We untied from our mooring buoy at 0610 under foggy skies. Visibility was about 1 mile or less. I turned on the radar just to be safe. We cruised against an ebb current making only 4.5 knots or less to about Strawberry Point, Whidbey Island and Skagit Bay. Once we passed Strawberry Point we rode the southerly ebb to our advantage out of Saratoga Passage. It was pretty easy cruising in that there weren't too many boats out, and the weather was fairly calm. I laid down at about Columbia Beach (just after we passed the Clinton ferry) and let Kim take the helm until we reached about Possession Point - about an hour later. We had low clouds all the way to Kingston when it quickly burned off. Just by the Kingston ferry dock in the outer cove, Kim got into the Zipper and met me at the dock. We got to Kingston and tied up at the dock at about 1320 (1:20 PM). Initially we pulled into a slip because the gas dock was busy, however then we went over to the gas dock and filled up with diesel.I put 150 gallons of diesel in at $2.90 a gallon for a total of $435.02. We last got fuel at 5967.7 hours which calculates to be 92.3 hours which calculated to be 1.63 gph! Most of our cruising rpm was at 1750 rpm which was a bit lower than years past.
It's good to be in Kingston. We've cruised 102 hours so far. We'll have a long cruising day tomorrow. We went up to Bella Luna for our traditional supper of a "Morgan's Special Pizza." As always it was very good. We ate about half, boxed the other half for tomorrow's breakfast and lunch for the cruise down.
Like yesterday, there was a minus tide around 1230-1300. As we were coming into to Appletree Cove I hailed a 30' planing cruiser boat on the VHF which was headed towards Appletree Cove Point but a bit too close to shore. I said, "You're cruising a bit to close to shore and as you get to the point it will be shoal." He was cruising fast and I don't think he payed attention to my radio call. As he approached the point he came to a dead stop. I think he discovered the shoal.
We met another boater from Olympia who had a blue heeler dog just like Hank. We chatted for a bit. He was just starting his vacation while we were ending ours. I passed on some of my boating knowledge during our conversation since he was a relatively new boater.
Stats: 43.6 nm, average speed 5.9 knots, running time 7:22, ending engine hours 6060.0.
1 comment:
I've very much enjoyed your account of this year's cruise by the MV Independence up in BC waters.
We just returned from our 10 day cruise from Olympia to Roche Harbor and back. We are looking forward to a BC cruise and an more appropriate vessel such as yours.
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