Sail Cutthroat

15 June 2009

Gig Harbor, WA

Our first week out from Shilshole found us headed generally south towards Olympia, WA. The first day we traveled down Colvos Passage to Gig Harbor. Gig Harbor is a charming town and one of the most protected harbors in Puget Sound. The entrance is particularly narrow and well hidden as you approach from the north. It’s also quite shallow and my attention meter was running high as we entered at low tide a couple of days after the full moon. Yes, full moons do exacerbate the tidal effects making the highs higher and the lows rather intense. Once beyond the entrance, this harbor hosts some very large yachts. There are numerous marinas, as well as a Jerisich Park where we chose to dock the dinghy on our shore excursions. We anchored out here saving our marina dollars for other ports of call. Besides, anchoring is very relaxing and you tend to get much better views of the entire area. Plus the kids enjoy running around in the dinghy where they can explore, go fast and avoid the Police who are looking for kids who are speeding in small boats and otherwise pretty actively keeping all the boaters in line.

Continuing in a southerly direction, we transited the “narrows” of Tacoma and spent the next night in the tiny town of Longbranch. It’s best to time the “narrows” with the current, so we departed late in the morning to take advantage of the 3-4 knots of current to more safely move through this short stretch of water. We went under the Tacoma Narrows Bridge – famous for the fact that it collapsed many years ago as a result of hitting its resonant frequency and breaking apart during a severe storm. This bridge design was a sister bridge to the Verrazano Narrows Bridge connecting Long Island to Staten Island in New York. I know this tidbit of information from growing up on Long Island and driving across that bridge again and again. The one in NY looks bigger. There wasn’t much at Longbranch except beautiful scenery. Kathryne thought it was spooky for some reason…something about vampires. I think these girls are way too much into that Twilight book! We did happen to learn much about the South Puget Sound area from the people in the small marina facility here. It’s a beautiful and scenic part of Washington – so remote yet not very far from major towns and road networks.

Olympia is the State Capitol of Washington. As you turn the corner by Dofflemyer Point you can see the Capitol dome as it guides you towards the city of Olympia. The cruising guide points this out with one caveat – the political fog which occurs when the legislature is in session can often obscure this otherwise perfect view of this beautiful and vibrant city. We docked in time for the Farmer’s Market (held Thursday thru Sunday). Got lots of goodies there. There is also a coffee roasting company very close by that has a coffee tasting room, much like a wine tasting room. We stocked upon coffee. The kids and Roger toured the Capitol and of course we got lots of pictures.

Cruising causes us to meet many folks along the way, and it is surprisingly a very small world. I mentioned earlier that we had some of the Mexico connection traveling up here this year as well. M/V Desert Venture is home to one of those couples, Bruce and Angie Butterfield. We’re not really sure where they’re “from” since Bruce spent his entire adult life aboard ships supporting the US Naval vessels. He’s actually a “real” Captain with what I’ll call an “ANY” license. USCG licenses come in a variety of sizes. They are generally based on the gross tonnage of the vessel, number of people you can legally transport, and are further delineated by distance from shore one can go. The “ANY” license allows him to take any ship, any place, any time. Any way, we met up in Olympia and decided to buddy boat for awhile.

Leaving Olympia on Friday, we headed for Jarrell Cove (another hot spot of activity). It sounded very good in the cruising guide, but unfortunately was a bit smaller than we anticipated and there was no room to anchor. They managed to drop moorings right up the middle of the cove precluding us larger vessels from anchoring. The moorings are really designed for smaller boats and while Cutthroat is already on the hefty size weighing in at about 51,000 lbs, Desert Venture is downright huge at somewhere around 75,000! So if the wind blew just a bit, we’d probably be dragging their little moorings all over the cove – not a good way to make new friends. We’d be trading addresses from our insurance companies. Plan B was to go a bit in the other direction to Stretch Island where we found a very nice, quiet and calm anchorage just outside of Fair Harbor. As we were preparing to depart the next morning, we sent Charlie and Kathryne ashore with the trash. But since we weren’t staying at the little marina in the harbor, somebody started yelling at them and told them they couldn’t leave it. I guess they were pretty crowded over the weekend and didn’t have room. Rude? Ya think?

Buddy boating is fun and part of the buddy boaters etiquette is to usually gather for happy hour or dinner, so needless to say we have enjoyed these many opportunities over the past several days to do just that with Angie and Bruce. You can read all about their travels at www.mvdesertventure.com. Angie does a great job of capturing their travels.

We want to head north now, so we stopped back at Gig Harbor for the night on Saturday with the plan to go through the Crittendam Locks on Sunday…bad plan. Now that summer is officially here, Sunday thru the locks is like a Friday rush hour in LA (or any major city). Boats are queued up for the trip back up to the lake. So we just stayed on our nice safe little anchor in Gig Harbor for another day. The kids went for a nice run ashore, and the adults got a few chores done. Angie has her sewing machine and ironing board aboard (of course, I don’t carry either of those items – get real!). We needed to fix the canvas cover for the dinghy, and they were gracious enough to assist. In trade, we’ve been providing shore transportation services so they haven’t had to launch their dinghy. I think they bring more to the table than we do. Bruce is like a personal cruising guide offering valuable input on places to go and those to avoid and especially as we have discussed traveling up to Desolation Sound and our pending return trip down the coast towards San Diego.

On our way back up Colvos Passage, we had a little crew conference and decided that a couple of days in the “big city” would punch everyone’s fun meter more than going through the locks to Lake Union as originally planned. So by lunchtime Monday we were conveniently tied up to the guest dock at Bell Harbor Marina right at the footsteps to downtown Seattle. Needless to say, Charlie and Kathryne are in “hog heaven” (a Roger term from his Texas youth).

Twitter Updates: don’t pay too much attention to these. As most of you are unfamiliar with this service, it’s one of those internet things whereby you can enter short (140 character) blurbs telling your “followers” what you’re doing or thinking or whatever you want at the moment. My blog offers the ability to take all of these over the course of a week and enter them as a separate blog entry. This past week we had intermittent cell service so I didn’t get too many done…like one. I’ve gotten a few comments pretty much telling me I’m an idiot, so I thought a little clarification might help those of you who are more technology challenged.

The picture gallery has been updated. We leave here tomorrow and continue north towards Whidbey Island. All is well aboard Cutthroat, the crew is motivated and enjoying a great trip in this beautiful and scenic part of our country.

Fair Winds from the Crew of the Cutthroat,

Elise, Roger, Charlie and Kathryne