Feels like a holiday already

Despite the furnace being broke (more on that in a subsequent post, I'm sure), we decided to sail up to Port Hadlock to my parent's house for Thanksgiving.

The original intent was to have the boat as accommodation as much as transportation, to alleviate the demands of an unusually full house this year. Not having the furnace running put a damper on that idea. But the more we thought about it, the more we thought that a sail might be nice regardless, and also that we had some other options for staying aboard if it really got too crowded. There are four marinas in the area, two of which host yacht clubs with which we have reciprocal moorage agreements, and one of which is within easy walking distance of my parent's house.

I don't know if we'll avail ourselves of any of those options, but once we realized we had them, sailing up didn't seem utter foolishness anymore.

So we blocked out the entire week for getting up there. Weather is always a little iffy this time of year. Today saw gales and torrential downpours, proving the point; fortunately, we had already decided not to take off today in order to give ourselves extra time to prepare. The power went out for a while at our dock, reinforcing the point that going out for a sail might not be all that much worse than staying here.

Just the fact of being un-rushed makes me feel a bit like I'm on vacation already. I've actually done a bit of work today, in addition to boat work, but it felt like that optional stuff that you do while out on holiday anyway.

Tomorrow is supposed to be the gap in the series of storm systems bearing down on the Pacific Northwest this week, which works out perfectly for us. There's still a Small Craft Advisory on, but the forecasted winds are going to be lighter than we saw to today, and will be on our stern, so it should be a quick and not terribly uncomfortable ride north. And the rain is supposed to abate for the morning, at least, after which we should be up into rain shadow territory, anyway.

The things I'm most concerned about are all early on; Mandy is feeling a cold coming on, and we have three bridges and the locks to clear right at the start of the day. This would be easy if she was 100% but she might not be, and I'm not super-comfortable single-handing the boat through the locks yet.

On the plus side, the large locks are closed, so there is zero chance of any complicated line handling. And I just went over the engine this weekend, changing the oil and checking for any obvious problems, so hopefully there won't be any snags there, either. Really, we've never had any signs that there would be, but I still get nervous from having trouble in the Ship Canal with the last boat. It's the stuff you don't get any signs of that really messes with you.