"Call me Ishmael"

SweetHaven is home!
After a few very complicated and stressful weeks, SweetHaven is finally safely birthed in Oak Harbor marina. Okay so, everything isn't perfect, we still have the slight issue of the title to deal with and a owner who is now in Indonesia, potentially a lot of things could still go wrong but who cares right now? The boat is here, and we can start the mountain of work she needs done.

Yesterday we began our journey up and around whidbey island on our first sail on SweetHaven. We took the Port Townsend Ferry from Coupeville over to Port Townsend where SweetHaven was anchored in the harbor. We started the day early, just barely catching the first ferry over at 7:15 am and sat on the beach waiting for Josh, the guy who would be sailing up with us and showing us how to actually sail again since its been double digit years since either of us has sailed before.

It was cold that morning. When Josh and his dog Angel arrived we paddled out to the boat and began getting read to get underway. First job was to hoist the incredibly large anchor with a manual windlass. (Note to self, buy an electric windlass.) It took both Mark and Josh about 15 minutes and a lot of muscle and scraped knees to raise the 90 pound anchor up onto the deck. Because it took so long to raise anchor the boat started to drift and we nearly bumped into another boat anchored beside us, Josh quickly crawled out onto the starboard ama and pushed us off the other boat before we hit.

So we haven't even moved yet and avoided a near catastrophe. Once the anchor was up we started up our lovely new motor and headed toward the fuel dock at the marina near by.

Last week I completed a Washington State boat operators course. Took me six hours of online reading and testing, so now I am sufficiently equipped to drive a boat, at least according to Washington State. On the way to the fuel dock Mark, (whose job is all about the rules of the road and navigating) kept quizzing me as each boat we would approach and who had to give way and who had to stand on. And in that short drive to the marina we managed to come across almost every situation. Sailboat heading towards sailboat. Motorboat crossing sailboat, sailboat coming up to crab fishers and I quickly discovered that just because I know all the rules doesn't mean everyone else does or that they will follow them. So it's pretty much just do whatever you have to do not to crash into anyone.

Coming up to the entrance of the marina we were overtaken by a tug boat which if you follow the rules, the overtaking vessel always has to give way to the vessel being over taken, but it seemed to be turning into a race for who could get to the marina entrance first and we were both on a collision course when they finally slowed to let us go first. It was difficult maneuvering such a large boat around the small marina to get to the fuel dock, SweetHaven has such a large beam, at 24 feet wide that is a big boat that doesn't turn on a dime. But we finally docked up safe and filled up the fuel tank, I learned diesel was pink, who knew?

We got to Port Townsend at 8:30am and didn't actually head out until 12:30pm, we had a deadline to get to Deception Pass by 3:30pm to time our passage through the narrow islands at slack tide to avoid dangerous currents. Once we made it trough the ferry lanes out of Port Townsend harbor we raised the sails.

The clouds blew off by noon and the sun came out unfortunately the wind did not come with it. We ended up having to motor-sail all the way.

We made it to Deception Pass, the bridges that connect Whidbey Island to Fidalgo Island, by 4:20pm, an hour later than we'd hoped but thankfully the water was calm and it was a safe and easy passage. Once we were through, the hard part was done and we had 20 miles left to go. We have no electronics, GPS or chart plotters, anything on board yet so we were navigating with an old chart of the islands we found below. A slight miscalculation on and we thought we were almost at Oak Harbor but we figured out eventually that we were off course. The sun started to set and it got colder and the tinted windows on the cockpit made it increasingly difficult to see land masses so we had to try to guess where we were.

By 7:30pm we were rounding the final edge of crescent harbor and started our passage into Oak Harbor and the marina, tucked neatly up inside. It was so dark by now that while Mark steered in the cockpit I stood up on the bow and shouted back directions for port or starboard to guide him through the markers which he couldn't see through the tinted windows and the darkness. Fortunately our slip was right inside the entrance to the marina and was relatively easy to dock in the dark. Once all lines were tied off and the boat closed up we headed back home where we all collapsed, exhausted but everyone relived to have the boat safely here.