four adults on board made the Washington and Oregon legs of the journey much more comfortable and safe as we got our sea-legs under us.
Port Angeles to Neah Bay
At 8 pm on August 12, we slipped our dock lines for the last time in the Salish Sea and headed west down the Strait of Juan de Fuca—into smoke and darkness, so much darkness.
We’d decided we would travel these first 60 miles through the night to avoid high winds which were kicking up each day. Smoke from the nearby wildfires had moved in and visibility was low. It took a lot of grit to motor for nine hours through the darkness, the boat pushing strongly forward, us humans unable to do anything but trust our instruments. But, we were rewarded with bright bioluminescence in the water and shooting stars above our heads.
Despite hitting something around midnight, likely a crab pot buoy or a big tangle of bull kelp, we made it safely to Neah Bay right at sunrise. Neah Bay is a local tribal community and they’ve remained closed to the outside world, including boat traffic, since the beginning of the pandemic. However, they graciously allow boats still to anchor in their protected waters at the head of the strait. A final ditch point before casting out into the open ocean.
Once our anchor was down and holding, we each lay down for some rest before consulting, again, the weather forecasts which would hold the ticket to when we could head out onto the Pacific.
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