Saturday, September 17, 2011

September 13-16 – Home Stretch

The winds that blew us onto the dock in Ganges quieted down overnight and our departure on the morning of September 13 was very uneventful. We motored down Saanich Inlet and entered the calm protected waters of Tod Inlet.

2011-Cruise-990xAfter lunch we paddled our kayaks the 200 yards to shore and walked 10 minutes to the Butchart Gardens. The amount of work and care that goes into providing blossoming and colorful plants the year round is 2011-Cruise-988ximpressive.

As we paddled back to the boat from shore, another kayak was paddling along the shore. As he got closer, he asked whether I was “Kurt Hanson.” I was a bit taken back but he introduced himself as Brian McCutcheon a friend of John Douglas owner of Laysan, a sister ship to ours. John is preparing to bring his boat back from Subic Bay in the Philippines to Hawaii where John lives. He asked Brian to intercept us in Tod Inlet and find out how things have been working in the long term on our boat.

It was a great visit and we wish John a safe and speedy journey across the Pacific.

The next morning, September 14, we headed across Haro Strait and reentered US waters. We’ve signed up through the NEXUS program with the Customs and Border Patrol and were able to clear over the telephone. We proceeded directly to Echo Bay on Sucia Island where we dropped the anchor.

The entire island is a Washington State Park and it has some very pleasant trails to walk. We elected to spend two nights so that we could cover them all.

An early start the morning of September 16 got us to the fuel dock in Anacortes at 10:30 AM. The only fuel we had taken on since last September was 200 gallons in Juneau. We weren’t surprised it took 1090 gallons to fill all our tanks. The 1290 gallons since last year has cover 580 engine hours, 30 genset hours and lots of furnace operation. We were in our assigned slip in Cap Sante Marina by noon.

From here we will head south to Seattle. We will probably swing by our yacht club’s (Queen City YC) outstation in Winslow for a night or two prior to transiting the locks into Lake Union. Hopefully home next Tuesday, 9/20.

Distance covered this leg is 83.3 for a total of 3379.6 nautical miles.

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