9/9 La Conner to Lake Union, 52.8 nautical miles

La Conner's Rainbow Bridge from our moorage

The channel through La Conner carries quite a bit of current, sometimes northbound, sometimes southbound. The currents just south of La Conner can be substantial as well, remnants of all the water that passes in and out through Deception Pass with the tides. We’ve been cruising a little slower, at about 7.5 knots, to baby the engines with their various problems. We’ve found that at this speed, port doesn’t overheat and starboard doesn’t consume quite as much oil. Because of our speed, we’re paying a little closer attention to take advantage of the prevailing currents rather than oppose them. The navigation software has a handy feature that makes this easy – it links all the nearby current reporting stations to the waypoints on our course, and, given our boat speed, calculates the best (and worst) departure times in a given time period. Depending on the route, sometimes the difference in time can exceed 2 or 3 hours. Our best departure time for today was calculated to be just after 11:00 am, although I was shooting for about 10:00.

I used the last of our spare motor oil this morning topping up the starboard engine – port hasn’t lost any oil through the entire trip. I was pretty sure we’d be okay for the long trip home, but I’m not inclined to head out without any spare oil, so trudged over to the marine store that was situated between the north and south basin marinas and bought a case of 12 quarts to take along.

Goat Island at left - Swinomish Channel

We got away from the dock about 10:30, cruising out of town and through Hole in the Wall, where the channel meets the north fork of the Skagit River. This area is all river delta, and the channel has been dredged to the west towards Goat Island and beyond as we head west towards Whidbey Island. The channel is well defined with buoys and markers on either side, and also range markers near the Whidbey shore. The range markers are two vertical panels, one taller and behind the other by quite some distance. When one is visually directly above the other, you are centered in the channel. Despite all these aids, we frequently see boats that have strayed or taken a shortcut behind a buoy at the end, only to end up aground in the shallow mud flats awaiting high tide.

The range markers near Whidbey Island

We did indeed have a favorable push with the currents on the way out of town, traveling at 9.5 to 10 knots for the first hour or so. That favorable current subsided a bit as we rounded Strawberry Point and headed for Camano Island, but we continued on along the Camano shore at over 8 knots. The weather was cloudy at first, but we had quite a bit of sun, not much wind and no rain. Good conditions for a long ride.

 

We’ve seen quite a bit of wildlife while on our trip – dolphins, seals, eagles, otters, swans, mergansers and all sorts of other seabirds – but we had the most unusual sighting today as we were cruising south of Whidbey Island towards Edmonds. In the distance just off to port we saw what first appeared to be a deadhead – it was protruding a couple feet above the water but not bobbing at all. As we got closer we saw that it was the unmistakable snout of a male elephant seal. He eventually slipped under the surface as we passed by about 100 feet away.

 

ship pushed into large lock by 2 tugs

We were hoping for a relatively quick transit through the locks as we approached Shilshole, but that wasn’t to be the case. Going in ahead of us was a large commercial ship being maneuvered by two tugboats. It was proceeding very slowly and would have to wait for the railroad bridge to raise, so we passed on by to go to the waiting area for the small lock. Ahead of us there was a purse seiner fishing boat. We tied to the waiting wall and killed the engines. Behind us I could see another fishing boat approaching and knew we were out of luck on the next locking. All commercial traffic gets priority over pleasure craft at the locks.

We were tied up just east of the railroad bridge, and Tribble, who had been curiously looking around at our surroundings, headed for the cover of one of her “safe areas” when the first Sounder commuter train clacked overhead. The fishing boats and a small holding tank pump boat were taken in the small lock while we waited. I had turned the radio to channel 13, the locks and bridges channel, to listen in on all the commercial traffic, as all this was going on against the red light for us lowly pleasure boaters.

It was high tide, so the actually locking didn’t take that long, and the small lock gates soon opened again for eastbound traffic. By then a small tugboat had appeared, and was given the go ahead to enter the lock. By now, the large lock had emptied of its westbound traffic and the tugs were maneuvering the big ship, which I heard on the radio displaced over 1000 tons, towards the lock, creating quite a propwash as they pushed it along. It was eventually secured, and an announcement was made for all boats to enter the large lock.

behind Westward in large lock

About then, we saw the Westward, the 86 foot classic we had toured up in Ganges a couple weeks ago, heading into the large lock behind the ship. We followed, and tied to the wall behind Westward. We had a nice chat about where we’d been since with Hugh and Teresa, the owners of Westward. We enjoyed the sound of their old Atlas Imperial engine idling at about 80 rpm – whoosh, whoosh, sput, whoosh, whoosh, sput…

Lake Union & Seattle skyline as we head to our slip

So, after an hour and a half, we were finally through the locks and cruising in fresh water on the way to our slip. It was getting on towards dusk so we turned on our navigation lights and bypassed our usual “victory lap” around Lake Union, instead heading directly to the dock. Ray and Mary arrived at our moorage not long after we had tied up, and we offloaded just some of our stuff – laundry, cameras, computer and of course the cat! Tribble came into her own as boat cat this trip, not even diving under the sofa once. She became accustomed enough to the engines starting to know that it was time to cruise, and she’d run up the steps to the bridge to take one of her places where she could look out and watch the water go by. At anchor she’d get out on deck and carefully walk the perimeter of the boat. We kept a close eye on her, and although she would peer down at the water from time to time she never decided to test walking on it.

We had a great trip, and despite the problems we had babying the engines a bit, they never failed, just kept chugging along. We’ll be back to the boat on Friday to pick up more stuff and wash off the salt layer. In the next evening or two I’ll add a few more photos to complete the blog, now that our Internet connection is stable.