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I made it home to Marrowstone Island this afternoon, motoring a dirt-cheap (and very dirty) 30-foot sailboat from Olympia over the last several days....sort of a Puget Sound, End to End run by slow boat.
I got underway Thursday afternoon at 4 p.m., running up Budd Inlet, through Dana and Drayton Passages, arriving at Eagle Island Marine State Park at 7 p.m., just in time for a great sunset with Mt. Rainier in the background.
Overnighting at one of the State Park buoys, I was up and away by 6:45 a.m. Friday, in order to hit slack water in the Tacoma Narrows around 8:30 a.m. After a two-hour pit stop in Gig Harbor, I faced strong northerly winds and big whitecaps all the way up Colvos Passage (inside Vashon Island), bucking wildly in the chop, before ducking into the lee of Blake Island. Wanting to avoid more rough water on the main body of Puget Sound, I putt-putted through Rich Passage and up the west side of Bainbridge Island...hoping to make Kingston before dark.
All seemed to be going well until I got through Agate Pass. While approaching Jefferson Head I noticed a strange reflections bouncing off of the cabin's interior walls...and realized with horror that I was seeing light bouncing off of water--LOTS of water that had filled the cabin's interior to about the one-foot mark. (I hadn't been in the cabin all day--just out in the cockpit, steering. For several minutes I wasn't sure if the boat was actively sinking, or if there might be some other explanation, so I shut down the motor, hooked up a portable bilge pump with hose running overboard, restarted the 9.9-hp outboard and continued running straight for Kingston...but now closer to shore than ever, just in case.)
No additional water accumulated, but the pump didn't seem to be making much progress against the sloshing lake in the cabin. I made Kingston just before dark, left the bilge pump running full-tilt, and decided I'd better use the next day--Saturday--to clean up the mess, figure out where the water came from, and hopefully get ready for today's final stretch from Kingston to Marrowstone Island.
Reconstructing Friday's rough-water passage up Colvos Passage, I realized that water had probably surged up the inside of the boat's keel casing, since when the keel is raised (as it was during the motor-only cruise), there's an open slot at the forward end of the casing, where water can overflow into the cabin during rough-water conditions. So, yesterday, while cleaning up the cabin mess (including the now-empty Porta Potty, which had been floating upside-down inside the cabin during the flooding), I applied layers of duct tape over the keel-casing slot, hoping that would keep water out of the boat. Having removed every bit of water from the cabin interior yesterday, I could see that the boat wasn't leaking a drop at rest in the marina, so I figured the duct-tape 'save' would hold up during today run north from Kingston.
While Puget Sound was rough today, the wind was from the south--at my back--and with an outgoing tide I made 9-10 mph heading north from Kingston, surfing over huge waves on the way to Point No Point. Once around PNP, I veered across Oak Bay, through Port Townsend Canal, into Port Townsend Bay and then into Kilisut Harbor and Mystery Bay, where I tied up at 3 p.m.
Accumulated running time from Olympia to Mystery Bay was 18 hours--3 hours on Thursday, 11 on Friday and 4 today, with Saturday spent at the dock in Kingston.
Several parts and pieces of the 1978 C&C Mega 30 sailboat were missing when I bought it, semi-abandoned at West Bay Marina in Olympia. I'm guessing that the boat originally had a rubber-gasketed plug to fill the keel-casing hole when cruising with the keel in the raised position...but duct tape worked fine, and once again proved its versatility.
Overall, I had a great time, and was welcomed back to Marrowstone by 200 harbor seals, basking on the sandbar at Fort Flagler State Park. (They're almost always there, but I've never seen more of them than today...a portion of which appear in one of the photos below.)
After figuring out the keel-casing situation, we'll rig the 30-footer for sail and use her mainly for daysailing in nearby Kilisut Harbor.
- Marty
I got underway Thursday afternoon at 4 p.m., running up Budd Inlet, through Dana and Drayton Passages, arriving at Eagle Island Marine State Park at 7 p.m., just in time for a great sunset with Mt. Rainier in the background.
Overnighting at one of the State Park buoys, I was up and away by 6:45 a.m. Friday, in order to hit slack water in the Tacoma Narrows around 8:30 a.m. After a two-hour pit stop in Gig Harbor, I faced strong northerly winds and big whitecaps all the way up Colvos Passage (inside Vashon Island), bucking wildly in the chop, before ducking into the lee of Blake Island. Wanting to avoid more rough water on the main body of Puget Sound, I putt-putted through Rich Passage and up the west side of Bainbridge Island...hoping to make Kingston before dark.
All seemed to be going well until I got through Agate Pass. While approaching Jefferson Head I noticed a strange reflections bouncing off of the cabin's interior walls...and realized with horror that I was seeing light bouncing off of water--LOTS of water that had filled the cabin's interior to about the one-foot mark. (I hadn't been in the cabin all day--just out in the cockpit, steering. For several minutes I wasn't sure if the boat was actively sinking, or if there might be some other explanation, so I shut down the motor, hooked up a portable bilge pump with hose running overboard, restarted the 9.9-hp outboard and continued running straight for Kingston...but now closer to shore than ever, just in case.)
No additional water accumulated, but the pump didn't seem to be making much progress against the sloshing lake in the cabin. I made Kingston just before dark, left the bilge pump running full-tilt, and decided I'd better use the next day--Saturday--to clean up the mess, figure out where the water came from, and hopefully get ready for today's final stretch from Kingston to Marrowstone Island.
Reconstructing Friday's rough-water passage up Colvos Passage, I realized that water had probably surged up the inside of the boat's keel casing, since when the keel is raised (as it was during the motor-only cruise), there's an open slot at the forward end of the casing, where water can overflow into the cabin during rough-water conditions. So, yesterday, while cleaning up the cabin mess (including the now-empty Porta Potty, which had been floating upside-down inside the cabin during the flooding), I applied layers of duct tape over the keel-casing slot, hoping that would keep water out of the boat. Having removed every bit of water from the cabin interior yesterday, I could see that the boat wasn't leaking a drop at rest in the marina, so I figured the duct-tape 'save' would hold up during today run north from Kingston.
While Puget Sound was rough today, the wind was from the south--at my back--and with an outgoing tide I made 9-10 mph heading north from Kingston, surfing over huge waves on the way to Point No Point. Once around PNP, I veered across Oak Bay, through Port Townsend Canal, into Port Townsend Bay and then into Kilisut Harbor and Mystery Bay, where I tied up at 3 p.m.
Accumulated running time from Olympia to Mystery Bay was 18 hours--3 hours on Thursday, 11 on Friday and 4 today, with Saturday spent at the dock in Kingston.
Several parts and pieces of the 1978 C&C Mega 30 sailboat were missing when I bought it, semi-abandoned at West Bay Marina in Olympia. I'm guessing that the boat originally had a rubber-gasketed plug to fill the keel-casing hole when cruising with the keel in the raised position...but duct tape worked fine, and once again proved its versatility.
Overall, I had a great time, and was welcomed back to Marrowstone by 200 harbor seals, basking on the sandbar at Fort Flagler State Park. (They're almost always there, but I've never seen more of them than today...a portion of which appear in one of the photos below.)
After figuring out the keel-casing situation, we'll rig the 30-footer for sail and use her mainly for daysailing in nearby Kilisut Harbor.
- Marty
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